Continuous conversion 4 William Johnston

William Johnston in a kimono

The continuous conversion experiences of William Johnston, the Jesuit priest and Zen practitioner involved moving, a bit like Kathleen Raine in her vision of the devout nun, out of the narrower remit of Roman Catholicism, but for Johnston into embracing aspects of Zen Buddhism. Johnston wrote about and immersed himself in the teachings of St John of the Cross and from ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’ as both firmly rooted in the Gospel, but after moving to become a missionary in Japan in 1951 he realized there was much to learn from Buddhism. He set up a dialogue with Protestants (who in the meetings read from the Bible), Catholics (who celebrated the Eucharist), and Buddhists (sitting in silent meditation). Occasional visitors joined including the Quaker Douglas Steere, and the interfaith proponent and Catholic priest Raimon Panikkar.

‘I quickly saw that Buddhist contemplatives easily transcend the ego, or small self … to be in contact with the big self. Are they, I asked myself, entering into what we have called “infused contemplation”? The attention they attached to the body, the breathing and the unconscious – all this was teaching me something.’

Even sitting on the train running through Tokyo, Johnston thought that the Japanese were living at a deeper level of reality than most Westerners. ‘Now I see that contemplation pervades this country and has got into me by a sort of osmosis.’

Some twenty years later and on a thirty-day retreat in the US, Johnston seems torn between following the prescribed Ignatian exercises and bringing in the Japanese influences. He was seriously challenged about what he was doing by the retreat leader, who questioned Johnston continuing as a Jesuit priest. Sharing this unexpected attack with a young abbess in a convent where Johnston stayed while on the retreat. the abbess advised him to sleep on it. She explained that always the answer comes from the unconscious.

‘I did sleep. And I had a dream … it had something to do with my being in a room in a big house, feeling very happy and comfortable. I woke up in peace, convinced that this room was the Society of Jesus and I was in the right place. I had no doubts about my vocation. I was where I should be. The answer, as the abbess had predicted, came from my unconscious.’

Returning the next day for the exercises on retreat Johnston demands that his life as a Jesuit and the new methods of contemplation are respected – both can co-exist, and the retreat continues. Yet Johnston remained shaken and became ill, having to go to hospital – the sickness he knew coming from the retreat and overwork.

‘Looking back at the whole scene again I can see that earth-shaking retreat as one of the blessings of my life … In zooming in on me and breaking down all my defences, Vince [the leader] was the Zen master leading me to enlightenment …’

Together with the insight from the abbess Johnston was:

‘… knocked into the unconscious realization that my vocation, my basic choice in life, was not a rational choice. It was somehow mystical, something like an awakening … a choice made at the depths of one’s being. “You have not chosen me; but I have chosen you.”

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