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. In 1989, some six years after Baker was forced to leave, he threatened to take back Zen Center by going to court. Above all, we agree to the stories that prop up constitutions or money. If this was the case, it would seem that he failed this task in America. At times, senior disciples needed to reassure newcomers who questioned Baker's behavior that all was in order. 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). Tassajara baked bread for student and guest consumption since 1967, and Edward Espe Brown's Tassajara Bread Book, demonstrated consumer interest. [2] From 1968 to 1971, he traveled to Japan to practice at the primary St monasteries there, including Antaiji, Eiheiji, and Daitokuji. Baker's friends and supporters say the Zen Center never regained the spark and spiritual power of the Suzuki/Baker years. A full overview of what is open can be found here. 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 Under the Zen form of legitimization, each Zen roshi is viewed as a saint. A theme repeated throughout Downing's book is Suzuki's injunction to "just sit," which means to do seated meditation. Suzuki Roshi Institutional and personal motives played an important part in the composing of Buddhist biographical collections; this was especially so in earl Chan lineage texts. In fact, Kapleau never received Dharma transmission in the first place, so there was nothing to rescind. It may be Zen-like, but it can also be annoying. In the end, both teacher and student fall prey to these fantasies. Furthermore this creation has to be ongoing. Even newer students, who come to Zen Center and find out about these incidents, are sometimes confused and question whether I can be their teacher. This would have led any impartial observer to question the spiritual implications of Dharma transmission. While this is obviously a general statement that demands further qualification, it serves to introduce some of the basic problems to be dealt with here. 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. 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. 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. Sanbkydan Zen and the Way of the New Religions by Robert H. Sharf A pioneer of gourmet vegetarian cuisine in America, the restaurant's first chefs were Edward Espe Brown and Deborah Madison. San Francisco is not mentioned in Newsom's plans, but Supervisor Dean Preston has proposed a similar action. These days, when we think of predatory clergy, we think of Roman Catholic priests. 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. Suzuki-roshi, as his students called him, died of cancer in 1971. Original Dwelling Place by Robert Aitken book review by Robert Goss buy this book now It is important to remember now that the interviews Downing conducted in 1998-2000 were long after the events at the SFZC took place. This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. 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. San Francisco Zen Center SFZC Online Welcome to SFZC Online Below you'll find information about our online offerings: resources for beginners, zazen (meditation) and chanting, Dharma talks, live online practice sessions with teachers, as well as classes and workshops from our Online Programs. This is also extremely disempowering which can lead to all sorts of problems, as the SFZC case clearly shows. 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. Yet for reasons known only to him he proceeded to make Baker his only American Dharma heir. The sangha was incorporated by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and a group of his American students in 1962. "The years people spent here were not wasted years of being duped. That's what we made of it." The question is: How do so many Zen Buddhist teachers get away with it, and for so long? Analysis or active use of "the discriminating mind" is frowned upon, or worse, it is viewed as a sign of having too large an ego. Spiritual authority is that second kind of authority. Asia is filled with monks and priests who know how to sit, chant, eat, bow, walk, dress, and live as a Buddhist. 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. 145 41. After a major fundraising effort led by Baker, Zen Center purchased the landwhich contained a rundown resort and mineral springs in 1967. 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. Michael Downing's book, Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center (2001) describes much of the sexual scandal surrounding Richard Baker, as well as financial problems and Baker's generally arrogant behavior. In addition, as there are other practitioners around the teacher, it is helpful to be part of a community of fellow practitioners. Suzuki's arrival came at the tail end of the Beat movement and just prior to the social movements of the 1960s, both of which had major roots in San Francisco. Suzuki Roshi Rather than report this to the police, Anderson returned to the body over several days to meditate over the corpse. 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. by Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright, Oxford University Press, 2000. On one visit he decided to take the revolver home with him. It all came tumbling down in a 1983 event known in Zen Center circles as "the Apocalypse." It was a spiritual scandal starring the usual suspects -- sex, money and the abuse of religious. 