www.zuiganji-affair.com

On that page, I outline my reasons for agreeing to undertake the translations in a matter first brought to public attention by the Rev. Kobutsu Malone, a Zen priest and editor of a web page known as the “Sasaki Archive” where witness statements and other documentation are collected concerning reports of alleged sexual harassment of students by Rev. Sasaki stretching over several decades, by Rev. Eshu Martin, a long time student of Rev. Sasaki, and others. I would like to briefly “bullet point” here the same reasons I explain in more detail on that webpage.

• I agreed to provide such translations upon condition that I would stand neutral and impartial in attempting to convey their content. I have attempted to do so throughout.
•  I originally was concerned that the case was someone’s “youthful mistake” and best forgotten. However Rev. Sasaki was in his early to mid 40′s at the time, already a high ranked priest of several decades experience, the financial and de facto administrative head of the temple where the scandal arose and (based upon the court’s subsequent conviction and imprisonment of Rev. Sasaki) a central figure in the alleged crimes committed. The charges on which he was convicted were also very serious, not merely a traffic offence or the like. 
• Reports of sexual scandal surrounding Rev. Sasaki, also contained in the news reports and seemingly admitted to by Rev. Sasaki in interviews with reporters, seemed sufficiently to foreshadow the current claims of alleged sexual harassment and improprieties such that they should be retold. 
• The news reports from two separate newspapers, coupled with panels of judges in two separate courts finding guilt and each imposing a sentence of imprisonment (they could have imposed lesser penalties under Japanese law), left me some confidence in the general basis of the news stories.
• Rev. Sasaki is a figure of great import to Zen in America, and some material indicated that the scandal was one reason for his first being sent to America, and thus has historical value to the story of Zen in the West.
• The very inability to report it years earlier than today must be attributed in large part to the failure to disclose this story by the principal figure himself and by the people around him either (i) not knowing or (ii) knowing and choosing to keep it undisclosed.
• In either case, it should have been told earlier as important information needed for informed consent by past, present and potential future students. I believe that potential students and those encountering a teacher have a right to consider such important information before placing their spiritual and psychological well-being in that teacher’s hands. Students have a right to know.
• I am not the police who arrested Rev. Sasaki, the prosecutor, the judges who convicted him, nor the newspaper reporters who wrote about the events, nor am I a person who caused the case in the first place. I am merely a translator whose role is limited to conveying, without understatement or exaggeration, the contents of reports containing descriptions of what they said and did.
• I take seriously Right Speech and my Vows regarding the Precepts concerning refraining from “gossip” and “criticizing others’ faults”. However, like the late Rev. Robert Aitken and Kobutsu Malone in their work to gather and publicize information regarding the long history of abuse by Rev. Eido Shimano, I believe that my obligations are also to potential or present students who have a right to know in order to prevent future harm, and to past students and possible victims of abuse who have a right to be informed and consoled as past victims.

I believe in forgiveness and forgetting, but also believe that openness and honesty are required first. Instead, what seems to have occurred is several decades of effort to keep this story, as well as the many cases of alleged sexual harassment, hidden. That is the central factor in the long delay in discussing these events until now. It is very different from a case in which a person may have made a single mistake in their youth which was openly admitted, well known by the community of students and potential students, openly apologized for with amends openly made (as in the Buddha’s time as well). In this case, right to the time these news reports were discovered, there have been high placed individuals around Rev. Sasaki who publicly have denied to anyone asking that the case happened at all, thus failing to disclose or honestly represent such information to other current students and potential students who had a right to know, or who may even have inquired about rumors of these events only to be given incorrect and misleading information in return.

And a final word …

Let us completely put aside from discussion this particular case involving Rev. Sasaki, any question of what happened in this matter, and speak in general terms about all the scandals and controversies which have appeared in the Zen and Buddhist world over the years.

I do not demand perfection from any Zen Teacher. They are only people. But I do demand that they do what they can to avoid harm to others. Most (the vast vast majority of Zen Teachers I know) do just that.

Sitting with the beautiful AND the ugly in this world … finding that which simultaneously transcends and holds, breathes in and breathes out, “beautiful vs. ugly” … is our Practice. Is it not the same when we find a certain ugliness amid the beautiful in Buddhism too? A naive student who demands ONLY beauty and goodness in the world … even the Buddhist world … one sidedly rejecting the sometimes distasteful or even criminal, may miss the Real Treasure that shines through all of it. That is so even as, in our Wisdom and Equanimity, we keep pulling the weeds we can and nurture the flowers, praise the good and punish the wrongdoer.

