Zen and the influence of the Holy Ghost

I enjoys studying about Zen. Below is an excerpt from "Zen in the Art of Archery" by Eugen Herrigel. Its about a German who move to Japan to understand the concepts behind Zen. Zen is not an action but a method. So it did not matter what he studied (painting, music, cooking, martial arts, chopping wood, whatever) but the mind set during and through the action was the important thing. I think it relates to what we call the workings of the Holy Ghost. In the church, we talk about what the Holy Ghost and its power to open our eyes in sacred and deeply meaningful ways. We believe that the Holy Ghost can be with us always unless we offend it, therefore it should be with us when we paint, cook, clean (ugh), chop wood, etc. How do accomplish that though? My attitude and mind set are often very different when I am reading the scriptures, fasting or at the temple compared to when I teach jr high, work on the yard and fill out lame paperwork. I think I know a lot more about getting the spirit that I know about keeping it actively with me (so then I go and get it again! Increasing my understanding on the getting side and slacking on my keeping side-not very tao of me, eh?) I think the attitude of Zen has helped and the Tai Chi philosophy of yielding is helping to understand how to hold on to the Holy Ghost more securely. These relate to the "Be still and know that I am God." Wait and act with the spirit-don't rush it let your actions flow like a water wheel and grow like an oak.


So to the book, I'll plug in more gospel-like word that could fill in for the Zen words. He starts by talking about why Zen (the Spirit) is so hard to teach or communicate fully.
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No reasonable person would expect the Zen (Holy Ghost, spiritually) adept to do more than hint at the experiences which have liberated and changed him, or to attempt to describe the unimahinable and ineffable "Truth" by which he now lives...Unless we enter into mystic (spiritual) experiences by direct paricipation, we remain outside, turn and twist as we may....Zen (the workings of the Spirit) can nonly be understood by one who is himself a mystic (spiritualist) and is therefore not tempted to gain by underhand methods what the...experience withholds from him.
Yet the man who is transformed by Zen (the Spirit), and who has passed through the "fire of truth" (baptism of fire), leads far too convincing a life for it to be overlooked. So it is not asking to much if, driven by a feeling of spiritual affinity, and desirous of finding a way to the...power which can work such miracles-for the merely curious have no right to demand anything-we expect the Zen (Spiritually) adept at least to describe the way that leads to the goal....How often is he tormented on the way by the desolate feeling that he is attempting the impossible! And yet this impossible will one day have become possible and even self-evident. Is there not room for the hope, then that a careful description of this long and difficult road will allow us at least one thing: to ask whether we wish to travel it?
[When talking about his Master]...No less decisive is the fact that his experiences, his conquests and spiritual transformations, so long as they still remain "his," must be conquered and transformed again and again until everything "his" is annihilated. Only i n this way can he attain a basis for experiences which , as the " all embracing Truth," rouse him to a life that is no longer his everyday personal life. He lives, but what lives is no longer himself.

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I don't think its a big stretch to see the gospel (eternal truths) in this Zen text. Worth pondering :)