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Eido Shimano Roshi
This week, the Buddhist Channel publishes a story about Eido Shimano Roshi, an ongoing topic there. Earlier this month, they published an article about the essay by Christopher Hamacher, Zen Has No Morals. Here too is an earlier article by Sweeeping Zen.
There's a voluminous Shimano Archive, online documenting offenses, and cover-ups, and debate. It's about 2 DVDs in length, and quite disturbing.
Posting this, I am not inviting disharmony, which could cause rupture in the community. Nor do I wish to gossip about that which I have not myself been personally involved, having received correspondence from a concerned party mentioned in the Archive. The topic is worthy of the contemplation and discussion by the enlightened New Buddhist community.
There's a voluminous Shimano Archive, online documenting offenses, and cover-ups, and debate. It's about 2 DVDs in length, and quite disturbing.
Posting this, I am not inviting disharmony, which could cause rupture in the community. Nor do I wish to gossip about that which I have not myself been personally involved, having received correspondence from a concerned party mentioned in the Archive. The topic is worthy of the contemplation and discussion by the enlightened New Buddhist community.
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Comments
Undoubtedly, though, Western followers tend to exaggerate this sort of thing. But I'm told the same thing happens in Taiwan. Everyone reveres the "Enlightened" master, who has illegitimate children scattered around the island.
There are a lot of such stories. Zen certainly has a checkered past when it comes to its transmitted holy ones who created the myth of transmission. Zen's worst nightmare is itself. The institution it created perpetuates a Zen that doesn't comport very well with its own religious literature; nor with much of the Mahayana canon. Its modern day apostles have almost become parodies of Zen teachers in the Tang and Song. Of course, all this requires credulous followers without which our holy Zen master would be out of a job. Maybe this is why Zen master Robert Aitken said the following: “The fundamental fact is that I cannot survive unless you do. My self-realization is your self-realization.” For future Eidos we need lots of shallow credulous people who will believe anything they are told if the person teaching them is wearing lots of fancy robes, looks Asian, and is transmitted.
What interests me is such situations -- and I have batted it around with Stuart on more than one occasion -- is this: Anyone setting out on a spiritual effort dearly hopes and prays that they aren't being led down the garden path. No one wants to be caught up in some cult. No one wants to be bamboozled or tricked or taken to the cleaners. Most of all, they don't want their somewhat tender longings to be used or abused.
With this in mind, students with more experience can issue all sorts of warnings to newcomers about the twisted and sometimes cruel possibilities of spiritual practice. "Watch out for this!" they may say. Or, "Look out for that!" And the warnings themselves tend to support the notion that a student would NOT be naive, would NOT be credulous, would NOT be a fool. Yes, the suggestion seems to be, it is possible to be a responsible, clear-eyed, street-smart devotee in a realm of moral rectitude and solicitous teachings. And there is a crystal palace where everything is pure.
I wish to suggest otherwise. Such a realm is more fancy than fact. The underlying axiom that there is a snow-white realm in which newcomers can relax and be cared for is simply not the case. For my money, the axiom might rather be -- yup, you are a rube and you will pay the price. And the unwillingness to be a fool, assuming that were possible, would deflect you from whatever honest and joyful meaning a practice might actually offer. There simply is no way to outthink the good or the bad points of spiritual life. You can try all you like ... still, it can't be done. Go ahead, make laundry lists of warning signs; read up on one scandal or another; pray to God that your teacher isn't on the make ... and still you don't know ... not until you step into an actual-factual practice.
I am not trying to suggest that every student at every center is bound to walk into some malicious and self-serving meat-grinder. That clearly is not the case. But I think that, whether or not a rube is confronted by a cruel and uncaring meat-grinder, still it is the DETERMINATION of that rube that nourishes a happy outcome. No saying you have to stay with some self-absorbed, nitwit teacher. No saying you have to leave. No saying you have to elevate a good teacher or denigrate him/her either. It's your life and your choice.