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. Until recently, the United States had very few natives who possessed that knowledge. In fact, Suzuki's lineage, now and as long as the line survives, comes through his son Hoitsu and Baker and that unknown person. Why do we need to rehash this one again? Brian Victoria was so interested in the possibility of a public pacifist/anti-war Soto monk that he contacted Suzuki's son Hoitsu who told him: "I don't know where all of this antiwar talk comes from, but my father and the rest of the family supported Japan's war effort just like everyone else." The Examiner reports that Preston has wants to use the mostly vacant 555 Fulton as . pp.347-379. 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. Please keep it in mind. Religion occupies a distinctive place in this enterprise." SteveSiesta. "On both a personal and a professional level, I am still dealing with the consequences of this episode. Berger begins, "Every human society is an enterprise of world-building. And stayed for 10 years.. Any genuine interpretation or questioning of the meaning of Dharma transmission, lineage, the Zen roshi, their place in the institution, their accountability, and so on is made to seem absurd. Join the San Francisco Zen Center Membership Program. It seems that Zen's emphasis on wisdom, while giving compassion only lip service, is really about power. Sitting meditation (zazen) is available live online Monday through Friday mornings, Saturday mornings, and Monday through Friday evenings. Live the Temple Life You wont find anybody within the Zen Studies Society who has tolerated this stuff from start to finish, Schnyer said. 4 Thank Kai C . Good bread, fine wine and simple, yet elegant, dining were offered by Tassajara Bakery and by Greens, the gourmet restaurant at Fort Mason that dished out vegetarian cuisine and inspiring views of the bay. They should take credit for the fact that we did it for many years. Writings featured as biography in Zen are most often an idealized presentation of how a master should perform his role rather than the life of a real person. By this time there had also been an abundance of scholarly writing and empirical evidence exposing much of the mythology surrounding Zen. Please consider a donation to San Francisco Zen Center. Zen Groups Distressed by Accusations Against Teacher Joshu Sasaki in New Mexico in 2007. San Francisco Zen Center students and other students throughout history were also one cause of the problem. In fact there are few major centers not touched by sexual or other scandals, but the SFZC case suffices for the discussion we will have here. As noted in the paper, senior members consistently reassured newer members that all was well when they raised questions about Baker's activities. . By Kurt Wolff, Free Press Paperback, 1950 for a discussion of authority, prestige, subordination, and sociability. Downing, who lives in Cambridge, Mass., provides an outsider's view into the incestuous circles at the first Buddhist monastery in the West. 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. At the time, Schnyer was just 24 years old, yet he had been a Shimano student since he was a teenager. And that very presentation is the freight of the Zen machine. Koun Yamada was Yasutani roshi's Dharma heir. 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. The student who enters the "practice" having read a myth will expect to find the myth, and will think they have found the myth. 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. Steve Hagen. Richard Baker also survived. Also available are practice sessions with SF Zen Center teachers. Downing has offered an excellent example in Richard Baker and the SFZC. I am also thankful to Mark Baldwin, Sandra Eisenstein, Simeon Gallu, Grace Luddy, Kevin Matthews, Bruce Rickenbacher and Marlene Swartz for many hours of discussion, helpful suggestions, and editorial assistance. I took a course at Rochester, an overview of Eastern religion and Confucianism. I don't know for certain but Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind was published in 1970, only one year before Baker himself received Dharma transmission and the title, Zen master. It all came tumbling down in a 1983 event known in Zen Center circles as "the Apocalypse." Some people felt that I had committed an irrevocable betrayal of trust, and have discounted me and my teaching ever since. Despite hesitance of some members of SFZC due to the size of 80 acres (320,000m2), Baker felt that acquiring Green Gulch Farm was very important for Buddhism in America. At that time, Baker also became the official leader of the San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC). 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. What they really found is another story of flawed human behavior. These and any number of other questions, complaints, hurts or criticisms harbored by his disciples, were not raised. An interesting debate between Victoria and members of the Deshimaru group (A.Z.I.) It will not do for future generations if there are gaps in the line of saintly figures. But in truth, neither Suzuki nor Baker fit the saintly mold. Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Teachings of Shunryu Suzuki: this link will take you to the website buy this book now Zen Center Members Downing quotes a prominent older student who expressed it differently, "Dick tried to take over Zen Center again." Classes and workshops from our Online Programs, resources for beginners, zazen (meditation) and chanting, Dharma talks, and live online practice sessions with teachers. In the West in general, but particularly in America, we place great importance on each person's individuality and uniqueness and hence on our personal experience. Bibliographical Notes Suzuki enabled the ensuing trouble by transmitting only to Baker to the exclusion of other westerners, by failing to understand Baker's character, by failing to mitigate his authority in any way, and by failing to explain clearly the historical and common way that Dharma transmission was and is used in Soto Zen. 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. Finally, as Suzuki apologized to Baker for what he was going to do to him, i.e., give him and only him Dharma transmission, Suzuki knew that all was not right or ripe or both with Baker. And what was Suzuki's intention here? Is it any wonder that the inevitable abuses that we have seen for the last thirty years should follow? Kobun was resident teacher at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center until 1970. It could fairly be said that what is effectively transmitted by Dharma transmission is institutional authority, rather than religious wisdom. This was because Aitkin, being a foreigner, was forbidden by the new leader Kubota Roshi, from giving Dharma transmission, while Japanese of equal standing in the organization were permitted this privilege (p.451). Established in 1962, the San Francisco Zen Center is one of the largest residential training Soto Zen Buddhist organizations outside of Asia. "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 was considered "real" because it came from the saintly Suzuki and Suzuki made a point of saying it was "real." Guests stay at the Lindisfarne Guest House, a traditional Japanese building with a wood-burning stove as the heating source. This 1987 incident has had a damaging impact on Anderson's reputation as a teacher, since his arrest received national media coverage. I believe that the reason for this surrender, in the case of Zen, is clear, structural, and self-perpetuating. 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. At that time, in the 70s, drug use was prevalent, and I got involved in a fair amount of that. Students that come to practice at the monastery from September through April must undergo the tradition known as tangaryo. There is certainly nothing anti-authoritarian about the notion of unbroken lineage going back to the historical Buddha. There is a saying, "It is difficult to convince a man of something if his paycheck depends on his not understanding it." He attended Harvard University, where he studied architecture and history. 3. San Francisco Zen Center 300 Page Street San Francisco, California 94102 www.sfzc.org. 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. This recommended class series offers listeners an overview of the fundamentals of Buddhism and Zen. This story appears to be an example of modern day creation of hagiography that will be repeated in the future. One student expressed it as, "some of the senior priests were in it for a payoff-Transmission," another stated it as, "They were ambitious, and only Richard could give it [transmission] to them, because he was the only one who had it." 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. 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. 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. For a history of early Soto Zen as well as how the Soto sect has understood Dharma transmission since roughly 1700, see Bodiford, William M., Soto Zen in Medieval Japan, University of Hawaii Press, 1993, p. 215. But for the [Zen Studies Society,] my gullibility, spiritual gullibilityI didnt realize that it was a borderline cult. 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. Your support is crucial to sustain our practice centers and thriving online community. It also spun off its business and stopped pretending that work without compensation was "spiritual practice.". Five years later (in 1988), roughly fifteen months after Anderson had become abbot of the San Francisco, Anderson was arrested for brandishing this same firearm in public. Was his lifestyle less than exemplary? He reported being mugged at knifepoint by a man just a block away from the San Francisco Zen Center at 300 Page Street. Mark Oppenheimer hosts the podcast Unorthodox for Tablet magazine and writes for The New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, and GQ, among other publications. They have a daughter, Sofia Baker, born on March 1, 2001, in Alamosa, Colorado. 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. 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." Tassajara Bakery was a Zen Center venture promoted by Richard Baker as an extension of the baking practices at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. Foulk gives translations of two versions of the text, side by side and analyses their internal structure and contents. 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. I said, I have to come back here. So I did one more semester of school and then dropped out. 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. 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. 