Regional and National Zen Institutions Revisited

The following is a post I wrote a little under two years ago. It got a lot of attention back then, and I believe the issues discussed in it continue to be on the hot plate so to speak. Locally, there has been a bit more cross-sangha connecting bubbling up over the past few years. Mostly organically, without any formal direction or focus behind it.

However, at our board retreat a few weeks ago, we decided that one of our focuses in the coming years will be to make more deliberate connections with our sister sanghas in the Twin Cities area. One potential long term outcome from this could be a collaborative body for sharing resources, helping address common problem issues systematically, and perhaps aiding individual sanghas with any major inter-sangha conflicts that arise.

Which fits in with the discussion that was had below. It's important to note, though, that one of the driving forces behind the posts cited below was a variety of sex scandals that have plagued Zen communities in recent decades. And furthermore, that the issue at Treeleaf sangha that arises was dealt with long ago.

I am actually more interested today in how neighboring Zen sanghas, and Buddhist sanghas in general, might collaborate instead of compete with each. How through sharing and expanding the base of wisdom, they might each become better communities.

So many of the discussions that happened in the wake of the Eido Roshi and Genpo scandals felt reactionary to me. People advocating for stronger national institutions - myself included - weren't thinking too much beyond sangha protection and addressing abuses. And those like Brad Warner, who rejected such organizations, were thinking mostly in terms of the restrictions and limitations.

There's got to be more to the story. I'd be interested in hearing about any cross-sangha collaborations that are currently going on. Or ways in which you believe such collaborations might be hindered. Your thoughts?



Time shift gears for a moment, and get back to the macro level issues. Brad Warner's blog often provides a lot of drama, which isn't so helpful. But the guy says some important stuff sometimes, even if it's perfectly useful material to disagree with. His most recent post has to do with another by Zen teacher James Ford, both of which address institutional structures in American Zen, spurred on by the recent resignation of Zen teacher Eido Shimano. There have been countless posts covering the details of the allegations against Shimano, so instead of getting into all of that, I'm going to focus in on the issue of oversight and large, national or even international institutional bodies.

James Ford advocates that here in the U.S., we need a stronger national institutional body to oversee the various Zen institutions that have developed over the past century or so.

Here I see the lack of larger institutions that oversee teachers and communities is a major problem. Not just about sex, but it is a good placeholder for all the complex issues of human relationships.

Ford goes on to point out that many Zen Centers don't have well developed policies and regulations for dealing with breaches of power within the sangha.

"At this point the only larger institutions to emerge that have ethical codes with teeth are the San Francisco Zen Center and the Kwan Um School of Zen, both institutions having experienced very rough times around sexual conduct of teachers pretty early on."

I'm not sure where exactly Ford is getting his information from about all of this. He very well could be right. I will say, though, that my own center, Clouds in Water doesn't fall into the groups Ford mentions, but does have a pretty rigorous structure for dealing with ethical violations, both of the student-teacher variety, and between members regardless of status. The development of this began long ago, but the "teeth" if you will, was added after our own teacher scandal situation, which resulted in the departure of our former leader. I can't imagine that we are the only other example, besides SFZC and Kwan Um that has developed healthy oversight mechanisms to serve their communities.

Back to the issue of a national oversight body, Brad Warner is totally against it.

I have to completely disagree. Because the Holy Roman Catholic Church is a gigantic institution with a very toothy ethical code and still sexual abuses of all kinds continue. Sure, when ethical abuses occur there are consequences. But only when the code is properly enforced by ethical people. And I’ve seen too many instances where that has broken down to believe that the simple existence of a big institution with an ethical code with teeth will always prevent abuses, or even prevent most abuses, or even prevent the worst abuses.

In the case of Zen, there is also something much more fundamental at stake, and that is the very existence of Zen itself. I don’t believe Zen can really be practiced at all unless its teachers are totally autonomous and not beholden to institutions.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I feel that Zen teachers are more like artists than like religious instructors. If you bind artists to institutions, you kill their ability to create art.

The interesting thing about all of this is that from what I have seen here locally, even the idea of getting Zen centers together nationally to work on these kinds of issues is kind of like herding cats. Here in the Twin Cities, we have nearly half a dozen heirs of Dainin Katagiri who lead Buddhist organizations. They all know each other well, having practiced together for years. And while they periodically meet to exchange ideas and support each other, working together on something like a co-operative oversight board for the Twin Cities just hasn't happened. There have been attempts at times to get something more collaborative to occur, but beyond the occasional dual sponsored visiting teacher event, it's really each organization for it's own.

