He served as Abbot there until 1978, moving the group to Jikoji in Los Gatos, California in 1979. These recordings of zazen instruction feature a variety of teachers offering an introduction to meditation. In the future, his name will be used as proof of authenticity for someone else that is also claiming this authentic connection to the Buddha. Soon these Westerners participated in regular services, and new non-Asian students came to outnumber the Japanese-American congregation. I suspect I probably said something like that, Schnyer said. "[12] And Baker, for his part, is quoted as having said in a 1994 interview with Sugata Schneider: I don't think that the gossipy or official versions of what happened are right, but I feel definitely that if I were back in the situation again as the person I am now, it wouldn't have happened. Institutional mythology, which created a seamless picture of unbroken lineage along with pure, desireless perfection and attainment housed in the body of the master, was not questioned, and hence, remained intact. [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. However, crediting a teacher, by definition of their role or title, with exalted qualities he does not really possess, is begging for trouble. 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. Its raison d'etre is to produce people who possess a fundamental insight into life, people who are not fooled by appearances or ideas. Their sins are far worse than what goes on in Zen circles. by Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright, Oxford University Press, 2000. Greens Restaurant, opened in 1979 in Fort Mason of San Francisco, was another business venture by SFZC under the influence of Baker. Learn and Practice at San Francisco Zen Center, residential guest student practice opportunities, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility, Conflict, Complaint, and Ethical Review Processes. It was high. Nor did anyone even think to view the situation through the lens of the Buddhist teachings themselves or even the particular teachings of their beloved founder Suzuki. 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 Zen Buddhist Who Preyed on His Upper East Side Students, The Zen Predator of the Upper East Side,. 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. 2 Thank Kelly S . 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. Zen ascribes to Pai-chang (died 814) its earliest monastic code that supposedly set Chan apart as a separate sect in the Tang dynasty. Although his salary was reportedly modest, he lived a lifestyle which many perceived as extravagant. In 1966, Suzuki and Baker scouted Tassajara Hot Springs, located in Los Padres National Forest behind Big Sur, as a possible location for the envisioned monastic center. It seems that Zen's emphasis on wisdom, while giving compassion only lip service, is really about power. It is common talk around Zen Centers to hear that the Master can tell your state of mind just in hearing your footsteps in going to sanzen/dokusan, in simply seeing you in any activity, seeing you with a single glance, or in the most idealized version, "he just knows from a distance!" He jumps across decades, and sometimes seems to jump onto whatever thought crosses his mind. At the time, Schnyer was just 24 years old, yet he had been a Shimano student since he was a teenager. Suzuki had asked Baker to locate a farm in the area for entire families to live a Buddhist life while working together. As in any field, there is a need for experienced and knowledgeable teachers. 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. Others have told me that my view, informed by historical scholarship (as opposed to Zen's own fictional history), sociology, political and social analysis as well as long personal involvement, has been helpful in clarifying some of the illusion and in reducing some of the pain. It is no longer ruled by an almighty abbott-for- life, but abbotts with term limits. After all, the only two previous Dharma transmissions Suzuki gave, to his son Hoitsu and to Unknown, were not based on attainment at all. 145 41. At a meeting of the Board of Directors of Lindisfarne at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, Thompson convinced the board to donate the campus that he had establishedwith its passive solar Lindisfarne Fellows House, Founder's House, and Lindisfarne Chapelto Baker-roshi's Dharma Sangha. 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. Our personal experience is socially constructed in dialogue with society and with ourselves. I highly recommend this book, especially the first 101 pages. Branching Streams is a network of affiliate Dharma centers and Sanghas in the Zen lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Located atop a bumpy 10-mile (16km) road which is difficult for some vehicles to climb, Tassajara offers shuttles to and from the retreat for those inclined to forgo trying to make the trek on their own. During his interview with Downing, Baker Roshi explains that having a "nice car," girlfriends and going out to dinner were implementations of Suzuki Roshi's commitment to lay practice. 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. 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. And that very presentation is the freight of the Zen machine. Shoes Outside The Door, p.289. Foulk doubts that the Chan sect existed as a separate sect with its own monastic institutions during the Tang dynasty. Zen's highly ritualized activities added a visceral instantiation to the cognitive edifice. Before long, Sokoji had non-Japanese Americans mostly beatniks coming to the temple to sit zazen with him in the morning. The first is grounded in something tangible, concrete, observable: the soldier with his gun, or the scientist with her laboratory results. And the teachings in it. 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? They weren't so much about about money (Chapter 27, if that's your cup of tea). 