The Zen of Reacting and Responding

There has been a lot of dharma drama going on amongst members of the American Buddhist internet "sangha" over the past week. If you know about it, you know about it. If you don't, I'll spare you the details, other than that it involves sex, teachers, and students. Big surprise, eh?

Anyway, here's my humble offering to the pot today. Which doesn't require any awareness of the drama mentioned above.

There is a very big difference between responding and reacting .

When we respond to a situation, we are aware of the impersonal quality of what is occurring. Life is occurring, and we are part of that life occurring.

When we react to a situation, we view what is occurring as a personal threat, as an attack, or as a punishment. Life is happening ONLY because I did something, or I am something someone does not like, or I did something that deserves to be punished.

Now think about about, does the world really work that way? Is it really possible that things are occurring solely because of you, and the interplay between you and one other person? It's pretty damn unlikely. There are a myriad of factors that come into play in any given situation. The "you" and "I" are only part of the equation, and usually a tiny part at that.

Thich Nhat Hanh writes: "When we cannot communicate, we get sick, and as our sickness increases, we suffer and spill our suffering on other people."

A major part of communicating effectively involves coming from a place of non-reactiveness. Being calm enough to take in the jumbled, confused expressions around you without having to defend some territory called "I." It's really not an easy task, and most of us - me included - fall flat fairly often.

And sometimes, it's really best to be quiet. To go back into our meditation practice, and let go of needing to fix, or be right, or help, or whatever it is you want your words to do.

Teacher Scandals: An American Zen Koan

There's another American Zen teacher scandal flaming up the interwebs right now. I knew nothing about Joshu Sasaki Roshi before the current discussion. Other than that he's an old dude. Really old. 105 to be exact.

And about that discussion. It's unfolding so much like the others. Lots of fluffy Zen talk amongst those who wish to defend the teacher. Lots of hell and damnation talk from those who are outraged at the teacher's alleged conduct. More than a little bit of puritanical talk about sexuality. Accompanied by some good ole boy "guys will be guys" nonsense from others. Finger pointing is commonplace. Calls for greater oversight at a level higher than the individual sangha continue to ring loud, if not hollow.

I used to love to dissect all this kind of stuff. It felt very important, vital really - having been from a sangha that went through it's own teacher scandal several years back.

Now. I don't know. We seem terribly muddled about both the power of sexuality, and the nature and forms of power itself. There's a lot of abuse of power, and seemingly endless numbers of people writing about it, trying to figure it all out. Perhaps most humans in general, but American Zen in particular, since that's the focus here. And for all the muck brought to the surface, and revelations that seem to be made, the heavy muddled quality remains.

When you think about it, the intersections of sex, money, and power - the three biggies in nearly all of these Zen teacher scandals - are perfect koans for Americans. We think we understand them, have penetrated their depths, but I doubt many of us do. I sure as hell haven't at this point in my life. In the absolute sense, they're empty of inherent nature, right? But in the relative world, each of them has a myriad of forms that baffle and shift, stick and cause us to stumble.

Yes. Sasaki, like Suzuki, Katagiri, and other founding convert Zen teachers, weren't born in the U.S. However, it seems to me that they plugged right into the particular matrix we have here around the big three. The odd mixture of puritanical views coupled with provocativeness when it comes to sexuality. The curious blend of anti-authority individualism mixed with obsession with heroes and guru figures. The heightened tension between viewing voluntary poverty as a sign of divinity, and the desire for more, more, more than drives the capitalist machine. None of these founding teachers really exhibited all three entry points in the way many American born Zen teachers in scandals have, but they've still be in the matrix all the same.

Will this matrix that's causing so much suffering change, and for the better? I don't know. I'd like to hope so, but that's just hoping, something I don't put much faith in these days. I do think, however, that cracking the koan nut of this matrix - or set of matrices - may be the key to truly establishing a living Zen tradition in this country. As opposed to a struggling copy. Or a lot of "not bad" institutions that are helpful to people's lives, but ultimately fail to foster enlightenment.

