Deja' vu

A recent announcement from Zen Mountain Monastery, and a response from Brad Warner.

In my experience, these types of announcements are very carefully crafted as a public statement, and there may be much more going on underneath we don't know about.  Our own situation at Shasta had various levels of transparency, from Master to Novice to lay minister to lay person. 

Again, another human being doing human things and caught in the structure of an antiquated zen tradition.   

I see some serious red flags with Mr. Warner's take on it, although I do see his points.  Not sure I would want to practice with an organization though that thinks these kinds of things are fine and just turn the other cheek and do your own training.  Ultimately yes, but I believe we are practicing here now, not Japan, and Zen needs to be understood in its current context. 

Any thoughts from others on the attached?

http://zmm.mro.org/ryushin-sensei-steps-down/

http://hardcorezen.info/the-scarlet-letter-z-for-zen/3269

Posting the full text here, for the record and easier to read:

Ryushin Sensei Steps Down as Abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery

Posted on January 26, 2015

Statement from Ryushin Sensei
Dear Sangha,

I have been asked by Shugen Sensei to permanently step down as the abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery, and take six months leave from my responsibilities as a teacher in the Mountains and Rivers Order. I completely agree with his request, will follow it, and this will become effective as of Sunday, January 25^th.

It is my transgression against the vows and rules of the Order that are the reason for these actions. Over the last six months, I formed an intimate relationship with someone outside our sangha, betraying Hojin Osho*, not being honest and forthright with her, and breaking our spiritual union vows and ending our marriage. This also violates my monastic vow of stability, and goes against the ethical guidelines that are to be observed by a teacher in our Order. Most importantly, I have caused Hojin a tremendous amount of pain with my self-centered and unilateral decisions to pursue this new relationship. These actions are also a betrayal of your trust in me.

It is also important for you to know that since beginning of 2014, I have actively studied and practiced the shamanic traditions and religions as part of my process of self-exploration. During that time I have come to appreciate significant aspects of my personality and history that need much work of clarification so I can gain more intimacy with myself and possibly be more loving and caring as a human being, and effective as a teacher. Incorporating the discoveries of these traditions into my dharma teachings, without doing more systematic exploration was irresponsible and might have caused some confusion, and may make people have doubt in the dharma.

It is necessary that I leave so that Hojin can have the space to take care of herself without needing to deal with my presence, for Shugen Sensei to attend to the needs of the sangha, for you to have time to feel deeply your responses to these changes and circumstances, for me to have time to gain fuller appreciation of the pain I have caused, to grieve and to delve deeper into seeing what is the authentic expression that all these teaching offer me, and for all of us to see how this challenge can be an opportunity for deepening our understanding of the dharma, and our capacity to hold ourselves and each other in more loving and nurturing embrace.

I am sorry for causing you all this pain, confusion and the demand for work this requires of everybody. I am sorry for my lapse in honesty, transparency and openness. Amidst all this, I love you all as I seek ways to better express that. Please continue with your practices and commitment to exhaustively explore this amazing gift of your life for the benefit of all beings.

In the dharma,

Ryushin Sensei
*Hojin Osho was Ryushin Sensei’s partner of many years.
 
Statement from Shugen Sensei
January 26, 2015

On January 24^th Ryushin Sensei stepped down as Abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery. He did this at my request, as well as from his own recognition that this was a necessary action both for the sangha and himself. (Please read his statement above to hear his own words regarding this.) This is a period of challenge and profound sadness for myself and our sangha, one that asks from each of us patience, understanding and honesty.

Ryushin’s infidelity – his betrayal of Hojin, his intimate partner, and thus his marriage and monastic vows – is a most serious breach for a person in a position of spiritual and ethical authority and leadership. I also feel that his consuming involvement in shamanic traditions, and how this has influenced his recent teachings and behavior has led to confusion and disruption within the sangha. The whole purpose of our existence as a Buddhist practicing community is to provide a clear and healthy environment in which to discover, practice and have our lives transformed by this most profound wisdom tradition that is buddhadharma. As the Head of the Order, I am responsible to ensure that a proper environment exists to serve students sincerely seeking the particular pathways to realization and actualization provided by Buddhism. It is within such reflections and convictions that I have asked Ryushin to cease his teaching and administrative responsibilities.

