Why did Baker perpetuate such a simplistic view of Suzuki? Under the Zen form of legitimization, each Zen roshi is viewed as a saint. It will not do for future generations if there are gaps in the line of saintly figures. by Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright, Oxford University Press, 2000. And that gets the juices flowing. 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.. Like whoa, and when you start the practice, the practice I feel isits very profound. 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. Baker also claimed that he was trying "to protect Suzuki Roshi's legacy and lineage." San Francisco is not mentioned in Newsom's plans, but Supervisor Dean Preston has proposed a similar action. SFZC will continue to offer classes, talks, workshops, and sangha gatherings through the Online Practice Center and residential guest student practice opportunities at all three temples. I approached it with a searching spirituality aspect, reading Huxley and Timothy Leary, and that leads you down the road to the Beat generation and Zen. All of this discontent emerged when it was made public that Baker had allegedly been having an affair with the wife of an influential sangha member. Many women and others in the Zen community have suffered as a result, and we regret and apologize for our collective failure to stop this harm. 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. This is hagiography, which is necessary for Chan's self-legitimating claims of mind-to-mind transmission and unbroken lineage. [Note: This section offers background mostly not covered in Downing's book.] The volunteer project's founding director was Frank Ostaseski, who served until 2004. "The years people spent here were not wasted years of being duped. Guests are . "[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. But that is the way that Suzuki or Baker or any roshi is presented. San Francisco Zen Center's purpose is to make the teachings and practice of Soto Zen Buddhism widely available, to train teachers, and to help cultivate mindfulness and compassion in the world. Berkeley, March 17th, 2002. On one visit he decided to take the revolver home with him. In addition, the few American students of his who went to Japan came back disappointed, which upset Suzuki because he thought these students would then think less ofBuddhism. We may however, ask, "What commitment was Suzuki referring to?" Michael Downing's book, Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center (2001) describes much of the sexual scandal surrounding Richard Baker, as well as financial problems and Baker's generally arrogant behavior. [The teacher] had been in a Zen monastery for a year in Japan. 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. This is not surprising if we remember that in Soto Zen "spiritual attainment" is rarely a criterion for Dharma transmission. 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. Below is the information about san francisco zen center scandal . 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]. In some of these biographies, people later classified as Chan monks were listed in other categories, such as Master Yantou Huo as an ascetic and Master Xingzhi as a benefactor. Zen Center members did not think there was any thought control or propaganda necessary to escape when it came to Zen. All trouble at the Center was internalized and personalized by its members. 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. Suzuki's arrival came at the tail end of the Beat movement and just prior to the social movements of the 1960s, both of which had major roots in San Francisco. He reported being mugged at knifepoint by a man just a block away from the San Francisco Zen Center at 300 Page Street. At the same time, this supposed desireless image of the roshi is meant to invoke desire in us for him. This 1987 incident has had a damaging impact on Anderson's reputation as a teacher, since his arrest received national media coverage. Hence, a number of questions were never openly raised: Was he acting in an arrogant fashion? Suzuki enabled the ensuing trouble by transmitting only to Baker to the exclusion of other westerners, by failing to understand Baker's character, by failing to mitigate his authority in any way, and by failing to explain clearly the historical and common way that Dharma transmission was and is used in Soto Zen. There are also accounts of people receiving transmission from masters who were dead by the time the supposed transmission took place. When Katagiri left, Tenshin Reb Anderson assumed Abbotship of the Zen Centerserving until 1995. For a history of early Soto Zen as well as how the Soto sect has understood Dharma transmission since roughly 1700, see Bodiford, William M., Soto Zen in Medieval Japan, University of Hawaii Press, 1993, p. 215. After all, the only two previous Dharma transmissions Suzuki gave, to his son Hoitsu and to Unknown, were not based on attainment at all. The senior members blindly and unquestioningly bought into Zen's mythology and Baker's transmission being above and beyond question. 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. 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. There he found the corpse of a man with a bullet wound to the head and a revolver nearby. Definitely worth checking them out on their website and trying to attend the beginners lesson! Baker and Suzuki themselves were rewarded by this system. 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. Original Dwelling Place by Robert Aitken book review by Robert Goss buy this book now I suspect I probably said something like that, Schnyer said. Rather than report this to the police, Anderson returned to the body over several days to meditate over the corpse. He exists freely in the fullness of his whole being. This is very similar to the Japanese Soto Zen, with minor variances for social and cultural differences. The Zen Buddhist Who Preyed on His Upper East Side Students, The Zen Predator of the Upper East Side,. 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). San Francisco Zen Center offers seven charming guest rooms for short-term stays. Before our eyes we have a living person becoming a faceless, a-historical person. Nor did anyone even think to view the situation through the lens of the Buddhist teachings themselves or even the particular teachings of their beloved founder Suzuki. 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. Zen Center members accepted and internalized most all of Zen's self definitions, history and social forms. It acquired property worth around $20 million and built up a network of affiliated businesses staffed by Zen Center students, which included the vegetarian Greens Restaurant in Fort Mason, a bakery, and a grocery store. He was doing what Japanese roshis are supposed to do, what they have done for centuries. Elizabeth is married to Jason Kibbey. Please consider a donation to San Francisco Zen Center. Covid-Related Openings and Closings Updates page, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility, Conflict, Complaint, and Ethical Review Processes. Baker claimed the Center was "denying 2,500 years of how Buddhism was developed and continued" He made a number of other historically inaccurate claims, and finally dropped the suit saying that he was pressured to institute the threat by a lawyer student of his: "There was a lawyer who kept bugging me." The leadership of San Francisco Zen Center required Anderson to take a leave of absence from his position as abbot. After a major fundraising effort led by Baker, Zen Center purchased the landwhich contained a rundown resort and mineral springs in 1967. Kwong's transmission was later completed by Suzuki's son, Hoitsu.[1][11][12]. [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. Within a couple of years, Suzuki considered founding a monastery to host more intensive practice for those students who were interested. [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. Rather than report this to the police, Anderson returned to the body over several days to meditate over the corpse. By saying this, he was emphasizing his guarantee that the essence of the Zen lineage resides in Baker. 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. In reality it means, "don't question, don't look!" And perhaps most importantly, his authority will be understood with a taken-for-granted quality of being natural. In the West in general, but particularly in America, we place great importance on each person's individuality and uniqueness and hence on our personal experience. Around 1970, he began sitting regularly with a group in Santa Cruz that went on to form the Santa Cruz Zen Center. "To sum up the situation, we have no sources at all from the T'ang which mentions or describe explicitly "Chan" institutions," p. 267. Above all, we agree to the stories that prop up constitutions or money. For some thirty years a significant group of scholars have been investigating the development of the Chan sect in Chinese Buddhism. 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