Fellow Zen blogger Algernon has a cantankerous post up right now in which he offers the following:

What happens when you have an elaborate ecclesiastical structure meant to support and inspire dharma practice, but the dharma practice is shallow or, worse, pretend? What happens when you have temple full of people who have robes and know a lot about ceremonies and ritual, but they can't function spontaneously and ethically? Well, what you are left with is a dead religion. And when you have dead religion, there is nothing left to do except fight over the property and the money and the social position. This is not unfamiliar in human history, is it? Indeed, many of the teachers who brought their zen to the United States in the 20th century said they did so because this is what happened to zen in their homelands. They wanted to work with hippies who could jump into practice with a fresh perspective. My generation, on the other hand, is a generation of experts. Generation X and Generation Y zenboos organize big, fancy conferences for people in their thirties and forties who have become "Buddhist leaders." So much expertise. And yet. Hmmm.

I have a sickening feeling that a lot of zen in my country is a bad play. A play of the sacred. The stink of zen.

How to stay fresh, responding with right now mind, even when what we are responding to is great suffering? I'm not sure questions like this are being asked enough, especially during "dark times," such as the unraveling of a teacher scandal.

The "Spiritual" Denial of Love and Sexuality?

I recently started my annual re-reading of selections from 20th Century Catholic monk Thomas Merton's journals. For the past few years, I have kept gravitating towards volume six, which arguably contains the most controversial section of Merton's life. Also, having read nearly all seven volumes from cover to cover over the years, number six is the most thought-provoking and revealing of Merton's life and how he understood the world.

At the center of this volume is the illicit relationship Merton had with a student nurse during the spring and early summer of 1966. I remember being shocked when I first stumbled on these entries in the journal, but now I find that there is something so shockingly human about it all that my shock has become reserved for why we're so unwilling to accept and work with the complexities of love, sexuality, and intimacy.

Author Mark Shaw came out with a new book in 2009 addressing this relationship, and how love, sexuality, and lack of both profoundly affected Merton's life and his views on religion and spirituality. Given the discussions about fallen Zen teachers like Genpo and Eido Roshi, as well as the numerous sex scandals that have rocked monastic communities of various religious traditions in recent decades, much of what Shaw has to say is important.

As some of you may know, Thomas Merton was broad in his interest of world religions, and dabbled to some extent in Zen towards the end of his life. He was visited by the Dalai Lama, and Thich Nhat Hanh, long before either were world renown figures. He read everything he could find on Buddhism, and was at a conference of spiritual monastics in Thailand when he was electrocuted by a fan and died in December 1968.

Of Merton's wild, fairly destructive young adult life, and his subsequent entry into the monastery, Shaw writes the following:

Becoming a monk was supposed to cleanse him of these sins, but from his own private journals, I knew this was not true. Instead, Merton’s failure to understand what loving, and being loved were all about caused him frustration, turmoil, and even depression. Beneath the mask of holiness, the plastic saint image promoted by the Catholic Church, was a sunken man who yearned for love while realizing he could never truly be one with God until he found it. Then, as I wrote in the book, the skies opened up and there was a gift, the love of a woman. It is no wonder Merton grabbed the chance to experience love despite the risks involved. And Margie taught him about loving, and being loved, opening up a path to freedom Merton never knew existed.

Anyone who reads the entries in Merton's journal about his time with Margie will immediately feel the profound struggle that went on for Merton between his understanding of the spiritual life and the manifestation of in the flesh love that was right before him. Although at times the way he words things sounds almost like a teenager in love, I really believe, like Shaw, that this was much more for Merton.

I have always found the deep split between the spiritual and sexual in nearly all religions, including Buddhism, very troubling. While it's possible to argue that Buddhism has less of this than Judeo-Christian traditions, I'm still convinced that there's a gap in the teachings that has lead to an enormous amount of confusion, condemnation, and suffering.

Merton took a vow of celibacy in a church that has has a long standing doctrinal split between sexuality and spirituality. The depth of sex scandals that have ripped through Catholic communities in recent years point to this split, and how destructive it can be.

But what if Merton had been a Buddhist monk? He still would have been breaking his vow. And yet, how does this vow square with a spiritual tradition built upon the awareness that everything in life is impermanent? In other words, what happens to a person who takes what might be viewed as a permanent vow (at least in this lifetime), and then discovers along the way that upholding that vow is causing more suffering than liberation?

