Because the newcomers' indoctrination into Zen ideology was incomplete, their unfortunate reliance on common sense prevented them from viewing Baker's eccentricities as qualities of an enlightened Zen master. He writes a religion column forThe New York Timesand is on Twitter@markopp1. However, there is no surviving text of Pai-chang's Rules. 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. The historical fact is that monasteries actively courted the state and elite elements of society, depended on donations from wealthy patrons and or the state, had tenant farmers work their often vast donated and inherited land holdings, etc. 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. These events are a helpful reminderboth to me and to othersof my vulnerability to arrogance and inflation. One component of Buddhism is to recognize cause and effect. Explore San Francisco Zen Center's newsletters and blogs. Foulk gives translations of two versions of the text, side by side and analyses their internal structure and contents. However, it should be noted, that he let interviewees voice any number of inaccuracies without comment. And the teachings in it. The other was to establish Chan's primacy over the indigenous teachings of Confucianism and Taoism in the eyes of the state and the elite of society. 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. This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. 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. 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." Within a couple of years, Suzuki considered founding a monastery to host more intensive practice for those students who were interested. 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. Besides the personal power of his position Baker lived with paid travel, an abundance of high-priced worldly goods, a number of well-appointed residences, a steady supply of household help and assistants, sex with his students and access to high profile friends. One member suggested that the Shimanos instead be given an extended sabbatical. A theme repeated throughout Downing's book is Suzuki's injunction to "just sit," which means to do seated meditation. 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. Is it any wonder that the inevitable abuses that we have seen for the last thirty years should follow? Religion occupies a distinctive place in this enterprise." They believed their way of living and of practicing Zen was the best alternative available in America. 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. 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. And that gets the juices flowing. "It is, basically, a description of a number of monastic procedures implicitly attributed to Pai-chang, set in a quasi-historical context, and presented with the authors own explanation and laudatory remarks. Baker also gives seminars at Boulder Zen Center in Boulder, Colorado twice each year, typically on the last weekends of January and April. In the early 1990s the Board of Directors at the Zen Center created the "Ethical Principles and Procedures for Grievance and Reconciliation" for its members, for conflict resolution mediation guided by Buddhist precepts. 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. There is a wealth of contemporary exciting Zen scholarship available in English. Suzuki planned to give transmission to Bill Kwong but died before his completion. At times, senior disciples needed to reassure newcomers who questioned Baker's behavior that all was in order. The Board of Directors at SFZC also began election of leaders. 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. Mark Oppenheimeris the author of three other books, includinga memoir of high school debateand atravelogue about crashing bar mitzvahs. 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. [3] He has two daughters, Sally and Elizabeth, from a prior marriage to Virginia Baker. These and any number of other questions, complaints, hurts or criticisms harbored by his disciples, were not raised. Audio recordings of familiar sounds heard at our temples. A monastery and retreat center in a remote mountain valley in the Ventana Wilderness SFZC Online 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. It could fairly be said that what is effectively transmitted by Dharma transmission is institutional authority, rather than religious wisdom. Ungerleider.[26]. SteveSiesta. It is important to remember now that the interviews Downing conducted in 1998-2000 were long after the events at the SFZC took place. All trouble at the Center was internalized and personalized by its members. 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. Branching Streams is a network of affiliate Dharma centers and Sanghas in the Zen lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Was his lifestyle less than exemplary? Its waves of people who say, Im done with this, I got what I can out of it and then a new group comes in.. 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. While leader of the SFZC, Baker's purchase of a new white BMW became a focal point for much of the anger and resentments that Zen Center members felt towards him. Neither business is operative today. 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. 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. [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. 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. I hope this is the case with this paper. 