In the mornings, Ian Kilroy goes downstairs at 7am to switch on his computer in the livingroom to sit online with others from Dublin Zen Centre. “I offer incense. I do my vows and then I sit,” he says. “Sometimes it’s peaceful and quiet, everyone in the house is asleep. Or, they’re not. The boys are teenagers. Arthur will be upstairs putting weights down heavily. Our cat Rocky Road will be ‘Mee-owww’, and Éamonn will be going, ‘Rocky, Rocky, Rocky!’ I have to silence the Zoom call, because other people are sitting online. It’s ordinary life.”
For Kilroy, practising these rituals as part of his usual home life is important. “The point of practice is not entering some kind of mystical state, although that does happen. The point is the difference between the ordinary and the extraordinary is illusory. Realising that the ordinary is extraordinary and the extraordinary is ordinary is an insight through Zen practice. James Joyce had it in Ulysses too, seeing the habitual as amazing. A lot of artists see that in a speck of dust there is a universe. Scientists too. The cat and the noise of family life and all that is just part of reality.”
Our lives have layers. Some people will know Kilroy as a journalist – he has worked at The Irish Times, The Sunday Tribune and The Irish Examiner – and others will be aware of him for his work as a lecturer in journalism at TU Dublin. But layered alongside this is his embrace of Buddhism: he’s been a Buddhist since he was a teenager, and he is now a Zen Buddhist priest.
Kilroy meets me at the door of Dublin Zen Centre on Anglesea St in Dublin’s Temple Bar. Inside the cushion and floor mat-filled space, full with a scent of incense, a 20-strong community, ranging from their early 20s to late 70s, meet three times a week for “Zazen” or sitting. Beyond them, Kilroy describes “concentric circles” of others with mixed levels of engagement who come and go. We perch on folding chairs, drink little cups of tea and chat Zen.
New homes: comprehensive guide to what’s for sale in Dublin, Wicklow, Kildare, Meath, Cork and around the State
‘They’re supposed to represent us, not sue us’: Crafts council threatens members after critical feedback
If Robert De Niro no longer feels he is able to speak out, one wonders who in the US does
Kilroy, now Myozan in that layer of his life, has written a book, Do Not Try to Become a Buddha, published by Wisdom (they publish the Dalai Lama too, “so I’m in good company!”). Subtitled Practicing Zen Right Where You Are, it illuminates Zen teachings and practice, but it’s rooted in the personal story of this Irishman.
Growing up in Salthill, Galway, in the 1980s, aged about 12 or 13, Kilroy came across a photo of the famous Buddha of Kamakura in the family encyclopedia. “You know the way an image can communicate, teach you something, silently. I went, Oh, there’s something there. This composure, peace.” We think cognition and rationality are prime, “but most of our decisions are intuitive”. Even then, he says, “I was looking for something”.
“Ireland in the ‘80s was in ways a theocracy. It was controlled. All the stuff that came out later, the ugliness. I’m sure we could sense all that. But we didn’t yet have the language to describe what was happening. Or I didn’t. There were priests going around that we’d say, avoid that guy, he’s a bit touchy.”
Kilroy doesn’t link his later rejection of Catholicism to his much earlier discovery of Buddhism. Zen practice is Zazen. “Za” means sitting. Though the word “Zen” is bandied about, it just means meditation. Sometimes, “when people come they think, I’m gonna lie on the floor and just chill out! But it is a rigorous practice. It’s quite a discipline.”
Cross-legged or in a chair, “when you sit still, you are not doing. We spend our lives always engaged. We’re trying to improve our house, improve our relationships, get on in work, get on in life, improve our health by exercising. We’re always doing-doing-doing-doing-doing. Zen isn’t self-help, or a journey towards self-improvement. Zen is primarily coming to this present moment. In sitting still, we stop doing. Zen offers this space in your life that is a total counterbalance to all that, so you stop doing and you just sit down. Those diffuse energies out there come back home to rest. By sitting you could say you recharge your body, mind and spirit, nourish your inner resources. And you do this every day.”
