But there are many lesser-known yet just as randy Zen teachers. And stayed for 10 years.. 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. But Shimano is hardly alone; his is not an isolated case. 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. I feel sorry for anybody who's bitter. It was almost like a magic theater, where if someone received Dharma transmission, and hence, was a supposed enlightened being, he would become a different person who could do anything he pleased. This necessitates the production of virtual quotas of such highly exalted people, while in the realm of "spiritual attainment" it is rare to produce just one such person. 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 idea and ritual of Dharma transmission rather than the meaning or content of that transmission, becomes the prominent and meaningful fact. If some one would like copies, please email me at: slachs@worldnet.att.net . Students that come to practice at the monastery from September through April must undergo the tradition known as tangaryo. 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.. 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. Suzuki Roshi These and any number of other questions, complaints, hurts or criticisms harbored by his disciples, were not raised. There he found the corpse of a man with a bullet wound to the head and a revolver nearby. But how real is this history? 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. [17], Last edited on 21 December 2022, at 18:50, Timeline of Zen Buddhism in the United States, "The Long Learning Curve: An Interview With Richard Baker Roshi", Zentatsu Richard Baker page on the Crestone Mountain Zen Center website, Richard Baker and the Myth of the Zen Roshi, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Baker_(Zen_teacher)&oldid=1128738434, This page was last edited on 21 December 2022, at 18:50. He convinced the American Zen community that he was, in effect, the Second Coming of Suzukibut even better, because he was here to stay. After six months, he returned to his position. 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. In 1983 Tenshin Reb Anderson received shih from Zentatsu Richard Baker, becoming Baker's first Dharma heir (though Baker disputes this). I dont remember saying that., Schnyer maintains a tidy understanding of his personal Zen galaxy, in which Shimano is the sun, hot and dangerous but necessary. Downing has offered an excellent example in Richard Baker and the SFZC. Baker also gives seminars at Boulder Zen Center in Boulder, Colorado twice each year, typically on the last weekends of January and April. by Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright, Oxford University Press, 2000. 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. The sangha was incorporated by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and a group of his American students in 1962. More tellingly, Baker, inserted the very idealized description of qualities and characteristics supposedly of Suzuki Roshi, generalized to all roshi, knowing it would inevitably, indeed shortly, be applied to himself. 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. And that very presentation is the freight of the Zen machine. Jerry Brown, poet Gary Snyder, Esalen founder Michael Murphy, author Ken Kesey and other leading lights of the Zen intelligentsia on the West Coast. The leadership of San Francisco Zen Center required Anderson to take a leave of absence from his position as abbot. [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. Perhaps the biggest change is that the two current co-abbotts are women. Zen's highly ritualized activities added a visceral instantiation to the cognitive edifice. Perhaps tellingly, Baker made this claim at the height of the Vietnam War, when virtually 100% of Zen followers were opposed to the war and hence having an anti-war/anti -government roshi in his lineage was good currency. 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. Downing interviewed roughly eighty people, most of them Baker's students, approximately eighteen years after Baker was forced to resign. While jogging through Golden Gate Park, Anderson deviated from the path to urinate in some bushes. Explore San Francisco Zen Center's newsletters and blogs. This ancient twisted karma I now fully avow. Despite having only had 12 years in the United States, Suzuki had gone a long way toward establishing Soto Zen in America. 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. Suzuki-roshi, as his students called him, died of cancer in 1971. I assume that Downing would have included a broader view if he had heard it from any of the interviewees. [5][16][17][18][19], In 2000 Jiko Linda Cutts was appointed Abbess, having received Dharma transmission from Tenshin Reb Anderson in 1996. This is also extremely disempowering which can lead to all sorts of problems, as the SFZC case clearly shows. Some of the most senior members appeared afraid to raise difficult questions with Baker perhaps for fear of losing their own privileged positions. People interviewed had the luxury of hindsight. 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. 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. Eighteen years later, there is still lingering bitterness about his overthrow. He writes, " The perfect disciplinary apparatus would make it possible for a single gaze to see everything constantly." 