His focus on having the Center grow quickly and on reforming Soto Zen in Japan may also have contributed to the problems. I welcome any comments from the reader. And the teachings in it. To legitimize the various family lines within Zen, Zen's self-definition necessitates establishing a continuing unbroken lineage of transmitted masters connected to the historical Buddha. The issue here is not how individual students behave foolishly or even in a self-serving way, it is the admonition to "just sit" - even for twenty thousand hours - is no guarantee against foolishness or delusion. Also see, Brown, Edward Espe, Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen, Harper Collins, 2002, Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness: Zen Talks on the Sandokai, Ed. We may however, ask, "What commitment was Suzuki referring to?" Most people think of Zen as being iconoclastic, anti-authoritarian, simple, direct, and unattached. 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. 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. Anybody who traveled to Japan, as many American Buddhists would, quickly learned that every monastery there had its own variations on the traditionas with any other religious practice, there is no one true form. Americans needed somebody to teach them the rituals. Under Baker's leadership, it appears that the Center functioned as a dysfunctional family, denying that anything was wrong or problematic. The idea and ritual of Dharma transmission rather than the meaning or content of that transmission, becomes the prominent and meaningful fact. Hence, questioning and dissent became a shortcoming of the person expressing such a view. 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. [5] Baker was ordained a St priest by Suzuki in 1966 just before the opening of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. Also available are practice sessions with SF Zen Center teachers. He was married three times. Was he acting primarily with his own self-interest in mind? Yet for reasons known only to him he proceeded to make Baker his only American Dharma heir. In the case of Zen, students usually come to the teacher with a set of preconceptions, acquired mostly through reading, about the fully attained Zen master as being virtually beyond their comprehension. It is an institutional dream that needs to be analyzed using its own description. You can see how much more potent it is to have a teacher presented as a living Buddha or at least Buddha-like, who, instead of simply interpreting and explaining the words of the Buddha, actually speaks with the same voice as the Buddha. 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. [2] From 1968 to 1971, he traveled to Japan to practice at the primary St monasteries there, including Antaiji, Eiheiji, and Daitokuji. I am greatly indebted to the works of the following scholars, among others, whose Elizabeth is married to Jason Kibbey. 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. Without our assent to those stories, the country would not work. [1] Zen Hospice Project was the subject of the Netflix 2018 Academy Award-nominated[24] short documentary End Game,[25] about terminally ill patients in a San Francisco hospital as well as at the Zen Hospice Project house, featuring the work of palliative care physician BJ Miller and other palliative care clinicians. Audio recordings of familiar sounds heard at our temples. Today SFZC is the largest St organization in the West. Therefore, in the need to remain at the Center, members had a powerful incentive to fully buy into Zen's mythology. This article was excerpted from the new e-bookThe Zen Predator of the Upper East Side,out now. This new Buddha is also alive and homegrown and hence more immediate and real. He was what I needed. 2002: 8-11. Zen is a Chinese invention roughly beginning in the seventh or eighth century of this era. Access to movies showing San Francisco Zen Center's founder, who died in 1971. Baker also claimed that he was trying "to protect Suzuki Roshi's legacy and lineage." There was a widespread conceit in their thinking that they were the center or "cutting edge" of Zen in America, not cognizant that many other Zen groups were forming city/country Centers and also experimenting with the ideas of setting up monasteries, group practice, communal living and forming a sangha. And he was also just a guy, kind of like Bill Clinton was just a guy. Suzuki-roshi, as his students called him, died of cancer in 1971. 145 41. In particular, Suzuki's San Francisco Zen Center lineage continues through his bureaucratic "transmission" to his son Hoitsu. Because the newcomers' indoctrination into Zen ideology was incomplete, their unfortunate reliance on common sense prevented them from viewing Baker's eccentricities as qualities of an enlightened Zen master. Mel Weitsman and Michael Wenger, University of California Press,1999 and for a biography of Suzuki's life see, Chadwick, David, Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunyru Suzuki, Broadway Books, 1999. 