Most of our formal students gathered during the weekend of January 23-25 to have Ryushin’s actions disclosed; to give everyone an opportunity to address him directly – face to face and publicly – with questions so they could better understand the facts of his transgressions; and to have the opportunity to express how this is impacting them honestly and openly. This also allowed Hoijn Osho to receive the tremendous love and support of the sangha during this most difficult period in her life. It also gave me an opportunity to speak about how our sangha will continue in the wake of these events. This weekend was an extraordinarily painful and empowering moment for our community, a time when the invaluable qualities of the Sangha were abundantly present and demonstrating how from within such a rupture we can all take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, and realize the strength and wisdom of the teachings and practices that we have, most fortunately, discovered in our lives.

Ryushin has made clear in his statement his purpose over the next six months during which he will be absent from the sangha. It is my hope and deepest wish, that he use this time to reflect deeply on his past and present actions and their effects on the many people who love him so deeply. I hope that he rediscovers and reclaims a profound appreciation for buddhadharma and this sangha, and gains new appreciation and reverence for this profound tradition of which he is a lineage holder.

As the head of the Mountains and Rivers Order and the abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery and the Zen Center of NYC, I am profoundly sorry for any pain these recent and still unfolding events have and may cause you. My deepest sadness, more even than the loss from our sangha of my beloved dharma brother and practicing companion for so many years, is that these events might weaken your own faith in Buddhist teachings and in your own practice. Please trust in your practice and all the good that you have seen come into your life through your own studies. I hope you can and will continue with renewed – and even strengthened – faith and conviction.

Nine Bows,
Shugen Sensei

and Brad Warner's response....  I am posting this in the spirit of sharing differing opinions.  He makes some good points, but he loves being the bomb throwing gadfly.....

The Scarlet Letter “Z” for “Zen”
Published by Brad on January 28, 2015 

Ryushin Sensei

I find it odd that I am sitting here at my kitchen table on a sunny Wednesday morning in Los Angeles working very hard to compose a response to something that, to me, hardly even merits a casual glance.

A guy who calls himself Ryushin Sensei has stepped down as abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery because he was having an extra-marital affair. The news is on the Lion’s Roar website if you want to read it. My initial response to this story, when people started forwarding it to me on Facebook and what-not was, fine, whatever. I don’t know this Ryushin Sensei fellow or his wife and I don’t know whoever he was having an affair with. I’m not part of their sangha. It’s really none of my business.

Then I started seeing this news get shared and commented on and shared again and commented on some more… That’s when I started trying to figure out if I could understand what the fuss was about.

We have a statement by someone who calls him or herself Shugen Sensei, who carries the title “head of the Mountains and Rivers Order” who says, “Ryushin’s infidelity – his betrayal of… his intimate partner, and thus his marriage and monastic vows – is a most serious breach for a person in a position of spiritual and ethical authority and leadership.”

And we have a statement by Ryushin Sensei in which he says, “Over the last six months, I formed an intimate relationship with someone outside our sangha, betraying Hojin [Ryushin Sensei's partner], not being honest and forthright with her, and breaking our spiritual union vows and ending our marriage… These actions are also a betrayal of your trust in me.”

Maybe I’m the weirdo here. Maybe I’m just wired differently from nearly everybody else. I will accept that as a possibility.

Yet I am not  certain I can understand what a “position of spiritual and ethical authority and leadership” actually is. Why is it we need to be lead by people in positions of authority when it comes to spirituality and ethics? Why is this stated in such a way that it appears to be beyond questioning?

I’ll see if I can explain a little of my own reaction. To pick just one item, even in spite of Ryushin’s comments, I don’t see any reason to be completely certain this wasn’t a case in which he and his partner had an open relationship which was discovered by the members of the community and found to be unacceptable to them. It would not be the first time someone has lied about the nature of their sexual relationships in order to save the myth of the heteronormative monogamy. For that reason among many others, I don’t feel any need to rush to conclusions.

I do see a few things going on here that I’m not sure too many others are seeing. For one thing, demanding Ryushin Sensei to step down from his position is a very Christian and very American response. It is impossible for me to imagine a married Japanese temple abbot being asked to step down from his post following the discovery of an extra-marital affair.