With such a gloomy sketch, reasonable people might ask, "Why get involved in the first place?" And the answer is that my foolish activities in the past and the suffering they have nourished require me to take a risk. Will it turn out well? Will it turn out badly? No one can answer that one because no one can see into the future. I risk ... using the best sense I can muster, I risk ... and then I do what I can to see this endeavor through to the very end. No more half-measures, no more safety nets, no more pretending. This is a time for -- however uncertain and wobbly -- honesty. Honesty and the determination to get to the bottom of things.
Am I a rube? You bet your Aunt Fanny I am! But I'm the only rube I've got (so to speak). Am I going to stumble and fall even as I pray my socks off that everything will be blissful and serene and morally upright? Yes I am. Will I run around using $10 words whose experiential meaning I haven't got a clue about? Yes. Will I believe in things for which I have no personal evidence? You bet. Will I be a fool and a jackass and open my heart in ways that are bound to get wounded? Yes indeed.
Why? Because this time -- perhaps for the first time -- I am going to see things through. Good, bad or indifferent, I want to know for sure.
Please take good care of your rube.
Good care and...
Never give up!
Sorry for the length. I hope it makes some sense.
But I can't help but wonder if it's entirely true, the statements in the first paragraph. Does Zen in Japan have these problems? Is it just Western Zen that has experienced this dissonance? Lachs trained in Japan and Taiwan, but he's remaining mum on the question of Zen in the East.
Master Sheng-Yen, in an essay of his, insists that students shouldn't be concerned with the master's inappropriate conduct, it's none of their business. As long as the Master is good at interpreting the teachings, and exhorts his students to practice virtue, that's the important thing, he says.
The question is, is the problem fixable? Could the West's contribution to Buddhism be transparency, and accountability in some form?
Paraphrasing this dhamma talk.
On one occasion, while Venerable Sariputta was sitting, listening respectfully at his feet as the Buddha expounded the Dhamma, the Buddha turned to him and asked,
''Sariputta, do you believe this teacher?''
Venerable Sariputta replied, ''No, I don't yet believe it.''
Now this is a good illustration. Venerable S?riputta listened, and he took note. When he said he didn't yet believe he wasn't being careless, he was speaking the truth. He simply took note of that teaching, because he had not yet developed his own understanding of it, so he told the Buddha that he didn't yet believe - because he really didn't believe. These words almost sound as if Venerable S?riputta was being rude, but actually he wasn't. He spoke the truth, and the Buddha praised him for it.
''Good, good, S?riputta. A wise person doesn't readily believe, he should consider first before believing.''
Conviction in a belief can take various forms. One form reasons according to Dhamma, while another form is contrary to the Dhamma. This second way is heedless, it is a foolhardy understanding, micch?-ditthi, wrong view. One doesn't listen to anybody else.
http://www.amaravati.org/index.php/teachingsofajahnchah/article/436/
And I honestly believe something is wrong with the idea of Dharma Transmission. It puts one person, who’s supposed to be "the Living Buddha in front of you", above critical evaluation and makes the others, who are supposed to be ignorant, caught in delusion and stuck in ego’s attachments, completely dependent.
That’s a sociopath’s paradise.
The truth is that the teacher is not in another category. We’re not so different. He’s doing a job and we can put up some boundaries to prevent he’s using his position for his hobby; abusing and manipulating people. We can learn Buddhism without being manipulated and abused.
That’s another mistake I think; the idea that our ego is such a tough nut to crack that it needs to be broken down with extreme means. This mistake (imo) fuels masochistic tendencies in students and again creates a sociopath’s paradise.
When we stop creating the ideal environment for abuse of power, power may still be abused. We are not going to create an ideal world. We may still get some bumps and bruises on the way.
But we do what we can to reduce the damage. We’re not masochists. We don’t create a sociopath’s paradise and jump in. It’s not necessary to do that.
