Zen Father, Mystic and Catholic Master Reding – It is not the path of comfort, but the path of sacrifice!
Mystic & Father - Master Reding
For centuries, people have told stories of seekers who set out to find a hidden treasure. These stories appear in different times and cultures, with varying symbols and landscapes. Yet their core remains the same: the human journey to our inner origin. This is true in the medieval legend of Parzival, the knight of the Grail story. It is true in the modern novel "The Alchemist." And this same path is reflected in my own life. The hero's journey begins…
The founding of Nigredo Monastery is my own Parzival story. Like Parzival, I left my mother's protective hand and entered a world that tested and shaped me. I sought wisdom in Japan and Korea, encountered Zen masters, learned other religious languages, and discovered that every true spiritual journey does not lead us to a distant land, but rather back—to God, to ourselves, and to our own spiritual home.
It is not the path of comfort, but the path of sacrifice!
It is not the path of ease that we tread, but the sacred path of sacrifice—that fiery sword of repentance that slays the old and awakens the new to eternal life. As a simple mountain monk, I have gathered here my store of knowledge. From the bottom of my heart, I bow in infinite gratitude before GOD, our Father in Heaven, and my masters—free from East to West. Without these existential encounters, my life would have remained empty. Through them, the root was exposed, and the spirit of the Father could manifest once more.
May their teachings flourish in the hearts of all people. All the best on the path of return to the Divine Logos!
The dog chases the ball, the tiger bites the thrower!
Adolescence - The Adventure Begins
Born and raised in City of Zurich (Switzerland), Zen Father Master Reding enjoyed life on the city limits. Following his mother's instructions, he completed his apprenticeship as a chemical laboratory assistant at Empa Dübendorf with a vocational baccalaureate (BMS). Thanks to additionally obtaining his Matura at the KME (Cantonal Matura School for Adults), the university was also open to him.
Inner Emptiness - Paternal Vacuum - Divorce
The contraceptive pill and the feminist movement of 1968, with its associated destruction of families, created chaos and meaninglessness in society. An inner emptiness in people's hearts caused them to harden and their souls to atrophy. Short-term satisfaction of the senses without responsibility became the focus of society. The spirit of the father was absent and an unbearable vacuum arose in the soul. The perfect breeding ground for narcissism and perfectionism arose under the protective cloak of pity. This environment and ideology had a great influence on him.
This pursuit of meaning developed suddenly during puberty, when he came into contact with the Logos (Zen dialogues) for the first time. The spirit of the father awakened in him unconsciously and the inner emptiness slowly filled with the long-awaited love of the symbolic father.
Thus began the unconscious search for the mystical father in heaven, a teacher and master on the path.
Decision - No mountain top without a valley floor!
An accident abruptly changed Master Reding's life. His back was barely usable – except perhaps for lying in bed and breathing. Enduring the pain became his sole daily goal. His entire life seemed over, and he accepted being a cripple for life.
During this difficult and somber time, he resolved to finally seek a master and enter a monastery – things couldn't get any worse. But first, all his hopes were threatened by the harsh realities of monastic life in Japan. It seemed almost impossible. He was unable to walk for three whole months – and yet, his resolve was made. He had to, and wanted to, relearn everything, literally step by step.
Ready to sacrifice his entire life, he began his preparations. Since then – and to this day – the pain has been his true master and teacher, a lifelong companion. Monastic life had to be tested beforehand. For a year, he lived with his mentor, Kaspar Reinhart, at the Karate Academy in Zurich, sleeping on the floor of the training hall.
The Necessary Journey - Looking for the Master
In Japan, he was ordained a monk by Zen Master Noritake Kotoku and received the monastic name Masan Doam. After formal training at the Empukuji Zen monastery near Kyoto, he traveled from temple to temple in search of a suitable teacher. He earned his living by traditionally almsround on the streets of Japan and assisting with ceremonies in the temples of his fellow monks.
At the behest of his monastic mentor, his journey took him to South Korea. His time as a wandering monk came to an abrupt end when he began his exchange with the Zen master and Korean patriarch Powha Sunim. Whether in the hermitage, the temple, the mountains, or the monastery—the battlefield of wisdom was ever-present with the master. As his personal assistant and student, the Logos was tested around the clock. Life at the teacher's side tolerated, and still tolerates, no carelessness.
After many arduous years of searching, his guiding star was finally found. It has shone timelessly in the student's heart ever since.
Mendicant Monk - You're welcome!
