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Baker is the sole western heir of Suzuki Roshi, a Japanese Zen teacher who founded the SFZC and its mountain training center, Tassajara established in 1967. Downing quotes a prominent older student who expressed it differently, "Dick tried to take over Zen Center again." A pioneer of gourmet vegetarian cuisine in America, the restaurant's first chefs were Edward Espe Brown and Deborah Madison. [2] From 1968 to 1971, he traveled to Japan to practice at the primary St monasteries there, including Antaiji, Eiheiji, and Daitokuji. And perhaps most importantly, his authority will be understood with a taken-for-granted quality of being natural. There was a widespread conceit in their thinking that they were the center or "cutting edge" of Zen in America, not cognizant that many other Zen groups were forming city/country Centers and also experimenting with the ideas of setting up monasteries, group practice, communal living and forming a sangha. Was he acting primarily with his own self-interest in mind? The volunteer project's founding director was Frank Ostaseski, who served until 2004. Zen Mind? 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. Baker was a charismatic leader, brilliant lecturer and dedicated Buddhist. One member quoted Baker as saying, "I always act from pure motives; I never worry about the world." "Something above ninety percent of us had come from alcoholic families or families that were dysfunctional with the same patterns." Introduction Therefore, in the living world of flesh and blood we have people with some very limited level of attainment occupying a role that is defined as Buddha-like, actualizing perfect freedom and unfathomable compassion beyond the ordinary person's understanding and hence above question. 837 501. According to the dust jacket, Downing spent three years interviewing 80 people at the center of the Zen Center scandal. Trust me." It also spun off its business and stopped pretending that work without compensation was "spiritual practice.". Hence, questioning and dissent became a shortcoming of the person expressing such a view. In the last few decades as opposed to the past, we have had a clear personal view of the actual people involved, Richard Baker being only one. Baker Sums It Up By Kurt Wolff, Free Press Paperback, 1950 for a discussion of authority, prestige, subordination, and sociability. [2][6][14], A once controversial figure, Richard Baker was publicly criticized for his behavior at San Francisco Zen Center. I have been involved with Zen in America for over thirty years during which time there have been many upheavals and problems, some similar to the Baker case described in Michael Downing's, Shoes Outside The Door, others more subtle and less obvious in nature. It was almost like a magic theater, where if someone received Dharma transmission, and hence, was a supposed enlightened being, he would become a different person who could do anything he pleased. It was not surprising, then, that when trouble arose at the Center it was mostly assumed that something must be wrong with the members themselves; that it was because they did not use or handle well Suzuki's pure teaching. 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. Reviewed July 20, 2014 . 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. 4.5. Used with permission. [21][22][23] Today SFZC is the largest Soto organization with a foothold in the West. These days, when we think of predatory clergy, we think of Roman Catholic priests. [34], Following Baker's resignation, Dainin Katagiri led the community until 1985. Shimanos womanizing is of the sleaziest sort: He is married, and he has often picked for his mistresses much younger and disturbed women, the kind particularly susceptible to his twisted charisma. The historical Zen masters we have all come to know are always presented in terms of supposedly real people, with names, dates, and locations, and reports of purportedly real conversations and interactions with other monks and sometimes lay people as if there is no doubt at all that we are dealing with historical individuals. Greens Restaurant, opened in 1979 in Fort Mason of San Francisco, was another business venture by SFZC under the influence of Baker. Yet we all know that no human is like this. 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. Furthermore this creation has to be ongoing. It may be Zen-like, but it can also be annoying. 2015. 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. One student stated it as, "The one thing that seemed unquestionable was Richard's Transmission." For an earlier view of the immediate events surrounding Baker, see Butler, Katy, "Events Are The Teachers", The CoEvolution Quarterly, winter 1983, pp.112-123. Baker himself was quick to remind his flock that he was the only American to receive Dharma transmission from Suzuki Roshi. 