All at Once, the Eye of Buddha holding all.

Gassho, Jundo Cohen

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Yes, we teach the importance of sitting in a balanced way, be it in Lotus, Seiza, on a chair or the like. We may show students how to place the mind on the breath, the Hara, how to “return to the posture” or sit boundlessly or some other way. We may tell folks about “opening the hand of thought“, letting thoughts and emotions go without getting caught in them. Yes, we emphasize that our way is “Goalless” sitting, or “good for nothing”, and that one should leave at the door thoughts of “gaining enlightenment” or some extra-ordinary state …

… but do we emphasize enough how Extra-Ordinary (beyond all small human weighing of “ordinary or extra-ordinary”) Sitting Zazen Truly is? Are we too focused on the mechanics of sitting (as important as such is), and not on the Wondrous Embodiment of Buddha which sitting manifests? Do we teach that a moment of Zazen is Buddha Realized, All Fulfilled, Holy-Wholey-Whole that completes and allows all of life? Are we afraid of sounding too starry eyed about Zazen? Do we point students sufficiently to the Timelessness of sitting for a time, that Zazen is the One and Only Place to Be in that Moment of Sitting, holding all the Sutras? Do we teach that Zazen is a Sacred Complete Act? A Moment of Sitting As Enlightened Sitting, Gainless-Enlightenment-Gained? 

Perhaps we are too focused on presenting Zazen as “just sitting” without getting to the heart of sitting as “Just All Reality, Every Mountain and Stone, All the Buddhas and Ancestors Sitting This Sitting”?

Master Dogen, when writing of Zazen, would remind us (this from Zanma-O-Zanmai. It makes my words seem quite understated!):

Now crossing the legs of the human skin, flesh, bones, and marrow, one crosses the legs of the king of samādhis samādhi. The World Honored One always maintains sitting with legs crossed; and to the disciples he correctly transmits sitting with legs crossed; and to the humans and gods he teaches sitting with legs crossed. The mind seal correctly transmitted by the seven buddhas is this.

The Buddha Śākyamuni, sitting with legs crossed under the bodhi tree, passed fifty small kalpas, passed sixty kalpas, passed countless kalpas. Sitting with legs crossed for twenty-one days, sitting cross-legged for one time — this is turning the wheel of the wondrous dharma; this is the buddha’s proselytizing of a lifetime. There is nothing lacking. This is the yellow roll and vermillion roller [that hold all the Sutras and Commentaries]. The buddha seeing the buddha is this time. This is precisely the time when beings attain buddhahood.

He pulls no punches.

And now turning from Teachers to Students, I wag my finger a bit more. So many (most?) who try Shikantaza for a time do not truly understand what it means to be wholly still, to not need to run after the next diversion or teaching or practice or book or entertainment. Or, they misunderstand our “goalless” sitting as some kind of complacency.

My biggest “complaint” about folks?

Most find it so hard to drop the “running here and there, chasing this and that” in life and “Just Sit” in Wholeness, “Just Sit” Buddha. Most are so used to looking for the answers “somewhere over the next hill” that they can’t stop running, looking for the “next shiny thing”. (Like the eye looking all around for the eye) Thus, they abandon the Practice too soon, running after the next promising thing, and the next.  I have spoken about that many times before:

WHAT’s NEXT?!?

Oh, some folks “get it”, what it truly means to find Stillness amid both life’s stillness and motion, Silence that sings as quiet or music or the noise of bombs exploding. But other folks don’t “get it”, or take it that we are pushing merely complacency, resignation and passivity, which is not the case.

We are not preaching slogans from greeting cards, not tranquilized dullness, not a foresaking of vibrant curiosity and questioning, not prescribing a drug to bring numbness …

… but Crystal Clarity and Wholeness.

Rising up from the cushion, whether lighting incense or changing a baby diaper, in the temple or the office, in a forest or the city streets … we get done what needs to be done, move forward though no place to go. One might then be able to manifest that same Ordinary-Extra-Ordinary Wondrous Embodiment of Buddha, Fully Realized, All Fulfilled, Holy-Wholey-Whole, holding all Timeless-Time & Space, the One and Only Place to Be, a Sacred Act Complete … in every moment and small action of life.

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As the needle goes
through the field of mokuren
birds songs
traffic sounds
even the distant train
even
your sweet face clouded with suffering

all of them
all are sewn
into mokuren

true color

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I have a confession to make, and have already spoken to Taigu about it, he agrees. Time to face the facts … and the fat. We both CAN’T TAKE ANOTHER MINUTE OF ZAZEN! 