At Zen Centre they sit for half an hour, three times a week, plus meditate online at home every morning. “We normally sit with others. When you sit on your own, you just go, ah, I’ll go make the dinner. But together, it’s almost like a contract. I’m going to sit with these people for half an hour. Sitting with others encourages you to keep going. This is called community.” They sit facing the wall to avoid distraction.
“When you sit still and enter the present moment, memory comes up, emotion comes up, the future. And your wounds come up, your hurts. You can’t help but work through all this stuff that’s in you.
“There is something that always brings you to practice.” Bereavement, family tragedy, trauma, addiction, serious illness. This is sometimes released, especially at retreats, or in private talks with a teacher. “It’s not like Confession, but you could draw an analogy.” Or the conversation could be, ‘I’m finding it hard. My knees are sore.' We might talk about posture and how to sit.”
It doesn’t always involve the Zen teacher or Buddhist priest. “Primarily, it’s your business. That’s the nice thing about Zen. It’s your journey.” What appealed to him first was that it’s a practice, not a dogma. “It was a positive, a discovery. It wasn’t a rejection” of Catholicism.
Years later, in his 30s, he formally “defected” from the Catholic Church (before Pope Benedict ditched that process). “It was inauthentic for me to remain in the church because I had gone in a new direction. I thought it was honest to just leave. There was plenty to be angry about.” That anger has now “abated in some ways”.
Zen Buddhism is both a religion and a philosophy. It is definitely not self-help. “Mindfulness is secular, and because it’s secular, it’s been commodified. I think mindfulness is a wonderful practice. I’m not denigrating mindfulness in any way. It comes out of the Buddhist tradition. But you have the US military teaching mindfulness to soldiers so they can kill more efficiently. People pay huge money for mindfulness retreats. It’s been commodified, bought and sold. And it’s been divorced from its philosophical and ethical foundations. It’s philosophy-free, religion-free and ethics-free, it’s been totally secularised, and that works in the marketplace very well. But the thing about a tradition like Buddhism, whether you call it a religion or not, is it challenges things like our selfish impulses, our desire to achieve fame and profit, materialism.
“That’s why community is really important, because you’re like stones polishing each other. In our own families we rub up against each other, and sometimes it’s challenging, but like most things that are challenging, they’re worthwhile in the long run. Family life, marriage is challenging, but it’s precious and worthwhile. Buddhism is not just working on yourself and self-help and mindfulness. It’s concerned with the big issues of life and death, the meaning of life.”
I think we need space for enchantment within public life, to acknowledge the mystery of our lives
Buddhism has three treasures: Buddha, the teacher; Dharma, the teachings; and Sangha, community. That last is crucial, and “it’s surprising to people. People think of Buddhism as something you do on your own, sitting under a tree or something. But for Buddhists, it’s something you do with others, because you need other people. Especially now in our individualistic culture, where everyone is obsessed with their own self. This moves you beyond that.”
He describes what’s happening during Zazen. “One of the famous lines of Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen in the 13th century, is: to study the Buddha ways is to study the self. So when we’re sitting here in silence, we come to a point of stillness, and inevitably things come up.” The important thing is “you are neither thinking nor not thinking. You’re not following thoughts.” This sounds difficult. “In the way the stomach digests, the mind thinks. Only when you’re dead do you stop thinking. Even when we’re asleep, our consciousness is aware at some level. So you’re not trying to stop thinking, you’re allowing the stream of your thinking to go without getting involved in it. There’s a space beyond your thoughts where you’re allowing your thoughts to run and not chasing them. That space is really important in Buddhism. This is the true self, the self that is not your own thoughts.”
The body too is important. “You’re returning to the body and the breath, being present in your own body. Practice isn’t happening from here up.” He gestures to his neck. “You’re fully inhabiting your body, and you’re not stopping your thoughts. You’re unconcerned.”
The second Dogen quote: To study the Buddha way is to forget the self. “In meditation, we often forget ourselves as well. Everyone does this when we’re ‘in the zone’. For some it’s gardening, climbing a mountain, running. Sometimes you get it in nature, an autumn day surrounded by trees and you just forget yourself. A blissful state. You’re connected to everything. When you remember yourself again, you go, ‘Oh, wow, that was a moment of liberation’.