And James Ford points out that the national American Zen Teachers Association "isn’t even a professional organization. It is basically a listserv and an annual gathering of peers without bylaws or, codes of conduct."

In addition to the AZTA, there is the North American office of the Sotoshu, which could be the kind of body that Ford is suggesting needs to have a stronger influence, but certainly doesn't act in the way the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy does.

In some ways, Brad's comparison between the Catholic church and Zen institutions isn't very helpful. However, the issues of power and sex abuse cases make it hard to not make such a comparison.

In fact, Ford himself makes a different comparison using the same two groups in this totally fascinating paragraph:

My rough analogy for this deconstruction is that we’ve shifted our understanding of the Zen teacher in a manner somewhat similar to the shift from a Roman Catholic understanding of its priests to an Anglican understanding of its priests. The myth of apostolic succession has been seen through and replaced with the understanding that it is a good, if imperfect symbol. The Zen teacher is a construct of medieval China and has been adapted in our own times to stand as a person with many years of training and authorization by another such within a broad community of practice. Whatever the titles (and I’m living proof they’re inflated), the reality is that among the Zen teachers who are mostly meditation teachers, there may be some genuine masters.

A large part of the kerfuffle going on over at the Treeleaf community seems be about this very issue. Is the teacher enlightened? Should we talk about enlightenment? If yes, how so? What level of authority should a teacher have, and how much does it depend on his/hers' level of understanding/attainment?

The student that was tossed out of the Treeleaf community directly challenged his teacher's understanding and experience repeatedly. He also pointed to his own experiences, suggesting that even if he's a student, his view shouldn't be dismissed as mere attachment. We could have a long debate about whether Chet, the student at Treeleaf, is being arrogant and ridiculous, but that's not really the point. I think what James Ford is trying to get at in his post is that because of the causes and conditions present here in the U.S. and in other nations outside of the Asian nations where Buddhism originated, the Zen teacher and the Zen institution functions differently, and needs different kinds of structures to address what's occurring.

At the same time, I can't help but thinking that Brad Warner's argument against national oversight bodies might have some validity to it.

Also, institutions tend to reflect the lowest common denominator of what their members understand as acceptable behavior. They are bound to come up with the most conservative definition possible. People who don’t agree that democracy is best often speak of democracy as the “tyranny of the masses.” And this is what happens with Zen institutions. It becomes more about what the greatest number of members think they want than what’s actually necessary for Zen teaching to occur. This can never be decided democratically.

Now, clearly Brad likes to be a "free agent" so to speak. He's got a bit of former Major League baseball player Curt Flood in him. That's not a bad thing, necessarily, but anyone looking at baseball these days would say that free agency has caused plenty of trouble, even if it has given players more freedom and much higher salaries.

However, I do think that whenever large institutions get heavily involved in anything, creativity and uniqueness of expression get challenged. And if you look at famous Zen teachers and students throughout history, there's an awful lot of creativity and uniqueness to be found, and also plenty of examples of free agent types who were shunned by the majority of people, but who's stories have lived on and inspired people hundreds of years after those who shunned them have died and disappeared completely. Mediocrity might make for a certain kind of longevity, but it doesn't inspire people to awaken to their true nature.

With that said, I still think a free for all isn't really helpful. The very forms of our practice - the chanting, bowing, zazen postures, etc. - provide a base to spring off of. They might not all be necessary for any given individual to awaken in this life, but they do seem akin to learning the scales in music. What this means in terms of providing leadership for Zen at a national level - I don't really know. For every James Ford advocating for strong national oversight, there are probably as many Brad Warners out there, even if they wish to deny any linkage with him.

For those of you in the broader Zen community, what do you think needs to be done, if anything, about ethical issues occurring in sanghas? Is it the job of each sangha? A regional or national body? Both? Neither?

And for those of you outside of the Zen community, what do you make of all of this?

Institutional Oversight of Zen Part Two

Algernon over at Notes from a Burning House continues the conversation about institutional oversight of Zen with his current post. It's a real barn burner of a post, and I'm interested to see what comes in the next few posts he's going to write about these issues. Here is the first half for you all to consider:

He was a Zen Master, and he wanted my girlfriend.

I am not certain that he wanted to fuck her. Maybe so. What is certain is that he wanted her to move across the country to live at his Zen Center, work there for him full-time; and he fixed her up with a young postulant monk who was also living there. She disclosed to me that he said things to her like, "One day, I will give you inka."