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." This is not surprising, being, as it is, a natural result of the customs and environment created by the Zen institution. At times, senior disciples needed to reassure newcomers who questioned Baker's behavior that all was in order. Explore San Francisco Zen Center's newsletters and blogs. A theme repeated throughout Downing's book is Suzuki's injunction to "just sit," which means to do seated meditation. After six months, he returned to his position. Zen ascribes to Pai-chang (died 814) its earliest monastic code that supposedly set Chan apart as a separate sect in the Tang dynasty. This change in demography caused a rift in the Sokoji community. Baker also gives seminars at Boulder Zen Center in Boulder, Colorado twice each year, typically on the last weekends of January and April. This is one reason why we are looking at his case, to see how the system works, how it has always worked. Unlike his predecessors, Suzuki was a fluent speaker of English who actually wanted to come to the United States. I believe the trouble at the San Francisco Zen Center, and at many other prominent Zen Centers, across the country to this day, is caused by a lack of understanding as to how the ideas of Dharma transmission, unbroken lineage, and Zen master have been used historically. Despite extraordinary personal shortcomings, Eido Shimano continued to wield spiritual authority throughout his time at the Zen Studies Society. The sangha was incorporated by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and a group of his American students in 1962. Members had not the slightest inkling that their view of Zen was controlled. 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. 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. At that time, Baker also became the official leader of the San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC). 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. Foulk disagrees with this view. Baker and Suzuki themselves were rewarded by this system. Baker's friends and supporters say the Zen Center never regained the spark and spiritual power of the Suzuki/Baker years. These events are a helpful reminderboth to me and to othersof my vulnerability to arrogance and inflation. That's what we made of it." Although his salary was reportedly modest, he lived a lifestyle which many perceived as extravagant. An interesting debate between Victoria and members of the Deshimaru group (A.Z.I.) 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. There was an article and follow up piece by Brian Victoria discussing anti-Semitic remarks made by Yasutani roshi in Tricycle magazine (Fall and Winter 1999). 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 reality it means, "don't question, don't look!" Shimanos Japanese ways suited Schnyer. And as complete neophytes in Buddhism, they were apt to believe most anything a teacher said: The Americans had no competing knowledge, no critical faculties, no grounds to challenge the teacher, no fixed point on which to stand. Richard Baker is an extremely bright and talented person and a born salesman. Peter L. Berger, the well- known American sociologist writes, "Unlike puppets, we have the possibility of stopping in our movements, looking up and perceiving the machinery by which we have been moved. But that is the way that Suzuki or Baker or any roshi is presented. 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). [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]. Why do we need to rehash this one again? Downing reveals that by 1969 Suzuki had made it known to Baker and others at the Center that Baker was to be his Dharma heir. A good part of the goal of Buddhism is to reduce illusion and suffering. As in any field, there is a need for experienced and knowledgeable teachers. Zen Nationalism Revisited by Robert H. Sharf "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." [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. 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]. Anderson succeeded him as abbot, and later co-abbot. Some people felt that I had committed an irrevocable betrayal of trust, and have discounted me and my teaching ever since. The focus itself is on the master. A full overview of what is open can be found here. He is now a professor of psychology at the University of Texas, and in December 2012 I spoke with him by telephone. It will not do for future generations if there are gaps in the line of saintly figures. Before long, Sokoji had non-Japanese Americans mostly beatniks coming to the temple to sit zazen with him in the morning. 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. He found willing assenters, willing children eager to listen to his fairy tales. Why did Baker perpetuate such a simplistic view of Suzuki? Guests stay at the Lindisfarne Guest House, a traditional Japanese building with a wood-burning stove as the heating source. The Board of Directors at SFZC also began election of leaders. Zen Center members accepted and internalized most all of Zen's self definitions, history and social forms. One of Shimanos greatest advantages has been that he is Japanese. A number of Downing's interviewees spoke of receiving the true or pure Zen teaching from Suzuki Roshi. 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. 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. 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. 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. The deeper you go into practice, the deeper you find your teacher's mind is, until you finally realize that your mind and his mind are Buddha's mind. And all of us worshipped him to a certain extent., Nobody was as worshipful as a student named David Schnyer. I hope this is the case with this paper. Zen Mind, Beginners Mind by Shunryu Suzuki buy this book People put their hearts into the practice and the Center, sometimes going as far as asserting that the Center represented the cutting edge of Zen in the America. 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. This has a direct bearing on the Baker story and the way mythology continues to be constructed even in the present. Cases like this are important simply because the study of Zen history has shown us the whole lineage tradition is built so heavily on questionable written and word-of-mouth accounts; what is said in the present will surely be repeated long into the future. 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. 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