Despite its iconoclastic image, Zen has in actuality been a remarkably conservative institution throughout its history, almost always tied to and controlled by the state and elite elements of society. Classes and workshops from our Online Programs, resources for beginners, zazen (meditation) and chanting, Dharma talks, and live online practice sessions with teachers. 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. Jerry Brown, poet Gary Snyder, Esalen founder Michael Murphy, author Ken Kesey and other leading lights of the Zen intelligentsia on the West Coast. In 1995 Zoketsu Norman Fischer was installed as Abbot at SFZC, and in 1996 Zenkai Blanche Hartman was appointed as co-Abbot with him (becoming the first female Abbot in SFZC history). 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. Ask Kai C about San Francisco Zen Center. Public opinion shows that while parishioners are, of course, disturbed by priests' abuse of children and young teens, they are more upset by the institutional cover up and denial of that behavior. For a many sided view of the Zen koan see, The Koan, Ed. He was 67 years old. At the time, Schnyer was just 24 years old, yet he had been a Shimano student since he was a teenager. 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 There appeared to be a vast cultural divide between the Zen Center students of Suzuki and Japanese Zen monks that showed itself both in America and in Japan. The senior disciples consistently stressed that Baker's transmission was real; it made him into a "pure vessel of the Dharma," a man of wisdom, far beyond the questioner's obviously limited understanding and suspicion. In this way the teacher was like a deity, a minor god. 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. However, for an in depth review of early Chan monastic codes and how early Chan viewed and supposedly treated errant behavior by monks see Foulk, T. Griffith, "The "Ch'an School" and Its Place In the Buddhist Monastic Tradition," Diss. Foulk doubts that the Chan sect existed as a separate sect with its own monastic institutions during the Tang dynasty. Upon Suzuki's arrival at Sokoji, the congregation was composed entirely of members of the Japanese-American population. 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! Maezumi, affiliated with another West Coast zendo, the Zen Center of Los Angeles, was a philanderer and an alcoholic, as the scholar Dale S. Wright has detailed at length. There are two kinds of authority. But for Schnyer this constantly refreshing membership was proof that the sangha did disapprove of Shimanos treatment of women. Why did Baker perpetuate such a simplistic view of Suzuki? What I mean by the "Zen" institution, for the simple purpose of this conversation, is the organized set of structures that support the standard model of Zen. It will not do for future generations if there are gaps in the line of saintly figures. Downing quotes a prominent older student who expressed it differently, "Dick tried to take over Zen Center again." They have a daughter, Sofia Baker, born on March 1, 2001, in Alamosa, Colorado. Established in 1962, the San Francisco Zen Center is one of the largest residential training Soto Zen Buddhist organizations outside of Asia. A number of Downing's interviewees spoke of receiving the true or pure Zen teaching from Suzuki Roshi. Shimano was not the bad guy; rather, those who made too much noise, who refused to go quietly, and thus disturbed Schnyers and others Zen practice, were the blameworthy ones. The Zen institution requires the master because he is supposedly a living example of the ideal of Zen and, as such, represents all of its legitimacy and authority. This imputation of power and attainment has given one Zen roshi after another the power to abuse their position while remaining beyond reproach. In some of these biographies, people later classified as Chan monks were listed in other categories, such as Master Yantou Huo as an ascetic and Master Xingzhi as a benefactor. He then drove after the alleged mugger and followed him into a housing project with the revolver (unloaded) in hand, being arrested minutes later by a police officer with his own gun pointed at him.[36]. Upon his final visit he found the body no longer there, and a fellow priest in whom he had confided showed him a newspaper article covering the apparent suicide. He attended Harvard University, where he studied architecture and history. Hence, a number of questions were never openly raised: Was he acting in an arrogant fashion? A theme repeated throughout Downing's book is Suzuki's injunction to "just sit," which means to do seated meditation. The historical fact is that monasteries actively courted the state and elite elements of society, depended on donations from wealthy patrons and or the state, had tenant farmers work their often vast donated and inherited land holdings, etc. But, given that no one interviewed in the book expressed any view outside of the standard Zen model, one may ask, was the Zen history taught at the Zen Center just more of Zen legend? 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). 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. Katagiri would go on to establish his own practice centerthe Minnesota Zen Centerin 1972 in Minneapolis. Foulk, T. Griffith, "The Zen Institute in Modern Japan", pp.157-177. There is nothing in the description that allows someone in the future to distinguish Suzuki, Hoitsu or any of their heirs from any of thousands of hallowed ancestors. After six months, he returned to his position. [15], In the twenty-five years since leaving San Francisco Zen Center, Baker has continued his career as a Zen teacher, founding and developing two practice centers. Also see, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, Trans.and Ed. 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. And as complete neophytes in Buddhism, they were apt to believe most anything a teacher said: The Americans had no competing knowledge, no critical faculties, no grounds to challenge the teacher, no fixed point on which to stand. Audio recordings of familiar sounds heard at our temples. The latter choice was too painful for many for any number of reasons, including: 1) many believed that the Center was the best place to practice Zen and so leaving meant giving up what made life seem most meaningful, 2) their self-identities as Zen practitioners were connected to the Center, 3) loyalty to Suzuki Roshi, 4) leaving close friendships established through communal living and especially through practicing meditation together, 5) loving the lifestyle and 6) fear of losing one's position in the hierarchy and the possibility for future higher positions culminating in being Dharma transmitted oneself. We seem to forget that we live with other humans and that society is a human product that we act upon and that acts upon us and in a sense produces us. 