But the Americans didnt know that. The situation is now reversing, as the Japanese, in particular, abandon Buddhism as an old relic, while it continues to find adherents in the West. As noted in the paper, senior members consistently reassured newer members that all was well when they raised questions about Baker's activities. There are two kinds of authority. [13], Following his departure from the San Francisco Zen Center in 1984, Baker relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico where he founded a new community known as Dharma Sangha. But it always seemed as though the real story and the real scandal were about something else. Branching Streams is a network of affiliate Dharma centers and Sanghas in the Zen lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. They believed their way of living and of practicing Zen was the best alternative available in America. I assume that Downing would have included a broader view if he had heard it from any of the interviewees. (See Foulk, "Myth, Ritual, and Monastic Practice," listed in the notes for a fuller discussion.) Stuart Lachs, October 2002 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. 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. [34], Following Baker's resignation, Dainin Katagiri led the community until 1985. He writes a religion column forThe New York Timesand is on Twitter@markopp1. A good place to begin to examine the scholarly view of early Chan history and development is Foulk, T. Griffith, Myth, Ritual, and Monastic Practice in Sung Ch'an Buddhism in, Religion and Society in T'ang and Sung China, Ed by Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Peter N. Gregory, University of Hawaii Press, 1993, pp147-205. A number of Downing's interviewees spoke of receiving the true or pure Zen teaching from Suzuki Roshi. 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." Some Zen followers believe that Zen is only concerned with enlightenment and is not concerned with personal behavior or with ordinary morality. 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. Suzuki's prescription to "just sit" as a kind of medicine to answer all questions and problems apparently did not apply to his Dharma transmitted son Hoitsu. He reported being mugged at knifepoint by a man just a block away from the San Francisco Zen Center at 300 Page Street. City Center A vibrant community in an urban temple in the heart of San Francisco. But there is another kind of authority, an opposite kind, grounded in the invisible, the faith-based, the fictional. 4 Thank Kai C . 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. Another error is seen in the statement that Yasutani roshi rescinded the Dharma transmission he gave to Philip Kapleau. This 1987 incident has had a damaging impact on Anderson's reputation as a teacher, since his arrest received national media coverage. Explore hundreds of dharma talksby San Francisco Zen Center teachers, practice leaders, and speakers from the wider community. [5], In 1969, Sokoji's board of directors asked Suzuki to resign his position as the temple's priest, asserting that he was spending more time with his Western students than the Japanese-American congregation. It is a performance meant to confirm and display the current master's significance, authority and attainment. San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC), is a network of affiliated St Zen practice and retreat centers in the San Francisco Bay area, comprising City Center or Beginner's Mind Temple, Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, and Green Gulch Farm Zen Center. For students of the San Francisco Zen Center, one of America's oldest and most prestigious Buddhist institutions, the world has already ended. Baker and Suzuki themselves were rewarded by this system. This is the consistent view of the master presented by Zen, the pure, simple, desireless and self-contained roshi, and was accepted unquestioningly by Zen Center members. If some one would like copies, please email me at: slachs@worldnet.att.net . It was also mentioned that Suzuki believed that Dharma transmission must be "real", implying that there is "not real" Dharma transmission. At that time, Baker also became the official leader of the San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC). San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC), is a network of affiliated St Zen practice and retreat centers in the San Francisco Bay area, comprising City Center or Beginner's Mind Temple, Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, and Green Gulch Farm Zen Center. Students in their early 30s, even younger, could find themselves among the senior monks at Dai Bosatsu, in a tradition that is supposed to be ungraspable even after a whole lifetime of study. His youngest daughter, Omi, committed suicide after spending nine years in a mental hospital; he gave Dharma transmission to his son Hoitsu, who did not study with him or even get on with him, but who inherited his temple (this is standard Soto Zen procedure); he gave, as a favor to a friend, Dharma transmission to someone he did not know or have any contact with. Join the San Francisco Zen Center Membership Program. He attended Harvard University, where he studied architecture and history. All of this discontent emerged when it was made public that Baker had allegedly been having an affair with the wife of an influential sangha member. Learn and Practice at San Francisco Zen Center, residential guest student practice opportunities, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility, Conflict, Complaint, and Ethical Review Processes. 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. This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. 