It's too easy to say that Merton should have either dropped the relationship and kept his vow or should have left the monastery. This was no novice monk; by the time of his relationship with Margie Smith, he was a world renown spiritual writer who was, despite his independent, anti-authoritarian streak, considered to be an important asset by the Church. Walking away from the monastery would have proved to be very difficult, and returning to his vows as they were was impossible. The last two years of Merton's life, following the relationship, proved to be his most exploratory in a spiritual sense, and it's possible to argue that he may have been tossed out of the church at some point if he had lived longer. To suggest that the relationship with Margie had nothing to do with this late life spiritual journey would be a great spiritual denial in my opinion.

In writing this, I'm not arguing that vows of celibacy are wrong, or that breaking those vows should be done any time someone feels constrained by them. That's not my point at all. I do believe we should strive to uphold whatever vows we make in our lives as best as we can.

However, I'm also convinced that how vows manifest in life changes over time. And when it comes to sexuality and spirituality, how much clarity can most of us claim to have when our spiritual traditions are littered with prohibitions, shame, blame, and non-discussions about the intersection of the two?

Zen Teachers As Professionals

Brad Warner, in almost punctual fashion, is back at his brand of fist in the face of the establishment Zen. His current post takes aim at what might be viewed as a shift towards "professionalization" amongst American Zen teachers. He writes:

I’ve finally managed to nail down what it is that troubles me so deeply about these organizations. And it comes down to one single word. That word is “professional,” as well as its grammatical variations (professionalism, profession, etc.).

In the fall out from the sex scandals involving Genpo Roshi, Eido Shimano Roshi, Maezumi Roshi, Baker Roshi and whoever else has been caught with their dick where it wasn’t supposed to be, a lot of people are saying the same thing. They say that Zen teachers are very much like therapists, doctors and lawyers and as such should be required to belong to some kind of organization to police their activities the way these other professionals are.

Let me just spell my position out very clearly here.

Zen teachers are not therapists.

Zen teachers are not doctors.

Zen teachers are not lawyers.

I recently came across a piece on the Internet in which someone lamented the current state of affairs in the Zen world and then asked, “Is Zen not, in it’s deepest sense, in the helping profession?”

I also came across a statement by a member of both SZBA and AZTA stating, “the SZBA and the AZTA hold the premises that Zen teaching is a profession.”

These statements are both entirely incorrect. I know it’s far too bold for me to say such a thing when so many people believe that these statements are correct. But this is my firm position on the matter.

Just yesterday at our monthly board meeting, we had a long discussion about our center's ethics and conflict resolution policies. Part of the talk zeroed in on how the nature of conflicts within a group are frequently messy enough that it's not always clear whether something unethical occurred, or whether it's something else - like a disagreement over how to spend community money, or a "personality conflict" between people.

Although it wasn't a feature of yesterday's conversation, I know that appeals to the ethical structures found in professional fields like therapists and doctors have come up in discussions we have had in the past. A few months ago, one of our senior students was speaking about an upcoming trip to do a practice period at a monastery. And our head teacher, during that conversation, mentioned the AZTA's recommendation (I think it's the AZTA's) that anyone who might receive dharma transmission should have 6 months of residential monastic experience under their belt before teaching. And then she asked the senior student something like "that's part of you're reasoning for going, right?"

It was an interesting exchange. This particular student has been a sangha leader for years, and is already a wonderful teacher in many respects. I found myself kind of perplexed by the notion that she "needed" to do more training - specifically in a monastic setting - given that we are an urban Zen center service lay practitioners. Mind you, I'm not against monastic training at all. And in this case, I know it's not my dharma sister's main focus. She wants to do it, and has been mostly waiting for the right to go. In addition, I don't believe that our head teacher is really viewing this trip as something that has to happen either. It seems more that our head teacher is aware of where the ATZA and SZBA are going, and responding during that meeting, responded in a way to support my dharma sister's practice and future.

So, what I was more interested in when that discussion occurred was the broader Zen teacher landscape appearing before us in a specific manner.

In reading about the various recent Zen teacher scandals, I have found it disappointing at times how easily conversations fall into one of two camps. The camp that I'd say some of Brad's comments above represent is the "hands off" approach, where any formal organization and ethical oversight is viewed as problematic, or even as somehow "tainting" what Zen teachers are. And on the other hand, there is a large subsection arguing for a vigorously "hands on" approach, which does seem to be leading to views that Zen teachers are professionals, and that the professional ethics guidelines and training required for others - like doctors and therapists - should be tailored to Zen teachers and applied.