(Inka is when an authorized Zen teacher recognizes your maturity and authorizes you as a teacher. It's considered a big deal, and the desire to become a teacher is a common pitfall in developing a consistent lifelong practice. Using that desire to hold students in place and get them to do things for you is rather awful.)

During the couple of days where she disclosed to me her sexual relationship with this young monk and her plans to move to that Zen Center, she received phone calls and emails from the teacher encouraging her to make a clean break from our relationship, hurrying her along, manipulating her and using her obvious attraction to him to his advantage. It was a weird way to break up with somebody. In hindsight, the lady was clearly ready to move on anyway. It broke my heart at the time but that's how it is with young love. (The lady's life took quite a few turns after that and although we are not often in contact these days, she appears to have a wonderful, happy life with a terrific husband and a baby.)

A short while after this went down, I learned that this man got into some serious professional trouble, which suggests his abusive behavior was not limited to his work as a Zen teacher.

It has been well over ten years since that incident took place. I have not written about it and have rarely spoken about it, for the most pragmatic of reasons: this Zen teacher has a following, and he or his organization could likely sue me. Talking about it all requires me to omit details that could be used to identify the person or his organization.

One of the things I have found interesting is how many people believe that those involved in religious/spiritual communities should be "responsible adults" who are "in control" of their reactions and interactions in said communities. A few comments on my recent post about institutional oversight suggested this, and I've seen others saying similar things on various blogs, in commentaries, and on chat boards.

Let me unpack this a little further. Clearly, Buddhist teachings point each of us towards taking radical responsibility for our "body, speech, and mind." The precepts, or ethical teachings, are designed to train us to check our motivations, watch our actions, and review everything we are thinking and doing. Zazen, or meditation, is all about accepting everything as it is, without any wiggling whatsoever. In fact, on the surface, the whole works of Buddhism can look an awful lot like the political philosophy of personal responsibility, that is, if you ignore that we really aren't separate selves and that everything occurs within an interdependent context.

What does any of this have to do with Algernon's post?

Well, first, when you look at the situation, there's a tendency to leap to hand full of conclusions. The teacher is a jackass would be one. Another might be that the students involved were naive and earned the suffering they incurred because they acted stupidly. A third blunt response might be something like this is just like those Catholic priests, and shows why we should just say fuck it to religion completely.

Those are nice anger rails, but they are cardboard cutouts when it comes to working with what happened.

What happened in Algernon's post, or at my zen center, or at San Francisco Zen Center, or any number of other places is complicated, messy, and involves both individual and collective responsibility.

Do you hear that people! Both individual and collective responsibility.

And you know what, it's bigger than that even. Just as parents pass down certain traits and habits to their children, and had their own set of traits and habits passed down from their parents, so, too, do communities of people - hell, entire cultural groups and nations even - pass down certain traits and habits to the next generation. Now, each person has the opportunity to work with that material, but we're not the "free agents" we think we are.

So, the history of Zen communities, for example, plays into what is happening today. How could it not. And yet, I still find it pretty easy to locate people who will basically say "All of that is fucking irrelevant! You either take responsibility for everything in your life, or you're fooling yourself."

Sounds a lot like Glenn Beck Buddhism if you ask me.

Towards the end of Algernon's post, he writes:

In the west, this history [of Zen center scandals] gives rise to a natural question: is there a need for a large institution to hold Zen teachers accountable for actions like this? Can we leave this to the organizations that support a particular teacher's work? Or should the various schools and traditions band together and make one large institution that is empowered to act when a teacher gets weird?

This is something we are good at: making institutions and conducting hearings.

And power and sex abuse scandals continue to occur despite those institutions and hearings, which shouldn't be a surprise.

This is what I find pretty fascinating about all of this, as a member of the Zen community. For people who spend hours and hours investigating our individual minds, and seeing how they work in ways many others never learn, we suck at understanding group dynamics. Many of us sit in silence together day after day, or week after week, and yet when something explodes in our community, be it a sex scandal, or a simple argument over a teaching, too many of us act shocked, confused, or even appalled that these things are occurring. And how often does one of these explosions turn into an effort to locate the perpetrators, so the group can assign blame, and "move on" with it's calm, happy day.

I want to be very clear. The teacher in Algernon's story, as it is written, abused his power and should have been held responsible for that abuse of power. It sounds like life brought that responsibility to his doorstep in a different form.

However, in writing what I did above, I'm pointing to the problem inherent in either arguing that it's all personal responsibility or it's all institutional/systemic responsibility. Clinging to either side is simply being lost in dualism.