I am not saying the Japanese are right and the Americans are wrong. But to me, it’s sort of like when there was all that furor over Bill Clinton getting a blow job from his intern. Everyone in the United States was ripping their own hair out. I was in Japan when that was going on and my friends over there found the American reaction mostly weird and funny. Like that, this is also a culturally based reaction. I think it’s useful to understand that.

I get that it’s probably best for Mr. Ryushin to step down from his post. It’s probably even best for this Shugen person to demand he do that. However, this is not because of some Universal Truth out there somewhere in the vastness of space that says that someone who commits adultery cannot be trusted to teach people how to sit and stare at walls or to handle the administrative duties necessary to keep a Zen center running. Nor is it best because someone who has committed adultery can never counsel people about the difficulties that occur in their practice. That would be absurd.

It’s best because so many people are freaking the [banned term] out and it’s good to try to get people to stop freaking the [banned term] out — although clearly people are still freaking the [banned term] out anyway. Personally, if you want me to freak out over something, you’re gonna have to give me a more compelling reason than this.

If I had found out one of my teachers had had an extra-marital affair I can’t imagine it would bother me even a tenth as much as this news seems to be bothering people who didn’t even know anyone involved. It would be like finding out my guitar teacher had an affair. Fine. Now show me how to do that thing Jimi Hendrix does with the wah-wah pedal in the middle of Voodoo Child (Slight Return). It’s difficult for me to see the relevance.

I guess maybe the problem is ethics. A Zen teacher is supposed to be someone who has taken a vow to uphold a certain ethical code. This same set of vows is generally also taken by that teacher’s students as well. In fact, it is a common practice at Zen temples for everyone to gather once a month and publicly re-take those vows as a group — teachers and students all chant them in unison.

My best guess is that people are looking for someone to follow. They want to be lead. They want to be sheep following a shepherd, just like it says in the New Testament. A shepherd leadeth his sheep to lie down in green pastures. He scares away the wolves. He shows the sheep where the food and the water is and keeps them from going into dangerous places.

More importantly, the shepherd is a different kind of animal from the sheep. You wouldn’t want a fellow sheep to be your shepherd. And we certainly don’t want to have to be our own shepherds!

Perhaps my difficulty is that I have never seen things this way. I never saw my Zen teachers as shepherds whose duty it was to provide an example of moral perfection and to protect me from harm. I always saw them as fellow travelers on what was a difficult and dangerous journey. I figured they had just a little bit more understanding of the terrain than I did. But I never demanded that they be free of error or unable to make mistakes. Expecting anyone to be like that would be to believe in a kind of person that clearly does not exist. It would be stupid.

I get that a teacher is different from a student. But I tend to look at this from the literal meaning of that much beloved Japanese word sensei. The two Chinese characters used to spell that word are 先生. The character 先 means “previous” or “before.” The character 生 means “born” or “alive.” A sensei is not a different sort of creature from you, she is a creature like you who has had more experience at whatever it is you’re trying to learn from her.

If you want to get your undergarments in a knot about things like this story, there’s not much I can do to stop you. I just thought I’d take a moment to express that there may be a different way to respond.

FYI - there are extensive blog comments after Mr. Warner's post, which were also revealing.  Here is the link again if you are interested....

http://hardcorezen.info/the-scarlet-letter-z-for-zen/3269

This is from the MRO's rules of conduct... and was posted on Brad Warner's discussion board:

“C. Ordained Teachers and Priests should adhere to the MRO Monastic Rule of Stability. This means to live a solitary life (i.e. without an intimate or sexual partner) or to be in a committed, monogamous relationship. In both cases, all MRO teachers and priests (ordained and lay) should not engage in any explicit or secretive communication or action with a student or trainee which has the intent—or gives the appearance—of initiating some type of sexual encounter or intimate relationship.

If a Teacher who is not in an intimate relationship wishes to initiate an intimate relationship with another person, they may not do so with any active formal student or practitioner within the Order. They may, however, initiate an intimate relationship with a person outside the practicing MRO sangha. In this case, they should be open and honest with the sangha about their relationship. An exception to this rule would be if both parties formed a relationship as practicing students (i.e. were equals within the MRO training), and consequently one of them completed his or her training and became an authorized Teacher or Priest.