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. 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. Stuart Lachs, October 2002 Practitioners are given the ultimate encouragement of knowing that real people "attained enlightenment" and therefore so can we. 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. It was considered "real" because it came from the saintly Suzuki and Suzuki made a point of saying it was "real." Baker also gives seminars at Boulder Zen Center in Boulder, Colorado twice each year, typically on the last weekends of January and April. 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. In fact there are few major centers not touched by sexual or other scandals, but the SFZC case suffices for the discussion we will have here. On one visit he decided to take the revolver home with him. Was he acting primarily with his own self-interest in mind? Around 1970, he began sitting regularly with a group in Santa Cruz that went on to form the Santa Cruz Zen Center. (Downing's interviews showed that he did.) In particular, Suzuki's San Francisco Zen Center lineage continues through his bureaucratic "transmission" to his son Hoitsu. But that is the way that Suzuki or Baker or any roshi is presented. At times, senior disciples needed to reassure newcomers who questioned Baker's behavior that all was in order. From 1986 to 1988 he served as abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, and from 1988 to 1995 he served there as co-abbot with Sojun Mel Weitsman. This would have led any impartial observer to question the spiritual implications of Dharma transmission. It matters that we keep assenting to the stories. Yet Baker certainly knew that, at best, few if any roshi are so fully realized. Zen's highly ritualized activities added a visceral instantiation to the cognitive edifice. See Alan Cole, "It's All in the Framing." (It should also be noted that Victoria is fluent in Japanese while Baker and Chadwick are not.) [10] The Residence combined residential rooms that could house 70 women on the upper floors, with public spaces for spiritual, recreational, and educational uses on the ground floor and basement. He served as Abbot there until 1978, moving the group to Jikoji in Los Gatos, California in 1979. Zen elevates its leaders to super-human status, then emphasizes that we should be obedient and subservient to a powerful and supremely accomplished authority figure, precisely because he is powerful and supremely accomplished. He remained abbot there until 1984, the year he resigned his position after it was disclosed in the previous year that he and the wife of one of SFZC's benefactors had been having an ongoing affair. Despite extraordinary personal shortcomings, Eido Shimano continued to wield spiritual authority throughout his time at the Zen Studies Society. 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. Trust me." This is not surprising, being, as it is, a natural result of the customs and environment created by the Zen institution. By saying this, he was emphasizing his guarantee that the essence of the Zen lineage resides in Baker. 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. 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. Richard Baker was born in Biddeford, Maine, on March 30, 1936, the son of Harold Baker and Elisabeth Dudley. Most people think of Zen as being iconoclastic, anti-authoritarian, simple, direct, and unattached. And all of us worshipped him to a certain extent., Nobody was as worshipful as a student named David Schnyer. Nor did anyone even think to view the situation through the lens of the Buddhist teachings themselves or even the particular teachings of their beloved founder Suzuki. It was not mentioned in the interviews that Suzuki himself might be partially responsible for the ensuing trouble. 1969 - Suzuki was asked to resign as priest at Sokoji by the temple's board of directors because he was spending more time with his Western students than the Japanese-American congregation. San Francisco Zen Center has begun to offer on-site meditation, Dharma talks, programs, classes, and other events. For an earlier view of the immediate events surrounding Baker, see Butler, Katy, "Events Are The Teachers", The CoEvolution Quarterly, winter 1983, pp.112-123. [5][6][7][8], Another assistant priest at SFZC was Dainin Katagiri-roshi, who served there from 1969 to 1971. Anderson became entangled in an incident in 1987 that reached back to 1983 just after Zentatsu Richard Baker had resigned as abbot. This is not surprising if we remember that in Soto Zen "spiritual attainment" is rarely a criterion for Dharma transmission. One of the earliest texts extant is "Regulations of the Chan Approach" (Ch'an men Kuei-shih, which cannot be dated earlier than 988) that some scholars think was the preface to Pai-chang's Rules. What the teacher really offers the student is literally living proof that all this talk and the seemingly impossible goals can be realized in this lifetime. Sarasota, Florida. After a major fundraising effort led by Baker, Zen Center purchased the landwhich contained a rundown resort and mineral springs in 1967. One component of Buddhism is to recognize cause and effect. 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. Zen Center Members In this regard Mr. For a view from the political perspective that has application in the religious arena see Edwards, David, "A Chest of Tools for Intellectual Self-Defense" in Burning All Illusions, South End Press, pp.177-224. Was he perhaps not a fully realized person? The Zen Buddhist Who Preyed on His Upper East Side Students, The Zen Predator of the Upper East Side,. One student stated it as, "The one thing that seemed unquestionable was Richard's Transmission." And perhaps most importantly, his authority will be understood with a taken-for-granted quality of being natural. I have seen such a view expressed in four other major Zen communities as well as in a Tibetan community. On May 23, 1959, Shunryu Suzuki (then age 55) came from Japan to San Francisco to serve as head priest of Sokojia Soto Zen temple then located at 1881 Bush Street in Japantown. It is mentioned often enough that Downing, interestingly calculates the hours that individual senior members had meditated. By Kurt Wolff, Free Press Paperback, 1950 for a discussion of authority, prestige, subordination, and sociability. Was Baker's commitment to Zen practice much greater than a number of other of Suzuki's close, very committed senior disciples? Branching Streams is a network of affiliate Dharma centers and Sanghas in the Zen lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. One was to make the state consider Chan the primary sect of Buddhism. For some thirty years a significant group of scholars have been investigating the development of the Chan sect in Chinese Buddhism. 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. 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