Overall, I probably lean in a more hands on direction, and yet I find Brad's specific disagreement with professionalization compelling.

And it makes me wonder: Can we develop a way to oversee the ethics of Zen teaching without turning it into yet another "profession"?

Brad writes:

I disagree completely with the position taken by the SZBA and the AZTA. They are dead wrong. Zen teaching is not a profession and must never be a profession. A professional is someone who charges for their services and promises some kind of results, even if not necessarily promising what the client views as success. The moment Zen teachers start looking upon what they do in this way, what they do is no longer Zen teaching at all.

I think this brings up another interesting question. What happens when a person considers themselves a "professional"? And more specifically, would have the norm of Zen teachers viewing themselves as professionals significantly shift the ways in which they practice, teach, and lead?

One thing I wonder, as someone who experienced the drift towards professionalization in the Minnesota adult basic education (ABE) field, is the longer term impact. Many of those in the beginning days have been focusing on the benefits - such as teachers having more formal education and training. However, in the case of ABE, the potential negative aspects are either being downplayed or just can't be seen yet. The increased focused on ABE professionalization has come in almost direct response to a rise of high stakes testing that few in the field support. How much of the decisions being made about what constitutes an ABE professional are coming not out of a creative and diverse understanding of the field, but out of a fear that "not professionalizing" will doom all the adult education programs out there?

Which brings me back to American Zen teachers. Is the drive to professionalize Zen teaching coming from, at least in part, a fear that not doing so will doom Zen in America? And if so, is that a wise place to approach all of this from?

I'd be interested in others' views on this issue. It's an ongoing discussion, and one worth having. And I personally am trying to come at it from different angles, asking different kinds of questions, and seeing what comes forth.

This Spiritual Scandal Brought To You By...

Because after too much time getting lost in the Zen tabloids:



His brain feels more like this:



Than this:



"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Albert Einstein

"This is my maiden voyage. My first speech since I was the president of the United States and I couldn't think of a better place to give it than Calgary, Canada." --George W. Bush, as reported by the Associated Press, Calgary, Canada, March 17, 2009

“My only dharma is my karma” Genpo Merzel

"Cover me when I run
Cover me through the fire
Something knocked me out' the trees
Now I'm on my knees
Cover me, darling please
Monkey, monkey, monkey
Don't you know when you're going to shock the monkey." Peter Gabriel

Had your fill of monkey mind yet? Happy weekend!

Zen Scandal Dialogues

For those of you who are tired of all this "scandal talk," I beg your indulgence for a little longer. I want to write about other things. There are so many other things to write about, right? However, this morning I saw this letter from Zen teacher Chozen Bays, in response to the letter from Kirsten Maezumi I wrote about in the last post. Not only is Chozen's letter a great teaching for us all, but below it is a heartfelt response from Kirsten Maezumi which illustrates the fact that the internet is, indeed, a real space with real impact.

Chozen writes:

Zen teaching is a profession. Professionals have an obligation not to betray the trust of their students/clients/patients, trust that is essential to the work of spiritual teaching or therapy. When we take on the profession, we take on the responsibility to maintain proper boundaries with those we are caring for. If a patient tries to kiss a doctor or a minister or a therapist, it is the professional’s responsibility to stop the behavior. A doctor or even a lawyer who has repeated sexual contact with clients can lose their license to practice permanently.

The American Zen teachers also have written letters to the Board of Kanzeon — and before that, to the Zen Studies Society — because we have a special concern about women. When male teachers have sexual relationships with women students, it creates a very difficult situation for these women. They are enrolled in the secrecy that is so corrosive within a sangha. Or within a partnership — one woman told me that her marriage was failing because her husband blamed her for her relationship with a teacher. Also, when a teacher sleeps with a woman and then transmits to her, it puts her credentials in doubt. “Horizontal transmission” it’s jokingly called. If women are to have a respected place as teachers of Zen, this behavior has to stop.

The experiences you described so vividly in your letter struck me and many others to the heart. This is exactly why the Zen teachers acted, so that wives, husbands, children, and students don’t have to experience the kind of suffering you described. And so that your father’s legacy, his wife, you and your brother and sister, and his many Zen descendants, can continue to bring benefit to the world.

