In particular, Berger, Peter,L. It was considered "real" because it came from the saintly Suzuki and Suzuki made a point of saying it was "real." [Note: This section offers background mostly not covered in Downing's book.] In this regard Mr. In his letter, Zournas, who had resigned the presidency in July, details for the lawyers benefit how the various board members reacted to a motion that Shimano and his wife, then the organizations treasurer, be fired. Members along with Baker literally built their world based on the language and view of Zen accompanied by ritualized behavior that added to the sense of being embedded in and being an active participant of that sacred world. There is a wealth of contemporary exciting Zen scholarship available in English. Baker wrote an introduction to Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, an edited collection of Suzuki's talks, in which Baker said (p.17), "During the Second World War he [Suzuki] was the leader of a pacifist group in Japan." The new president, Sylvan Busch, did not open his mouth to show any disapproval of Mr. and Mrs. Shimanos activities. And then there was Schnyer, the youngest board member, who, according to Zournas, defended Shimano by reportedly saying, He hasnt raped anyone yet, has he?. That made him the successor and dharma heir to Shunryu Suzuki, a Japanese Zen missionary who came to California in 1959 to serve immigrant families living in Japantown. Victoria describes how the most prominent roshis from all sects of Japanese Zen interpreted Zen's teachings to support the imperial and militaristic goals of Japan from the early twentieth century through the end of World War II and beyond. In the 1960s, four major Zen teachers came to the United States from Japan: Shunryu Suzuki, Taizan Maezumi, Joshu Sasaki, and Eido Shimano. Explore hundreds of dharma talksby San Francisco Zen Center teachers, practice leaders, and speakers from the wider community. But the Americans didnt know that. Classes and workshops from our Online Programs, resources for beginners, zazen (meditation) and chanting, Dharma talks, and live online practice sessions with teachers. Sasaki, of Rinzai-ji, a Zen center in Los Angeles, is now 106 years old and, as his board members finally admitted in 2013, was groping and fondling unwilling students well into his 11th decade (he also ran a leading Zen center in New Mexico, and his lewdness did not respect state lines). [21][22][23] Today SFZC is the largest Soto organization with a foothold in the West. Peter L. Berger, the well- known American sociologist writes, "Unlike puppets, we have the possibility of stopping in our movements, looking up and perceiving the machinery by which we have been moved. [7] Thich Nhat Hanh wrote of Baker, "To me, he embodies very much the future of Buddhism in the West with his creative intelligence and his aliveness. All trouble at the Center was internalized and personalized by its members. . The deeper you go into practice, the deeper you find your teacher's mind is, until you finally realize that your mind and his mind are Buddha's mind. Baker manifested his authority by giving his followers two choices: obey his words without question or be marginalized, which was tantamount to being forced to leave. Under the Zen form of legitimization, each Zen roshi is viewed as a saint. What was or was not implied in Baker's transmission from Suzuki? Finally, as Suzuki apologized to Baker for what he was going to do to him, i.e., give him and only him Dharma transmission, Suzuki knew that all was not right or ripe or both with Baker. The San Francisco Zen Center community includes residents and non-residents at all three centers, priests and lay practitioners, long-term and short-term participants, and opportunities to attend a wide variety of events and programs. critical insights into Zen/Buddhism have strongly influenced my views: Robert Buswell, Alan Cole, Bernard Faure, T. Griffith Foulk, Robert M. Gimello, Peter N. Gregory, John Kieschnick, John R. McRae, A. Charles Muller, Mario Poceski, Robert H. Sharf, Morten Schlutter, Gregory Schopen, Brian Victoria, Albert Welter and Dale Wright. However, there is no surviving text of Pai-chang's Rules. San Francisco Zen Center 300 Page Street San Francisco, California 94102 www.sfzc.org. (It should be noted that Suzuki could read English.) Not surprisingly, virtually 100% of the time these breaches of morality serve the pleasure and interests of the supposed enlightened one. But there is another kind of authority, an opposite kind, grounded in the invisible, the faith-based, the fictional. And three of the four, Afable noted when we spoke, have caused major public sex scandals: first Maezumi, and more recently Shimano and Sasaki. It acquired property worth around $20 million and built up a network of affiliated businesses staffed by Zen Center students, which included the vegetarian Greens Restaurant in Fort Mason, a bakery, and a grocery store. As in any field, there is a need for experienced and knowledgeable teachers. 