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. Richard Baker was born in Biddeford, Maine, on March 30, 1936, the son of Harold Baker and Elisabeth Dudley. For students of the San Francisco Zen Center, one of America's oldest and most prestigious Buddhist institutions, the world has already ended. In this scheme, each teacher can trace his lineage and hence, authenticity, back to the historical Buddha. Suzuki or any other Zen master only looks this way if we avoid looking at their real life. 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. His whole being testifies to what it means to live in the reality of the present. 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. " Baker claimed the Center was "denying 2,500 years of how Buddhism was developed and continued" He made a number of other historically inaccurate claims, and finally dropped the suit saying that he was pressured to institute the threat by a lawyer student of his: "There was a lawyer who kept bugging me." Downing quotes a prominent older student who expressed it differently, "Dick tried to take over Zen Center again." The meeting, which Zournas had hoped would mark the end of Shimanos tenure, turned out to be another show of support. One component of Buddhism is to recognize cause and effect. [7], Baker received Dharma transmission from Suzuki in 1970,[2] and then was installed as abbot of San Francisco Zen Center during the "Mountain Seat Ceremony" on November 21, 1971. Although his salary was reportedly modest, he lived a lifestyle which many perceived as extravagant. We agree that the Constitutional Convention made law for all the people, and for all generations to come; we agree that the government will back up our money, if no longer with gold, then with its promises. When I heard about it, I was like, Thats for me. Soon, Schnyer was practicing Buddhism. Zen Mind, Beginners Mind by Shunryu Suzuki buy this book Explore and learn more about the San Francisco Zen Center community. 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. Alan Sherman, Vintage Books, 1995 (reprint edition), 1995, pp.170-195 discusses a number of aspects of the penal system, its disciplinary power and the simple instruments from which it derives its power: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment, and their combination-the examination. And then I went back and basically never left. Please see the Covid-Related Openings and Closings Updates page as well as the Calendar. The Zen Studies Society was marked by frequent turnover. [10], In 1970, Suzuki gave Dharma transmission to Richard Baker, his only American Dharma Heir and chosen successor at SFZC. In fact, a number of older students who had known Baker for years left the Zen Center when he was installed as both abbot and roshi of SFZC. He also grabbed the land for Green Gulch farm and retreat center, located in a spectacular valley near Muir Beach. And after his death, several students of Dainin Katagiri, the founding abbot of the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, in Minneapolis, reported having affairs with their teacher, who had been married. 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 by Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright, Oxford University Press, 2000. Zen Groups Distressed by Accusations Against Teacher Joshu Sasaki in New Mexico in 2007. He was perfect for me, Schnyer said. The last of these was Bodhidharma, who began the patriarchal line in China that led to Hui-neng, traditionally considered to be the sixth and last Chan patriarch. Yet we all know that no human is like this. Katagiri would go on to establish his own practice centerthe Minnesota Zen Centerin 1972 in Minneapolis. 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. It may be Zen-like, but it can also be annoying. About. He found willing assenters, willing children eager to listen to his fairy tales. In one well-known collection, the famous Grand Master Yunmen is not recorded at all. . In this sect, Dharma transmission is commonly a father-son transmission ritual culminating in the son's inheritance of the family temple. However, it should be noted, that he let interviewees voice any number of inaccuracies without comment. 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. After six months, he returned to his position. This was especially true of people wanting to climb Zen Center's ladder to positions of authority, power, and prestige, which was totally dependent on Baker's sanction. For an analysis of the inherent power relations in the one-dimensional description of a roshi and how it is taken for being natural, see "Symbolic Violence and Social Reproduction" and "Uses of Language" in, Jenkins, Richard, Pierre Bourdieu, Routledge, 1992, pp.103-110 and pp.152-162 respectively. Under the Zen approach, the Chan masters are clearly more potent than the monastics of other Buddhist sects, who merely explicate the Dharma through texts, often texts that are further distanced from their authoritative origins by the act of translation. Suzuki Roshi Despite having only had 12 years in the United States, Suzuki had gone a long way toward establishing Soto Zen in America. There was an article and follow up piece by Brian Victoria discussing anti-Semitic remarks made by Yasutani roshi in Tricycle magazine (Fall and Winter 1999). 