Christian turned Zen Buddhist (Christianity, Buddhism)

Christianity, Buddhism

"Sometime in 2007, it fully dawned on me that I did not, and indeed, could not believe some of the things that, more or less, one is required to believe to call oneself a Christian, and that no amount of deciding or effort was going to change that. Additionally, I realized that I actually never had. One of the ideas that my mind would not sit still for was an externalized, interventionist God. I simply didn't buy it.

Now that was troublesome, having been raised a Christian, and it took some time to actually admit what I had already realized because of fear of damnation inculcated since childhood in the church. Once that admission was made, though, I let go of Christianity. I decided that I wanted a spiritual life that would work for me, not the other way around, and for the first time felt free to look outside the faith I was brought up in."

—Will Collum

This quote is taken from an interview with Will Collum at MeditationHow.info.


This four part meditation testimonial and interview features Will Collum of Columbia, South Carolina, who shares his experiences shifting from Christianity to Zen Buddhism, cultivating Inner Awarness, Zazen Shikantaza (Sitting Meditation), and his process of Letting Go.

Groundhog Universe

Interview with Robert Thurman

MR: Buddhism is not a religion?

RT: No, not primarily. The way we define religion today in religious studies is as a non-rational, sort of an emotional thing, where you put your science aside and you kind of commune with the world or something and you have a leap of faith and you’re saved and born-again. And therefore it’s non-rational, in fact, by definition anti-rational.

MR: So that experience can happen in a Buddhist context, like in the Vimalakirti Sutra you described earlier, even though Buddhism is not a religion? It sounds like you are saying the root of a conversion experience is not, in fact, religious.

RT: Yes, the real essence of that experience can happen in a Buddhist context because the real essence of it is not the blind faith or religious part of it, actually. The real essence is a deep contact with a different aspect of reality. The essence of that experience is a contact with the nirvanic nature of reality. That is what the essence of that experience actually is.