In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Wisdom's Flowering Cherry:William Johnston's Charismatic ZenLucien Miller Click for larger view View full resolutionIn 1976, when I was about to leave Taiwan after a sabbatical in Taiwan, I happened upon a tattered poster on a telephone pole: [End Page 133]CHRISTIAN-ZEN RETREAT DIRECTOR: WILLIAM JOHNSTON, S.J. ST. BENEDICT'S CONVENT, TAMSUI, TAIWANSunday-FridayI knew that Father Johnston was the well-known Irish Jesuit theologian at Sophia University in (...) Tokyo, widely honored for his studies of mysticism and his major contributions to the development of Buddhist-Christian encounter. I was totally intrigued. Instantly, I decided to attend the retreat.1day oneI was late when I arrived at Saint Benedict's chapel, where the retreat was underway, announcing my presence with a mighty thud of its door to a full gathering of retreatants sitting silently in the pews. Suddenly, here I was, the sole layman among a group of Catholic priests and sisters, most of them American-born, who were serving as missionaries in Taiwan. I looked and felt like a misfit, especially since Father Johnston had to wait to begin the retreat because of me. The chapel setting was Far Eastern in its simplicity and decor. Square in shape, it had a low altar in its center, about a foot and a half high. A plain, muted oil lamp hung to one side, softly gleaming in the semidarkness of late afternoon. Tatami mats and cushions were placed on the spacious floor around the front and two sides of the altar, so that after today's introduction, participants could sit on cushions according to zazen form and face the altar.As I dashed into a pew and looked up, I experienced a Catholic's shock. To my utter surprise, Father Johnston appeared in black Japanese yukata robes, instead of a priest's black suit. He bowed deeply before the altar, where he placed the Eucharist in a ciborium in plain view instead of in the tabernacle where it belonged. Turning to face us, he sat zazen style with his legs crossed on a Zen cushion with the ciborium behind his back. There was no "In the Name of the Father" or "let us pray." We simply maintained a long silence. In imitation of Japanese monks, many of the religious women and men retreatants were wearing robes, while the priests among them had on cassocks. Everyone but me had dressed appropriately for a Zen sesshin. I guessed many were fellow neophytes like me, as we all awkwardly sat zazen with legs crossed as best we could. We would quickly discover together that, for the uninitiated Westerner, zazen would initially prove a painful affair.Father Johnston was partly bald with longish hair at the temples, bushy white eyebrows, and wore a gray-brown beard and radiant smile. While born in Ireland and definitely Irish, you could tell by his clothing, carriage, and bearing that he had been profoundly touched by Japanese culture and language through his long years in Japan. Nonetheless, you readily knew by his sparkling blue eyes amidst his ruddy complexion that the Irish remained in the Japanese.I had brought my Zen sitting cushion all the way from my home in Pelham, MA, to Taiwan, and had practiced daily morning zazen in our Japanese-styled residence while teaching and researching at Tunghai University near Taichung. But feeling late and a bit shy about being up front with esteemed Father Johnston and among the clergy and [End Page 134] religious, I placed my cushion at the back of the chapel, sat down, and crossed my legs. Father Johnston noticed that I was off by myself, and came over. "Good," he laughed, complimenting my sitting posture. "But pretty hard to sit on a marble floor!"He explained to the participants that the schedule he set would be followed beginning the next morning, and that it was entirely voluntary. You could practice crosslegged zazen on your cushion and mat on the chapel floor or sit in the pews. The general atmosphere would be both disciplined, Zen-style, and relaxed. "Please keep silence at all times," he requested. Morning zazen was very early—from... (shrink)

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This work contains the Gifford Lectures delivered in the University of Glasgow in the academic years 1932-1933 and 1933-1934.

1. General philosophy. - 2. Ethics and politics. - 3. Plato and Christianity.

The relations between philosophy and religion.--Personality in theology and ethics.--Christian ethics in application to individuals and to groups.

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Collingwood and Hegel R. G. Collingwood was a lonely thinker. Begrudgingly admired by some and bludgeoned by others, he failed to train a single disciple, just as he failed to communicate to the reading public his vision of the unity of experience. This failure stands in stark contrast to the success of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who won many disciples to a very similar point-of-view and whose influence on subsequent thought, having been rediscovered since 1920, has not yet been adequately (...) explored. Collingwood and Hegel share three fundamental similarities: both men held overwhelming admiration of the Greeks, both possessed uniquely broad knowledge of academic controversies of their day, and both were inalterably convinced that human experience consti tutes a single whole. If experts find Collingwood's vision of wholeness less satisfactory than Hegel's, much of the fault lies in the atmosphere in which Col lingwood labored. Oxford in the 1920'S and 1930's, sceptical and specialized, was not the enthusiastic Heidelberg and Berlin of 1816 to 183I. What is important in Collingwood is not that he fell short of Hegel but that working under adverse conditions he came so elose. Indeed those unfamiliar with Hegel will find in Collingwood's early works, especially in Speculum M entis, a useful introduction to the great German. (shrink)

In the twentieth century, celebrations of historical anniversaries abounded. There was the bicentennial of the French Revolution, the 150th anniversary of photography, Bach's 300th anniversary, and the 200th anniversary of the American Constitution, to name just a few. Every year hundreds of anniversaries still attract media attention and government investment in ever greater degrees. Deploying an astonishing array of insights, Celebrations explores the causes and consequences of this major phenomenon of our time. As Johnston shows, anniversaries fulfill a number (...) of needs. They provide the kind of experience of regularity across a lifetime that the weekly cycle supplies in daily life. The use of anniversaries for political ends emerged during the French Revolution and expanded to promote nationalism during the nineteenth century, although there are differences in how they are used. Europeans tend to celebrate cultural heroes, while Americans tend to celebrate events. Entire nations exploit anniversaries of founding events in order to promote national identity. Commercially, there are whole industries built around commemoration, and they provide intellectuals an opportunity to take center stage. Using methods of cultural history, sociology, and religious studies, Johnston shows how the cult of anniversaries reflects postmodern concerns. It fills a void left by the disappearance of ideologies and avant-gardes. In an era when there is little consensus about styles or methods, anniversaries allow intellectuals, businesses, and governments to acknowledge and celebrate every nuance of opinion. By suggesting ways to use anniversaries more creatively, this book offers a broad range of insights. (shrink)

Field-ground reversal underlies Islamic art's use of repeating geometric patterns or tessellations. Encounter with field-ground reversal suggests the notion of ‘oscillationism’ to mean willingness to oscillate between two equally plausible opposites rather than to affirm one or the other of them. This article explores oscillationism as a move for confronting theories of evil and for assessing the merits of foundationalism without succumbing to cognitive dissonance. The article goes on to examine F.D.E. Schleiermacher's suggestion of 1799 that the infinitude of God (...) calls for more, not fewer religions. His reversal of Christian and Muslim assumptions puts contemporary debate in the theology of religions into a postmodernist perspective. Without supplying fresh answers, the spiritual practice of oscillationism provides a fresh way to frame some of the weightiest questions. (shrink)

The historical techniques of theodor gomperz, Friedrich jodl, Wilhelm jerusalem, And rudolf eisler are described. All four excelled at expositing and comparing widely divergent doctrines. Gomperz and jerusalem discussed how social practices influenced doctrines. Eisler was perhaps the most encyclopedic historian of philosophy ever. Johnston's book "the austrian mind" (berkeley, 1971) relates the four philosophers to seventy other austrian thinkers.