I'd rather see a teacher for whom he/she is, than have my understanding of them falsely filtered through a one-size-(never really)fits-all code of conduct that hides their true nature. If the teacher is already not living by the "do no harm" ethic at the core of Buddhism, which is the core reason I became a Buddhist, I don't wish to study with them, and for the sake of other students, I don't wish see their true nature cloaked in academic or bureaucratic costume.
I guess it's kind of part of the greater freedom discussion--does freedom make life more, or less dangerous? In many cases, I think less.
At any rate, dharma schools are private endeavors and will not unite under a pan-Buddhist federation, in my opinion--nor do I want them to, because that federation or council just becomes another "priest," believing it should insert itself between myself, my teacher, and my dharma path.
In a free society, it's very hard (I'd say, not really possible) to justify "regulating" religion as more oppressive countries do. I believe with all my heart that the way to a healthy dharma experience (as well as the way to maintaining the health of the dharma) is what it's always been--fostering discernment in students.
There are just some simple and obvious rules to keep. Any teacher – worth of the title -would keep them anyways.
And students must take their responsibility as members of a sangha. They can’t hide behind the back of their teacher. It’s their decision to close their eyes and let the abuse and manipulation continue.
Look, while any organization with different levels of authority can have problems, the fact is that outright abuses are rare. Most Zen Masters you'll meet really are well meaning, dedicated teachers who care about the institution and their students.
The student-teacher relationship is like any relationship, including marriage. It can result in a wonderful experience or turn out to be destructive. I've experienced both sides. The institution works best when it acknowledges the need for some way to correct abuses, that's true. But, the only way to be certain it never happens is to never take a chance in the first place.
Some Zen centers are discussing putting in place policies that would require teachers to sign a contract binding them to certain ethical rules, whereby breach of contract would be grounds for dismissal. Another idea being discussed is appointing ombudsmen/women in the sangha whose responsibility would be to offer support to any member lodging a complaint of teacher misconduct toward him or her. Probably, as in any human system, things can go wrong no matter what precautions are put in place, but hopefully, having some measures in place is better than none?
http://www.zenforuminternational.org/viewtopic.php?f=68&t=3584
It covers pretty much every angle and emotion.... _/\_.
Worth a thought, I think.
Yes, in fact I have a clear memory of my father taking my hand before crossing a road with heavy traffic -on the scale of the sixties.
And I felt his hand trembling with nervousness.
How about that?
One rule I’d propose is this. When the teacher gets romantically involved with a student he has to make that public. Also he has to terminate the formal student/teacher relationship with that person. Just to keep things clear.
A school that permits the romantic involvement between a teacher and a student is bizarre. Any of my experience with such things (celibate orders) usually has such trists be the reason that a teacher has to step down. Perhaps your approach is more compassionate.
Romantic involvement would depend very much on the branch/school we're talking about, I imagine. My mother and father both took turns at the podium, for example, and were technically each other's students at various points; they did however follow your second suggestion of making it public--they got married!
Jokes aside, I think the imposition of rules very much depends on who founded the center. If a group of students builds a temple, establishes a business name and so forth, and then brings in a teacher, that strikes me as different from (many) sanghas which are established usually by the effort of one or two teachers, and then grow from there.
I believe our center, Deer Park, resembles the latter, but the eventual establishment of the temple was a joint effort between Geshe Sopa, his colleagues, a growing student body, local Tibetans, and the community in general. There has never been any talk of romantic relationships that I know of, though several young monks have opted for a layperson's life and gotten married. They continue to teach, translate, and work for Deer Park as well as in the community.
I don't know much about the Zen community--maybe the differences are great enough (from the Tibetan community) that comparisons are difficult?
I believe the basic notion in English is called “segregation of incompatible functions”. You don’t want all the power in your organization, spiritual and financial, to be in one hand.
And of course it will not be waterproof and there will be other problems. But at least we can take the subject seriously instead of going into denial.
I have encountered some denial. I know people who literally covered their ears saying “I don’t want to hear the bad things you say about my teacher!” And after the group collapsed some other teacher said, “Let’s quickly forget about this nasty episode.”
