"-isms," narratives, and Zen Buddhism

TLDR: Sweeping Zen seems to be more personality driven than teaching and practice driven.  Moreover,  a lot of what's on that blog doesn't even seem to be informed by strong teaching and practice.  One post there by Herb Deer illustrates this, especially compared with what we know from the patriarchs.  I can't justify giving them linkshare, even if a teacher, such as Genjo Marinello might have an article there now and then.




There's been a bit of hubbub lately in the Buddhist blogosphere about the abuse of power sexually with a few zen "teachers," and what this means for "Zen Buddhism" in "the West."  Due to some of this hubbub I've decided to not promote the Sweeping Zen blog, but not for the hubbub that you might think; not for the issues I've alluded to in the past few days, although I think the post today might be identifying more of a root cause of those other posts.

The root cause is that a heck of a lot of people don't seem to be demonstrating in their verbal communication at least what Zen Buddhism is - people who seem to include some signed, sealed, and delivered "authorized" "teachers" of "Zen."  And Sweeping Zen, (a "who's who of Zen") is more personality driven than teaching and practice driven.

The post on Sweeping Zen that led me to this view was this post by Herb Eko Deer.   (About the same time there was this bit of pro-teacher fetishism there too, but that's another kettle of fish - at least for now.)  From Deer's blog post:

In the short history of Zen in America there are a few big names that have become infamous in the lineages I know about. Admittedly, I know very little about Zen in America in general, and so I will not even try to map out a list of teachers and their successors to show who was troubled and who was or is lacking in integrity. It’s not easy to get an authentic history for most teachers who came from other countries, particularly Japan. 

It might be an interesting project for someone to map such a Zen family tree or perhaps it’s already done? 

For this blog, I simply want to point out a pattern of teachers who were sent to America from Japan as Zen missionaries who had deep flaws that were not discussed openly, or supported effectively, to maintain integrity. 

Suzuki was sent here after his wife was murdered by a crazy monk he allowed to live in his monastery in Japan. Sasaki was left here after he was expelled from Japan for creating a huge scandal in his home temple. Maezumi was sent here and, no one seems to know but, it has been felt that he may have been quite a rebel and perhaps sent here as an attempt to relocate him. Eido Shimano may have had trouble in Japan, but I don’t know of it. To my mind, this pattern of relocating monks who have caused trouble in Japan to America set the stage for a legacy of secrecy, covering up, forgetting, omitting, withholding, avoiding, and being defensive if questioned. 

These patterns of behavior, mixed with a hierarchy that was strict and without accountability or tolerance for open questioning of authority, are a formula for a very dysfunctional spiritual path. 

So the second generation of American students who trained with such teachers have had a great deal of secrecy, avoidance, withholding, and defensiveness around lack of integrity and the use or abuse of students.

This narrative is, to put it politely,  erroneous and self-conradictory rubbish.  Let's take it apart:

In the short history of Zen in America there are a few big names that have become infamous in the lineages I know about. Admittedly, I know very little about Zen in America in general, and so I will not even try to map out a list of teachers and their successors to show who was troubled and who was or is lacking in integrity.

Deer is correct here - he does know little about "Zen in America," by which he probably means the propagation of Zen Buddhism in America by Japanese immigrant priests.

For this blog, I simply want to point out a pattern of teachers who were sent to America from Japan as Zen missionaries who had deep flaws that were not discussed openly, or supported effectively, to maintain integrity. 

Suzuki was sent here after his wife was murdered by a crazy monk he allowed to live in his monastery in Japan. Sasaki was left here after he was expelled from Japan for creating a huge scandal in his home temple. Maezumi was sent here and, no one seems to know but, it has been felt that he may have been quite a rebel and perhaps sent here as an attempt to relocate him. Eido Shimano may have had trouble in Japan, but I don’t know of it. To my mind, this pattern of relocating monks who have caused trouble in Japan to America set the stage for a legacy of secrecy, covering up, forgetting, omitting, withholding, avoiding, and being defensive if questioned.

First, was there a "pattern of teachers" sent to America from Japan? What the hell does that even mean? It is true that there are teachers with notable lineages were sent from Japan who later had problems or their successors had problems.  But...they were hardly the first or the only teachers of Zen Buddhism in America from Japan, let alone from other Asian countries.  

First of all, my ancestor Shaku Soen managed to come here in the 1890's see enough of America  and meet with enough Americans to establish teaching Zen Buddhism in America.  Secondly while scholar D. T. Suzuki was familiar with the Beat writers, he also worked with professional philosopher  William Barrett, who nobody would call way out there by any stretch of the imagination.  Thirdly, Soen's heir in the US (never officially etc. etc.) Nyogen Senzaki, well, sorry Herb, no scandals there have been recorded, unless you count his being sent to an internment camp because of his Japanese ancestry.  Fourthly, there was and still are quite a few Zen Buddhist temples... in Hawaii. These temples have no big scandals associated with them, but alas, they happened to serve the Asian immigrant population so perhaps they don't matter so much to Deer...except to say that you'd have to consider Robert Aitken, who taught in Hawii as a teacher of the same generation as Shimano and Sasaki, ...

I could go on, to mention Japanese lineages in Chicago and the Pacific Northwest that have been scandal free, and then get to the Korean, Chinese, and Vietnamese versions of Zen in the US.