A teacher who receives sexual advances from a trainee is obligated to directly and unambiguously tell him or her that such actions are detrimental to the student’s spiritual training and will not be allowed. The teacher should also make a written, dated note outlining the advance, which should be stored confidentially in the Training Office. If the student is unable or unwilling to stop such actions, they should be directed to work with another MRO teacher or asked to discontinue their training within the MRO.Any student who feels a teacher is misusing sexuality should follow the Grievance Procedure outlined below.”

http://zmm.mro.org/about/ethical-guidelines/

@H Enida

I didn't see Brad saying that Ryushin Sensei's mistakes were OK.
..just that the soap opera drama it was instigating was an indulgence of an attachment (to the teacher) that should also be faced.

I think Brad is all over the place, makes some good points, others I think are confused and off-base, and we see in many comments that this is an "American issue" - in Japan or Europe, no one would care if the head of a Zen group has an affair.... ignoring many issues that are at the heart of this brouhaha....   more later, but this is getting tedious.... Zen has a very dim future in this country......

先生 in Chinese just means "Mister" (with the exception that it can occasionally be used for a distinguished woman)
老师 which in Japanese reads "Roshi" just means "teacher" in Chinese, anyone is a 老师 when they are teaching someone else, I can be your 老师 in one subject and you can be my 老师 in another. Actors are also addressed as 老师

Of course Japanese meanings of words have diverged from the Chinese meanings so you can not draw any conclusions from the Chinese characters as to the Japanese meanings, but in general when two characters are combined it's pretty dodgy to do what the gentleman quoted above does and draw a conclusion as to the meaning of the composite word from the meanings of the individual characters. That certainly doesn't work in Chinese, anyway.

Every episode like what just happened at MRO could teach a lot if people are willing to open and learn a lot... and really look at the roots and shadows of their institution, their assumptions, their lineage, and so on.  Really look and not just fall into the "bad apple" syndrome.  OBC / Shasta was and likely continues to be wholly unwilling to look beyond Eko as a bad apple and certain limited aspects of their denial in dealing with Eko.  Looking at Kennett and her stuff, that's off the table.  So if they can't look there, they can't really look anywhere, and so institutionally, they remain blind and bound hand and foot in their iron bubble. 

Also, as we know, it is never just that the head person had a sexual affair by itself.  This kind of thing almost always involves layers of deception, scheming, hiding, lying, rationalizing, denial.... Now - all of this could be grist for the mill - all the aspects of what happened can become the koans of everyday life - but most organizations, their devotees and board members -  don't see it that way.  Get rid of the "bad guy" - bring the lawyers in quickly to make sure no one sues - and restate your ethics policies - which didn't work in the first place.  Something much deeper or more systemic is going on when so many Zen teacher and leaders are and have fallen prey to their own self-delusion and grandiosity and are being dragged around by their own needs at the expense of compassion, empathy, and honesty.

Who do they think they are and what do they imagine they are doing?  They all think they are far more enlightened than they are - until the jig is up, they are caught, somehow it all comes out, and it is rather obvious, painful, embarrassing and even goofy.  It doesn't matter that much, according to Brad Warner.  Really?  It does matter if you want to have a healthy, honest, sustainable community.  If you want to have some fun at the expense of others and play dress-up Zen master, then go for it until it all falls apart and then take the money and run.  Or continue to maintain it's all some great Zen teaching and skillful means and you are beyond those precepts anyway - and likely you will find some gullible folks to go along with this game, this enchantment, this myth-fantasy. 

I posted in another place on this board the story of the western swami who had sex with 40 of his female students, asserting that it was all tantra and goddess teaching and that the secrecy, the deception was an important part of the practice.  This shows you that it is not that hard to create a distortion field where some people will believe anything at all.  Anything.  Kennett did that.  Sasaki did that.  And there are of course much bigger examples - Rev. Moon, L.Ron Hubbard, the Mormons. Now back to this western swam - of course, soon everyone found out about all the sex and his scene is all falling apart. 

The truth shall set you free - but there is no promise that it won't be painful to wake up from the child dream.  What was I thinking?  Well, actually you weren't thinking.  You shut down your rational mind.  Yes, you were told to do it and you went along with it.  You were enchanted.  You got seduced by this great spiritual story and that blinded you to clear seeing and adulthood.  Now what is waking up?  and what does it mean to be a spiritual adult that can say NO - someone who can question and challenge and demand accountability.  What is that like?  And do you want it.. or do you want to find another guru that will sell you mud by the river?

