I have a lot to learn about both Quakerism and Zen. I find strong elements of truth in both, however, so at this point in my life, I am shaping my life's practices on their teachings. Fortunately, for the most part, they do not conflict with each other.

In one area, however, they appear to run into each other in a very significant way. Quoting from one my primary Zen sources, Stephen Batchelor's "Buddhism Without Beliefs" --

A central Buddhist idea ... is that no such intrinsic self can be found through analysis or realized in meditation. Such a deep-seated sense of personal identity is a fiction, a tragic habit that lies at the root of craving and anguish.

So there is no self, no soul, in Buddhism. In ending anguish through the ending of craving, we end the self -- I think that's what he's saying. I must be missing something here, because to end human suffering by ending human-ness makes no sense. If that is the end product of enlightenment, why not commit suicide and fully end the self and all craving, all anguish?

I think I am still under the sway of hard-core Christianity at this point. Something in my thinking is obscuring my understanding. I certainly hope so. For while Quakerism does not endorse much of what evangelicals or Catholics insist is necessary to be a Christian -- to be saved -- Quakers do, I think, believe in the soul. That of God; we each possess the Eternal, and yet it's individual. "I" does exist; as long as we recognize the self as being part of God, we can then live in what I perceive to be Quaker sanctity.

I'm still trying to understand this: The Quaker self, seen as "that of God", and the Zen self, empty.