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. What they really found is another story of flawed human behavior. One of Shimanos greatest advantages has been that he is Japanese. It is because one was wrong about him, because one misinterpreted the states of his soul and drew as sharp a line as is possible between oneself and him, as if he were something utterly incomparable and strangely superhuman-that he gained that extraordinary power with which he could dominate the imagination of whole peoples and ages. This is hagiography, which is necessary for Chan's self-legitimating claims of mind-to-mind transmission and unbroken lineage. 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. Asia is filled with monks and priests who know how to sit, chant, eat, bow, walk, dress, and live as a Buddhist. Unfortunately, this issue is not raised or considered by any of the Zen Center members interviewed in the book. Baker also gives seminars at Boulder Zen Center in Boulder, Colorado twice each year, typically on the last weekends of January and April. 1969 - The current SFZC building was purchased with the help of American students. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews. 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. And all of us worshipped him to a certain extent., Nobody was as worshipful as a student named David Schnyer. In the last few decades as opposed to the past, we have had a clear personal view of the actual people involved, Richard Baker being only one. It is important to remember now that the interviews Downing conducted in 1998-2000 were long after the events at the SFZC took place. 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. He exists freely in the fullness of his whole being. 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. Tassajara baked bread for student and guest consumption since 1967, and Edward Espe Brown's Tassajara Bread Book, demonstrated consumer interest. It is a sanitized description wherein any one roshi is replaceable by any other roshi, which is really no person at all. It is fashionable among practitioners in the West to consider critical thought as "un-Zen." I am thankful for Michael Downing's work, which is extremely valuable. Richard Baker was 36 years old when he was installed as abbott of the San Francisco Zen Center in 1971. Remember the senior student who quoted Suzuki as saying, " Dick's commitment is at another level, so the rest of us simply were not in a position to criticize him." His American students accept this theme unquestioningly. A theme repeated in Downing's interviews is Suzuki's seemingly quirky idea of reforming Soto Zen in Japan by having his American students go there as living examples of reform. From the perspective of power and control, the political and the religious spheres overlap. The only one of the four whose reputation was unblemished, Shunryu Suzuki of the San Francisco Zen Center, gave his sangha over to a man named Richard Baker, who was later embroiled in a sex scandal of his own, resigned from his abbacy, and became the subject of a book with the appropriately suggestive title Shoes Outside the Door. Was Baker's commitment to Zen practice much greater than a number of other of Suzuki's close, very committed senior disciples? Suzuki indeed had ordinary and even tragic circumstances in his life, as is shown in Downing's book, who references David Chadwick's book, Crooked Cucumber, for the following details. Anderson became entangled in an incident in 1987 that reached back to 1983 just after Zentatsu Richard Baker had resigned as abbot. [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. When I heard about it, I was like, Thats for me. Soon, Schnyer was practicing Buddhism. [5], In 1983 Tenshin Reb Anderson received shiho (Dharma Transmission) from Richard Baker. Mark Oppenheimer hosts the podcast Unorthodox for Tablet magazine and writes for The New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, and GQ, among other publications. 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. This is not to imply that there is no value to be gained in the practice of Zen. 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. This is a very interesting piece of "history" which is no doubt destined to be repeated. This is the sort of detail, which might be useful to both present and future students, but it is absolutely missing from all of the completely standard biographies of Zen masters through the ages. Was it all really such a big deal? Americans needed somebody to teach them the rituals. I dont know, he said. Soon these Westerners participated in regular services, and new non-Asian students came to outnumber the Japanese-American congregation. With this investment it is understandable that one might not want to question too closely the teacher's behavior. But for Schnyer this constantly refreshing membership was proof that the sangha did disapprove of Shimanos treatment of women. This is a mythology of Zen, a pure fiction. What passes for "knowledge" in society is built on the foundation of language. It was a spiritual scandal starring the usual suspects -- sex, money and the abuse of religious authority. 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. Yet, I have found that within the Zen community there is little self-examination about Zen as an institution and its self-definitions and what the effects of these are in the world of flesh and blood people. At first, I had trouble with Downing's refusal to bend to the dictates of chronology and a quirky writing style that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Sitting meditation (zazen) is available live online Monday through Friday mornings, Saturday mornings, and Monday through Friday evenings. 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. I too was a member of a Zen center where we also felt that our group and style of practice were in some ways unique. Foulk disagrees with this view. 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