There is a saying, "It is difficult to convince a man of something if his paycheck depends on his not understanding it." 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. Tassajara Zen Mountain Center ("Zen Mind Temple" or Zenshinji) was the first Zen Buddhist monastery built in the United States, and the first in the world to allow co-ed practice. The center received significant media coverage concerning the 1984 resignation of then abbot Zentatsu Richard Baker, who was ousted after it was alleged that he had been having an affair with the wife of a prominent Zen Center member. How bad was Shimanos womanizing? I asked Schnyer. Finding Safe Harbor: Buddhist Sexual Ethics in America by Stephanie Kaza, Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center by Michael Downing: book review by Vladimir K. buy this book Shimanos Japanese ways suited Schnyer. 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. Ungerleider.[26]. I see how my empowerment to protect and care for the Triple Treasure inflated my sense of personal authority, and thus detracted from and disparaged the Triple Treasure. #28 of 84 Specialty lodging in San Francisco. Senior members also appeared blind to the voices of others and closed to criticism. For a very fine book review of Shoes Outside the Door, see Crews, Frederick, "Zen & the Art of Success," The New York Review of Books, 28 Mar. That Kapleau never received Dharma transmission was exposed in a public letter from Yamada roshi dated,1/16/86. For example there was the claim that Zen monasteries in China were self- sufficient, which makes it seem that they were not dependent on the state and elite elements of society and were not actively promoting themselves to get this support and patronage. The other was to establish Chan's primacy over the indigenous teachings of Confucianism and Taoism in the eyes of the state and the elite of society. One student said that when the senior priests were questioned about some aspects of Baker's behavior, the answer was, "Richard has Transmission." The finances are terrible, and the beautiful carriage house on East 67th Street may have to be sold to pay legal debtsor, if he wins the lawsuit, to pay damages to Eido Shimano, the 82-year-old Zen master who built the society up but also, in a way, has destroyed it. Baker presided over it all like a feudal lord, hosting dinner parties with then-Gov. Despite this, few people interviewed seemed to be aware that by continually repeating the transmission story without reflection and without making the effort to understand what they were part of, they were in fact becoming an integral component in the creation of a new myth-which was then used by people like Richard Baker. defending Deshimaru's teacher Sawaki roshi's wartime involvement dating from 1905 through WWII is available on the internet at, http://www.zen-azi.org/html/guerre_e.html#replybyb. 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. 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. One of the oldest and perhaps most outspoken members who was eventually forced out by Baker stated, "this was a system that was about staying asleep because it was too risky to wake up." It is an institutional dream that needs to be analyzed using its own description. Examining the work of any of the above-mentioned scholars will greatly reward the interested reader who would like to explore contemporary Zen/Buddhist scholarship. Baker adds he was "on a roll," was in love with his latest girlfriend and that his peers, est founder Werner Erhard and the well known Tibetan teacher Trungpa, had chauffeurs and large Mercedes, so "I thought I should buy a car." Downing shows that even in their every day negotiations for used restaurant equipment when they were opening Green's Restaurant, they held a disproportionate sense of their own importance in the wider community. His first wife contracted tuberculosis and returned to her parents shortly after marriage; his second wife was brutally murdered by an erratic, antisocial monk whom Suzuki had retained as a temple assistant, despite contrary advise from neighbors and colleagues. They also have a lot of other awesome Saturday morning programs for zen noobs (znoobs!!). At a meeting of the Board of Directors of Lindisfarne at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, Thompson convinced the board to donate the campus that he had establishedwith its passive solar Lindisfarne Fellows House, Founder's House, and Lindisfarne Chapelto Baker-roshi's Dharma Sangha. Without anything said or done, just the impact of meeting a personality so developed can be enough to change another's whole way of life. A theme repeated throughout Downing's book is Suzuki's injunction to "just sit," which means to do seated meditation. It also spun off its business and stopped pretending that work without compensation was "spiritual practice.". [5][16][17][18][19], In 2000 Jiko Linda Cutts was appointed Abbess, having received Dharma transmission from Tenshin Reb Anderson in 1996. If