3-101 applies the social construction of reality theory to religion. Why do we need to rehash this one again? I took a course at Rochester, an overview of Eastern religion and Confucianism. Therefore, in the living world of flesh and blood we have people with some very limited level of attainment occupying a role that is defined as Buddha-like, actualizing perfect freedom and unfathomable compassion beyond the ordinary person's understanding and hence above question. By Kurt Wolff, Free Press Paperback, 1950 for a discussion of authority, prestige, subordination, and sociability. In this way the teacher was like a deity, a minor god. It was also mentioned that Suzuki believed that Dharma transmission must be "real", implying that there is "not real" Dharma transmission. It was more about power, about finding another way to govern and manage an operation that was never sure if it was a California commune, a Japanese monastery or a New Age business. Suzuki surely knew that his fellow Japanese Soto roshi and priests would hardly accept Americans as examples for the reform of Zen, especially in Japan. I believe that the reason for this surrender, in the case of Zen, is clear, structural, and self-perpetuating. It is a sanitized description wherein any one roshi is replaceable by any other roshi, which is really no person at all. The land was purchased from one of the founders of Polaroid, George Wheelwright. In the end, Baker's problems at the Zen Center weren't so much about his seven or eight sexual affairs over a 20-year span (Chapter 23, if you get impatient). In 2003 Paul Haller, who received transmission from Sojun Mel Weitsman in 1993, was installed as co-abbot with her. Sasaki, of Rinzai-ji, a Zen center in Los Angeles, is now 106 years old and, as his board members finally admitted in 2013, was groping and fondling unwilling students well into his 11th decade. These recordings of zazen instruction feature a variety of teachers offering an introduction to meditation. Spiritual authority is that second kind of authority. All of this authority and potency is manifested in the rituals of the Zen master commenting on and judging the words and actions of not only their disciples, but also of anyone in the lineage going all the way back to and including, the historical Buddha. So it is natural to ask, why did Suzuki's and Baker's students mention this so often? To see how the most prominent Japanese Zen roshi as well as some of the roshi associated with bringing Zen to America, in spite of the rhetoric of the standard model of Zen, functioned in Japan from roughly 1911 through WWII, see Victoria, Brian, Zen At War , Weatherhill, 1997. According to this model, mind-to-mind transmission began with an encounter between the historical Buddha Sakyamuni and Mahakasyapa, and continued, in an unbroken lineage, through twenty-eight Indian Patriarchs. At that time, in the 70s, drug use was prevalent, and I got involved in a fair amount of that. Institutional and personal motives played an important part in the composing of Buddhist biographical collections; this was especially so in earl Chan lineage texts. The bakery was closed altogether in 1999. Tenshin Reb Anderson-roshi, former abbot of City Zen Center, is senior Dharma teacher at Green Gulchtraining priests and laypeople, leading sesshins, giving talks and conducting workshops while also living onsite. Senior members also appeared blind to the voices of others and closed to criticism. At that time, Baker also became the official leader of the San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC). Berger begins, "Every human society is an enterprise of world-building. However, it should be noted, that he let interviewees voice any number of inaccuracies without comment. The admonition to "just sit," to "just practice," is one more way in which trust in one's discriminating faculties or any other Buddhist practice are cut off. The volunteer project's founding director was Frank Ostaseski, who served until 2004. Their sins are far worse than what goes on in Zen circles. Baker was a charismatic leader, brilliant lecturer and dedicated Buddhist. Baker Sums It Up The historical Zen masters we have all come to know are always presented in terms of supposedly real people, with names, dates, and locations, and reports of purportedly real conversations and interactions with other monks and sometimes lay people as if there is no doubt at all that we are dealing with historical individuals. Explore and learn more about the San Francisco Zen Center community. Green Gulch An organic farm and garden in a beautiful coastal valley in Marin County Tassajara A monastery and retreat center in a remote mountain valley in the Ventana Wilderness Learn and Practice at San Francisco Zen Center SFZC Online Members soon raised funds for a zendo to be built there, and over time the farm transformed into a monastery and retreat center for residents and guests with an organic farm, flower gardens, a teahouse and a plant nursery. [2], In the late-1980s Baker also gave shiho to Issan Dorsey, whom he had ordained as a priest in 1975. Baker then moved to Crestone, Colorado and Germany to found other practice sites for Dharma Sangha. Besides the personal power of his position Baker lived with paid travel, an abundance of high-priced worldly goods, a number of well-appointed residences, a steady supply of household help and assistants, sex with his students and access to high profile friends. But there are many lesser-known yet just as randy Zen teachers. It simply means that a power structure has evolved that will perpetuate itself even if it means imputing "attainment" to people who don't really have it. But in the end it is not the extraordinariness of the teacher that perplexes, intrigues, and deepens the student, it is the teacher's utter ordinariness. For a most interesting examination of early Chan lineage and truth claims read from a critical textual analysis rather than reading them "for information about Truth and Practice" or about "historical claims to own truth", see Cole, Alan, "It's