Claude AnShin Thomas, an ordained mendicant monk in the Soto Zen tradition—an approximately 25-hundred-year-old lineage that has been passed down for 82 generations—recently gave a lecture in Asheville. New Life Journal had a chance to attend and speak with him briefly after the talk to hear more of his story and hope for peace.

AnShin is not only a monk. He is a soldier, and he is careful to say this in the present tense. It is this paradox that informs his practice and his life. From September 1966 to November 1967 he served in Vietnam. He was shot down on five different occasions and was honorably discharged from the military in August of 1988. AnShin was ordained as a Zen priest in August of 1995. He is the founder of the Zaltho Foundation, whose purpose is to promote peace and non-violence, as well as the author of the book At Hell’s Gate: A Soldier’s Journey from War to Peace.

AnShin takes a practical approach to spiritual practice. Much of his lecture focused around the precept of the Diamond Sutra, which is said to be one of the primary driving factors behind Zen practice: “That which I call that is not necessarily that thing. It is only when I call it that thing.”

He goes on to state, “War. Peace. What is war? What is peace? What does it mean to end war; what does it mean to live peace? That which I call war is not necessarily war. It’s only what I call war. Iraq. Afghanistan. Darfur. Northern Ireland. Sri Lanka. Cambodia. These are places of obvious fighting. Where we say there is war, we identify that as war, and thus we identify war as something outside of us. What is critical for us to understand is that war is not a process that happens externally to us. You are not the cause of my uncomfortable feelings. You gave me the privilege to come into contact with those feelings. Now what I do with those uncomfortable feelings is my responsibility; however, without having a conscious awareness of the roots of war in me, living from this place of conditioning, I would take those uncomfortable feelings in your presence and then blame you for them. If I eradicate you then my uncomfortable feelings will go away. Roots of war. And this gets played out in any number of circumstances large and small. And it doesn’t get played out just in interactions with other human beings. George W. Bush is not the enemy. When we make him the enemy, then we already engage in the process of war. We are blaming someone else and avoiding our own personal responsibility to this dynamic. What are you willing to do?”

Claude AnShin then tells a story that again relates back to the Diamond Sutra:

“Recently, I met with the chairmen of the House Committee on Veteran’s Affairs. When he was talking to me, he was so preoccupied; he couldn’t sit on one point. He was so busy promoting his idea. He has a plan that he wants to put into Congress that every man who comes back from combat has to go through a psychological evaluation period. He wants the military supervising that. If you have them supervising, no one is going to step up and claim the issues that they are having. Twenty-six thousand people from Afghanistan have been labeled to have personality disorders as a ‘pre-existing condition.’ This is an abandonment of the reality of post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s not really a disorder. I’m not a disordered person. It is a natural reaction to an unusual set of circumstances. How I am makes absolute sense based on what I experienced, where I came from. I’m not malfunctioned. But if I don’t conform to the collective consciousness, whatever it might be, then I have the perception that I am malfunctioned. That doesn’t mean that I should go out and not conform just for the sake of it, but rather look at how I can come into contact with a group of like-minded people who provide the support to this process of discovery. This is where meditation comes in. It is about meditation, not medication. It’s about waking up, not masking over. It’s about turning that light inward. It is through this reflection that I can be fully present with all that is. Stillness is not the absence of feelings. It is learning to live in harmony with all of it, with all the bubbling feelings and perceptions and thoughts that I have.”

Q: How does the practice of meditation enable or affect spiritual transformation?

A: There is no such thing as spiritual transformation. You are living in the spiritual reality of life already. It is just waking up to that. What works for me may not be the way it works for you. If you want to find the answer to that question, then engage whole-heartedly in whatever your practice is. One does not have to become monastic to really engage in the practice of meditation. You have opportunities… solid, stable supportive places where you can go and find yourself by turning the light inward and being willing to be open to your own condition. The first two and a half months of my military service, I was directly responsible for the deaths of several hundred people. That was my job. I am a murderer. And, I am not a good or a bad person because of what I have done. I am responsible. What do I do with that? That question was much too big for me to answer. The more I attempted to answer it intellectually, the deeper I was sinking into this psychological quicksand. I stopped attempting to answer it intellectually and instead just sit with these things and see what arises out of this place of silent reflection. It will surprise you.

Look out for more of this Q and A in a future issue of New Life Journal.

Emily Sullivan is a local integrative massage and bodywork therapist. She can be reached at emilybodywork@gmail.com.

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