[Buddha-l] Re: How to help the Dharma grow in the USA

[Richard Hayes]

On Wednesday 03 January 2007 13:25, Vera, Pedro L. wrote:

> But this leads me to a question I have been thinking about for a while. How
> can we judge "orthodoxy" or "authenticity" in Buddhist teachers. Yes, I
> know about transmission of the bowl, etc, etc, but is there a body in any
> branch of Buddhism that grants an "imprimatur" on a certain
> teacher/lineage?

There has never been any attempt (until Nichiren and his imitator Benito came 
along) to set a standard for Buddhism as a whole. There are, of course, 
plenty of more particular sub-communities and lineages that set standards for 
a particular community. There used to be four vinaya lineages, of which three 
are still extant. If one wishes to be a Theravadin monk, one adheres to that 
vinaya---although even here there is a certain amount of latitude involved in 
what exactly it means "to adhere" to the rules.

In North America there have been a number of renegade teachers who chose to do 
things quite differently from the lineages that trained them. Famously, 
Philip Kapleau had the "imprimatur" of his Japanese master revoked because he 
taught his disciples to chant in English instead of Japanese. Then, like a 
child abused by his parents, Kapleau disinherited his own dharma successor, 
Toni Packer, and he kicked one of his senior monks out of the community for 
disloyalty because the monk had attended a two-week Tibetan retreat while on 
pilgrimage in India. That disciple had been entrusted as head of a Zen center 
and was asked by Kapleau to leave, That action sent waves of shock and deep 
sadness thoughout the organization.

My former Zen teacher,Samu Sunim, declared himself a master and, as far as I 
know, never got permission from his order (the Chogye Order) to teach. This 
did not prevent him from setting up an elaborate dharma teacher training 
program to make sure people in his community were not teaching wild dharma 
when they gave talks. (I went through the program and eventually taught in 
it.) One finds very similar attempts all over the Western world, probably 
because everyone recognizes the danger of having a total absence of standards 
in a loose-knit community that has grown much faster than its formal 
institutions have been able to keep up with.

> How do the different sects deal with runaway teachers?

>From what I have seen, runaways are just allowed to run away. As long as they 
do not falsely claim to have the imprimatur of a particular school or 
lineage, the attitude seems to be that no great harm is being done. And if 
harm is done, it surely can't be much worse than the damage done by miscreant 
priests, swamis, gurus (gurava.h), lamas and ministers who have misbehaved 
after earning a legitimate imprimatur.

It seems as though the situation among American Buddhists is not too different 
from that of many Protestant sects in the 18th century that had no formal 
training of ministers. If a woman or man could "gather a church" and keep the 
congregation together, then the person was a de facto minister. If people 
listened, then the person to whom they listed was a preacher. Buddhism isn't 
quite that loose, but I don't think it would matter much if it were. 

One of my wife's cultural heroines was Peace Pilgrim. When people asked her 
who her teacher was, she said "God." When people sought to become her 
disciple, she said "It's unhealthy for a person to become the disciple of 
another human being." She refused to wear labels, as a result of which many 
communities, including some Buddhists, tried to claim her as their own. While 
I think it would dishonor Peace Pilgrim's memory to say she was really a 
Buddhist, I don't think it's disrespectful of either her or of Buddhism to 
say that she was a true Buddhist---probably a lot more true than many of us 
who got properly recognized as authentic by some Buddhist community or other.

> But more importantly, when we walk into the Zen center (or whatever other
> branch you might fancy) and meet Joe Blow the enlightened teacher, who
> might be spouting any kind of Buddhist or pseudo-Buddhist babble, how can
> we check for accuracy and authenticity?

There is only one way. Buddhism is about eliminating pain-causing habits of 
thinking, speaking and acting. If a person aids others in eliminating the 
root causes of pain, she is authentic. Ultimately, there is only one person 
who can decide whether any teacher is authentic: oneself. 

Following canons and councils and hiding behind the facade of orthodoxy is 
often just manifestation of being too cowardly to make life's most important 
decisions for oneself. And tying to impose an orthodoxy on others is just an 
incompetent way of dealing with one's fear of creativity, which is of 
necessity unpredictable.

About such fear Hafiz said in today's Daily Peace Quote 
<peacequotes at livingcompassion.org>:

Fear is the cheapest 
room in the house.
I'd like to see you
in better living conditions.

> But I wonder if this is a Western
> phenomenon, and perhaps in Asian countries with a long history of Buddhism
> and Buddhist teachers, there might be some sort of council that keeps
> things in check.

No doubt there are. Like all such councils they probably do at least as much 
to mute excellent teachers as they do to promote good ones. (Sounds a lot 
like a PhD examination committee, eh?) For my taste, what makes Western 
Buddhism so vital (for now at least) is the lack of councils that hand out 
imprimaturs and say "nihil obstat" to people who learn to mind their p's and 
q's. 

The kind of orthodoxy talk and reckless and uninformed denigration of other 
Buddhists that our good friend Benito has been indulging in recently sounds 
to me like the makings of the death knell of the dharma in the West. Thank 
God nobody with any sense pays him much attention.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico