How bad was Shimanos womanizing? I asked Schnyer. [6], San Francisco Zen Center expanded quickly with Baker at the helm. Also see his forthcoming book on early Chan texts for a unique dissection of early lineage claims and their supporting texts . However Zen texts may define the role, Zen masters have not been fully enlightened beings beyond question. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews. We did something great. If someone attempted to question some aspect of Baker's behavior, both Baker and senior disciples reminded them that Baker was the only American Dharma heir of Suzuki. Reviewed December 27, 2012 . If Suzuki was California's Zen messiah, then Richard Baker was his Apostle Paul. Unfortunately, the Western Zen community has not explored the many important questions implied by Zen At War. About. Victoria describes how the most prominent roshis from all sects of Japanese Zen interpreted Zen's teachings to support the imperial and militaristic goals of Japan from the early twentieth century through the end of World War II and beyond. I feel sorry for anybody who's bitter. 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. 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. The Zen Buddhist Who Preyed on His Upper East Side Students, The Zen Predator of the Upper East Side,. 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. He writes a religion column forThe New York Timesand is on Twitter@markopp1. 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. Suzuki or any other Zen master only looks this way if we avoid looking at their real life. 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. However, it should be noted, that he let interviewees voice any number of inaccuracies without comment. Many women and others in the Zen community have suffered as a result, and we regret and apologize for our collective failure to stop this harm. One was to make the state consider Chan the primary sect of Buddhism. 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. Shoes Outside The Door, p.135. Yamada gave Dharma transmission to Robert Aitkin, though Aitkin and his Diamond Sangha later separated from the Sanbokyodan organization after Yamada's death. Shimanos Japanese ways suited Schnyer. The Zen Institution 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. Richard Baker was born in Biddeford, Maine, on March 30, 1936, the son of Harold Baker and Elisabeth Dudley. The Zen Institution 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. Berger begins, "Every human society is an enterprise of world-building. 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. In time Suzuki, Baker, Hoitsu, and Unknown will blend into that "history" of immaculate patriarchs. Stay connected. In 2003 Paul Haller, who received transmission from Sojun Mel Weitsman in 1993, was installed as co-abbot with her. The meaning of these terms evolved as a means of self-definition for the Zen sect to differentiate itself from other Buddhist sects in a way that particularly matched the Chinese social system based on genealogy and to gain legitimization and authenticity from the imperial powers that always maintained tight control over Buddhism. 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. 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. In the end, both teacher and student fall prey to these fantasies. All of this authority and potency is manifested in the rituals of the Zen master commenting on and judging the words and actions of not only their disciples, but also of anyone in the lineage going all the way back to and including, the historical Buddha. At the time of the purchase, Baker claimed he needed so expensive a car because of the amount of driving he did. 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. Thanks to Mr. Oppenheimer's efforts, women have come forward, some even using their names; we think this kind of courage can only embolden other survivors of abuse to speak out. According to this model, mind-to-mind transmission began with an encounter between the historical Buddha Sakyamuni and Mahakasyapa, and continued, in an unbroken lineage, through twenty-eight Indian Patriarchs. Please consider a donation to San Francisco Zen Center. Political authority can function in this second way. The idea and ritual of Dharma transmission rather than the meaning or content of that transmission, becomes the prominent and meaningful fact. To this end, Zen Center is engaged in numerous social and ecological initiatives. 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). San Francisco Zen Center practitioners did make a serious commitment to their practice. It acquired property worth around $20 million and built up a network of affiliated businesses staffed by Zen Center students, which included the vegetarian Greens Restaurant in Fort Mason, a bakery, and a grocery store. 1962 - SFZC is founded by Shunryu Suzuki and his Western students. In July 1987 Baker gave Dharma transmission to Whalen; Whalen later became abbot of the Hartford Street Zen Center (following the tenure of Issan Dorsey) in the Castro district of San Francisco. Jerry Brown, poet Gary Snyder, Esalen founder Michael Murphy, author Ken Kesey and other leading lights of the Zen intelligentsia on the West Coast. [7] Thich Nhat Hanh wrote of Baker, "To me, he embodies very much the future of Buddhism in the West with his creative intelligence and his aliveness. In this way the teacher was like a deity, a minor god. 