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. A number of Downing's interviewees spoke of receiving the true or pure Zen teaching from Suzuki Roshi. Kobun was resident teacher at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center until 1970. Which means it's basically my fault. Definitely worth checking them out on their website and trying to attend the beginners lesson! 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. [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. 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. Used with permission. My first reaction to the book was, "Why?" Learn and Practice at San Francisco Zen Center, residential guest student practice opportunities, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility, Conflict, Complaint, and Ethical Review Processes. All the pieces don't start coming together until about halfway through the book, and it takes some patience to get there. In Downing's book we see that much illusion, suffering and pain has been part of Zen in San Francisco, a situation that, unfortunately, has been repeated in most every other part of America over a thirty-five year period. The idea that Zen's emphasis on wisdom while only giving lip service to compassion in reality is then about power is an idea that I have just begun to examine. 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. [1][15], In 1983 Tenshin Reb Anderson received shih from Zentatsu Richard Baker, becoming Baker's first Dharma heir (though Baker disputes this). Zen Mind, Beginners Mind by Shunryu Suzuki buy this book Even when Dharma transmission does reflect some level of something we may call spiritual attainment, it is not based on the idealized version proffered by the Zen institution: a mystical meeting of minds between teacher and disciple sharing a timeless truth that unvaryingly matches the minds of all teachers going back in the lineage, through the six Chan Patriarchs in China, and the twenty eight generations of the supposed Indian lineage going back to the historical Buddha, and beyond. This is not surprising, being, as it is, a natural result of the customs and environment created by the Zen institution. Unlike his predecessors, Suzuki was a fluent speaker of English who actually wanted to come to the United States. Perhaps the biggest change is that the two current co-abbotts are women. Find classes, retreats, practice periods, and many more offerings in the San Francisco Zen Center calendar of events. There are two kinds of authority. But there are many lesser-known yet just as randy Zen teachers. 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. When Katagiri left, Tenshin Reb Anderson assumed Abbotship of the Zen Centerserving until 1995. 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. 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. Elizabeth is married to Jason Kibbey. These and any number of other questions, complaints, hurts or criticisms harbored by his disciples, were not raised. 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. 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. Some people felt that I had committed an irrevocable betrayal of trust, and have discounted me and my teaching ever since. 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. 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. Suzuki had asked Baker to locate a farm in the area for entire families to live a Buddhist life while working together. 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. Richard Baker is a man who through the ritual of Dharma transmission has been installed in the Soto Zen sect's "authentic" unbroken lineage going back to the historical Buddha. Guests stay at the Lindisfarne Guest House, a traditional Japanese building with a wood-burning stove as the heating source. 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." I feel sorry for anybody who's bitter. Months later Suzukiwith the help of his American studentspurchased the current (and larger) City Center building, located on 300 Page Street. 1969 - Suzuki was asked to resign as priest at Sokoji by the temple's board of directors because he was spending more time with his Western students than the Japanese-American congregation. "[36], SFZC is connected, in an unofficial capacity, to the following Zen Centers:[1], Coordinates: .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}374626N 1222534W / 37.774009N 122.426075W / 37.774009; -122.426075. Suzuki-roshi, as his students called him, died of cancer in 1971. The film was directed by veteran filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and executive produced by physician, Shoshana R. "On both a personal and a professional level, I am still dealing with the consequences of this episode. Before long, Sokoji had non-Japanese Americans mostly beatniks coming to the temple to sit zazen with him in the morning. They have shown us clearly that much of what has been presented by the tradition as "history," is really a myth created with two purposes. Rather than report this to the police, Anderson returned to the body over several days to meditate over the corpse. His death came shortly after the publication of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, a collection of lectures translated into numerous languages and considered a classic of contemporary Zen literature. In this act lies the first step towards freedom." Despite its iconoclastic image, Zen has in actuality been a remarkably conservative institution throughout its history, almost always tied to and controlled by the state and elite elements of society. Suzuki Roshi, the founder of the San Francisco Zen Center and its leader until his death in 1971, was an impressive person, sincerely loved by most all the Center's members. In one well-known collection, the famous Grand Master Yunmen is not recorded at all. On one visit he decided to take the revolver home with him. The sangha was incorporated by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and a group of his American students in 1962. "Something above ninety percent of us had come from alcoholic families or families that were dysfunctional with the same patterns." [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. This would have led any impartial observer to question the spiritual implications of Dharma transmission. 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. Without anything said or done, just the impact of meeting a personality so developed can be enough to change another's whole way of life. When it came to Baker's transmission from Suzuki, virtually all the students interviewed by Downing assumed that it was a "real" transmission. 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. Excellent. Zen Nationalism Revisited by Robert H. Sharf San Francisco Zen Center practitioners did make a serious commitment to their practice. At the same time, this supposed desireless image of the roshi is meant to invoke desire in us for him. For example, Afable might have added that at Chobo-ji, a Zen temple in Seattle, Genki Takabayashi made passes at his female students. Today, one could reasonably assert that of the 30 or 40 important Zen centers in the country, at least 10 have employed head teachers who have been accused of groping, propositioning, seducing, or otherwise exploiting students. [15], In the twenty-five years since leaving San Francisco Zen Center, Baker has continued his career as a Zen teacher, founding and developing two practice centers. They weren't so much about about money (Chapter 27, if that's your cup of tea). [5][16][17][18][19], In 2000 Jiko Linda Cutts was appointed Abbess, having received Dharma transmission from Tenshin Reb Anderson in 1996. In 2003 Paul Haller, who received transmission from Sojun Mel Weitsman in 1993, was installed as co-abbot with her. [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. 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. It did not matter that Baker did not appear to offer his students the "living proof that the seemingly impossible goal [of Zen] can be realized in this lifetime" as Baker himself described the function of the teacher. 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. 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. by Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright, Oxford University Press, 2000. 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. 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. For students of the San Francisco Zen Center, one of America's oldest and most prestigious Buddhist institutions, the world has already ended. 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. I have seen such a view expressed in four other major Zen communities as well as in a Tibetan community. They will sit for five days or longer in the zendo before they are formally admitted into the monasterya physically daunting challenge. This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. It is an institutional dream that needs to be analyzed using its own description. The current crisis in the Catholic Church proves the need for such an institutional analysis. Mission. Ironically, one may ask, is that what Suzuki hoped to reform? 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