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. The suit cost the SFZC $35,000 to $40,000 in legal fees at a time when it was under financial pressure. 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. Berkeley, March 17th, 2002. Eighteen years later, there is still lingering bitterness about his overthrow. It is mentioned often enough that Downing, interestingly calculates the hours that individual senior members had meditated. One student stated it as, "The one thing that seemed unquestionable was Richard's Transmission." I have found the work of the following social analysts to be especially illuminating: Peter L. Berger, Pierre Bourdieu, Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, David C. Korten, Thomas Lukach, Howard Zinn and Angela Zito. The number of practitioners at SFZC grew rapidly in the mid-sixties. Most people think of Zen as being iconoclastic, anti-authoritarian, simple, direct, and unattached. Ironically, one may ask, is that what Suzuki hoped to reform? Join the San Francisco Zen Center Membership Program. But that is the way that Suzuki or Baker or any roshi is presented. [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. [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. In 2003 Paul Haller, who received transmission from Sojun Mel Weitsman in 1993, was installed as co-abbot with her. The Zen Institution Asia is filled with monks and priests who know how to sit, chant, eat, bow, walk, dress, and live as a Buddhist. For some thirty years a significant group of scholars have been investigating the development of the Chan sect in Chinese Buddhism. Surely others felt the same way, but only Schnyer and Kelly have been so bold or articulate, have made clear the amorality, and the misogyny, that can infect Zen practice and enable its malefactors. That's what we made of it." 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. Without our assent to those stories, the country would not work. They should take credit for the fact that we did it for many years. This scheme was later institutionalized through the ritual of Dharma transmission. Until one begins to view religious institutions as institutions that function in a particular context, subject to the same problematic power relationships as secular institutions, problems such as those that arose at the San Francisco Zen Center and Buddhist organizations across the West will be almost inevitable. You have to ask whether Suzuki was aware of the claims made by Baker and, if so, why he permitted them to stand without correction. Michel Foucault in "The Means of Correct Training" in Discipline and Punish, Trans. "Something above ninety percent of us had come from alcoholic families or families that were dysfunctional with the same patterns." The focus itself is on the master. [3] Because his family moved around frequently, he lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Indiana, and Pittsburgh growing up. Please consider a donation to San Francisco Zen Center. Not only is the book a compelling read; it also, more importantly perhaps, provides raw data for observing Zen mythmaking in action. A large institution like Zen requires hundreds of such living role players. On one visit he decided to take the revolver home with him. 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. 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. 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. 1962 - SFZC is founded by Shunryu Suzuki and his Western students. He was 67 years old. Others were more forgiving, but their trust in me and my integrity was permanently shaken. 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. But during the 1960s, Suzuki attracted an eager flock of meditating Westerners, including Baker, who showed up in 1962 and was soon singled out as a possible successor. In the 1960s, four major Zen teachers came to the United States from Japan: Shunryu Suzuki, Taizan Maezumi, Joshu Sasaki, and Eido Shimano. Therefore, in the living world of flesh and blood we have people with some very limited level of attainment occupying a role that is defined as Buddha-like, actualizing perfect freedom and unfathomable compassion beyond the ordinary person's understanding and hence above question. [27][28][29][30], In March 1983 Baker was accused of engaging in a sexual relationship with the wife of an influential sangha member. "[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. Is it any wonder that the inevitable abuses that we have seen for the last thirty years should follow? But the percentage of the Zen clergy implicated in sexual misdeeds is many times greater than that of the Catholic clergy. Within a couple of years, Suzuki considered founding a monastery to host more intensive practice for those students who were interested. Reviewed July 20, 2014 . How bad was Shimanos womanizing? I asked 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. Practitioners are given the ultimate encouragement of knowing that real people "attained enlightenment" and therefore so can we. [5], In 1983 Tenshin Reb Anderson received shiho (Dharma Transmission) from Richard Baker. . The tension was alleviated when Suzuki's Western students began gathering for separate services, albeit still at Sokoji, in 1961. Although Baker claimed that his relationship was a love-affair which had not yet been consummated, the outcry surrounding the incident led to accusations of impropriety, including the admissions by several female members of the community that they had had affairs with Baker before or during his tenure as abbot. 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." 