Where do I get all the hours back I spent staring at dust balls roll across the floor?

Sorry, but we are OFFICIALLY ENDING ZAZEN SITTING at Treeleaf!

Anybody want to buy 20 used Zafus? Enough is Enough! All meditating has made me is a nervous wreck!

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Why?

Why would one need a reason ever to do a silly dance?!

But maybe one can say that all of the universe is a silly dance, and all of life a silly-serious dance!

Anyway …  We danced in Tsukuba Japan joined by folks from the US, Mexico, Canada, Ireland and the UK.

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Of course, taking a few minutes to chant and remember is fine, but we also ask you to consider making a donation today to a charity that is helping those around the world in need. There are people in many corners of the globe who could use your support. We suggest a charity such as DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS or SAVE THE CHILDREN . There are certainly people in your own community as well.

Here in Japan, there are many people still feeling the loss and uprooting to their life which happened on March 11, 2011. May they stand as a symbol of all those around the world who have met loss of life, shelter and safety in some way since that time.

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We are free of aversion and attraction even as we have our ordinary human aversions and attractions, pulling the weeds we can and watering the flowers … even as we embrace each as just what they are. One finds Wholeness, Light, Beauty that is unconcerned by small human judgments of beauty and ugliness.

We observe the terrible battle fields for what they are, even as we seek to make peace. We sit serenely in the sick room, even as we try to cure the disease. We transcend yet fully embrace a world of beauty and ugliness, even as we do what we can to mend the ugly and make it beautiful.

Is it not the same when we find a certain ugliness amid the beautiful in Buddhism too? A naive student who demands ONLY beauty and goodness in the world … even the Buddhist world … one sidedly rejecting the sometimes distasteful or even criminal, may miss the Real Treasure that shines through all of it. That is so even as, in our Wisdom and Equanimity, we keep pulling the weeds we can and nurture the flowers, praise the good and punish the wrongdoer. All at Once, the Eye of Buddha holding all.

Master Dogen quoted his Master’s poem in Baike, On Plum Blossoms … which flower on gnarled twisted branches in our garden each cold February …

The thorn-like, spike-branched Old Plum Tree
Suddenly bursts forth, first with one or two blossoms,
Then with three, four, five, and finally blossoms beyond count.

… So Beautiful, So Beautiful

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Well, what may startle some folks is that Enlightenment does allow one to be totally beyond the blues and all stresses of life, free of loss and longing and sickness and aging and death … even right in, as and amid days of sadness, times of stress, loss and longing, sickness and aging and death. BOTH VIEWS AND THE VIEWLESS, AT ONCE AS ONE. Oh, one should not be a prisoner of extremes … falling into anger and violence, excess longing and greed, life halting depression and thoughts of suicide, destructive panic, uncontrolled regret and other harmful extremes of thought and emotions. However, the full range of moderate, healthy emotions … life’s normal ups and downs … are what life is about and are not to be fled. Heck, any human being can even suffer depression or some other human weakness for a period. At the same time, right in the ups and downs, this Buddhist Way allows us to simultaneously taste a way of being thoroughly transcending up and down … all at once. Strange as it may sound, one may sing and feel the blues … and be beyond the blues … at once. 

Perhaps the very concept of “Enlightenment”, and the point of this Buddhist enterprise, has evolved over the centuries … into something far more subtle and powerful than even the early interpretations of long ago. You see, originally, the goal of early Buddhism might actually be best described as total escape from this world which is seen as a realm of suffering. Family, home and ordinary life were to be left behind on a path of cooling and abandoning human emotions and human ties. This life, the possibility of rebirth, was not looked upon as something positive to be lived, but as something to be fled. The goal was halting the endless chain of birth and death and rebirth.

Next, a concept of “Buddhahood” developed in which a Buddha or other Enlightened Master might be beyond all human attachments, sadness, fear, regret, longing, and all the rest even in this life. This is still perhaps the most widely held image of “the point of Buddhist Practice” that most Buddhist folks are to aim for. Old Buddhist Sutras, myths and hagiographic histories, painting exaggerated portraits of our long dead heroes, contribute to the image by stripping such saints and supermen of every human weakness or failing, thus building an idealized legend.