As thanks for his ten years of training in Japan and Korea, Master Reding embarked on a traditional alms round across Japan, wearing only straw sandals. From Wakkanai in northern Hokkaido to Ishigaki-Jima in the far south of Okinawa—over three thousand kilometers—he covered the distance in eight months, living hand to mouth.
Each day he traveled further south, without knowing if the food would last or where his next place to sleep would be. Along the way, he explored life and death with the people of Japan. During this time as a wandering monk and mendicant, the monastery and the marketplace became one.
In 2012, he received Zen Master transmission (Inka Shōmei-sho) from his Japanese Zen Master, Kotoku.
Back to the Roots - The Prodigal Son Returns!
We have to destroy everything and build something new with the pieces! Son Urban (4)
In the quiet depths of his soul, Master Reding recognized that Zen embodies the living mysticism of the East—that direct experience of God which our Western world so painfully lacks in its oblivion. This longing drew him to Zen, not as an escape, but as a bridge to his own lost treasure. For where direct contact with the divine had faded, a mirror shone in the Eastern path, pointing the way back to Christian mysticism: the rediscovery of that sacred union of soul and Creator which forms the heart of true faith.
His time away became the alchemical fire of conversion. Through it, Master Reding gained a profound understanding of his origins and his Christian identity. Although the duration of his training was uncertain, he carried within him the sacred promise to support his father in his old age in Switzerland. Thus, he decided to settle down and rediscover Christian religion and culture together with his children. It was a courageous act of destruction and recreation: everything old had to be shattered into its constituent parts so that, under the guidance of the Divine Logos, something true, beautiful, and good could emerge from the fragments. Like the sword of repentance, it slays the transient and simultaneously awakens to eternal life.
Here the sacred circle closes, connecting to the European tradition. Thus, the family—father, mother, and children—becomes a living temple where mysticism flourishes anew, sustained by reason, morality, and profound spiritual truth.
May this example encourage us all to courageously descend into the Nigredo, sacrifice the old, and build the new in the light of the resurrected Logos. The beauty of goodness awaits those who return home.
Rustic Zen & Mysticism - Church in your own mind and God in your own self!
As a simple mendicant friar, he found lodging in an old, spartan attic in the monastery village of Einsiedeln—where his father lived and had grown up. Thus, Master Reding also studied the lives and deaths of people in Europe through recurring, serendipitous visitors and guests—all united in meditation and prayer.
With the paternal rigor from Japan and the maternal kindness from Korea, the foundation was laid.
After ten years of intensive monastic training in Japan and Korea, Master Reding founded the Nigredo Order in Switzerland in 2014. As founder and abbot, he now leads the rustic, Christian-oriented Nigredo Monastery in Reichenburg. In the Nigredo Order, God is understood as religious experience and mysticism—the living core of every religion. It is about practice, realization, and direct encounter with God.
Our family tradition is to find 'the Church in one's own mind and God in one's own self.' A traditional teaching of self-cultivation, long forgotten by many in the East (Zen) and lost in the West (Mysticism).
Because the Zeitgeist has diluted church, culture, and religion, and our society is increasingly losing its core values—even to the point of disregarding femininity and dissolving the family principle—many people feel lost and alone. Master Reding therefore founded Nigredo Monastery and the Order—not to dictate to others, but to exemplify a path that leads back to faith, truth, and reason.
Vita Innocentis & Firstborn - Vicious life gradually became a virtuous one
Before enlightenment; Chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; Chop wood, carry water. Adam and Eve play again in the Garden of Eden and so the Reding family grows. What else does the simple abbot have to do other than chop wood and carry water. The monastery gates remain open for a handful of determined and intrepid people to examine life and death together again and again.
The tragedy was that Master Reding had always tried to satisfy the paternal vacuum (spiritual longing) with something physical, but this never actually worked. There is no saturation point for a spiritual longing with physical means.
Only with the birth of his first son did fatherhood slowly and steadily awaken in him. And it became more and more of a living symbol and was finally able to do its work of bringing him into his wholeness.
With this awakening that one lives for something greater than oneself, a vicious life gradually became a virtuous one. When the son becomes the father and the father becomes the son again, everything is fine.
The Black Monastery - The Restoration of the Heart
After many years of searching, Master Reding rediscovered the Christian faith and found in it the long-sought piece of the puzzle: mysticism. Although he had traveled halfway around the world, he suddenly realized: the key to the soul had been right under his nose all along.
The Father in Heaven!