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. 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." "Something above ninety percent of us had come from alcoholic families or families that were dysfunctional with the same patterns." 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"). 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. 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. 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. In 1989, some six years after Baker was forced to leave, he threatened to take back Zen Center by going to court. The duo published a book of recipes in 1987 titled The Greens Cookbook. He was not a sticky kind of emotional person. The idea of electing an abbot is, no doubt, a distinctively American innovation in a centuries-long pattern of religious authority. 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. Suzuki's arrival came at the tail end of the Beat movement and just prior to the social movements of the 1960s, both of which had major roots in San Francisco. He was joined by his wife Mitsu (also from Japan) in 1961. 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. Shoes Outside The Door, p.289. 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). The idea that Zen's emphasis on wisdom while only giving lip service to compassion in reality is then about power is an idea that I have just begun to examine. Writings featured as biography in Zen are most often an idealized presentation of how a master should perform his role rather than the life of a real person. (If the reader wants to argue that Dharma transmission in the Rinzai sect or in the modern Sanbokyodan sect so popular in the West matches the ideal of Zen rhetoric, please feel free to email me at my address listed in the Notes.) San Francisco Zen Center offers seven charming guest rooms for short-term stays. Having wisdom, in the Zen view, is based on Dharma transmission, which implies that the person is an enlightened being. Richard Dudley Baker (born March 30, 1936) is an American Soto Zen master (or roshi), the founder and guiding teacher of Dharma Sanghawhich consists of Crestone Mountain Zen Center located in Crestone, Colorado and the Buddhistisches Studienzentrum[1] (Johanneshof) in Germany's Black Forest. This has a direct bearing on the Baker story and the way mythology continues to be constructed even in the present. As noted in the paper, senior members consistently reassured newer members that all was well when they raised questions about Baker's activities. 13 reviews of San Francisco Zen Center "This place is really awesome! 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. Baker Sums It Up The social contract and national constitutions count because we believe them to count, because we will them into reality. A senior member relates in Downing's book that Suzuki himself refused to hear criticism of Baker by other members of the Center because, as he said, " To his [Suzuki's] way of thinking, Dick's commitment was at another level, so the rest of us were not in a position to criticize him." The sangha was incorporated by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and a group of his American students in 1962. 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. There he found the corpse of a man with a bullet wound to the head and a revolver nearby. 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 idea of the enlightened Zen master authenticated through the ritual of dharma transmission and maintained by an unbroken lineage going back to the historical Buddha is at the heart of the Zen tradition. Your support is crucial to sustain our practice centers and thriving online community. It is important to remember now that the interviews Downing conducted in 1998-2000 were long after the events at the SFZC took place. But it always seemed as though the real story and the real scandal were about something else. In fact, Suzuki's lineage, now and as long as the line survives, comes through his son Hoitsu and Baker and that unknown person. 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. 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 supposed enlightened Master gets the last word in judging not only the student's behavior and verbal responses, but also the whole of the past enlightened lineage including the historical Buddha by commenting on and judging any and all of the past Masters in the old cases (koan) and in their recorded sayings. A vibrant community in an urban temple in the heart of San Francisco. Anderson became entangled in an incident in 1987 that reached back to 1983 just after Zentatsu Richard Baker had resigned as abbot. Baker Sums It Up But the percentage of the Zen clergy implicated in sexual misdeeds is many times greater than that of the Catholic clergy. San Francisco Zen Center 300 Page Street San Francisco, California 94102 www.sfzc.org. There is a saying, "It is difficult to convince a man of something if his paycheck depends on his not understanding it." 