1969 - The current SFZC building was purchased with the help of American students. "It was a fantastic drive," he said, it was safe to drive and that he liked to keep his legs in zazen posture. 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. Learn and Practice at San Francisco Zen Center, residential guest student practice opportunities, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility, Conflict, Complaint, and Ethical Review Processes. The volunteer project's founding director was Frank Ostaseski, who served until 2004. [20] Zen Hospice Project provides hospice care for individuals of any or no religion who are looking for a compassionate end to their life. [17], Last edited on 21 December 2022, at 18:50, Timeline of Zen Buddhism in the United States, "The Long Learning Curve: An Interview With Richard Baker Roshi", Zentatsu Richard Baker page on the Crestone Mountain Zen Center website, Richard Baker and the Myth of the Zen Roshi, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Baker_(Zen_teacher)&oldid=1128738434, This page was last edited on 21 December 2022, at 18:50. But in the 1960s and 70s, American Buddhists needed the foreigners. Berkeley, March 17th, 2002. Branching Streams is a network of affiliate Dharma centers and Sanghas in the Zen lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Baker's introduction to Suzuki's edited words in the well known book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind gives a description of Suzuki as the ideal of a fully realized Zen master. Hence, roughly 95% of all Soto priests in Japan have Dharma transmission, most receiving it after spending at most three years in a monastery, some with as little as six months. The leadership of San Francisco Zen Center required Anderson to take a leave of absence from his position as abbot. 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). "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. 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. 1962 - SFZC is founded by Shunryu Suzuki and his Western students. It could fairly be said that what is effectively transmitted by Dharma transmission is institutional authority, rather than religious wisdom. And three of the four, Afable noted when we spoke, have caused major public sex scandals: first Maezumi, and more recently Shimano and Sasaki. It may be Zen-like, but it can also be annoying. [6] One student who followed him to his new community was the priest Philip Whalen (ordained by Baker as a priest in 1973), who became tanto (head monk) of the new center. Surely others felt the same way, but only Schnyer and Kelly have been so bold or articulate, have made clear the amorality, and the misogyny, that can infect Zen practice and enable its malefactors. 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. Green Gulch An organic farm and garden in a beautiful coastal valley in Marin County Tassajara A monastery and retreat center in a remote mountain valley in the Ventana Wilderness Learn and Practice at San Francisco Zen Center SFZC Online 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. And stayed for 10 years.. Unlike his predecessors, Suzuki was a fluent speaker of English who actually wanted to come to the United States. Before our eyes we have a living person becoming a faceless, a-historical person. Anderson remembered stowing the revolver away in the San Francisco Zen Center's garage and quickly retrieved it. Not what the holy man is but what he signifies in the eyes of those who are not holy gives him his world- historical value. It is important to remember now that the interviews Downing conducted in 1998-2000 were long after the events at the SFZC took place. Hence, a number of questions were never openly raised: Was he acting in an arrogant fashion? Some of the most senior members appeared afraid to raise difficult questions with Baker perhaps for fear of losing their own privileged positions. Some of these students began calling their group City Center, and they incorporated in 1962 as the San Francisco Zen Center.[1][2][3][4][5]. But for the [Zen Studies Society,] my gullibility, spiritual gullibilityI didnt realize that it was a borderline cult. It is mentioned often enough that Downing, interestingly calculates the hours that individual senior members had meditated. [2][6][14], A once controversial figure, Richard Baker was publicly criticized for his behavior at San Francisco Zen Center. [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. Above all, we agree to the stories that prop up constitutions or money. Also see his Zen War Stories to be published December 2002. This story appears to be an example of modern day creation of hagiography that will be repeated in the future. This has a direct bearing on the Baker story and the way mythology continues to be constructed even in the present. Senior members also appeared blind to the voices of others and closed to criticism. He was what I needed. 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. 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. The fact is that almost everything about Zen's presentation, practice, and rituals is aimed at producing people who give up their good sense with the promise of a greater gain in the future. Mark Oppenheimeris the author of three other books, includinga memoir of high school debateand atravelogue about crashing bar mitzvahs. 