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. Also see his Zen War Stories to be published December 2002. The results of this in terms of the quality of his life are extraordinary-buoyancy, vigor, straightforwardness, simplicity, humility, security, joyousness, uncanny perspicacity and unfathomable compassion. Not surprisingly, virtually 100% of the time these breaches of morality serve the pleasure and interests of the supposed enlightened one. [9] In the midst of the growth, Baker became a popular public figure. Shoes Outside The Door, p.289. Baker manifested his authority by giving his followers two choices: obey his words without question or be marginalized, which was tantamount to being forced to leave. Access SFZC Online wherever you are, anytime. Baker himself was quick to remind his flock that he was the only American to receive Dharma transmission from Suzuki Roshi. Baker and the senior priests dismissed any questioning of Baker's behavior or activities as a lack of insight into enlightenment on the part of the questioner. 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. With this investment it is understandable that one might not want to question too closely the teacher's behavior. When one member was about to leave (after the Baker scandal), rather than receiving well wishes or a word of advice from his teacher-who happened to be the new abbot after Baker, he was smugly told that he would be back in a year. For an analysis of the inherent power relations in the one-dimensional description of a roshi and how it is taken for being natural, see "Symbolic Violence and Social Reproduction" and "Uses of Language" in, Jenkins, Richard, Pierre Bourdieu, Routledge, 1992, pp.103-110 and pp.152-162 respectively. Throughout the 1980s Greens, which obtained produce from Green Gulch Farm, was one of the most popular restaurants in San Francisco. It allows us a much closer look than we get through, say, looking at the many biographies of past masters from Chan in China during the Tang dynasty (CE 618-907). Also see the public letter from Mr. Kapleau toYamada, dated 2/17/86. 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 number of practitioners at SFZC grew rapidly in the mid-sixties. He writes a religion column forThe New York Timesand is on Twitter@markopp1. Rather than report this to the police, Anderson returned to the body over several days to meditate over the corpse. This is not surprising if we remember that in Soto Zen "spiritual attainment" is rarely a criterion for Dharma transmission. Most of the narratives of the early heroes of Chan that we have today were composed hundreds of years after the ostensive events, complete with verbatim accounts of the master's interaction with a disciple presented as if a court stenographer had been recording the entire interaction. 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. If some one would like copies, please email me at: slachs@worldnet.att.net . 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. [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. I finished high school early, and at 17 I went to college, Schnyer said. Anderson became entangled in an incident in 1987 that reached back to 1983 just after Zentatsu Richard Baker had resigned as abbot. Which means it's basically my fault. 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. "To sum up the situation, we have no sources at all from the T'ang which mentions or describe explicitly "Chan" institutions," p. 267. Definitely worth checking them out on their website and trying to attend the beginners lesson! 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. 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. Mark Oppenheimeris the author of three other books, includinga memoir of high school debateand atravelogue about crashing bar mitzvahs. A good place to begin to examine the scholarly view of early Chan history and development is Foulk, T. Griffith, Myth, Ritual, and Monastic Practice in Sung Ch'an Buddhism in, Religion and Society in T'ang and Sung China, Ed by Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Peter N. Gregory, University of Hawaii Press, 1993, pp147-205. Before our eyes we have a living person becoming a faceless, a-historical person. Coming Down from the Zen Clouds: A Critique of the Current State of American Zen 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. In particular, Suzuki's San Francisco Zen Center lineage continues through his bureaucratic "transmission" to his son Hoitsu. 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. 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. Zen elevates its leaders to super-human status, then emphasizes that we should be obedient and subservient to a powerful and supremely accomplished authority figure, precisely because he is powerful and supremely accomplished. [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]. It allows bureaucratic transmission, but it also uses "historical" biographies of eminent masters presented as desireless beings, the koans, and the many Zen stories and dialogues (mondo) to legitimize and to enhance authority, that make clear that transmission is given because of a deep insight into reality or spiritual attainment. Despite extraordinary personal shortcomings, Eido Shimano continued to wield spiritual authority throughout his time at the Zen Studies Society. Of being duped a distinctive place in this enterprise. at 300 Page Street traditional Japanese building with a stove. 70S, drug use was prevalent, and Edward Espe Brown 's Tassajara bread Book, demonstrated consumer interest so. 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