As the head of a community where people are living together, making various commitments and vows, promises, your behavior is no longer strictly private.  As the master/abbot, you are seen, assumed to be some version of the living embodiment of the teachings.  Were you picked at random?  Weren't you chosen because of some wisdom or attainment or accomplishment?  Don't you have certificates, pieces of paper or silk that anoint you?  Didn't you receive the official sanction and transmission?  Don't people believe that you can take them to the top of enlightenment mountain - that you know the path, live the path?  People hang on your every word, so they assume you have some insight and knowledge that is above theirs, even way about theirs.  You have a title, you sit on a throne, you wear gold brocade, you are listened to and obeyed, people are bowing down to you all the time.  Wow!  People come to you for all the answers, so you must have all the answers.  So with this comes responsibility and some accountability?  You give people the precepts, you ask them to make other commitments and follow various rules, you discipline people who screw up.  You admonish them to train harder and be more dedicated and focused.  So are you above them in this regard?  Openly so?  Do you say, I don't have to follow these rules and precepts because I am special?  Or is this the kind of community where all the rules are spoken and then casually broken?  Or do you pretend?  To be wiser than you are?  To be holier than you are? To be much more Zen than you are?  What's authentic / real and what's play acting or some kind of Zen theater?  If you dress up like this - in these robes - and you have a title - and you sit on this throne - and you can say or do anything and no one will say NO - then you must be THIS!!  How could it be otherwise?  It feels so great and special and warm.  You are adored.  Everyone wants to be you.  And since you are THIS, then everything you say or do, well that must be ZEN, not ordinary, not common.  You are THIS.  What you do, whatever you do, that's THIS ZEN.  How wonderful for you.  Maybe good for those around you, maybe not -- but who cares?  You don't care.  Caring is common and You are not common.  Other people's feelings, reactions - not your problem.  Their feelings and thoughts are irrelevant.  Just all their koan, their resistance - their blocks.  They don't like what you do or how you behave, shut up, bow or get out of here.  They are not special, but you are.  They are not enlightenment, you are.  If they have doubts, that their problem as they wander in the fog and as you sit at the top of the mountain.

Go Josh! Your last comment is the BEST EVER!

I second Diana's endorsement of Josh's comments as the best ever. And there is a universal truth to what Josh is saying. We all like to think we are "special" and that "special" rules apply to us. You don't have to be a pseudo-Zen master to think you sit on top of some mountain, whether the mountain is Important-Job, Lots-of-Burdens-That-Other-People-Don't-Have, being Rich, being Poor, being White, or some other status that gives the delusion of specialness.

http://an-olive-branch.org/


     Attached is a website that is sponsoring an ethics webinar put on by Olive Branch, to help Buddhist churches organize in a way that provides ethical guidelines and recourse for breaches of ethical boundaries.  It looks like Olive Branch is trying to do good work here. 

 
    An upcoming webinar features an attorney who counsels non-profit religious organizations and their Boards/Trustees.  It seems to me that if an institution sets up protections for itself from legal liability by instituting ethical guidelines, it stands to reason that individual practitioners would have protection as a result.  A win-win proposition as far as I can tell.  Many of the Abbey monks know Kyoki Roberts who is sponsoring this series. 


     I wonder if anyone from the OBC is participating in any of these webinars........

H Enida wrote:

 It seems to me that if an institution sets up protections for itself from legal liability by instituting ethical guidelines, it stands to reason that individual practitioners would have protection as a result.  A win-win proposition as far as I can tell

Surely a code a code of ethics must primararily be set up to protect the users of the institution and the general public, NOT primararily to protect the institution. Shasta had a set of ethical rules before the recent Eko debacle. They seem to have been primarily used to hide behind and protect the hierarchy. Ethical guidelines need to be set up to control the organisation and to protect those interacting with it. But this in itself is not enough, as we have often seen rules and guidelines however worthy are often flouted and ignored and quibbled over by the very groups within the organisation that have been set up to enforce them. Look at the Faith Trust report on Shasta, and many other examples that Josh and others have brought to our attention. If we want to call a halt to abuse, or at the very least make it more difficult to hide, then firstly ethics committees need a good proportion of independent members drawn from outside the organisation and its milieu as well as members drawn from all parts of the organisation. And secondly, as intimated in the Faith Trust report on Shasta, the organisation needs to be externally audited at regular intervals for compliance with its own ethical guidelines and rules, with a clear, easy, and safe method for those within the organisation to report failings directly to the auditors without comeback from within. It seems to me that anything less, however worthy it may start out, can slowly metamorphise into whitewash.