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. Why do we need to rehash this one again? After six months, he returned to his position. Another error is seen in the statement that Yasutani roshi rescinded the Dharma transmission he gave to Philip Kapleau. Downing has offered an excellent example in Richard Baker and the SFZC. 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 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. And that very presentation is the freight of the Zen machine. 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.[36]. The teacher knew all; the American knew nothing. 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). 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. This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. He was leader of the largest Zen center in the United States and founder of Tassajara, the first Zen monastery in America; he sent a number of American disciples to study in Japan and was surrounded, as was Baker, by hundreds of devoted, unquestioning, often young and energetic followers. Trouble At The San Francisco Zen Center What unites the several panels is a stream of monarch butterflies, often seen in spring at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, one of SFZC's three temples. He reported being mugged at knifepoint by a man just a block away from the San Francisco Zen Center at 300 Page Street. The center received significant media coverage concerning the 1984 resignation of then abbot Zentatsu Richard Baker, who was ousted after it was alleged that he had been having an affair with the wife of a prominent Zen Center member. They will sit for five days or longer in the zendo before they are formally admitted into the monasterya physically daunting challenge. [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. The last of these was Bodhidharma, who began the patriarchal line in China that led to Hui-neng, traditionally considered to be the sixth and last Chan patriarch. Why should we think that Suzuki chose Baker as his only American Dharma heir based on his level of "spiritual attainment?" These events are a helpful reminderboth to me and to othersof my vulnerability to arrogance and inflation. One of Shimanos greatest advantages has been that he is Japanese. Latest News. There is a wealth of contemporary exciting Zen scholarship available in English. 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. 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 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). 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. [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]. This 1987 incident has had a damaging impact on Anderson's reputation as a teacher, since his arrest received national media coverage. Neither business is operative today. But Shimano is hardly alone; his is not an isolated case. 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. He was a very traditional Rinzai master: stern when he needed to be, very rarely encouraging. I am thankful for Michael Downing's work, which is extremely valuable. 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. It also spun off its business and stopped pretending that work without compensation was "spiritual practice.". ", Read more about this topic: San Francisco Zen Center, Problems, laws havent the slightest interest for meexcept in the world of science, in which they are always changing; or in the world of art, in which they are unchanging; or in the world of Being in which they are, for the most part, unknown.Margaret Anderson (18861973), One does not arrest Voltaire.Charles De Gaulle (18901970). There are also accounts of people receiving transmission from masters who were dead by the time the supposed transmission took place. [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. In this way the teacher was like a deity, a minor god. 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. Trouble At the San Francisco Zen Center Also see, Brown, Edward Espe, Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen, Harper Collins, 2002, Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness: Zen Talks on the Sandokai, Ed. Zen Center members accepted and internalized most all of Zen's self definitions, history and social forms. It is because one was wrong about him, because one misinterpreted the states of his soul and drew as sharp a line as is possible between oneself and him, as if he were something utterly incomparable and strangely superhuman-that he gained that extraordinary power with which he could dominate the imagination of whole peoples and ages. The idea of electing an abbot is, no doubt, a distinctively American innovation in a centuries-long pattern of religious authority. This 1987 incident has had a damaging impact on Anderson's reputation as a teacher, since his arrest received national media coverage. Baker Sums It Up Tenshin Reb Anderson-roshi, former abbot of City Zen Center, is senior Dharma teacher at Green Gulchtraining priests and laypeople, leading sesshins, giving talks and conducting workshops while also living onsite. It is clear that the senior members of Zen Center surrounding Baker were well-indoctrinated vessels of Zen ideology. That Kapleau never received Dharma transmission was exposed in a public letter from Yamada roshi dated,1/16/86. Also see, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, Trans.and Ed. There are two kinds of authority. According to the dust jacket, Downing spent three years interviewing 80 people at the center of the Zen Center scandal. 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