[Buddha-l] Another One Bites the Dust

[Sally McAra]

thanks for that link, Franz
It's sad, isn't it. (And it's not just zen teachers, of course).
I'd seen some commentary on this in the last couple of weeks -
e.g.,Brad Warner has been discussing it in his blog, somewhat
flippantly: "Some day I’m gonna write a piece about how guys like
Joshu Sasaki, Eido Shimano and even Genpo Roshi have done a huge
service for Zen. They really have. In some sense they have saved us
all by sacrificing themselves. Maybe they’re not quite Christ-like.
But then neither was Jesus. By getting themselves embroiled in sleazy
sex scandals, they’ve shown the world that Zen Masters are just
people. And that is something we probably ought to honor and revere
them for rather than vilifying them. Usually you don’t find this out
until you actually meet a Zen Master face-to-face and spend a lot of
time with her. But these guys have made all of us able to see that
without even meeting them. Kudos to them for that! I’m not even being
sarcastic here. I mean this!"
(http://hardcorezen.info/the-buzz-clic-adventure/1644). Make of this
what you will...

I wonder why so many of the Japanese teachers who came to live in the
USA ended up misbehaving like this...
-- I'm curious to if this has also happened in places in Japan where
women students train(ed) with male teachers? Or if was something about
the kinds of individuals who moved to the USA, or their situation so
far from where they trained...
-- Maybe I'm out of the loop but I haven't heard negative stories like
this about Shunryu Suzuki, or the most well-known of the first
generation of western-born zen teachers (e.g., Philip Kapleau and
Robert Aitken?) (sticking to zen teachers here; there are of course
all sorts of stories with other kinds of Buddhism, that have also
become well-known.)

Cheers
Sally

On 12 February 2013 16:01, Franz Metcalf <franz at mind2mind.net> wrote:
> From the New York Times:
>
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/world/asia/zen-buddhists-roiled-by-accusations-against-teacher.html>
>
> This time it's Joshu Sasaki Roshi. I guess if you live long enough, someone eventually calls you to account. I'm sorry, Richard, this happened (all along and now). I reckon, that's just about a clean sweep of all the first wave Zen teachers who came to bury their bones in America. Sad.
>
> Franz Metcalf
> (who's becoming increasingly proud he never actually took jukai in a Zen lineage--is that bad of me?)
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-- 
Sally McAra