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. You wont find anybody within the Zen Studies Society who has tolerated this stuff from start to finish, Schnyer said. It matters that we keep assenting to the stories. Baker and Suzuki themselves were rewarded by this system. Yet, after Tatsugami Roshi, one of the important training teachers from Eiheji, one of the two main Soto Zen training monasteries in Japan, conducted only one training period at Tassajara, Zen Center's monastery in California, Suzuki "arranged" for him not to return because his American students were so dissatisfied. 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. In time Suzuki, Baker, Hoitsu, and Unknown will blend into that "history" of immaculate patriarchs. But for Schnyer this constantly refreshing membership was proof that the sangha did disapprove of Shimanos treatment of women. This ancient twisted karma I now fully avow. But how real is this history? The tension was alleviated when Suzuki's Western students began gathering for separate services, albeit still at Sokoji, in 1961. This reminder served an important purpose: the Center's members viewed Suzuki's authority as if it were a divine fiat, so that any dissent or criticism was ended. This scheme was later institutionalized through the ritual of Dharma transmission. But Shimano is hardly alone; his is not an isolated case. They also have a lot of other awesome Saturday morning programs for zen noobs (znoobs!!). Guests are . The volunteer project's founding director was Frank Ostaseski, who served until 2004. Used with permission. Or was it that Baker, in addition to his commitment to Zen, was more committed to institutional growth than the others, and importantly, was the only disciple who possessed the necessary skills and qualities to achieve the growth; the growth that Suzuki desired? "If you scratch under the bitterness, there's a lot of beauty there," says Norman Fischer, abbott of the Zen Center from 1995 to 2000. It has three practice places which offer daily meditation, regular monastic retreats and practice periods, classes, lectures and workshops throughout the Bay Area. Another error is seen in the statement that Yasutani roshi rescinded the Dharma transmission he gave to Philip Kapleau. 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. 2 Thank Kelly S . The conception of an unbroken lineage based on the idea of mind-to-mind transmission going back to the Buddha superceded a previous idea of authority that was based on texts, i.e., the sutras, which were understood to embody the words of the historical Buddha. Anderson remembered stowing the revolver away in the San Francisco Zen Center's garage and quickly retrieved it. Sitting meditation (zazen) is available live online Monday through Friday mornings, Saturday mornings, and Monday through Friday evenings. And that very presentation is the freight of the Zen machine. He also ran a temple virtually under the control of Japan's repressive fascist era government. At the same time, this supposed desireless image of the roshi is meant to invoke desire in us for him. Like whoa, and when you start the practice, the practice I feel isits very profound. These events are a helpful reminderboth to me and to othersof my vulnerability to arrogance and inflation. Unfortunately, this issue is not raised or considered by any of the Zen Center members interviewed in the book. Was he perhaps not a fully realized person? How bad was Shimanos womanizing? I asked Schnyer. 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. [6] Baker also penned the introduction to Suzuki's famous book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. For a peek into a period only shortly before our own, we can use Brian Victoria's book Zen At War. No one took the opportunity to stand back and view the entire affair from any sort of sociological, anthropological, psychological or religious-historical perspective. [3] He has two daughters, Sally and Elizabeth, from a prior marriage to Virginia Baker. He is now a professor of psychology at the University of Texas, and in December 2012 I spoke with him by telephone. Supporting tools to make this narrative seem real and unconstructed include the particular methods of meditation and interactions between teacher and student as well as an abundance of validating mythologies most often presented as history in the form of biography, along with accommodating literary and ritual devices. 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. Some people felt that I had committed an irrevocable betrayal of trust, and have discounted me and my teaching ever since. 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. 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?. However, crediting a teacher, by definition of their role or title, with exalted qualities he does not really possess, is begging for trouble. Zen Center Members Covid-Related Openings and Closings Updates page, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility, Conflict, Complaint, and Ethical Review Processes. These days, when we think of predatory clergy, we think of Roman Catholic priests. That little piece of paradise in the Marin County headlands is just a short drive from the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge, perfect for a quick retreat. 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