Codes of ethics... of course, organizations need to have that.. legally speaking.  And the specifics are both supposed to protect members, but also written by lawyers to create a system that provides some cover for the organization in the event of legal action.  But codes of ethics are list of rules and remedies and as we know, us human being, when the rules become burdensome, we find ways to get around the rules, reinterpret them or break them in secrecy and silence. So beyond an ethics code, for sustainable and beneficial spiritual communities, members need to create cultures of honestly, accountability, and transparency.   Not easy to do.  Because there are so many belief systems and assumptions that go unquestioned that create these distortion fields.  The most obvious one for guru/master based communities like Zen groups and various ashrams - is how enlightened their leader is and what all that means.  That one aspect alone creates serious challenges that will undermine any ethic system since that person is often unaccountable, you can't challenge him/her, is seen as super-human, and so on.

When I was at Shasta, there was no code of ethics I don't think.  Maybe a few things were written down.  The code there was Kennett's wishes and the basic hierarchy.  What she said was right, don't upset her because there would be negative consequences, so there was only one master rule.  Bow to Kennett.  If there had been a code that let's say specifically addressed sexual behavior or physical abuse, well she would have been in compliance with the code.  Codes rarely talk about emotional abuse, bullying, self-glorification, etc.  Those things are a too big and complex to write down in a simple rule.  But codes or no codes, she created a seriously toxic and dysfunctional personality cult.

The celibate monastic approach to Buddhism is a very small scene these days in the West - especially with the huge rise in mindfulness.  Over the decades, that became so much less true.  And celibacy, as we have seen over and over again, mostly does not work.  Maybe for some tiny percent of people it is a powerful practice, but not for most. For many people, it just leads to suppression and sadness. It mostly never worked in Japan.  Even before they forced monks to marry, for five hundred years, temple priests had "secret" temple wives.  Most of them. And kids who inherited the temples. And in Tibet, many lamas had girl friends / wives and in the big monasteries, likely that various forms of gay sex was and is rampant. They did not care about any rules or they found ways to get around them, to justify their actions, so officially they weren't breaking the rules.  So rules around celibacy are often ignored in public or private.  Why should anyone be shocked when this doesn't work? 

A truly creative approach to dealing with one's desires and feelings - that would be radical.  Finding ways to bring everything to the path... to make every part of your life part of your spiritual evolution - that's more interesting.  But that requires a level of honesty and adulthood and self-awareness that most organizations do not have. So instead, rules work sometimes and other times not.  And when they don't, there is secrecy, deceit, institutional blindness, guilt, scandal and all the rest.  The shadow side - will show itself with certainty. Working creatively with our bodies, with our animal-nature, with our desires and energies - that's far more exciting and difficult then pretending we are angels and demonizing ourselves and others when we fall short.  end of thought.

I hope you will write a book about all this stuff, Josh, because you have such clear insights into the pitfalls of this type of monastic practice. Books on Zen are like legs on a snake and all that but all the same a bit of rational thought can come in handy from time to time.

                The online workshop looks to be about developing ethics in relation to the formation of effective and autonomous governing/oversight boards (comprised of ordained and lay people) which would attempt to ameliorate some of the concerns that have been made here.  The obvious problem is the members of the institution must desire to embrace transformation…by aspiring to seeing its own weaknesses and then changing according to conditions.

 

                When I spoke with the head of the Order some time back about implementing the recommendations of the Faith Trust Institute, his response was that they would interfere with later aspects of training.  In other words, it would take a complete reworking of the master-disciple paradigm, which was out of the question.

 

                By leaving the formation as it is, not only are the individuals who participate in the institution still highly vulnerable to similar abuse because nothing has really changed, but the church itself remains open to misuse and exploitation (both from the inside and out), which leaves the institution financially vulnerable.  Financial abuse may not be the most morally significant consideration but, if you are someone who donates to an organization financially, it should be a concern that you are throwing money at something that isn’t well protected and is archaic in terms of safeguarding its assets.  After all, supposedly we are the church….unless of course, we really aren’t.