The Christian faith holds an infinitely vast treasure of truth. But without the teachings of the Zen patriarchs, he would never have completed this journey and would never have found the source. For in the West, the soul speaks the language (culture) of Christianity, while in the East, it speaks the language of Buddhism. Zen in the East was like an inoculation, a necessary nudge: it awakened him and showed him that we must not only preserve mysticism, that is, the direct search for the experience of God, but also live it out vibrantly once again.
The Division Since the Reformation - The Loss of Mysticism
In the person of Master Reding, it becomes clear what the modern soul has lost and what it can rediscover. Since the Reformation, we have been divided: We live solely within a materialistic-rationalistic worldview, trapped in the gut—the feminine, which seeks to minimize fear and maximize pleasure—and tyrannized in the mind—the masculine, which revolves in tautological fantasy worlds. The heart, the seat of the soul and religion, has fallen silent.
But Master Reding took the opposite path and listened to his intuition. The path of suffering. He discovered mysticism, the unifying element that heals the division. Religion is his heart. With this way of life, he honors his Zen masters in Japan and Korea by not allowing the religiosity he learned there to remain as a foreign doctrine, but rather realizing and passing it on within his own Christian tradition of mysticism. In this way, what he has learned is not betrayed, but placed in the light of the Logos.
Here, the turning back to the symbolic Father takes place. Here, the soul finds its liberation on the path of individuation. Healthy femininity, symbolized by the Black Madonna, and healthy masculinity become in him an inner union.
The Nigredo
What was dark in the Nigredo of the soul is purified and brought to life by the flaming sword of the Logos. Master Reding's path is a living testament: truth, beauty, and goodness can become one again—in the heart that prays and in the silence that sustains.
Thus, this path ultimately manifested itself in the Black Monastery—that place of the Nigredo where the soul passes through darkness to be reborn in the light of Christian mysticism.
Catholic Zen Master - Love of Fathers
The necessary step towards Catholicism was and is, however, littered with great personal obstacles and trials. After Master Reding and his children became Catholic, his own family, relatives, friends and students turned their backs on him. He was abandoned, divorced, betrayed, sued and deceived. People tried to damage his reputation and the monastery. Only a handful of honest friends stood by him.
Divorce and the Abyss – Involuntary Initiation Ritual
Master Reding realized through his own trial by fire that divorce and the destruction of the family have become the involuntary initiation ritual for men. Because our culture no longer recognizes voluntary male rites of passage, he had to endure it involuntarily – and barely survived the silver-bullet-method of divorce and custody proceedings with his children.
No man becomes a complete human being without a positive relationship to the archetypal feminine. Therefore, at the latest by midlife, he had to descend – involuntarily – into the depths of his own shadow to integrate the opposing forces and discover the Self (Jesus). The tragedy of our time lies in the fact that modern society has distanced men from the initiation processes that once transformed boys into men – thus leaving them dependent on their mothers. Authentic masculinity demands a religious journey that only a few complete and survive.
Thus, Master Reding was led by maternal chaos to the brink of death, and in the deep blackness of Nigredo, he gazed into the satanic face of true evil.
When we sense evil and malevolence, it is a shock that cuts deep into the heart, because we have looked into the abyss, into the satanic face of true evil within ourselves and others. Betrayal, the emotional pain, and the horror that such a thing exists shake a person to their very core.
Yet it was precisely there that the Black Madonna became a living symbol. Thus, he was initiated into religion. From the abyss, he rose as a man and a father.
The Beautiful, the True, and the Good
Cultural decay and resurrection! In a fatherless and therefore disrespectful time, we feel lonely, aimless, divided, disloyal, lost and betrayed. Only with the spirit and the Love of the Father do we have the courage and determination to break the cycle of cause and effect, action and consequence of many generations. You did not start it, but you can finally finish it and march through the gateless gate to freedom and responsibility!
In the monastery and on the market square (Vita Contemplativa & Vita Activa), you wandering and temple monks, brothers and sisters, where exactly do you see all the comings and goings of things? Fast fast! Give me an answer, because life and death are the important things, be careful, everything is fleeting and passes quickly. Time waits for no one. God, protect yourselves!
Family Tradition - Korea & Japan
Order: 臨済正宗 (Rinzaishoshu) Master from the true tradition of Zen (Mysticism).
Title: 西瑞軒 (Saisuiken) The pure and auspicious house in the west.
Monk name:
- 磨山 (Japanese: Mazan) Polishing an entire mountain. The Mountain of Bodhidharma.
- 道庵 (Korean: Doam) The eaves on the path, which provides some shade and protection.
The Zen monasteries and Zen temples in Korea and Japan - The family tradition of Zen Father Master Reding. Sacred places where the monks have been continuously searching for the truth for centuries.