The Sanbo Kyodan school originated from the great Harada Roshi and his disciple Yasutani Roshi who created a practice integrating the methods of Soto and Rinzai.　Yasutani has been especially influential in bringing Japanese Zen to the West, in particular as the teacher of Philip Kapleau.　Unfortunately for their reputations in the contemporary West, it has been established that both ardently supported Zen training as an aspect of Japanese militarism, a position seemingly incompatible with the teachings of Buddha.　Although the Sanbo Kyodan is an orthodox tradition it subscribes to the Suzuki fallacy of treating Zen as the ahistorical root of all religion and therefore offering a methodology applicable within basically any belief system.　In Japan this had the consequence that the selfless application of the sword in the decapitation of prisoners could be read as Zen attainment.　That

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such a situation could have arisen certainly merits careful historical and cultural analysis such as Brian Victoria has set in motion (1997).

　　 The Sanbo Kyodan also appears to be the prime vehicle through which Christian practitioners have been taught Zen meditation and granted transmission.　The resulting work of the Benedictine monk Jaerger Willigis, and the Jesuit William Johnston and Fr. Ednomiya-Lassalle is admirable and has introduced many people, Christian and otherwise, to Zen practice but it raises many questions.　Although the mystical experience common to all religions and probably basic to the shamanic origin of all of them, almost certainly has a psychological root which may be considered a fundamental human condition, this does not mean that the Zen cultural tradition and the practice of meditation can be meaningfully split in twain, adopting the latter while ignoring the former.　To simply graft a Zen method of contemplation onto a Christian theological stance looks like thievery.

　　 It is strange that Westerners respond more openly to the Asian model than to the profound practices of the desert fathers in the Neo-dionysian tradition of apophatic theology.　It is stranger still that apologists of Christianity should ignore their own profound methodology to ride the stream of fashion for Oriental mysticism.　Undermined by the rationalism of the European “Enlightenment” and the emergence of scientific humanism it seems Christians need to look outside their own culture for spiritual inspiration.　This has been a success perhaps only because of Suzuki’s insistence on a Zen mysticism independent of history and culture.　We do not deny the transmissions of these fathers in Zen nor their understanding of practice but we do need to understand that their realisation is that of a psychological or attitudinal state and not that of an insight into Buddhadharma.　Needless to say this can cause profound disquiet in those of their disciples with minds alert to meaning as well as process.

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　　 It is likewise strange that basing their approach in the assumed ahistorical, culture free, character of Zen these teachers should still refer to it as a Christian Zen.　If either Christian or Buddhist, Zen cannot be said logically to lack context.　Only a completely independent Zen could be so.　A similar criticism may perhaps be directed at an attempt to describe Zen in terms of agnosticism (Batchelor 1998).

　　 In fact these teachers have no intention of developing a Buddhist Zen understanding.　As Batchelor (1994, p.213-220) points out, in spite of a greater tolerance of pluralism in religious belief, inclusivist Zen enthusiasts of the Roman faith are clearly placing sitting meditation in the service of a mission minded Christianity as basically as intolerant of difference as ever it has been.　The superiority of Christianity is assumed on the grounds that it consists in “revealed truth” rather than in “natural” truth which is as far as Zen can go.　For men like Father Lassalle and William Johnston, Christian contemplation remains the focus to which they are drawn── a focus paradoxically strangely insistent on the importance of a remarkable if implausible “fact” as having happened in history.

　　 It follows that a major source of confusion in European Zen centres on a question concerning whether Zen is to be considered Buddhist or not.　One result has been an institutional eclecticism exemplified by the De Tiltenberg centre in Holland.　De Tiltenberg in 1973 was a centre of the International Grail Movement, a Catholic movement for women.　Christian Zen was initiated there in retreats offered by William Johnstone and Fr. Ednomiya-Lassalle.　 Subsequently retreats were led by Japanese Roshis, a Japanese Carmelite, and Toni Packer, a former associate of Philip Kapleau who split away to form her own school.　In addition conferences have been attended by major Zen scholars such as Professor Dumoulin and Professor Masao Abe of the Kyoto School of Philosophy.　At De Tiltenberg one can sample a cross section of

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