This attitude was like say in the Catholic Church twenty years ago. “There is no real problem; it was an incident; let’s not give it attention and the problem (what problem?) will go away. Let’s not harm our organization.”
Tell me about it. I was connected to a Buddhist monastic organization that routinely shunned anyone who questioned the party line. For 40 years many folks in training got pushed out with no recourse to question what happened. The folks that ended up stayed were those that compromised their values, kept their heads down and conditioned themselves not to see the damage they were causing.
The point of my last post was to say that there is also the other side of it where things that should be changed, are not, because it differs with cultural history and represents change that scares the community at large.
Aitken was aware of Eido's problems going back to the early 1960s. Aitken was later transmitted in 1974 by Yasutani. Yasutani was the big honcho who headed Sanbo Kyodan (classified as a new religion). Eido studied with Yasutani including others like Maizumi. If you are Aitken, you don't rock Yasutani's boat with sex and financial scandal and expect to get transmitted. First, you get your transmission, then go after Eido. Aitken, like many American Zenists, wanted power. He did what he had to do to get dharma transmission.
My Zen teacher once said to me casually, "Buddha didn't study 1,700 koans." In some schools of Zen practice, koans, or intellectually insoluble riddles (eg. What is the sound of one hand clapping?) are a part of the practicum. But since the Zen schools grew up after Shakyamuni Buddha did his work, there was, in one sense, no way he could have entered into the 1,700 koans that, for some, later came to be part of the practice.
Some may hear the "Buddha didn't study 1,700 koans" as a dismissive observation ... since Gautama didn't study koans, koans are therefore an add-on and an unnecessary one at that: Forget about koans!
Formal koans are not everyone's cup of tea, but to my mind, koans pop up in actual-factual life like weeds in the backyard. Human beings, by their nature, face koans over and over and over again, irrespective of some well-tended Buddhist school or teaching.
And one of those koans might be: There is a yearning in the human heart -- a hope for peace or happiness or understanding or even 'enlightenment.' How it expresses itself varies from human being to human being and all of us have tried various methods of actualizing this quietly insistent hope. There were jobs and liaisons and travels and money and brand new sneakers and who knows what else and when these things failed to provide a satisfactory answer, some of us turned to something called Buddhism. For whatever reasons, Buddhism seemed to fill the bill -- to extend a comforting and sensible hand in the matter of peace or happiness or understanding or even "enlightenment." Buddhism, as once with brand new sneakers, stood head and shoulders above practical ways to realize a deep and human and touching hope.
And then the rubber hit the road. For a while as practice gained momentum, we could keep Buddhism on a pedestal of blessed hope. This was a good and true and sustaining and comforting way. There was no denying it or questioning it ... practice put us all hip-deep in the Big Muddy. Day after day, week after week, year after year... a good and consoling and convincing and hot-damn true direction enveloped the scene. True, there were bumps and lumps along the way, but we practiced our way through them, revised our old habits, informed stale and sometimes painful material with more clear-headed approaches. It was a determined effort and we took it seriously. And some remained dog-dedicated to this way, this path, this philosophy or religion. No interlopers need apply. No skeptics were acceptable. No doubters could enter. Buddhism was powerful and fixed and not open to question. Protect the teacher. Protect the teachings. Protect the Dharma. .... Protect my happiness!
Honesty is not an easy thing. And perhaps its highest expression is wrapped in a line as simple as "Get over yourself!" But it is impossible to request honesty from another. We can only demand it from ourselves ... assuming we have the stones for it. As with hallucinations, the delusion of a safe and serene and exalted Buddhism cannot be erased from the hallucinator's heart. It can only be erased in this heart.
But none of this means that it all can't be hard -- that manipulative teachers cannot spring up, that manipulated students cannot delight in being manipulated and fight tooth and nail against any who might challenge their delight. Within the deep and exalted world of Buddhism, whose to say that the truth is not a lie or vice versa?