All in the Framing", a paper given at U.C. We can begin to approach an answer by thinking about the nature of authority. About. On one visit he decided to take the revolver home with him. He was what I needed. As the American Dharma heir to Shunryu Suzuki, Baker assumed abbotship of the San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC) shortly before Suzuki's death in 1971. We see in Downing's book that it is precisely the idealized notion of Dharma transmission that pre-empted anything that Zen Center members saw for themselves when viewing Baker, their Dharma-transmitted leader, at least prior to the rupture in 1983. Shimanos womanizing is of the sleaziest sort: He is married, and he has often picked for his mistresses much younger and disturbed women, the kind particularly susceptible to his twisted charisma. Some people felt that I had committed an irrevocable betrayal of trust, and have discounted me and my teaching ever since. In addition, the few American students of his who went to Japan came back disappointed, which upset Suzuki because he thought these students would then think less ofBuddhism. In this act lies the first step towards freedom." Many women and others in the Zen community have suffered as a result, and we regret and apologize for our collective failure to stop this harm. Downing quotes a prominent older student who expressed it differently, "Dick tried to take over Zen Center again." There he found the corpse of a man with a bullet wound to the head and a revolver nearby. 2 Thank Kelly S . Over the past 10 years, San Francisco Zen Center has devoted time and energy to studying the best practices around conflict resolution, difficult conversations, sexual harassment prevention, appropriate teacher/student boundaries, giving and receiving feedback, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, working with trauma, and Right Use of Power trainings. One older student expressed it this way, "In our hands, and it was in our hands, it [Suzuki's pure teaching] became a bludgeon of power, a source of competition, jealousy, and paranoia. They believed their way of living and of practicing Zen was the best alternative available in America. The bakery supplied Greens Restaurant and some local grocers.[16]. Green Gulch Farm ("Green Dragon Temple", or Soryuji), located in Sausalito, California in a valley on the Pacific Ocean, was acquired by SFZC in 1972. The experience of legitimacy, realness and of being believable hides the underlying power relations. Anderson succeeded him as abbot, and later co-abbot. As is common among members of new religions, they viewed themselves as special. 13 reviews of San Francisco Zen Center "This place is really awesome! [5], In 1983 Tenshin Reb Anderson received shiho (Dharma Transmission) from Richard Baker. So why did none of Baker's students, as expressed in their interviews with Downing, show any awareness that institutional self-definition encouraged their idealization of Baker, which allowed, perhaps even fostered, the occurrence of many of the alleged abuses? Elizabeth is married to Jason Kibbey. It is clear from Downing's interviews that Zen Center members assumed that there was no ideology to be questioned, i.e., the unreliable history of Zen, the hagiographic picture of the lineage, along with its mythology of Dharma transmission, unbroken lineage, and enlightened Zen masters. This story appears to be an example of modern day creation of hagiography that will be repeated in the future. Within a couple of years, Suzuki considered founding a monastery to host more intensive practice for those students who were interested. Cases like this are important simply because the study of Zen history has shown us the whole lineage tradition is built so heavily on questionable written and word-of-mouth accounts; what is said in the present will surely be repeated long into the future. In the early 1990s the Board of Directors at the Zen Center created the "Ethical Principles and Procedures for Grievance and Reconciliation" for its members, for conflict resolution mediation guided by Buddhist precepts. It is mentioned often enough that Downing, interestingly calculates the hours that individual senior members had meditated. It also spun off its business and stopped pretending that work without compensation was "spiritual practice.". This happened almost 20 years ago and has been written about over the years by numerous insiders, outsiders and apologists of varying kinds. Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, shortly before his death in December 1971, gave him Dharma transmission in the Soto sect of Zen, thereby making Baker, for his students and for all future people in his lineage, an authentic link to the Buddha. A full overview of what is open can be found here. I think that really helped to put everybody on their best behavior. After failing to re-create his Zen empire in Santa Fe, N.M., he settled in Crestone, Colo., where he presides over a much smaller Zen center. Kai C. Half Moon Bay, California. Which means it's basically my fault. The Zen Institution Unlike his predecessors, Suzuki was a fluent speaker of English who actually wanted to come to the United States. 3. In 1966, Suzuki and Baker scouted Tassajara Hot Springs, located in Los Padres National Forest behind Big Sur, as a possible location for the envisioned monastic center. Was Baker's commitment to Zen practice much greater than a number of other of Suzuki's close, very committed senior disciples? 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