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. Me and my friend always had suspicions he had ongoing relationships with Japanese women that were kept quiet, and were more or less continuous. For a look at how religious fantasies may cause trouble, especially with leaders, see "Religion and Alienation" in Berger, Peter L., The Sacred Canopy, pp, 81-101. Today SFZC is the largest St organization in the West. But that is the way that Suzuki or Baker or any roshi is presented. So why did none of Baker's students, as expressed in their interviews with Downing, show any awareness that institutional self-definition encouraged their idealization of Baker, which allowed, perhaps even fostered, the occurrence of many of the alleged abuses? Tenshin Reb Anderson-roshi, former abbot of City Zen Center, is senior Dharma teacher at Green Gulchtraining priests and laypeople, leading sesshins, giving talks and conducting workshops while also living onsite. Suzuki died of cancer on December 4, 1971. They have a daughter, Sofia Baker, born on March 1, 2001, in Alamosa, Colorado. My first reaction to the book was, "Why?" Most people think of Zen as being iconoclastic, anti-authoritarian, simple, direct, and unattached. That made him the successor and dharma heir to Shunryu Suzuki, a Japanese Zen missionary who came to California in 1959 to serve immigrant families living in Japantown. This was likely prompted by a conversation between Robert Baker Aitken and Baker at San Francisco Zen Center concerning the question of Zen's availability to interested gays, for Dorsey went on to become abbot of the Hartford Street Zen Center. And he found them quite easily, because Westerners practicing Zen have an almost infantile relationship to what they perceive to be the authentic, Oriental father. This group is by far the largest Zen group in France and is active in the U.S.A. as well as in other parts of Europe. 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. A large institution like Zen requires hundreds of such living role players. 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. 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. Until recently, the United States had very few natives who possessed that knowledge. Zen Center members did not think there was any thought control or propaganda necessary to escape when it came to Zen. Over the past 10 years, San Francisco Zen Center has devoted time and energy to studying the best practices around conflict resolution, difficult conversations, sexual harassment prevention, appropriate teacher/student boundaries, giving and receiving feedback, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, working with trauma, and Right Use of Power trainings. I believe the trouble at the San Francisco Zen Center, and at many other prominent Zen Centers, across the country to this day, is caused by a lack of understanding as to how the ideas of Dharma transmission, unbroken lineage, and Zen master have been used historically. 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. The organic farm at Green Gulch supplies local restaurants and food suppliers and sells flowers, produce and herbs at Ferry Plaza Farmers Market 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. This scheme was later institutionalized through the ritual of Dharma transmission. This is hagiography, which is necessary for Chan's self-legitimating claims of mind-to-mind transmission and unbroken lineage. 2 Thank Kelly S . If the past is any indication these present teachers will be referred to as honored patriarchs in the future. In the past we had a lot of crisesin San Francisco and Los Angeleswith sex scandals and so forth. Baker adds he was "on a roll," was in love with his latest girlfriend and that his peers, est founder Werner Erhard and the well known Tibetan teacher Trungpa, had chauffeurs and large Mercedes, so "I thought I should buy a car." All trouble at the Center was internalized and personalized by its members. 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. Visitors can enjoy the springs, go swimming or on hiking trips, and have the opportunity to arrange for practice with the community living at the monastery for a few days. After a major fundraising effort led by Baker, Zen Center purchased the landwhich contained a rundown resort and mineral springs in 1967. Importantly, teachers can inspire followers by setting a living example through interactions with their students and others and, with the conduct of their own life, demonstrate that Zen practice can make one a wiser and more compassionate human being. SFZC will continue to offer classes, talks, workshops, and sangha gatherings through the Online Practice Center and residential guest student practice opportunities at all three temples. It may be Zen-like, but it can also be annoying. This is one reason why we are looking at his case, to see how the system works, how it has always worked. 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. (It should be noted that Suzuki could read English.) "It was a fantastic drive," he said, it was safe to drive and that he liked to keep his legs in zazen posture. These revelations led to community-wide pandemonium, and in 1984 Baker was forced to resign as abbot. Resort and mineral springs in 1967 revolver nearby control or propaganda necessary to escape it... 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