 

                I value the two-fold mission of protecting both the individual and the organization because, after all, they are integral to each other’s success in the end.

"interfere with later aspects of training"..... precisely what does that mean?  What aspects?  and re-working the master-disciple paradigm.... what's the paradigm and what would need to change? 

With organizations like this, the only time there is even the slightest self-examination is when there is a crisis that becomes public... someone must get caught.. otherwise everything is hushed up and nothing changes.  They just cast out the bad apple and don't examine the whole tree.  The idea that many of these Zen groups are practicing some pure form of the master-disciple relationship that is sacrosanct and can't be examined or changed is absurd.  The master-disciple dance now being played out is a shadow of an imaginary ideal that mostly never occurred.  And they just all ignore the evidence, because they are entranced and have taken refuge in this big narrative... and it is a trance or an enchantment.  Alex Gibney sub-titled his Scientology documentary film expose -- "the prison of belief" - and that applies to many cultic situations including Shasta. 

And Shasta/OBC is practicing this Zen that has gone through a thousand years or more of various distortions and myths - first in China and then in Japan and the last additional distortion being it all was filtered through the persona of Kennett.

When something is "out of the question" ... I say ask the question.... and see what happens.  Ask many questions. 

What can't be talked about?  and why?  

That's the prison of belief.

Thanks Enida, I can see the Faith Trust report being metamorphosed into whitewash before my eyes. As For the OBC their appears to be no new transparency, and no chance an external audit of compliance with even their own watered down ethics code, and certainly not by the Faith Trust. I fear the OBC have stuck their heals in, their heads in the sand and probably condemned themselves to the dustbin of history.

This may seem like a harsh judgement on the OBC but it is one that I am reluctantly drawn to given their apparent internal intransigence, lack of openness and the reported prevalence of the old spiritual sickness and scourge of the religious life, accidie (now dressed up in modern clothes as chronic fatigue syndrome), but which seems to be have been taken by the OBC as a mark of special spiritual development!

Good comments  I find myself saying :'Lack of life, or Lack of living it'
Are they saying the teacher somehow has something special that no one else has? or the  institution itself or the teacher presents the only way forward.
It seems frightenly dark , and lacking in spiritual awareness.

I think there are two completely separate issues being conflated on this thread, one is the issue of people’s particular resentment against the OBC and the other is the issue of what controls should be exerted on the workings of a religious organisation by persons outside that society, or by society at large.
 
Traditionally one of the differences between western cultures and eastern cultures is that in western culture we don’t really value “the holy man” as such. We mostly judge people on the visible results of their work, whether that work be running a library, writing novels, treating patients, inventing improved internal combustion engines or whatever. Freud pleaded with Jung “do not let the black tide of mysticism enter the west”, and I suspect just for this reason, that once you accept the notion that a person can be placed in a position of moral authority just on the word of another then you open a very queer Pandora’s box.
 
But these systems may very well work effectively in the cultures which originated them, as Josh says, people who are used to living with these systems have their own ways of understanding them and working around them. The difficulty arises when you try and transplant into a new environment.
 
But even acknowledging these difficulties, there is still a problem about how much a training organization ought to allow itself to be controlled and vetted by outsiders. Looking at our own culture, ballet might provide an example. A lot of the things dancers do in training are undoubtedly painful and seen in isolation can be called cruel, but because we understand the value of ballet, we are willing to let children be trained and some of us are willing to undergo the training itself.  Reading “Eat, Sit, Sleep” one can see that some of the things Japanese monks are subjected to would count as aggravated assault in America, but in Japan they are tolerated because the training is regarded as a cultural treasure, they feel it has great value. But it would be a problem to try and transplant such extreme methods from Japan to the USA or Europe, because the secular societies of those countries don’t regard this kind of training as a cultural treasure and why should they.  
 