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. Suzuki Roshi [10], In 1970, Suzuki gave Dharma transmission to Richard Baker, his only American Dharma Heir and chosen successor at SFZC. And all of us worshipped him to a certain extent., Nobody was as worshipful as a student named David Schnyer. Please see the Covid-Related Openings and Closings Updates page as well as the Calendar. Baker also gives seminars at Boulder Zen Center in Boulder, Colorado twice each year, typically on the last weekends of January and April. Mark Oppenheimer hosts the podcast Unorthodox for Tablet magazine and writes for The New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, and GQ, among other publications. 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. It matters that we keep assenting to the stories. This ancient twisted karma I now fully avow. It was more about power, about finding another way to govern and manage an operation that was never sure if it was a California commune, a Japanese monastery or a New Age business. Baker and Suzuki themselves were rewarded by this system. In America, it is common in Zen and other communities led by a charismatic teacher to view events that could generate questions such as these not as real life-problems, but as "skillful means" employed to convey the essence of "the teaching." This article was excerpted from the new e-bookThe Zen Predator of the Upper East Side,out now. 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. I had a kind of insecurity and self-importance, which I didn't see for a long time, that was a bad dynamic in the community. 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. In one well-known collection, the famous Grand Master Yunmen is not recorded at all. Zen Mind? It is an institutional dream that needs to be analyzed using its own description. Mission. People interviewed had the luxury of hindsight. Me and my friend always had suspicions he had ongoing relationships with Japanese women that were kept quiet, and were more or less continuous. [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. 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. Suzuki or any other Zen master only looks this way if we avoid looking at their real life. 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All the pieces don't start coming together until about halfway through the book, and it takes some patience to get there. 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. Tassajara Zen Mountain Center ("Zen Mind Temple" or Zenshinji) was the first Zen Buddhist monastery built in the United States, and the first in the world to allow co-ed practice. 2002: 8-11. But the Americans didnt know that. 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. The leadership of San Francisco Zen Center required Anderson to take a leave of absence from his position as abbot. Kai C. Half Moon Bay, California. Dharma transmission has been awarded and is still awarded for many reasons besides spiritual attainment. The Church hierarchy has displayed a consistent concern for protecting and maintaining the eminence of the abusive priests and the holiness of the institution of the Catholic Church, rather than concern for the children and teenagers trusted to their care. "Something above ninety percent of us had come from alcoholic families or families that were dysfunctional with the same patterns." Not surprisingly, virtually 100% of the time these breaches of morality serve the pleasure and interests of the supposed enlightened one. If some one would like copies, please email me at: slachs@worldnet.att.net . After a major fundraising effort led by Baker, Zen Center purchased the landwhich contained a rundown resort and mineral springs in 1967. He occupies an authoritative place in East Asian cultures that have already been imbued with a special level of hierarchy since ancient times. But Downing does approach the story with an open mind, and doesn't fall into the trap of trying to portray Baker as a monster or a saint. While we remain committed to the health and safety of our residential and wider sangha, we deeply value the importance of gathering in person and sharing the Dharma in proximity with others. 1967 also saw the arrival of Kobun Chino Otogawa of Eiheiji, who served as assistant to Suzuki. In particular, Berger, Peter,L. One of the most interesting aspects of the Baker case is that the people at the SFZC did not change their fundamental understanding of the process they had gone through for, in some cases, twenty or more years. And what was Suzuki's intention here? Reviewed July 20, 2014 . 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. [1] San Francisco Zen Center's web site now comments: "Although the circumstances leading to his resignation as abbot in 1984 were difficult and complex, in recent years, there has been increased contact; a renewal of friendship and dharma relations. Introduction [21][22][23] Today SFZC is the largest Soto organization with a foothold in the West. 4.5. The number of practitioners at SFZC grew rapidly in the mid-sixties. Live the Temple Life The flow of his consciousness is not the fixed repetitive patterns of our usual self-centered consciousness, but rather arises spontaneously and naturally from the actual circumstances of the present. . Established in 1962, the San Francisco Zen Center is one of the largest residential training Soto Zen Buddhist organizations outside of Asia. The monastery is closed to outsiders from the months of September through April, then opens to the public by reservation from May through August - offering retreats, seminars, and workshops. This relationship between the public and private was easily translated to the needs of the San Francisco Zen Center, with meditation halls and public spaces on the lower levels, and residential areas for practicing students on the upper floors. Kwong's transmission was later completed by Suzuki's son, Hoitsu.