I am very sorry for any suffering my role in these events caused in yours or your family’s life. In an earlier letter you asked me how I could have behaved in this way? What have I done about it? I will give you the simplest answers first. Then some longer explanations.

I took my own role in the events at ZCLA very seriously.

I did specifically focused therapy.

I did specific repentance work.

I realized that the best form of repentance was to change my behavior — for good.

I educated myself about clergy misconduct.

My husband and I emphasize the importance of the precepts in their literal form in our Zen teaching.

We have helped other Buddhist groups that requested assistance with issues of ethics and misconduct by teachers.

I have never had an inappropriate relationship with a student, nor has my husband.

I have been in a faithful marriage for 27 years.

Here are the longer explanations.

I left ZCLA in 1984 with the feeling, “If this is an example of what we have been touting as enlightened behavior (and I include my own), I want no part of it. “ For several years I did not practice Zen. I explored other religions. I got a job and spent more time with my children. I met many people who had never heard of Zen or who had no religion at all, who were kinder and wiser than we had been. Gradually I began to sit again, and rediscovered the purpose and power of practice. I felt renewed gratitude to your father for the invaluable gift of dharma that he had given us all.

I decided to educate myself about what can go wrong in spiritual communities, and I did a lot of reading, for example, about the Rajneesh group – which was then making headlines for all kinds of misconduct – and other communities. From that study I concluded that early warning signs that a group is headed for trouble are these.

1. over-adulation of the teacher
2. too much power residing in the teacher, with lots of “yes” men and women, and no checks and balances
3. believing that the ends justify the means (as in having healthy young people go on welfare at ZCLA so they could be on “staff”)
4. talking about us “inside” who know the truth and the “outside world” who do not
5. resultant loss of outside perspective
6. lack of clear ethical guidelines, maintained first and foremost by the teachers
7. resultant misuse of power – monetary, sexual, etc.
8. secrecy
9. manipulation, intimidation, coercion or threats



I also studied clergy misconduct. I read books such as Sex in the Forbidden Zone: Why Men in Power – Therapists, Doctors, Clergy, Teachers and Others – Betray Women’s Trust by Dr. Peter Rutter, and Is Nothing Sacred?: The Story of a Pastor, the Women He Sexually Abused, and the Congregation He Nearly Destroyed by Dr. Marie Fortune. I invited Dr. Rutter to give a presentation at a White Plum meeting in Palm Desert.

My husband Hogen and I took a professional workshop on clergy misconduct sponsored by the Alban Institute and Faithtrust Institute. We have since been invited to give this training at Buddhist teachers’ conferences and at the invitation of Buddhist groups in crisis. I’ve learned a lot by talking to many survivors of abuse by Buddhist clergy. Their stories are poignant, their wounds long-lasting.

I learned that often, in the chaos of an acute crisis, the wife of the offending teacher gets pushed aside. As I read your letter, I realized that nothing has been written about the suffering of the children. I’m glad you have begun our education about how children in the community are traumatized, too. (I had assumed, wrongly it seems, that when your father went into recovery and your parents reunited and moved out of LA to Idyllwild, that you had eleven years of good family life before your father’s untimely death in 1995.)

There is even more to her letter, but I have offered the bulk of it because it's just so powerful. Personally, the last paragraph rings painfully true. I've seen it in my own sangha, where what happened continues to impact both our former teacher's ex-wife and his children, still part of our community, years later.

Kirsten Maezumi's response is also illuminating, and shows that one point I made in the post yesterday was false.

Dear Chozen,

I was so happy to talk with you the other day and I appreciate the candid way you answered my frank questions.

Honestly the most helpful insight I got out of our illuminating conversation, is the one into the nature of the affair you had with my father as you say, ” It was mostly an affair of the heart, taking intimately about dharma and translating Dogen Zenji.”

That you didn’t feel her victimized you, or that your vulnerability was preyed upon, or that sex was the only reason for the affair.
I think that is important… NOT that it makes it right, or appropriate, but that it was not, in its nature, an abuse of power.

It was a love of the dharma.

I think this could be the case in many of the consensual affairs that happen in sanghas between teacher and students.
Again, NOT that it makes it right at all! ; it is just another shade of grey in the black and white of right and wrong…and of being human.

