Maura O'Halloran

Biography #6   

Maura O’Halloran (1955-1982)

Christian Zen Monk

"Suddenly I understood that we must take care of things just because they exist."

Maura O'Halloran was born in Boston, the daughter of an Irish father and an American mother. When she was four, the family moved to Ireland. Her father died when she was fourteen, and she played a large role in the upbringing of her four younger siblings.

From a young age, Maura displayed a deep awareness of human suffering. After college she spent time working in soup kitchens and traveled widely in Latin America. Her concern for social justice was accompanied by a serious attraction to the spiritual life. After experimenting for some years with various methods of prayer and meditation, she decided to explore the wisdom of the East.

In 1979 she flew to Japan and applied for admission to a traditional Buddhist monastery in Tokyo. Many Catholics, and even Jesuit priests, have undergone training in Zen meditation in Japan, finding no inherent conflict between their Christian faith and the principles of Zen. But at the time of Maura's arrival there were few Western women who had been accepted into the very male world of a Zen monastery. Maura was admitted, and so she embarked on the rigorous training of a monk.

Her journals offer an unusual record of her experience, which included sustained periods of meditation, arduous manual labor, and an ascetic discipline of mind and body. Under the guidance of her Roshi (master), she struggled to solve her assigned koans, the famous Zen riddles designed to free the mind of dualistic illusions and lead the novice on the path to enlightenment. In the cold of winter she joined the other monks on an annual begging expedition in the North. With her shaved head and monk's robe, wearing only straw sandals in the snow and sleet, she would join the other monks as they passed through the streets, ringing a bell and holding out their bowls for alms and donations of food.

After six months of intensive training, Maura experienced an ecstatic breakthrough. While being interrogated by her Roshi she was suddenly overcome by tears and laughter. "It is enlightenment!" her Roshi cried. Afterward, when she went outside, she was overcome with a feeling of compassion for everything in existence.

This was not the end of her training. In the months that followed she concentrated more energy than ever on her meditation and her self-discipline. By the next year her Roshi made her an extraordinary offer. If she would agree to marry a fellow monk, he would entrust his temple to her. Torn between the desire to obey her Roshi and a conviction that this was not where she was intended to remain, she experienced a strange physical collapse. Her Roshi at this point accepted her plan to leave the monastery at the conclusion of her training. Some months later, Maura reflected on her vocation:

"I'm twenty-six and I feel as If I've lived my life. Strange sensation, almost as if I'm close to death. Any desires, ambitions, hopes I may have had have either been fulfilled or spontaneously dissipated. I'm totally content. Of course I want to get deeper, see clearer, but even if I could only have this paltry, shallow awakening, I'd be quite satisfied.... So in a sense I feel I've died. For myself there is nothing else to strive after, nothing more to make my life worthwhile or to justify it. At twenty-six, a living corpse and such a life! ... If I have another fifty or sixty years (who knows?) of time, I want to live it for other people. What else is there to do with it? ... So I must go deeper and deeper and work hard, no longer for me, but for everyone I can help."

As this reflection makes clear, Maura did not consider enlightenment something to be grasped for herself alone. Rather, she wished to empty herself to serve others in the way of compassion. This was Maura's wish. But it was not her karma. Instead, after leaving the monastery on her way back to Ireland, she was killed in a bus accident in Thailand on October 22, 1982. She was twenty-seven.

In a letter of condolence to her mother her Roshi wrote, "She had achieved what took the Shakuson [Shakyamuni Buddha] eighty years in twenty seven years. She was able to graduate Dogen's thousand-day training. Then she left this life immediately to start the salvation of the masses in the next life! Has anyone known such a courageously hard working Buddha as Maura? I cannot possibly express my astonishment."

Through a memoir published by her mother in a Catholic journal and the later publication of her journals, Maura's story has earned a devoted following among Christians as well as Buddhists. Her short road to holiness in a Zen monastery has been compared to the compressed career of Therese of Lisieux, the French nun who set out as a child to become a saint. Both young women, having accomplished their spiritual business in this world, promptly departed. It is certain that Maura would have identified with the words of Therese, who said she hoped to spend her heaven doing good on earth.

Citation: All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses From Our Time.

Thomas

Nice story  , makes me think ..............

Yes, I know what you're sayin.  When I first read it, I was amazed.

So when she left this life, she was able to save others from the afterlife?  That would be a first with the exception of the Lord Jesus Christ.

'Christian' seems to be a very broad term in this group-not a person who follow Jesus Christ who said: '...I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man cometh to the Father, but by me.'  He is not a way-one of many.  He said he was the way.

 What are you trying to tell everyone?

'The Christian Saints'

Christian = follower of Jesus Christ and his teachings.

Jesus Christ's teachings are in the Bible.

Saints = what God calls Biblical Christians.

Biblical definiation of Christian = believe God (the Word) became flesh, died for our sins like the Bible said he would, was buried and rose again.

I cannot look into another's heart and tell whether he/she is a Christian.  Only God can.  However, I can watch their lives to see if they live by the Bible.  This 'saint' does not appear to live by the Bible or understand it very well.  Either she is not a Christian or she is a poor example of one.

 Psalms 49:7 None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him:

It is not possible for me or any other person in this life or in heavn to save anyone.

These are not Biblical Christian teachings. 

Brother, I do not mean to discourage you.  However, you (and I also) should follow the example of the Bereans.

 Acts 17:11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.

When we are told follow this or believe that, we should search the Bible to see if it is correct.

Otherwise we will be children spiritually tossed to and fro by the changing teachings of men. 

 Ephesians 4:14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;