So while some organizations in Japan may have left their problems here, there is no reason why it would "set the stage" for all the craziness that happened later.  Organizations face this problem often.  But yes, let's set the record straight here: not all the teachers sent by Japan to the US, before, during that time or now, are dysfunctional.   But Deer has his generations wrong; what he's calling the "second generation of American students" was actually the third in terms of Zen in America.  It is true that they were the first generation of those dysfunctional teachers' students.  But let's let that slide, except if you read more of Deer's article, it puts forth a narrative that the "students" of the "bad teachers" "were dysfunctional" but the "3rd generation of students" are "waking up" out of "denial" and "slumber" "about the problems with much of the cornerstones of Zen training." (And mirabile dictu! That happens to be Herb Deer's posse!)

The real problem is Deer is constructing a narrative that he wants to stick on to Zen Buddhism ("in America"), and the fact that his narrative is pretty weak isn't helping him.  Let's see where we can agree:

• There were some "teachers" of Zen who came to America who were troubled, to put it politely.
• Some of these teachers abused women, and others had other behavior that was harmful.

Here's where my narrative would depart from Deer's:

• The list of teachers involved includes American (what Deer would call the "2nd  Generation")  teachers  Genpo Merzel and Richard Baker, and non-Asian Jiyu Kennett (though the latter was not involved in sexual abuse nor abuse of substances, there were reasons that certain temples broke with her)
• A whole bunch of other Asian teachers were not having these problems
• Even way back when, in at least some places where these problems were happening, there were people responding to dysfunctionality; it was not uniform denial
• It's not for nothing, I suspect, that the major perpetrators of the dysfunctionality of the temples involved ... had sang has that grew a lot.

Now that's the historical narrative, as best as I could correct it. But It led me to wonder, just what kind of Zen are folks promoting this weird narrative teaching anyway?  And who would authorize them to teach? (Maybe they came from schools that grew a lot?)

Deer has a mission to put a 12 Steppist narrative onto the dysfunctionality he finds in his neck of the woods of Zen Buddhism, and I'd submit, in so doing, he's not only trying to put a lipsticked pig onto a teaching seat, but he's also committed the same offenses of which he speaks. He says:  

I know I’m hard to take in many ways, I’m often silly, arrogant, irritating, crazy, outspoken, and blunt. I don’t expect the Zen teachers culture to applaud me or laugh with me, but I do expect them to acknowledge that I am here too, and see that ignoring me when I suggest that we should reach out to those who might be vulnerable to an abusive teacher is an enabling part of the root problem. I expect them to answer my questions about why no one was told there were serious problems occurring until it was too late. 

They continually congratulate each other for what they are doing and offer their condolences about how shitty it is and they say they are available for support. But they do not demand accountability and they do not offer practical solutions.

Yet I don't see a solution offered for the mistaken expression of the problem to which Deer alludes.  Deer's narrative is woefully inadequate as an expression of an apprehension of Zen, which, as a teaching outside the scriptures, directly pointing to Mind,  is pointing to a Mind that is Buddha nature. 

Deer concludes this post with:

This is a generalization, of course, but I believe it is a fair one that captures the essence of the long standing culture of Zen in America which is still enabling bad things to happen to vulnerable people by not taking stronger stands for accountability and open communication, not to mention refining training standards to help ensure a safe transmission of the dharma that is strong enough to see through fear and anger, and the buddha’s honest truth when it is abusive and defensive.

It seems that American Zen "teachers" do not agree with whatever Deer is saying.  I could be wrong, but that seems to be the case.   But Deer's narrative is nonsense; he hasn't captured the longstanding culture of Zen in America, although I would agree with him; he needs more training.  And he needs to be more humble when it comes to propagating a narrative.  (The need for more training and humility  apply to me too.)

But I think there was a lot of nonsense a lot of "teachers" of "Zen" in America promulgated, and some led to abuse of power, but it seems that some of those students who weren't abused and who had some kind of authorization actually weren't particularly good students.

Here's why I'm saying this: if you read Huang Po, if you read the Platform Sutra,  the Diamond sutra, etc.,  and you try to unravel what's in there,  you can't but come to the conclusion that there's not much to add to Zen practice (as I see it, nothing, though one can practice Zen in many ways in one's everyday life), or to put it another way, the Mind as transmitted by Huang Po, Huineng, Lin Chi, et al. had no need for abuse,  12 Step philosophy, sexism, Marxism, feminism, militarism, existentialism,  guided imagery, trademarked large group awareness seminars,  etc.  etc. etc.  Zen has no mandatory "-isms," get it?

Yet there's teachers adding all kinds of things such as these.  Some of these teachers don't seem to have a good grasp of many things about quite a few things in Buddhism though.

Good Zen mentors are hard to find, and that's why Huang Po said there's no teachers of Zen in the empire, and my Zen mentor has echoed that.  That bit of Zen practice is as serious as a heart attack. Until these "teachers" of diluted teaching stop fetishizing themselves and trying to add this doodad or that to the Great Way,  and actually practice the practice, well, I don't see the point in getting them substantially more link traffic on other points.   If there's an organization in place, yeah, put structures in place to keep the bad apples out, but how about structures in place to keep the inaccurate teaching out?   How about structures in place to keep the living teacher worship out?  And if you're going to have a blog in which a group teachers' blog, how about  structures there to enforce some kind of quality control? (Peer review comes to mind.  Heh.)

Anyway, that's why I'm not promoting Sweeping Zen anymore.   Poor quality control.