It makes the line so much more complicated.
That there are other reasons than abuse of power, desire of position, lust or addiction, that cause these lines to be crossed.
How will these be judged?

I am saddened that many responses seemed to think that I thought forgiveness was all that was asked of us in this situation concerning Genpo Roshi.

I was just a shocked and devastated as his family and the Kanzeon sangha, and absolutely something should and is being done.

I was also very happy to hear about your “reformation”, spiritual re-awakening, and the work you are doing at your Zen Center with your husband.
And although it is healing to hear, what compelled me to write my letter, was not a personal attack on you.

It was the fact that I knew no one who was involved in this investigation who was not at one time directly involved in a similar situation. I am not saying they do not exist, just that I don’t know a single one.
And yes, times change, thank god! but could there be something else at play?

Jealousy? Fear? Resentment? Guilt?
Or like a reformed smoker, more sensitive and intolerant to smoke?

It is just such an ironic, dark corner to shine light into.
I am sorry it was seen as a bitter attack on the messenger.

I cannot blame you for my fathers drunken bad behavior, or many affairs, which were the cause of mother to taking us and leaving, but the affair between you and my father stands out in my mind because of the close personal ties you had with our family and the length of the relationship.

I honestly don’t know that names of anyone else.

The point I was doing my best to make was, if my father had been removed from any position of teaching from that time on, indefinitely, and you stripped of your titles as well, even the Inca received from Genpo Roshi, that would not have been justice either.

I am also very happy that you addressed the fact that many of the women that have affairs with teachers also receive transmission.
This is of course a VERY VERY dubious, irresponsible and almost always hurtful way to establish a link in a lineage, but coming back to what you described as the “heart connection” you shared with my father, it may be one of the reasons.
I of course have no answers, its just knowing some of the “victims” myself, well, they don’t seem like victims at all.

It is great that you outline your own reformation for others to consider.
And your safeguards for your delusion and rationalizations. :)
We all need that, and I think that is the role of the Sangha in its truest sense.

I know, with all my heart, that when a person is ready to accept responsibility for their behavior, and have seen where their ego and self will take them, they can change.
Most of the time it seems to take a rock bottom to have this opportunity.

I wish we could have had this conversation years ago; its true as Al Rappaport said in the sweeping zen thread, “Maezumi is dead and gone”, yet this karmic knot is something we are left with to unravel.

I appreciate Kirsten's nuanced view of all of this. (Please go and read the rest of her response here). Even though I have written quite fiercely about the need for teachers to be held accountable, as well as the ways group dynamics reinforce destructive behavior, I agree with Kirsten that seeing all of this in a totally black and white way doesn't aid us in finding the skillful means necessary to develop and maintain healthy spiritual communities.

Beyond this, I'm kind of in awe right now at how the public discussions and offering of letters like these are leading people to do the work of untangling old karmic knots. That Buddhist blogs are offering sites where people might spring board into healing and reconciliation from. Pretty amazing. May it continue to be so.

Sexism in the Sangha Scandals

I have felt disturbed by some aspect of the ongoing discussions, both within my sangha and also online, concerning the various Zen teacher scandals. Up until now, it was really just a feeling, some sense that something was off, but what that was wasn't very clear.

As I read through this letter from the eldest daughter of Maezumi Roshi, and the subsequent comments, suddenly it started to dawn on me: there is sexism going on here.

Kirsten Maezumi's letter details the painful fallout that occurred during and after an "affair" between Maezumi and Zen teacher Chozen Bays. This was before Bays was a teacher, but after Bays had gotten married, and become the Maezumi's family doctor. It's quite a messy tangle, one that really doesn't reflect the majority of cases where Zen teachers have treated students like sex objects as part of an abuse of power pattern.

What struck me about Ms. Maezumi's letter was her utter defense of Genpo Roshi as a teacher, coupled with a lack of defense of Chozen Bays as a teacher. While acknowledging that Genpo's repeated offensives were greatly harmful, she goes on to write quite glowingly about the future of Zen and Genpo's place in that.

Of course what Genpo Roshi did was wrong and caused a great deal of hurt and pain to his wife Stephanie, his children and the sangha.

Does this mean as punishment he should be cast out and not allowed to teach or be recognized as a senior Zen successor?