Does this qualify as a koan? Maybe it doesn't, but it sure seems to ... an intellectually-insoluble riddle right in front of our noses. How can we protect students? How can we protect teachers? How can we advance and improve the wonderful teachings? How can we avoid becoming bamboozled or seeing others bamboozled? And these are not intellectual questions alone ... people bleed from open wounds and are raised up on flights of spiritual fancy. This is serious stuff. Why? Because it's your stuff and mine. Because it's intimate and compelling and confusing.
Can students be adequately guarded? Can organizations be perfectly -- or even just adequately -- shaped in some ethical and moral format? Can true teachers and false ones be nailed down with some sort of lie-detector test or laundry list of do's and don't's?
I'm no longer sure what all these words are trying to say. Maybe it's just to pay attention and take responsibility.
Or maybe it's along the lines of the Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki when he was asked whether Zen practice were important:
"It's important," he said. "But it's not that important."
Sorry for wasting all the space.
Every person's experience with a person or system is different. Short of true crimes, one person's bamboozling is another's delight. My relatives love supporting the church in a way outsiders would consider financially tragic; outsiders would see my relatives being abused, but my relatives don't feel abused--they feel happy. I understand this happiness, because at one time I agreed with the Adventist system and all its goals and was a contented participant.
Humans do good things, and bad things; in addition to that, they often don't experience the same set of conditions in the same way. There has never been, and will never be, a single set of regulations which can solve for this. In a decent democracy, the laws of the land will protect best they can against true crime, but in a decent democracy, the laws of the land are careful not to be too heavy-handed and interfere with the fact that one person's bamboozlement is another's joy.
This is not a defense of criminal abuse--criminal abuse is already outlawed. But a teacher or fellow student who is already violating the dharma and breaking the law of the land to inflict criminal abuse on fellow sangha is not going to be stopped by an extra set of internal regulations.
As a side note (but perhaps one that shouldn't be) I think it's interesting that we rarely reflect on the actions of fellow sangha students, and how to regulate sanghas in a way that guarantees safety from fellow students, as well as guaranteeing teacher safety. I have only had an occasional uncomfortable feeling in a temple, and it was due to a fellow student or visitor, rather than a teacher or staff. But perhaps that would be a good separate thread.
There are countries which take a much more invasive approach to religion, labeling it "for the people's protection," but we can see that this is extremely problematic. One of the best ways to see how such a system of regulations would work in our countries is to examine countries already enforcing such regulations.
I guess what is striking me, is that we see our discussion on regulation as problematic--we are tempted to see the differences as "right versus wrong," when in fact human beings are so different that one person's "right" is often another person's "wrong." We find that paradox disturbing, on both sides--and yet it simply reflects the fact that humans are different. Interestingly, paradox is considered, by the koanists, to be extremely useful on the path:
"Finally, the brief prehistory of the koan sketched here includes the conceptually oriented contemplative exercises developed most fully in T'ien-t'ai and Hua-yen as well as the Mi-tsung or esoteric school. These exercises in the dialectics of "emptiness and form" were clearly developed out of images in the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras of the Buddha's continual shifts in framework during conversations with disciples. The Chinese scholastic sects simply systematized the various realizations that could be seen in the "Wisdom" sutras and extended them in directions that seemed most profound to the Chinese. These texts were commonly called kuan, "contemplations," and were used as guides for Chinese vipasyana.
They were conceptual exercises that operated at the limits of thinking, challenging meditators to push further in their capacity to hold necessary but contradictory frameworks of thought together in the same exercise. Although they were indeed narrative and conceptual practices, often culminating in the command "think it!" (szu-chih), their rationale was to bring the mind thus prepared to the event of transconceptual disclosure called "sudden awakening." Like the Wisdom sutras, Chinese kuan cultivated the sense of paradox, and over time paradox became a sign of depth or awakening."
(The Koan -Texts and Contexts in Zen Buddhism - Steven Heine, Dale S. Wright)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/48672142/The-Koan-Texts-and-Contexts-in-Zen-Buddhism-Steven-Heine-Dale-S-Wright
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