It is interesting to keep in mind that Suzuki's lineage is alive today at the San Francisco Zen Center because of transmissions through Hoitsu. Analysis or active use of "the discriminating mind" is frowned upon, or worse, it is viewed as a sign of having too large an ego. [10] The community's sense of crisis sharpened when the woman's husband, one of SFZC's primary benefactors, threatened to hold the organization legally responsible for its abbot's apparent misconduct.[11]. He was convincing not just because of his own facility with a story, but because he found Americans who were very receptive to that story. Most of the narratives of the early heroes of Chan that we have today were composed hundreds of years after the ostensive events, complete with verbatim accounts of the master's interaction with a disciple presented as if a court stenographer had been recording the entire interaction. [5], In 1983 Tenshin Reb Anderson received shiho (Dharma Transmission) from Richard Baker. 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. Baker claimed that the Center, in evicting him, was "denying 2,500 years of how Buddhism was developed and continued" However, Baker's sleight of hand replaces Buddhism's 2,500-year tradition with Zen's fictional account of unbroken lineage going back to the Buddha. This imputation of power and attainment has given one Zen roshi after another the power to abuse their position while remaining beyond reproach. by Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright, Oxford University Press, 2000. According to revelations that have tumbled out over the past two years, and which I chronicle in-depth in a new e-book, Shimano has spent 50 years preying sexually on his students. Why should we think that Suzuki chose Baker as his only American Dharma heir based on his level of "spiritual attainment?" In not clearly explaining the meaning, to his disciples at the SFZC, of his transmission to Baker, while stressing that it was "real;" Suzuki chose to perpetuate a fiction and to dishonor the trust they had given him. It did not matter that Baker did not appear to offer his students the "living proof that the seemingly impossible goal [of Zen] can be realized in this lifetime" as Baker himself described the function of the teacher. The same myth was later used in Japan for similar purposes, with Shintoism being the competing indigenous teaching. 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 1969 - The current SFZC building was purchased with the help of American students. At the same time, this supposed desireless image of the roshi is meant to invoke desire in us for him. Even when Dharma transmission does reflect some level of something we may call spiritual attainment, it is not based on the idealized version proffered by the Zen institution: a mystical meeting of minds between teacher and disciple sharing a timeless truth that unvaryingly matches the minds of all teachers going back in the lineage, through the six Chan Patriarchs in China, and the twenty eight generations of the supposed Indian lineage going back to the historical Buddha, and beyond. It may be Zen-like, but it can also be annoying. Eighteen years later, there is still lingering bitterness about his overthrow. 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. University of Michigan, 1987. Suzuki planned to give transmission to Bill Kwong but died before his completion. After six months, he returned to his position. Look, theres a certain type of person that is looking for something else in another culture, said Ed Glassing, the former resident monk at both Zen Studies Society locations, whom Shimano maligned as a homosexual. Sort of like, something they dont have, so its mysterious, exotic, its like whoa. Suzuki or any other Zen master only looks this way if we avoid looking at their real life. I highly recommend this book, especially the first 101 pages. This is a mythology of Zen, a pure fiction. If Suzuki was California's Zen messiah, then Richard Baker was his Apostle Paul. Zen at War by Brian Daizen A. Victoria: a link to varioius book reviews buy this book now Zen Center Members [2] 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. 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. This dissertation also asks whether the Chan sect existed at all as a separate and distinct sect in the Tang dynasty, the supposed "golden age of Chan"). In fifteen years, the Center's annual budget increased from $6,000, to $4 million. [6] Baker was instrumental in orchestrating the acquisition of Tassajara, raising $150,000 for the purchase in a short period of time. And what was Suzuki's intention here? Downing, who lives in Cambridge, Mass., provides an outsider's view into the incestuous circles at the first Buddhist monastery in the West. [34], Following Baker's resignation, Dainin Katagiri led the community until 1985. All of this is in the context of Suzuki, the Zen master, being a man whose quality of life is described as: "buoyancy, vigor, straightforwardness, simplicity, humility, security, joyousness, uncanny perspicacity and unfathomable compassion." A monastery and retreat center in a remote mountain valley in the Ventana Wilderness SFZC Online Resources for beginners, zazen (meditation) and chanting, Dharma talks, live online practice sessions with teachers, as well as classes and workshops from our Online Programs. (Downing's interviews showed that he did.) 