2 Thank Kelly S . That Kapleau never received Dharma transmission was exposed in a public letter from Yamada roshi dated,1/16/86. "Hollow" transmissions such as those between father and son are incorporated into the unbroken lineage to the Buddha. Foulk doubts that the Chan sect existed as a separate sect with its own monastic institutions during the Tang dynasty. He occupies an authoritative place in East Asian cultures that have already been imbued with a special level of hierarchy since ancient times. The latter choice was too painful for many for any number of reasons, including: 1) many believed that the Center was the best place to practice Zen and so leaving meant giving up what made life seem most meaningful, 2) their self-identities as Zen practitioners were connected to the Center, 3) loyalty to Suzuki Roshi, 4) leaving close friendships established through communal living and especially through practicing meditation together, 5) loving the lifestyle and 6) fear of losing one's position in the hierarchy and the possibility for future higher positions culminating in being Dharma transmitted oneself. Tassajara baked bread for student and guest consumption since 1967, and Edward Espe Brown's Tassajara Bread Book, demonstrated consumer interest. [3] Because his family moved around frequently, he lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Indiana, and Pittsburgh growing up. From 1986 to 1988 he served as abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, and from 1988 to 1995 he served there as co-abbot with Sojun Mel Weitsman. He was neither. The idea of electing an abbot is, no doubt, a distinctively American innovation in a centuries-long pattern of religious authority. No one took the opportunity to stand back and view the entire affair from any sort of sociological, anthropological, psychological or religious-historical perspective. Mission. About. Did it not occur to him that Richard had a family, too, as did many of the priests of Zen Center?" In fact, Kapleau never received Dharma transmission in the first place, so there was nothing to rescind. [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]. [8] Within a very short period of time Baker broadened the scope of SFZC, starting first with the acquisition of Green Gulch Farm in southern Marin county, in 1972. 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. This is a person without a defect, showing no self-interest, desire, interior calculation, or a shortcoming. For more on the Soto Zen institution in Japan see Foulk, T. Griffith, "The Zen Institute in Modern Japan", pp.157-177, Zen, Tradition and Transition, Kenneth Kraft ed., NY, Grove Press, 1988. In this sect, Dharma transmission is commonly a father-son transmission ritual culminating in the son's inheritance of the family temple. Access SFZC Online wherever you are, anytime. A large institution like Zen requires hundreds of such living role players. But there is another kind of authority, an opposite kind, grounded in the invisible, the faith-based, the fictional. This is not surprising if we remember that in Soto Zen "spiritual attainment" is rarely a criterion for Dharma transmission. Zen ascribes to Pai-chang (died 814) its earliest monastic code that supposedly set Chan apart as a separate sect in the Tang dynasty. What the teacher really offers the student is literally living proof that all this talk and the seemingly impossible goals can be realized in this lifetime. If the past is any indication these present teachers will be referred to as honored patriarchs in the future. Some people felt that I had committed an irrevocable betrayal of trust, and have discounted me and my teaching ever since. San Francisco Zen Center has begun to offer on-site meditation, Dharma talks, programs, classes, and other events. 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. By saying this, he was emphasizing his guarantee that the essence of the Zen lineage resides in Baker. One justification sometimes heard, glib to my ear, is that enlightenment is not about morality. San Francisco Zen Center 300 Page Street San Francisco, California 94102 www.sfzc.org. (If the reader wants to argue that Dharma transmission in the Rinzai sect or in the modern Sanbokyodan sect so popular in the West matches the ideal of Zen rhetoric, please feel free to email me at my address listed in the Notes.) I have copies of these letters. The San Francisco Zen Center "scandal" was not unique in American Zen history. But in truth, neither Suzuki nor Baker fit the saintly mold. 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. If this was the case, it would seem that he failed this task in America. That "something else" is what Michael Downing tries to find in "Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion and Excess at the San Francisco Zen Center. " Ironically, what follows is in many ways a religious text. But for Schnyer this constantly refreshing membership was proof that the sangha did disapprove of Shimanos treatment of women. On one visit he decided to take the revolver home with him. 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. What was or was not implied in Baker's transmission from Suzuki? Under Baker's leadership, it appears that the Center functioned as a dysfunctional family, denying that anything was wrong or problematic. [6], San Francisco Zen Center expanded quickly with Baker at the helm. 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. The social contract and national constitutions count because we believe them to count, because we will them into reality. It was also mentioned that Suzuki believed that Dharma transmission must be "real", implying that there is "not real" Dharma transmission. The number of practitioners at SFZC grew rapidly in the mid-sixties. The situation is now reversing, as the Japanese, in particular, abandon Buddhism as an old relic, while it continues to find adherents in the West. For example, the San Francisco Zen Center, after a scandal involving Suzuki-roshi's dharma heir Richard Baker-roshi, decided to elect its two abbots to four-year terms. 1962 - SFZC is founded by Shunryu Suzuki and his Western students. 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. 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). I have found the work of the following social analysts to be especially illuminating: Peter L. Berger, Pierre Bourdieu, Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, David C. Korten, Thomas Lukach, Howard Zinn and Angela Zito. 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. 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