you counted the blow-ups, youd say just a few [women,] but we think he ran his life like a Japanese businessmanlots of affairs, but most of them discreet. It was almost like a magic theater, where if someone received Dharma transmission, and hence, was a supposed enlightened being, he would become a different person who could do anything he pleased. Excellent. Likewise, Dharma transmission was as much about institutional prosperity, prestige, authority, continuity and acceptance and control by imperial authorities as it was about notions of enlightenment and spiritual perfection. While leader of the SFZC, Baker's purchase of a new white BMW became a focal point for much of the anger and resentments that Zen Center members felt towards him. Zen priest Mel Weitsman served with Anderson as a co-abbot during the remainder of his term, and the tradition of two sitting Abbots continued for the next few decades. Latest News. This is a person without a defect, showing no self-interest, desire, interior calculation, or a shortcoming. Ironically, one may ask, is that what Suzuki hoped to reform? Having wisdom, in the Zen view, is based on Dharma transmission, which implies that the person is an enlightened being. For Suzuki Roshi's edited words see the well-known Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Weatherhill, 1970. Original Dwelling Place by Robert Aitken book review by Robert Goss buy this book now Some Zen followers believe that Zen is only concerned with enlightenment and is not concerned with personal behavior or with ordinary morality. Elizabeth is married to Jason Kibbey. "[36], SFZC is connected, in an unofficial capacity, to the following Zen Centers:[1], Coordinates: .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}374626N 1222534W / 37.774009N 122.426075W / 37.774009; -122.426075. Suzuki Roshi, the founder of the San Francisco Zen Center and its leader until his death in 1971, was an impressive person, sincerely loved by most all the Center's members. 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. 2002: 8-11. 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. I finished high school early, and at 17 I went to college, Schnyer said. San Francisco Zen Center students and other students throughout history were also one cause of the problem. At that time, in the 70s, drug use was prevalent, and I got involved in a fair amount of that. It is mentioned often enough that Downing, interestingly calculates the hours that individual senior members had meditated. Any genuine interpretation or questioning of the meaning of Dharma transmission, lineage, the Zen roshi, their place in the institution, their accountability, and so on is made to seem absurd. Seeing Through Zen by by John R. McRae book reviews buy this book, Coming Down from the Zen Clouds: A Critique of the Current State of American Zen, Means of Authorization: Establishing Hierarchy in Ch'an/Zen Buddhism in America, The Zen Master in America: Dressing the Donkey with Bells and Scarves, Holding the Lotus to the Rock: reflections on the future of the Zen sangha in the West, Sanbkydan Zen and the Way of the New Religions, Finding Safe Harbor: Buddhist Sexual Ethics in America, Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center, Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Teachings of Shunryu Suzuki, Not Always So: practicing the true spirit of Zen by Shunryu Suzuki. It is interesting to note that these beliefs persisted strongly even into the year 2000, roughly the time of Downing's interviews when there had been thirty-five years of sexual and financial scandals in the Zen community in America. "The years people spent here were not wasted years of being duped. In fact, David Chadwick, a student of both Suzuki and Baker, lent some credence to this assertion in his 1999 book about Suzuki, Crooked Cucumber. Unfortunately, this issue is not raised or considered by any of the Zen Center members interviewed in the book. I suspect I probably said something like that, Schnyer said. Mind-to-mind transmission implies that the student has attained an understanding equal to his Zen master/roshi and so on backwards, hence being equal to the original, unmediated wordless understanding that supposedly passed between Sakyamuni and Mahakasyapa. There he found the corpse of a man with a bullet wound to the head and a revolver nearby. He was a very traditional Rinzai master: stern when he needed to be, very rarely encouraging. It is no longer ruled by an almighty abbott-for- life, but abbotts with term limits. I believe that the reason for this surrender, in the case of Zen, is clear, structural, and self-perpetuating. Suzuki enabled the ensuing trouble by transmitting only to Baker to the exclusion of other westerners, by failing to understand Baker's character, by failing to mitigate his authority in any way, and by failing to explain clearly the historical and common way that Dharma transmission was and is used in Soto Zen. He was 67 years old. Institutional mythology, which created a seamless picture of unbroken lineage along with pure, desireless perfection and attainment housed in the body of the master, was not questioned, and hence, remained intact. by Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright, Oxford University Press, 2000. ", Lachs, Stuart: This is one reason why we are looking at his case, to see how the system works, how it has always worked. "It is, basically, a description of a number of monastic procedures implicitly attributed to Pai-chang, set in a quasi-historical context, and presented with the authors own explanation and laudatory remarks. I assume that Downing would have included a broader view if he had heard it from any of the interviewees. 