I assume that Downing would have included a broader view if he had heard it from any of the interviewees. Introduction This ancient twisted karma I now fully avow. He was married three times. He exists freely in the fullness of his whole being. 837 501. 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. Finding Safe Harbor: Buddhist Sexual Ethics in America by Stephanie Kaza, Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center by Michael Downing: book review by Vladimir K. buy this book They also have a lot of other awesome Saturday morning programs for zen noobs (znoobs!!). Shimano was not the bad guy; rather, those who made too much noise, who refused to go quietly, and thus disturbed Schnyers and others Zen practice, were the blameworthy ones. 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. By saying this, he was emphasizing his guarantee that the essence of the Zen lineage resides in Baker. This is not surprising, being, as it is, a natural result of the customs and environment created by the Zen institution. [2][6][14], A once controversial figure, Richard Baker was publicly criticized for his behavior at San Francisco Zen Center. 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. We should be affirming that. 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." 4 Thank Kai C . [3] He has two daughters, Sally and Elizabeth, from a prior marriage to Virginia Baker. 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). An organic farm and garden in a beautiful coastal valley in Marin County, A monastery and retreat center in a remote mountain valley in the Ventana Wilderness. Furthermore, Chadwick told Victoria that when he (Chadwick) had once asked Baker himself about the basis for the claim, Baker replied that he could not remember! All trouble at the Center was internalized and personalized by its members. If this was the case, it would seem that he failed this task in America. In fact, Suzuki's lineage, now and as long as the line survives, comes through his son Hoitsu and Baker and that unknown person. He worked for me, and if he didnt work for other people, then I just wanted them to go, and often hoped theyd go more quietly than they did., Quietly or not, many people did leave. The San Francisco Zen Center "scandal" was not unique in American Zen history. He also ran a temple virtually under the control of Japan's repressive fascist era government. One of the earliest texts extant is "Regulations of the Chan Approach" (Ch'an men Kuei-shih, which cannot be dated earlier than 988) that some scholars think was the preface to Pai-chang's Rules. [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. The finances are terrible, and the beautiful carriage house on East 67th Street may have to be sold to pay legal debtsor, if he wins the lawsuit, to pay damages to Eido Shimano, the 82-year-old Zen master who built the society up but also, in a way, has destroyed it. But for Schnyer this constantly refreshing membership was proof that the sangha did disapprove of Shimanos treatment of women. That's what we made of it." He is now a professor of psychology at the University of Texas, and in December 2012 I spoke with him by telephone. 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. In 1971, he became resident priest at Haiku Zen Center, a practice center in Los Altos where Suzuki-roshi had been giving lectures, and soon after the sangha there grew and changed its name to Bodhi. 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. 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. Anderson succeeded him as abbot, and later co-abbot. (It should also be noted that Victoria is fluent in Japanese while Baker and Chadwick are not.) 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. You can quarrel with their authority, but if the gun works, or if the experiment was well designed and conclusive, you are likely to lose the argument. This recommended class series offers listeners an overview of the fundamentals of Buddhism and Zen. In this way the teacher was like a deity, a minor god. City Center A vibrant community in an urban temple in the heart of San Francisco. However, this supposed wisdom is beyond words, is not understood by the unenlightened who are then not qualified to judge or evaluate it, whether expressed in the words or in the behavior of the wise one. But in the end it is not the extraordinariness of the teacher that perplexes, intrigues, and deepens the student, it is the teacher's utter ordinariness. One justification sometimes heard, glib to my ear, is that enlightenment is not about morality. A student was also liable to believe that her teacher was conveying the one true form of Zen Buddhism. He then arrived in San Francisco, California in 1960beginning to sit with Shunryu Suzuki in 1961. But how real is this history? Trust me." 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. Zen Center Members This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. A large institution like Zen requires hundreds of such living role players. 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. One member suggested that the Shimanos instead be given an extended sabbatical. 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. Understandably, Suzuki may not have been able to read across the Japanese-American cultural divide and therefore not see the character flaws of Baker that were obvious to some of his unenlightened American students. 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. Their sins are far worse than what goes on in Zen circles. 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. Berkeley, March 17th, 2002. In the 1960s, four major Zen teachers came to the United States from Japan: Shunryu Suzuki, Taizan Maezumi, Joshu Sasaki, and Eido Shimano. Downing shows that even in their every day negotiations for used restaurant equipment when they were opening Green's Restaurant, they held a disproportionate sense of their own importance in the wider community. Founded in 1972 by the San Francisco Zen Center and Zentatsu Richard Baker, the site is located on 115 acres (0.47 km 2) in a valley seventeen miles (27 km) north of San Francisco [1] and offers a variety of workshops and classes throughout the year. Some people felt that I had committed an irrevocable betrayal of trust, and have discounted me and my teaching ever since. 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. A gem! And he was also just a guy, kind of like Bill Clinton was just a guy. 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. 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." In the 1960's and 70's, San Francisco Zen Center students, like most other Zen students in the U.S.A., thoroughly accepted (among a range of glaring historical inaccuracies) the idealistic Zen rhetoric, including the notion that Dharma transmission is only about spiritual attainment, that all roshis are essentially equal, and that Zen institutions in East Asia are apolitical and divorced from the state. According to revelations that have tumbled out over the past two years, and which I chronicle in-depth in a new e-book, Shimano has spent 50 years preying sexually on his students. 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