What a lot of people who go into things like the OBC don’t seem to realise is that a religion is a system for describing the world and not the world itself (except insofar as everything is part of the world). For example, Christians talk about compassion and renunciation. Does that mean that Christians therefore are compassionate and renounce their possessions? No, of course some do, but the reason the Bible recounts these things is because they absorbed the writers of those documents, not because you can acquire them by reading those documents. Similarly, Zen Buddhists like to talk about “seeing into the heart of Kwannon” or “seeing into the holy heart of Monju”. Does that mean that by becoming a Zen Buddhist, by signing up for a bowl and robe I can find my way to the wisdom of Monju? No, of course it doesn’t, any more than going to midnight mass will put me in touch with the Lord. I might have an awakening in a Buddhist training centre, but I might equally well have one on the Portobello Road. When I go to a Buddhist monastery, which I have done on occasion, I don’t go looking for the wisdom of Monju, I go looking for a place I can concentrate and tighten up my life. As far as the compassion of Kwannon or the wisdom of Monju are concerned, I keep my eyes open for them everywhere and for the most part when I find them it’s not in monasteries. 
 
Einstein, for me, represents the wisdom of Monju:
 
To know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties - this knowledge, this feeling ... that is the core of the true religious sentiment.
 
Can anyone point to a clearer expression of the wisdom of Monju than this? Or in a completely different mindset, of a completely different character, in the poet Rilke:
 
            Why, when this span of life might be fleeted away
            As laurel, a little darker than all
            The surrounding green, with tiny waves on the border
            Of every leaf (like the smile of a wind): - oh, why
            have to be human, and, shunning Destiny,
                        long for Destiny? …
                                                Not because happiness really
            exists, that precipitate profit of imminent loss.
            not out of curiosity, not just to practise the heart,
            that could still be there in laurel ….
            But because being here is much, and because all this
            that’s here, so fleeting, seems to require us and strangely
            concerns us. Us the most fleeting of all. Just once,
            everything, only for once. Once and no more. And we, too,
            once. And never again. But this
            having been once, though only once,
            having been once on earth – can it ever be cancelled?
 
This is real thought, not like the bloviations of some Buddhists who want to reduce the questions of life and death to a yes or no answer according to a formula they found in an old sutra.
 
These are things you have to keep your eyes open for everywhere, and we will all find them in different places according to our particular talents and particular destinies and  particular lives. But once someone starts thinking that wisdom can only be found on the dais of a monastery then that person is really in very deep trouble. You must keep your eyes open everywhere!
 
What depressed me about Throssel Hole when I visited it, and what depresses me about the OBC in general as I hear it described in this forum is that it’s all about “me, my training, my enlightenment” and of course in method it is apparently shrink-wrapped against incursions by the 20^th century (and we’re already in the 21st!). This would not matter, except that I have always thought that Zen could be exactly the antidote we need to the rise of the machines and the destruction of our common humanity, if only it could throw off its gloomy historical baggage. But the proper work of a Zen monk should be to create a monastery where someone like me can go and concentrate and tighten up my life, not a place where I will be insulted and have dogma thrust down my throat and be told in no uncertain terms by some half educated monk that I am his spiritual inferior and I’d better not forget it. When I stayed in the Shaolin Temple I only even saw the Abbott once, I couldn’t care less if he was enlightened or a member of the Mafia, frankly, that was his business.
 
I obviously don’t have an encyclopaedic knowledge of what goes on in every Zen training centre in Europe and America, but it seems to me that the “orientalist” approach, that of transplanting Zen from Japan, has failed. A better approach would have been the “clean room” approach, to start from the beginning and build a form of Zen that was devised by westerners for westerners. Obviously this has its own pitfalls, and perhaps it will never happen.
 
But when I read the posts on this forum, posts by Josh and others who spent time at Shasta and have an inside knowledge of the dysfunctional dynamics that kind of training can produce, I can’t help feeling that this isn’t the end of Zen but rather the beginning.

Thank you Tufsoft for the clear and articulate thoughts.  I remember Jiyu Kennett saying on occasion that Zen couldn't really be taught in the "West".  I understood her to mean that because there was support in western culture (and in law) for individual rights the means necessary to teach Zen would never be tolerated. 


This quote from Einstein is sublime and beautiful, thank you.

To know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties - this knowledge, this feeling ... that is the core of the true religious sentiment.

The institutionised zen ,trappings, beatings  and rituals, and the behaviour where a 'teacher' is beyond reproach may not be able to be taught in the West, It is showing that people are waking up to this and don't want it.
I believe zen is taught by someone living jt, and is understood by someone living it,this can occur anywhere outside the confines of country , type of society and language,I think we would all appreciate this, I am not sure that it has happened yet in the early stages of spiritual growth in our countries