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]. 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." In 1987 SFZC started the Zen Hospice Project, a volunteer hospice program run out of a guest house on Page Street with five residential beds. 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. My first reaction to the book was, "Why?" (It should be noted that Suzuki could read English.) Did it not occur to him that Richard had a family, too, as did many of the priests of Zen Center?" With one or two exceptions, the only views expressed of Baker's errant behavior among the Center's members was in the context of their personal experience. Shoes Outside The Door, p.135. Not only the work of Zen writers, but political analysts, social critics, sociologists, and my involvement with the practice have informed my thinking about the state of contemporary Zen in the West. This story appears to be an example of modern day creation of hagiography that will be repeated in the future. Sasaki, of Rinzai-ji, a Zen center in Los Angeles, is now 106 years old and, as his board members finally admitted in 2013, was groping and fondling unwilling students well into his 11th decade (he also ran a leading Zen center in New Mexico, and his lewdness did not respect state lines). The film was directed by veteran filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and executive produced by physician, Shoshana R. Institutional power, authority, hierarchy and order are, hence, accomplished through self-censorship by the members, a more effective method for controlling dissent and questioning than coercion by the leaders. My view of Zen as an institution, some of its problems, and how it operates is most completely expressed in my paper, "Means of Authorization: Establishing Hierarchy in Zen Buddhism in America", delivered as part of a panel on Chan at the American Academy of Religion Conference in Boston in 1999. is the head teacher at the Dharma Field Meditation and Learning Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Read any of these texts of Zen, The Book of Serenity, a Soto sect koan collection, being one prominent example, and this will be abundantly clear. 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. The land was purchased from one of the founders of Polaroid, George Wheelwright. 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). 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 is a mythology of Zen, a pure fiction. He became the leader of the Sanbokyodan school of Zen started by Yasutani. San Francisco Zen Center practitioners did make a serious commitment to their practice. "Zen Dharma transmission between master and disciple could occur whether or not the disciple had realized enlightenment, just so long as the ritual of personal initiation had been performed." It is a sanitized description wherein any one roshi is replaceable by any other roshi, which is really no person at all. This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. According to a 1982 letter from George Zournas to Jack Clareman, the Zen Studies Societys lawyer, a litany of charges was read against Shimano at a board meeting on September 14 of that year. "It was a fantastic drive," he said, it was safe to drive and that he liked to keep his legs in zazen posture. Baker then quotes Trudy Dixon, the editor of the book, thus endorsing her words: He was neither. The implications of this authority in some ways far outstrip that bestowed upon the highest secular authorities, since there is the implication that the Zen master is enlightened, a fully attained being. It is this idealized version of Dharma transmission that claims the master is an enlightened being that is the source of the Zen master's extraordinary claim to authority. Its waves of people who say, Im done with this, I got what I can out of it and then a new group comes in.. Learn about the latest news from affiliate sanghas with Tova's newsettes and other timely articles. Hence, a number of questions were never openly raised: Was he acting in an arrogant fashion? For students of the San Francisco Zen Center, one of America's oldest and most prestigious Buddhist institutions, the world has already ended. It will not do for future generations if there are gaps in the line of saintly figures. Richard Baker also survived. 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. A Zen teacher can certainly assist his students in their practice, can encourage the students to be diligent, guide their meditation practice in both public and private meetings, offer aid in difficult times, talk about Zen texts to enrich the student's sense of the tradition and explicate Buddhist and Zen ideas. While jogging through Golden Gate Park, Anderson deviated from the path to urinate in some bushes. There are some good, and unavoidable, reasons for Americans dependence on Japanese roshis (and, more recently, as Americans have become interested in Tibetan Buddhism, for their dependence on foreign teachers like the Dalai Lama). One justification sometimes heard, glib to my ear, is that enlightenment is not about morality. Throughout the 1980s Greens, which obtained produce from Green Gulch Farm, was one of the most popular restaurants in San Francisco. If you're looking for some information that's important to you (such as research for work or learning how to manage your money), then the advice here is to first write down the relevant keywords on a piece of paper to figure out exactly what you want, which will be a lot more efficient. 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. 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