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. As long as it was understood that Baker was the only Dharma heir of Suzuki, it was exceedingly difficult for any one to question Baker's behavior and style. When Kelly grew frustrated with Shimanos womanizing, he made a proposition. Brian Victoria was so interested in the possibility of a public pacifist/anti-war Soto monk that he contacted Suzuki's son Hoitsu who told him: "I don't know where all of this antiwar talk comes from, but my father and the rest of the family supported Japan's war effort just like everyone else." The leadership of San Francisco Zen Center required Anderson to take a leave of absence from his position as abbot. Five years later (in 1988), roughly fifteen months after Anderson had become abbot of the San Francisco, Anderson was arrested for brandishing this same firearm in public. "On both a personal and a professional level, I am still dealing with the consequences of this episode. Baker is the sole western heir of Suzuki Roshi, a Japanese Zen teacher who founded the SFZC and its mountain training center, Tassajara established in 1967. After a major fundraising effort led by Baker, Zen Center purchased the landwhich contained a rundown resort and mineral springs in 1967. In some ways, it was an obvious choice. After six months, he returned to his position. They will sit for five days or longer in the zendo before they are formally admitted into the monasterya physically daunting challenge. Some people felt that I had committed an irrevocable betrayal of trust, and have discounted me and my teaching ever since. He attended Harvard University, where he studied architecture and history. Others were more forgiving, but their trust in me and my integrity was permanently shaken. Right now, Manhattans Zen Studies Society, perhaps the most prestigious Zen Buddhist center in the United States, is being torn apart by lawsuits, backstabbing, and infighting. The Zen Institution Nevertheless, following extensive investigation, even Chadwick was forced to admit: "Anything Shunryu had done that could be considered remotely antiwar he had done before the Pacific war started" (p. 97). Zen priest Mel Weitsman served with Anderson as a co-abbot during the remainder of his term, and the tradition of two sitting Abbots continued for the next few decades. This imputation of power and attainment has given one Zen roshi after another the power to abuse their position while remaining beyond reproach. In addition, if there were something to reform in Japanese Soto Zen, the automatic Dharma transmission for virtually all priests, often between father and son, would be high on the list. [1][15], In 1983 Tenshin Reb Anderson received shih from Zentatsu Richard Baker, becoming Baker's first Dharma heir (though Baker disputes this). Furthermore, Chadwick told Victoria that when he (Chadwick) had once asked Baker himself about the basis for the claim, Baker replied that he could not remember! Another error is seen in the statement that Yasutani roshi rescinded the Dharma transmission he gave to Philip Kapleau. He writes a religion column forThe New York Timesand is on Twitter@markopp1. Shocked by the series of scandal involving its senior teachers, the organization decided to appoint two abbots, who would share the position at any one time. In this regard Mr. Baker's case took place within a certain context, and to understand what happened it is helpful to look not only at Baker, but also at Zen institutional self-definitions and the patterns of social life they have engendered in the United States. Ask Kai C about San Francisco Zen Center. That "something else" is what Michael Downing tries to find in "Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion and Excess at the San Francisco Zen Center. " [2] From 1968 to 1971, he traveled to Japan to practice at the primary St monasteries there, including Antaiji, Eiheiji, and Daitokuji. In the latter part of the book, Downing points out that the San Francisco Zen Center has beaucratized Dharma transmission so that in order to receive Dharma transmission a person must spend ten or twelve years going through the system. I highly recommend this book, especially the first 101 pages. Which means it's basically my fault. 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