This is one of the issues I see in creating a large institution to deal with "bad Zen teachers" and whatnot. In fact, it's one of the problems I feel is almost inherent in legal systems themselves - you end up abstracting actions and intentions that occur within a particular context. And let's face it: individuals get away with doing some pretty awful things because the legal system doesn't have a law to address the exact particulars of what they did. (I'm not suggesting that we should do away with laws, or get rid of all large institutions, but it's important to see the potential limitations of such things.)

On the other hand, Brad Warner's suggestion that Zen teachers should be treated like individual "artists" fails to take into account the impact said teacher can have on students and/or followers. And the calls for people who experience harm at the hands of spiritual leaders to buck up and take responsibility for their own safety and well-being are not only pretty callous, but also suggest that people have a kind of freedom that is rarely, if ever, possible. The enlightened Siddhartha still had to deal intimately with clan warfare, corrupt political leaders, gender issues within the original sangha, and possibly even being poisoned at the end of his life. All of those issues, and others, shaped not only his own life, but also the ways in which he taught the first sangha, and thus the teachings that were handed down to us. In fact, the long lists of monastic precepts that have come down to us are probably a direct result of the group dynamics that played out in that original sangha at that particular time and place. Had Buddhism developed in another place at another time, I'd bet that those lists would look at least somewhat different.

So, this long post is pointing to a few things.

First, I think taking a long, hard look at the group dynamics manifesting in Zen centers today probably would be worth doing, regardless of whether it ends up reducing the number of power abuse scandals. Each community could do this and perhaps national surveys of such issues could be conducted.

Second, even though all of us must take radical responsibility for our lives, and to drop of the tendency to blame others for our lot in life - we must also recognize that there ARE group dynamics at play in everything as well. Katagiri Roshi called it the total dynamic functioning of the universe, this interplay of the individual and collective, the relative and absolute.

And finally, I'm convinced that there really aren't any easy answers to dealing with power breaches in spiritual communities. Because if there were easy answers, we'd already have figured them out, and put them in place.

Institutional Oversight of Zen

Time shift gears for a moment, and get back to the macro level issues. Brad Warner's blog often provides a lot of drama, which isn't so helpful. But the guy says some important stuff sometimes, even if it's perfectly useful material to disagree with. His most recent post has to do with another by Zen teacher James Ford, both of which address institutional structures in American Zen, spurred on by the recent resignation of Zen teacher Eido Shimano. There have been countless posts covering the details of the allegations against Shimano, so instead of getting into all of that, I'm going to focus in on the issue of oversight and large, national or even international institutional bodies.

James Ford advocates that here in the U.S., we need a stronger national institutional body to oversee the various Zen institutions that have developed over the past century or so.

Here I see the lack of larger institutions that oversee teachers and communities is a major problem. Not just about sex, but it is a good placeholder for all the complex issues of human relationships.

Ford goes on to point out that many Zen Centers don't have well developed policies and regulations for dealing with breaches of power within the sangha.

"At this point the only larger institutions to emerge that have ethical codes with teeth are the San Francisco Zen Center and the Kwan Um School of Zen, both institutions having experienced very rough times around sexual conduct of teachers pretty early on."

I'm not sure where exactly Ford is getting his information from about all of this. He very well could be right. I will say, though, that my own center, Clouds in Water doesn't fall into the groups Ford mentions, but does have a pretty rigorous structure for dealing with ethical violations, both of the student-teacher variety, and between members regardless of status. The development of this began long ago, but the "teeth" if you will, was added after our own teacher scandal situation, which resulted in the departure of our former leader. I can't imagine that we are the only other example, besides SFZC and Kwan Um that has developed healthy oversight mechanisms to serve their communities.

Back to the issue of a national oversight body, Brad Warner is totally against it.

I have to completely disagree. Because the Holy Roman Catholic Church is a gigantic institution with a very toothy ethical code and still sexual abuses of all kinds continue. Sure, when ethical abuses occur there are consequences. But only when the code is properly enforced by ethical people. And I’ve seen too many instances where that has broken down to believe that the simple existence of a big institution with an ethical code with teeth will always prevent abuses, or even prevent most abuses, or even prevent the worst abuses.

In the case of Zen, there is also something much more fundamental at stake, and that is the very existence of Zen itself. I don’t believe Zen can really be practiced at all unless its teachers are totally autonomous and not beholden to institutions.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I feel that Zen teachers are more like artists than like religious instructors. If you bind artists to institutions, you kill their ability to create art.

