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. In the case of Zen, students usually come to the teacher with a set of preconceptions, acquired mostly through reading, about the fully attained Zen master as being virtually beyond their comprehension. He was a very traditional Rinzai master: stern when he needed to be, very rarely encouraging. Which means it's basically my fault. Shimanos Japanese ways suited Schnyer. 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. These revelations led to community-wide pandemonium, and in 1984 Baker was forced to resign as abbot. This dissertation also asks whether the Chan sect existed at all as a separate and distinct sect in the Tang dynasty, the supposed "golden age of Chan"). One was to make the state consider Chan the primary sect of Buddhism. Baker then quotes Trudy Dixon, the editor of the book, thus endorsing her words: This is not surprising, being, as it is, a natural result of the customs and environment created by the Zen institution. defending Deshimaru's teacher Sawaki roshi's wartime involvement dating from 1905 through WWII is available on the internet at, http://www.zen-azi.org/html/guerre_e.html#replybyb. This is not a new idea nor is it unique to Chan/Zen. This has a direct bearing on the Baker story and the way mythology continues to be constructed even in the present. 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.. San Francisco Zen Center students and other students throughout history were also one cause of the problem. This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. We should be affirming that. Ironically, what follows is in many ways a religious text. The idea of electing an abbot is, no doubt, a distinctively American innovation in a centuries-long pattern of religious authority. He reported being mugged at knifepoint by a man just a block away from the San Francisco Zen Center at 300 Page Street. Was Baker's commitment to Zen practice much greater than a number of other of Suzuki's close, very committed senior disciples? Introduction You can see how much more potent it is to have a teacher presented as a living Buddha or at least Buddha-like, who, instead of simply interpreting and explaining the words of the Buddha, actually speaks with the same voice as the Buddha. 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. More commonly it is bestowed or given by a teacher to some one with limited attainment in order to keep his lineage alive. As is common among members of new religions, they viewed themselves as special. Not Always So: practicing the true spirit of Zen by Shunryu Suzuki book review buy this book Also see his Zen War Stories to be published December 2002. One student stated it as, "The one thing that seemed unquestionable was Richard's Transmission." 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. 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. 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. Downing interviewed roughly eighty people, most of them Baker's students, approximately eighteen years after Baker was forced to resign. For example, Afable might have added that at Chobo-ji, a Zen temple in Seattle, Genki Takabayashi made passes at his female students. 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. Today SFZC is the largest St organization in the West. Ask Kelly S about San Francisco Zen Center. After a major fundraising effort led by Baker, Zen Center purchased the landwhich contained a rundown resort and mineral springs in 1967. 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. The Zen Institution The land was purchased from one of the founders of Polaroid, George Wheelwright. Greens Restaurant, opened in 1979 in Fort Mason of San Francisco, was another business venture by SFZC under the influence of Baker. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Suzuki, in so many ways an admirable person, had a large hand in the problems that followed his death. Our personal experience is socially constructed in dialogue with society and with ourselves. Richard Baker also survived. Unlike his predecessors, Suzuki was a fluent speaker of English who actually wanted to come to the United States. Sarasota, Florida. "[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. It was high. He then arrived in San Francisco, California in 1960beginning to sit with Shunryu Suzuki in 1961. 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. 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. " These days, when we think of predatory clergy, we think of Roman Catholic priests. Mark Oppenheimeris the author of three other books, includinga memoir of high school debateand atravelogue about crashing bar mitzvahs. Stuart Lachs, October 2002 He occupies an authoritative place in East Asian cultures that have already been imbued with a special level of hierarchy since ancient times. Some Zen followers believe that Zen is only concerned with enlightenment and is not concerned with personal behavior or with ordinary morality. But Shimano is hardly alone; his is not an isolated case. Eighteen years later, there is still lingering bitterness about his overthrow. Baker and Suzuki themselves were rewarded by this system. According to a 1982 letter from George Zournas to Jack Clareman, the Zen Studies Societys lawyer, a litany of charges was read against Shimano at a board meeting on September 14 of that year. For students of the San Francisco Zen Center, one of America's oldest and most prestigious Buddhist institutions, the world has already ended. 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. How bad was Shimanos womanizing? I asked Schnyer. It simply means that a power structure has evolved that will perpetuate itself even if it means imputing "attainment" to people who don't really have it. Members along with Baker literally built their world based on the language and view of Zen accompanied by ritualized behavior that added to the sense of being embedded in and being an active participant of that sacred world. Zen at War by Brian Daizen A. Victoria: a link to varioius book reviews buy this book now I have seen such a view expressed in four other major Zen communities as well as in a Tibetan community. 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. In some ways, it was an obvious choice. 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. So why did none of Baker's students, as expressed in their interviews with Downing, show any awareness that institutional self-definition encouraged their idealization of Baker, which allowed, perhaps even fostered, the occurrence of many of the alleged abuses? Throughout the 1980s Greens, which obtained produce from Green Gulch Farm, was one of the most popular restaurants in San Francisco. He also ran a temple virtually under the control of Japan's repressive fascist era government. 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. Join the San Francisco Zen Center Membership Program. For a very fine book review of Shoes Outside the Door, see Crews, Frederick, "Zen & the Art of Success," The New York Review of Books, 28 Mar. What was or was not implied in Baker's transmission from Suzuki? Baker presided over it all like a feudal lord, hosting dinner parties with then-Gov. 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. But the Americans didnt know that. The Zen understanding of wisdom imputes Foucault's "single gaze to see everything constantly" to the Master. But the percentage of the Zen clergy implicated in sexual misdeeds is many times greater than that of the Catholic clergy. 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. There are also accounts of people receiving transmission from masters who were dead by the time the supposed transmission took place. Or was it that Baker, in addition to his commitment to Zen, was more committed to institutional growth than the others, and importantly, was the only disciple who possessed the necessary skills and qualities to achieve the growth; the growth that Suzuki desired? After the founding of Dharma Sangha in New Mexico, Baker met with William Irwin Thompson, the founder of the Lindisfarne Association. I dont remember saying that., Schnyer maintains a tidy understanding of his personal Zen galaxy, in which Shimano is the sun, hot and dangerous but necessary. He also grabbed the land for Green Gulch farm and retreat center, located in a spectacular valley near Muir Beach. Anderson became entangled in an incident in 1987 that reached back to 1983 just after Zentatsu Richard Baker had resigned as abbot. 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. 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. 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