But with the passing centuries, a much more subtle viewless view of “Enlightenment” developed, and this is perhaps the most powerful of all. For in this “Enlightenment”, one could live fully this up and down life, with family and household responsibilities and work and all the pains of normal life, the rainy days and sunny … feeling it all … yet simultaneously, thoroughly free of it all. Amid sadness, feeling sadness yet simultaneously embodying that Joy that sweeps in both small human happiness and sadness. Knowing birth and death, the travails of aging and passing time … yet simultaneously free of birth and death and time. Oh sure, one still needed to avoid the extremes and perils of harmful emotions such as excess greed, anger and all the other chains of the runaway mind … but in so doing, the result is a kind of “Buddha cake and eat it too” view of an enlightened life amid Samsara. Yes, the Buddha DOES TOTALLY ESCAPE from the world and the prison of Samsara … right here amid the prison of Samara, right at the heart of the sometimes hard and stressful times of human life. There is a Peace, Beauty and Wholeness that holds all the broken pieces, both the beautiful and oh so ugly, the simple pleasures and unavoidable pains, of this complex world.

If you ask me, that is the most powerful view of Enlightenment, allowing Peace and Joy right amid a full, rich and balanced life, freedom from birth and death while born and growing old and someday dying. I would not trade it for any other Enlightenment even if all the Buddhas and Ancestors were to appear before me and point elsewhere.Anyway, in my heart, I do not believe they would.

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THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ZEN TALK YOU WILL EVER HEAR.

In an old Koan from the Book of Serenity (Ganto’s Bow and Shout) a Zen student of too little experience but too much self conceit (as is true of so many modern Zen Students) shows up at the doorway of a Sangha. He demands, full of opinions, “Is this place sacred or just common? Is it what I think I want from the Zen I picture? Is it ‘real Zen’ or just fake Zen, and are the Teachers enlightened as I want ‘enlightened’ to look and seem?”

The Teacher in the Koan then demonstrates Dharma with a KATZU! Shout … perhaps a GREAT Wordless Teaching or perhaps just a hackneyed cliche clunker. The student, moved, may decide to stay. Or, judgmental and dreaming, filled with golden expectations, the same Zen Student may feel disappointed with the Teachings offered (compared to how he thinks they “should” sound … even if he is not quite sure how that is.). He leaves … either right away or after some time … thinking “there is no True Dharma here.”He may judge based on having read too many Zen story books, where all the characters of the past have been cleaned up and dipped in gold (Although please read some of the old books such as the Vinaya, and you will find what a frustrating mess, with folks bumping noses, was Sangha even in the Buddha’s day ). In either case, the foolish studentfails to hear the TRUE SHOUT! … the Great Wordless Teaching found both in the inspiring moment and the hack and cliche’d klunk. 

The student fails to realize that the Best Zen Sangha may be that which is sometimes inspiring and sometimes discouraging, and the Best Buddhist Teachers and Friends those who are frequently uplifting and sometimes frustrating and mostly in between … the ones who sometimes meet your ideals, but sometimes don’t. 

For what the Zen Student must find is Such which is Common-Holy, Specially Unspecial, fulfilling all desires … both with what is wanted and what is not. The student most find freedom from the small human self … filled with aversions and attractions, dreams and feelings of incompleteness and lack (the “I” in “I’m disappointed”). Can one know the Real that sweeps in and sweeps through ‘real’ or ‘fake’? Can the Great Teaching be heard that shouts at the Unbreakable Heart of both the sparkling talks or thrilling moments and the dull or dumb, the Timeless both in the ‘time well spent’ and so-called ‘waste of time’? Can one experience the Wholly Holy Whole, which fills all the high mountains climbed and barren holes one falls in. Can one find that True Way from which there is no way to “go away”? Even the frauds and fake Teachers, even the Teachers with weaknesses and failings, even the the greatest abusers and predators are Teaching to those with a Buddha’s Eye to see.

Is this a clarion call to complacency and mediocrity, acceptance of the ugly without attempt at repair? FAR FROM IT! Yet there are two kinds of Sangha or Teacher that, I feel, do a disservice to students. One is a place or person that is too lax, too careless, which fails to provide beneficial opportunities for Practice, or (in some fortunately very VERY few cases) where real abuse and other bad acts occur. But, counter-intuitive as it may seem, a Sangha or Teacher which meets all the student’s expectations, golden dreams, ideals and desires too would be a disservice (not to mention unlikely to ever truly appear, at least for the long haul when the rose colored honeymoon is done. It would be as misleading as the world of ‘Gods’ in the Six Realms, where all is given that is desired). Why? Because as with all of this life, all this world, one must come to see through personal judgments of both “sacred” and “ordinary”, good and bad, flashy or dull, entertaining or painful, satisfying and disatisfying, true vs. fake … thus to find a Truth beyond selfish expectations, disappointments, dreams, ideals and failings to meet a mark, thus to find the Mark Always Met. The best Teacher or Community, as strange as it sounds, may be one that … like the universe … sometimes inspires and sometimes frustrates, sometimes energizes and sometimes bores, sometimes astounds and sometimes leaves cold … all so that one might find Astounding Energetic Inspiration even right at the heart of the frustratingly dull or unbearably cold. 