Sitting Zazen, “you’re going from one to the other, fluctuating between thinking what will I make for dinner, to forgetting yourself, then back to the dinner. That’s what it’s like for Zen masters, and that’s what it’s like for Zen novices.”
Dogen’s third take is about being enlightened by everything in the world, “a kind of mystical understanding of reality. You see it in Catholicism too, in St Teresa or John of the Cross, and in Sufi. Many religious traditions have this idea of unifying with the true, ultimate nature of reality.”
There’s “a blissfulness, peace and joy. Because you get a taste for that you want to keep sitting.” Is he blissed out? He laughs. “No! What I love about the Zen tradition is it doesn’t have gurus. It doesn’t make great claims. It’s very down to earth, realistic. Zen masters, teachers, are human beings.”
That peace was what kept him coming back for more; but in Buddhism you’re not supposed to chase. This seems contradictory to the outsider. “Contradiction is really important in Zen teaching. For example, the contradiction that I’m an independent person and I’m also totally interdependent. In traditional western logic, you can’t have two opposites simultaneously. But reality is full of contradictions, and Zen is encountering that reality. What brings us to practice might be a desire to recapture that bliss, or to work out some trauma. But when we actually sit, we need to give that up, let it dissolve.”
It strikes me that the same duality, those contradictions, are in Kilroy himself too. He’s the same person he was as a journalist: warm, engaging, smart, humorous. But he’s also a Zen Buddhist priest, learned and concerned with life and death.
Practice is challenging and “very few people stick it”. But Myozan Ian Kilroy took lay ordination, formally becoming a student of the Zen tradition. For years he met his teacher Taigu, a Zen priest in Osaka who wrote his book’s foreword, weekly online, and in person on retreat, discussing texts. “I didn’t choose to become a Buddhist priest. I was asked to become a priest.” That was 2011. “I thought about it, and talked to [his wife] Isabelle, because you need the people in your life to support your journey.” She’s “a French atheist”. He laughs heartily. “She doesn’t practise anything. But she’s incredibly supportive. And she’s a brilliant, very creative baker. When she bakes for our events, it’s a particular hit in Dublin Zen Centre.”
Their son Arthur (16) has taken Jukai, the lay ceremony, and Éamonn (14) is “interested in Christianity. Buddhism, no thanks. That’s Dad’s thing.” His parents Margaret and Michael are “devout Catholics”.
Kilroy is aware “people are always curious”, about what Buddhism is, and how he got into it. It’s one of the reasons the book exists. “There’s an autobiographical element. It’ll mean something to people who grew up in Ireland.”
Over the years he didn’t talk a lot about practising Zen. But as a Buddhist priest he is public-facing, involved with Dublin City Interfaith Forum, working on school religious curricula, representing Buddhism at National Days of Commemoration. He has also ordained people, including Ireland’s first woman priest.
He stresses “Zen Buddhism is an ancient and profoundly deep tradition, and it offers an opportunity to find a space of peace within your life. We live in a very secular country, and I really value secularity, because in a multi-religious, multi-faith and no-faith society, secularity is the container we need to hold everybody. I am a big proponent of religion not being public policy. But I think we need space for enchantment within public life, to acknowledge the mystery of our lives. Religion is totally cut out of public life, and I understand why it has been, because religion mostly should be a private matter, but an arid secularity needs to open up a little.”
Tips for living – Ian Kilroy suggests anyone can use Zen in their lives
- Sit still for a time in quietness every day, especially if you do not have the time.
- Connect with others doing things where no self-gain is apparent. Being together will nourish you in unexpected ways.
- Breathe into the space between your triggers and reactions – there’s some freedom before anger and irritation arise. Your breath is an anchor of stability and stillness that is always with you.
- Do not wait for anything: your life is right now. There will be no later time when everything is perfect.
- The past is gone and the future has no real substance. The peace and liberation you want can only be experienced in the here and now.
- Allow the mystery of life to enchant your days: see the extraordinary in the ordinary. What you need is with you at every moment.
- Want what you have. This is the secret of contentment.
- Being kind is more vital than knowledge or belief.
Do Not Try to Become a Buddha by Myozan Ian Kilroy is published by Wisdom. https://wisdomexperience.org/product/do-not-try-to-become-a-buddha/