The interesting thing about all of this is that from what I have seen here locally, even the idea of getting Zen centers together nationally to work on these kinds of issues is kind of like herding cats. Here in the Twin Cities, we have nearly half a dozen heirs of Dainin Katagiri who lead Buddhist organizations. They all know each other well, having practiced together for years. And while they periodically meet to exchange ideas and support each other, working together on something like a co-operative oversight board for the Twin Cities just hasn't happened. There have been attempts at times to get something more collaborative to occur, but beyond the occasional dual sponsored visiting teacher event, it's really each organization for it's own.

And James Ford points out that the national American Zen Teachers Association "isn’t even a professional organization. It is basically a listserv and an annual gathering of peers without bylaws or, codes of conduct."

In addition to the AZTA, there is the North American office of the Sotoshu, which could be the kind of body that Ford is suggesting needs to have a stronger influence, but certainly doesn't act in the way the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy does.

In some ways, Brad's comparison between the Catholic church and Zen institutions isn't very helpful. However, the issues of power and sex abuse cases make it hard to not make such a comparison.

In fact, Ford himself makes a different comparison using the same two groups in this totally fascinating paragraph:

My rough analogy for this deconstruction is that we’ve shifted our understanding of the Zen teacher in a manner somewhat similar to the shift from a Roman Catholic understanding of its priests to an Anglican understanding of its priests. The myth of apostolic succession has been seen through and replaced with the understanding that it is a good, if imperfect symbol. The Zen teacher is a construct of medieval China and has been adapted in our own times to stand as a person with many years of training and authorization by another such within a broad community of practice. Whatever the titles (and I’m living proof they’re inflated), the reality is that among the Zen teachers who are mostly meditation teachers, there may be some genuine masters.

A large part of the kerfuffle going on over at the Treeleaf community seems be about this very issue. Is the teacher enlightened? Should we talk about enlightenment? If yes, how so? What level of authority should a teacher have, and how much does it depend on his/hers' level of understanding/attainment?

The student that was tossed out of the Treeleaf community directly challenged his teacher's understanding and experience repeatedly. He also pointed to his own experiences, suggesting that even if he's a student, his view shouldn't be dismissed as mere attachment. We could have a long debate about whether Chet, the student at Treeleaf, is being arrogant and ridiculous, but that's not really the point. I think what James Ford is trying to get at in his post is that because of the causes and conditions present here in the U.S. and in other nations outside of the Asian nations where Buddhism originated, the Zen teacher and the Zen institution functions differently, and needs different kinds of structures to address what's occurring.

At the same time, I can't help but thinking that Brad Warner's argument against national oversight bodies might have some validity to it.

Also, institutions tend to reflect the lowest common denominator of what their members understand as acceptable behavior. They are bound to come up with the most conservative definition possible. People who don’t agree that democracy is best often speak of democracy as the “tyranny of the masses.” And this is what happens with Zen institutions. It becomes more about what the greatest number of members think they want than what’s actually necessary for Zen teaching to occur. This can never be decided democratically.

Now, clearly Brad likes to be a "free agent" so to speak. He's got a bit of former Major League baseball player Curt Flood in him. That's not a bad thing, necessarily, but anyone looking at baseball these days would say that free agency has caused plenty of trouble, even if it has given players more freedom and much higher salaries.

However, I do think that whenever large institutions get heavily involved in anything, creativity and uniqueness of expression get challenged. And if you look at famous Zen teachers and students throughout history, there's an awful lot of creativity and uniqueness to be found, and also plenty of examples of free agent types who were shunned by the majority of people, but who's stories have lived on and inspired people hundreds of years after those who shunned them have died and disappeared completely. Mediocrity might make for a certain kind of longevity, but it doesn't inspire people to awaken to their true nature.

With that said, I still think a free for all isn't really helpful. The very forms of our practice - the chanting, bowing, zazen postures, etc. - provide a base to spring off of. They might not all be necessary for any given individual to awaken in this life, but they do seem akin to learning the scales in music. What this means in terms of providing leadership for Zen at a national level - I don't really know. For every James Ford advocating for strong national oversight, there are probably as many Brad Warners out there, even if they wish to deny any linkage with him.

For those of you in the broader Zen community, what do you think needs to be done, if anything, about ethical issues occurring in sanghas? Is it the job of each sangha? A regional or national body? Both? Neither?

And for those of you outside of the Zen community, what do you make of all of this?