This is not a call for complacency, resignation or merely “putting up with” … but a call to PIERCE RIGHT THROUGH!

Our Treeleaf Sangha is a wonderfully imperfect place, often beautiful and often filled with small frictions. Our Teachers here are well-meaning but mediocre clods and fools. Yet This Place, This Dharma, This Buddha, sits beyond all human weighing and rating. 

Here is a talk by me, the Best Zen Talk You Will Ever Hear, yet just middling and unspecial. Is it worth the time? Is it a waste of time?

……. ‘Tis Timeless whether worth or waste.

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Zen has to be just a little bit dangerous. If it’s not, it ceases to be Zen. The reason that Zen can go as deeply as it does into the question of what it means to be truly human comes in a large part because it’s not entirely safe. The safer, more rule-bound, more structured and organized it becomes, the shallower and less valuable it gets. Nobody gets hurt (supposedly) but nobody learns much of anything either.

I completely agree, except that I don’t. In fact, I totally disagree, except that Brad is totally right. Anyway, what one does is more important than some artificial name or category. Beyond names and mental categories.

Our Teacher, GUDO WAFU NISHIJIMA, was a Traditionalist (as seen in the picture over there with the funny hat and fly swatter), except when he wasn’t at all. Sometimes he taught us to follow “Old Timeless Traditions”, but often he told us to make “New Timeless Traditions” fitting for our culture and times. [Sometimes he told us that his way was to be “his way or the highway”, except when he let us go our own way. Sometimes he stuck closely to every word and rule of Dogen, except when he didn’t.

So, are we artisans? clergy? artists? wandering musicians? ministers? comedians? priests? rabbis? bakers or candle stick makers? 

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It is much the same situation in Western Zen these days, where a handful of crashed Teachers lead some to the falacious impression that there is some wide spread systemic problem in the Zen world. Critics, often foolishly shortsighted or even with an axe to grind, are quick to assert that the whole Zen adventure is dangerous or corrupt based on isolated and extreme situations. Nothing could be farther from the truth! What such doomsayers overlook is the fact of all the other teachers … hundreds of caring, devoted, wise, compassionate, well trained, illuminating, enlightening folks … who do not get involved in such things. who range from competent to truly gifted pilots who do not do harm to their students and, in fact, bring illumination and change lives for the better. They are out shadowed by the few (a very few) teachers who have crashed and burned.

This is not to discount the importance of shedding light on, uncovering, openly discussing and analyzing the few cases of abuse, for to do so is the only way to address the problem, help past victims and prevent future incidents in that same Sangha or others. It is much as air crash inspectors dissect every incident with an airliner, finding the cause and proposing a remedy so that like accidents will not repeat (a system that has been very effective to making flying very safe these days). We must not fail to aid even one victim of abuse, we must not turn our eyes the other way. That is why places like Sweeping Zen have done a tremendous service for all of us by reporting these incidents in all their gory detail, tearing away the cover-ups and excuses by “see no evil” types and apologists. Honest reporting is the first step to true healing and reform.Nonetheless, doing so can be misunderstood or misrepresented by some as an attack on all of Zen that focuses only on the negatives. Such is simply not the case.

In Zen flying, ultimately, there is no up or down, no place to fall or need for rescue. We passengers are each Buddha, riding on a jet that is also Buddha, with each engine and wheel, pilot and pillow just Buddha, Buddha, Buddha. It rises from ‘Buddha International Airport’, into skies and clouds just Buddha, over Buddhamountains, no place in need of going on the way to Buddha somewhere down the line. Buddha, flying Buddha across Buddha to get to Buddha all around. Nonetheless, one of the paradox-non-paradoxes of this Zen Way is that … though there is no place to fall, no way to die … fall and die we might! Thus we must be on our guard, careful in flying and maintaining the plane and diligent as the crew with lives in our hands. Thus, yes, there are things that need to be fixed about Buddhism, both in the West and back in the old countries. Some issues are quite serious (I am quite the vocal critic of many things in fact, calling for reform).

But don’t let folks use scattered problems and a handful of disasters to distract from all the safe landings. The skies are clear and wide open.

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