[1][11][12]. Not only is the book a compelling read; it also, more importantly perhaps, provides raw data for observing Zen mythmaking in action. When Kelly grew frustrated with Shimanos womanizing, he made a proposition. A special note is given to the papers of Heine, Wright, Foulk, McRae, Welter, Schlutter, Michel Mohr and Ishii Shudo. 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. There he found the corpse of a man with a bullet wound to the head and a revolver nearby. 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. "[33], In the 1980s Baker ordained Issan Dorsey as a priest. San Francisco Zen Center practitioners did make a serious commitment to their practice. Was it all really such a big deal? 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. The virgin birth, the Buddha, Joseph Smiths golden plates that became the Book of Mormonto build spiritual tradition, it does not matter if the people were real or if the events happened. Please send to slachs@worldnet.att.net. [1][15], In 1983 Tenshin Reb Anderson received shih from Zentatsu Richard Baker, becoming Baker's first Dharma heir (though Baker disputes this). Despite the controversy connected with his resignation, Baker was instrumental in helping the San Francisco Zen Center to become one of the most successful Zen institutions in the United States. Money, too, is worth something because we believe it iswe give the $20 bill the magical properties of being worth more than the $1 bill, even though the paper and ink are identical. In fact, Suzuki's lineage, now and as long as the line survives, comes through his son Hoitsu and Baker and that unknown person. For an outstanding article on Sanbokyodan Zen, a Zen sect important in the West see, Sharf, Robert, "Sanbokyodan, Zen and the Way of New Religions", Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Fall 1995, Vol. Today SFZC is the largest St organization in the West. Was his lifestyle less than exemplary? Zen Groups Distressed by Accusations Against Teacher Joshu Sasaki in New Mexico in 2007. In this way the teacher was like a deity, a minor god. 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. Desire, Devotion, and Excess at the San Francisco Zen Center. Institutional and personal motives played an important part in the composing of Buddhist biographical collections; this was especially so in earl Chan lineage texts. 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. [35] 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. 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. His first wife contracted tuberculosis and returned to her parents shortly after marriage; his second wife was brutally murdered by an erratic, antisocial monk whom Suzuki had retained as a temple assistant, despite contrary advise from neighbors and colleagues. [citation needed], Additional businesses run by SFZC were the Alaya Stitchery storefront, which made zafus, zabutons and clothing, and Green Gulch Grocery, which sold produce from Green Gulch Farm. Trouble At The San Francisco Zen Center 3. For a very fine book review of Shoes Outside the Door, see Crews, Frederick, "Zen & the Art of Success," The New York Review of Books, 28 Mar. With so many students and so much public attention, some felt Baker became less available to the members of the community. This imputation of power and attainment has given one Zen roshi after another the power to abuse their position while remaining beyond reproach. One component of Buddhism is to recognize cause and effect. Also see, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, Trans.and Ed. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. In fact, David Chadwick, a student of both Suzuki and Baker, lent some credence to this assertion in his 1999 book about Suzuki, Crooked Cucumber. 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). Katagiri would go on to establish his own practice centerthe Minnesota Zen Centerin 1972 in Minneapolis. This is not to imply that there is no value to be gained in the practice of Zen. These days, when we think of predatory clergy, we think of Roman Catholic priests. critical insights into Zen/Buddhism have strongly influenced my views: Robert Buswell, Alan Cole, Bernard Faure, T. Griffith Foulk, Robert M. Gimello, Peter N. Gregory, John Kieschnick, John R. McRae, A. Charles Muller, Mario Poceski, Robert H. Sharf, Morten Schlutter, Gregory Schopen, Brian Victoria, Albert Welter and Dale Wright. For example, Afable might have added that at Chobo-ji, a Zen temple in Seattle, Genki Takabayashi made passes at his female students. These and any number of other questions, complaints, hurts or criticisms harbored by his disciples, were not raised. He was not a sticky kind of emotional person. He was doing what Japanese roshis are supposed to do, what they have done for centuries. Original Dwelling Place by Robert Aitken book review by Robert Goss buy this book now Former students have said that he was addicted to power, abusive of his position, extravagant in his personal spending, and inappropriate in his love life. I took a course at Rochester, an overview of Eastern religion and Confucianism. The same myth was later used in Japan for similar purposes, with Shintoism being the competing indigenous teaching. 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 writes, " The perfect disciplinary apparatus would make it possible for a single gaze to see everything constantly." Dorsey went on to serve as abbot of the Hartford Street Zen Center in San Francisco, where he worked to develop hospice care for AIDS patients. 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. Sarasota, Florida. To this end, Zen Center is engaged in numerous social and ecological initiatives. The film was directed by veteran filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and executive produced by physician, Shoshana R. "It was a fantastic drive," he said, it was safe to drive and that he liked to keep his legs in zazen posture. Hence, a number of questions were never openly raised: Was he acting in an arrogant fashion? 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