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. Zen Center members did not think there was any thought control or propaganda necessary to escape when it came to Zen. Today SFZC is the largest St organization in the West. One student said that when the senior priests were questioned about some aspects of Baker's behavior, the answer was, "Richard has Transmission." His focus on having the Center grow quickly and on reforming Soto Zen in Japan may also have contributed to the problems. Was his lifestyle less than exemplary? Their sins are far worse than what goes on in Zen circles. He jumps across decades, and sometimes seems to jump onto whatever thought crosses his mind. by Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright, Oxford University Press, 2000. For a view from the political perspective that has application in the religious arena see Edwards, David, "A Chest of Tools for Intellectual Self-Defense" in Burning All Illusions, South End Press, pp.177-224. He was neither. "The Apocalypse," as they came to call it, took place in 1983 at a Peace Conference at Tassajara, a retreat center that was the first Buddhist monastery founded outside Asia. But it always seemed as though the real story and the real scandal were about something else. [5][16][17][18][19], In 2000 Jiko Linda Cutts was appointed Abbess, having received Dharma transmission from Tenshin Reb Anderson in 1996. 13 reviews of San Francisco Zen Center "This place is really awesome! One component of Buddhism is to recognize cause and effect. This "non-person" i.e., a roshi, is a generic person, who supposedly is a real member of the Buddha's family, the holder of absolute truth, whose function besides producing an heir to keep the lineage alive, is to wield authority: to be listened to, obeyed and bowed down to. Latest News. [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]. 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. Ask Kai C about San Francisco Zen Center. 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. 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. Cases like this are important simply because the study of Zen history has shown us the whole lineage tradition is built so heavily on questionable written and word-of-mouth accounts; what is said in the present will surely be repeated long into the future. It also spun off its business and stopped pretending that work without compensation was "spiritual practice.". This is not a new idea nor is it unique to Chan/Zen. San Francisco from the 1960's into the 1980's was considered by many to be the freest city in America, especially when understanding "libre" as freedom from ideological constraints. Sarasota, Florida. 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. You wont find anybody within the Zen Studies Society who has tolerated this stuff from start to finish, Schnyer said. Baker's use of Dixon's words begins the description of Suzuki Roshi, with the strange phrasing "a roshi is" This substitutes what is supposed to be a description of their close and beloved teacher Suzuki Roshi, a real person, with an abstraction, "a roshi." [31] 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. Even though the bureaucratic "transmissions" in the Soto church have nothing to do with spiritual insight, the Soto institution does nothing to dissuade people thinking that there is a mind-to-mind connection between its "roshis" and the historical Buddha. They will sit for five days or longer in the zendo before they are formally admitted into the monasterya physically daunting challenge. In fact, it was often not based on spiritual attainment at all, most especially so in Japanese Soto Zen, which is the sect of Suzuki, Baker and the San Francisco Zen Center. In particular, Berger, Peter,L. They weren't so much about about money (Chapter 27, if that's your cup of tea). Having wisdom, in the Zen view, is based on Dharma transmission, which implies that the person is an enlightened being. I approached it with a searching spirituality aspect, reading Huxley and Timothy Leary, and that leads you down the road to the Beat generation and Zen. In this act lies the first step towards freedom." 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. 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. [6] Baker was instrumental in orchestrating the acquisition of Tassajara, raising $150,000 for the purchase in a short period of time. Downing, who lives in Cambridge, Mass., provides an outsider's view into the incestuous circles at the first Buddhist monastery in the West. For an analysis of the idealized, one-dimensional style of describing a roshi, the one of Suzuki in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind being just one contemporary example, see "Simpleness" in Alan Cole's previously mentioned paper, "It's All in the Framing", p.6. [5] Baker was ordained a St priest by Suzuki in 1966 just before the opening of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. 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. There is a wealth of contemporary exciting Zen scholarship available in English. 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? 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. It should be kept in mind that the senior members, by 1982, were often over forty years old and had been practicing at Zen Center for fifteen or more years. 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. 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. 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. What goes on in Zen circles beyond question are far worse than what goes on in circles. 2003 Paul Haller, who received transmission from Sojun Mel Weitsman in 1993, was installed as with. 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