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. Baker and the senior priests dismissed any questioning of Baker's behavior or activities as a lack of insight into enlightenment on the part of the questioner. This recommended class series offers listeners an overview of the fundamentals of Buddhism and Zen. The bakery supplied Greens Restaurant and some local grocers.[16]. Baker then quotes Trudy Dixon, the editor of the book, thus endorsing her words: Despite the controversy connected with his resignation, Baker was instrumental in helping the San Francisco Zen Center to become one of the most successful Zen institutions in the United States. It is noted that after 1983 the study of sutras, Zen texts and history was instituted. In Downing's book we see that much illusion, suffering and pain has been part of Zen in San Francisco, a situation that, unfortunately, has been repeated in most every other part of America over a thirty-five year period. While traveling back to school after a vacation, he stopped with a friend at Dai Bosatsuthe Zen Studies Society's monastery in the Catskillsand was impressed immediately. ---Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (1878) [5][16][17][18][19], In 2000 Jiko Linda Cutts was appointed Abbess, having received Dharma transmission from Tenshin Reb Anderson in 1996. Explore San Francisco Zen Center's newsletters and blogs. 2 Thank Kelly S . It is possible that Suzuki had a paternal attachment to Baker. Zen Center businesses embodied other Bay Area delights. 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. As noted in the paper, senior members consistently reassured newer members that all was well when they raised questions about Baker's activities. Zen Center Members 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. It was a spiritual scandal starring the usual suspects -- sex, money and the abuse of religious authority. 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). It depends not on miracles or mystical figures or discoveries of secret books, but merely on our willingness to believe, against evidence if need be, that those things were real. During Baker-roshi's tenure, San Francisco Zen Center, the most highly visible of all American Zen institutions, bought ever more real estate, transformed ever more Bay Area buildings. It has three practice places which offer daily meditation, regular monastic retreats and practice periods, classes, lectures and workshops throughout the Bay Area. Great Experience with Western Zen Practice. 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. Access to movies showing San Francisco Zen Center's founder, who died in 1971. Is it any wonder that the inevitable abuses that we have seen for the last thirty years should follow? Whose Zen? The deal I cut with him, Kelly told me, was that he stop sleeping with Western women and only sleep with Japanese women, because they dont tell.. This new Buddha is also alive and homegrown and hence more immediate and real. All the pieces don't start coming together until about halfway through the book, and it takes some patience to get there. Zen ascribes to Pai-chang (died 814) its earliest monastic code that supposedly set Chan apart as a separate sect in the Tang dynasty. Throughout the 1980s Greens, which obtained produce from Green Gulch Farm, was one of the most popular restaurants in San Francisco. San Francisco Zen Center's purpose is to make the teachings and practice of Soto Zen Buddhism widely available, to train teachers, and to help cultivate mindfulness and compassion in the world. By the seventies he calculates 10-15,000 hours and that by 1987 the most senior practitioners had each meditated some 20- 25,000 hours on the cushion. Others were more forgiving, but their trust in me and my integrity was permanently shaken. The first is grounded in something tangible, concrete, observable: the soldier with his gun, or the scientist with her laboratory results. The Board of Directors at SFZC also began election of leaders. [6] Baker also penned the introduction to Suzuki's famous book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Yet Baker certainly knew that, at best, few if any roshi are so fully realized. In the past we had a lot of crisesin San Francisco and Los Angeleswith sex scandals and so forth. One of Shimanos greatest advantages has been that he is Japanese. 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. Please consider a donation to San Francisco Zen Center. Cole, who teaches at Lewis and Clark College, also has two very provocative books soon to be published, one on the Mahayana sutras and the other on early Chan texts and the "birth" of Chinese Buddhas. I finished high school early, and at 17 I went to college, Schnyer said. This article is not saying that there is no place for a Zen teacher. 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