A Quaker in the Zendo

by Steve Smith

Overview

At a time in my life when I had drifted far from my Quaker origins, I found the discipline of Zen meditation to be clarifying, healing, and liberating. Curiously, this Asian spiritual practice has led me back to the Society of Friends: the more I practice Zen, the more thoroughly Quaker I become. The spiritual insights of Christianity and Quakerism have regained for me fresh depth, power, charisma. Within the earliest records of Quakerism, in the writings of George Fox and other early Friends, I find--to my wonder and delight--remarkably explicit guidelines for spiritual practice that are often diluted or obscured in contemporary unprogrammed Friends' worship. In A Quaker in the Zendo, I tell the story of my journey through Zen to a rediscovery of these directions for spiritual formation practiced by the earliest Quakers.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940156998760
Publisher:	Pendle Hill Publications
Publication date:	07/16/2016
Series:	Pendle Hill Pamphlets , #370
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	219 KB

About the Author

Steve Smith was born in 1939 in a farm house near What Cheer, Iowa, and grew up as a member of Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative). He attended Scattergood Friends School, Earlham College, and Harvard University, from which he received an MA. and Ph.D. in Philosophy, He has recently retired from 35 years of teaching in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California.

A member of Claremont Monthly Meeting (Pacific Yearly Meeting), he has been clerk of the Meeting and of various monthly meeting committees. He has been active with the Southern California Friends Conference on Religion and Psychology, the Friends Association for Higher Education (FAHE), and the Executive Committee of Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC), Section of the Americas. Steve has led numerous Friends’ retreats and workshops, has written for Friends Bulletin and Friends Journal and has edited three books by Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work, Nothing Special: Living Zen, and Now Zen. He currently serves as Clerk of Southern California Quarterly Meeting, He has a son, David. Steve and his wife, Pat, live in the small mountain village of Mt. Baldy.