Tom Chetwynd converted to Catholicism as a youth while attending a boarding school run by Benedictine monks. In this accessible story of his introduction to the Zen practice of meditation, the author discusses his physical discomfort during a grueling ten-day sitting retreat. "Meditation started out painful and tedious beyond words," Chetwynd notes but later it dawns on him "that sitting was the one sure and calculated way of restoring the soul to its natural state of grace."
One of the outcomes of this practice was the author's realization that meditation is an essential part of the Christian tradition. Chetwynd believes that Jesus learned it in the Qumran community and that monasteries in Egypt and Palestine made it one of their essential routines. Both Zen teachers and Christian meditators would agree with the following insight by the author: "Only by purifying the heart — the depths of the feeling-mind and the seat of passion — can we free ourselves from our particular egoistic reactions to which we are tethered by long conditioning. The storm of the ego is always on the surface, but in the depths of the mind there is unlimited peace." Chetwynd demonstrates how he has integrated his Christian faith with the teachings of Zen. With the approval of Sochu Roshi, he now teaches Zen meditation in London and in prisons throughout England.