To do this is throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Genpo Roshi is a wonderful teacher and humanitarian, and I feel that his contributions to Zen in America and the raising of consciousness now and in the future are of great importance to continue on my father’s work and his own personal vision as an American teacher of Zen.

I think to deny what he can offer in the evolution of Zen in America would be a travesty.

On the other hand, Chozen Bays receives forgiveness, but no glowing account of her value as a Zen teacher. Even though Chozen has led peace missions to Japan to honor those killed by American atomic bombs, has done endless amounts of work around various spiritual forms of healing, and has co-led a growing sangha for over two decades, without the accompanied power abuse baggage since becoming a teacher, her value as a teacher to Ms. Maezumi is decidedly low. Certainly, this is a personal issue - that she's probably too close to the situation to offer anything more than forgiveness, but there's such an uneven sense of adoration for Genpo presented, especially since his offenses have impacted more lives in similar ways to what happened in Ms. Maezumi's family.

What's more interesting, though, are the comments that follow. At one point, a male commenter dismisses Ms. Maezumi as "delusional," never mind that she does raise some troubling questions about a relationship that involved multiple power line bending over each other (Zen teacher and family doctor). Moving beyond Ms. Maezumi, there are multiple arguments that display a decidedly sexist (in my opinion) approach to all of this.

One commenter, Mary Rosendale, writes the following:

Can we please get away from this idea that female practitioners are low-hanging fruit for any Zen teacher? It is sexist and demeaning to women. I think I know a fair number of Dharma sisters who are devoted to their teacher. Without exception, all of them have a strong moral compass, do their best to keep the precepts and do good for others. Kirsten reminds us that it takes two to tango and points out that the other willing partner in the relationship with her father broke more than one vow; she slept with a patient; slept with the father of other of her patients and consistently lied to a friend (and probably her husband) for 5 years. This is not a passing indiscretion. These are wilful and deliberate acts. Both consenual participants were responsible for the break-up of Maezumi’s family.

This comment is fascinating to me because Rosendale points out that sexism is at play and then goes on to use the "it takes two to tango" line, which denies the validity of other women's claims that what happened to them was abuse of power. Consider that in all the prominent cases, it has been male teachers sleeping with female students. And that unlike the Bays/Maezumi situation, most of these students have not had a corresponding power base (like being the family doctor) that they were coming from. Yet, the arguments that 1) it's always only been about sex and 2) that the sex was consensual are commonplace.

Beyond this post, there have been a fair number of calls for Zen students to take responsibility for themselves, to reclaim their power, etc. I support this, and believe that blind faith and idealization on the part of students have aided in teachers going wrong. However, let's consider the circumstances again. These calls for Zen students to basically grow up are coming as a result of scandals in which female students are the main victims. And yet, sanghas are not all women working with a male teacher. What about all those male students? Why is it taking numerous scandals where women have been the primary visible victims to get us to call for students to "grow up"?

I was a male student in my sangha under a teacher who crossed the power lines. As a relative newcomer, I didn't have enough insider knowledge or status to do a whole lot about our situation, but there were plenty of male practitioners who could have. We men, too, needed to grow up as students, and stop idealizing and/or blindly following our teacher. And this is true of the men in Genpo's sangha, and Shimano's sangha, and all the rest.

What it comes down to is that the male students of these broken sanghas are mostly invisible. Whatever mistakes they made, including ways they ignored or allow abusive behavior to go on, are also invisible for the most part. While at the same time, the women, especially those who were involved sexually with the teacher, are totally exposed.

So, even though calls for zen students to reclaim their power and responsibility are evenhanded in intent, I believe the appearance of the calls is directly tied to a stereotypical image of a female Zen student who is emotionally vulnerable, and idealizes her teacher.

In my view, it's important to note that these questionable at best gendered lenses are being used by both women and men. That despite all the efforts of numerous women and feminist-minded men in the broader Western Zen community, there are still unexamined patterns of sexism that I would argue are influencing who we consider to be "great teachers" and also how we treat those who have been in abusive situations.

If Genpo Roshi were a women with the same sordid track record, would there be so many people willing to defend his teaching, and offer that he's a "humanitarian" and that his "contributions" to Zen must be continued? Somehow I think not so much. And that should make all of us pause.

For those interested in learning more about the dynamics of power and sexual abuse in spiritual communities, check out Scott Edelstein's excellent book.