1/27 - The Kwan Um School and Richard Shrobe

As I’ve been working on the transcripts of these interviews, it’s become increasingly clear

how significant to the history of North American Zen are the Korean Zen teacher Seung Sahn and his Kwan Um School. The only representative of the school to whom I’d spoken, however, was Bobby Rhodes. I interviewed her back in July [see July 8, 2013, posting], but she seemed very approachable, so I contacted her again and asked her to recommend someone else in the school I could speak to. She suggested Richard Shrobe.

                I found him listed in Wikipedia as Wu Kwang Soen Sa Nim. Members of the school had also referred to Seung Sahn as “Soen Sa Nim”. So when our conversation began, I asked Richard if he were now the head of the order. He admitted that he probably was for North America, but that, in fact, Bobby Rhodes was the Head of the Order. Well, I had missed that entirely during my interview with her.

                Soen Sa Nim, it turns out, is a title meaning Zen Master. Soen is the same as Zen; Sa means master; and nim is an honorific. So when members of the school used it to refer to Seung Sahn—or to Richard or to Bobby—it was much like members of Japanese Schools referring to their teacher as “Roshi.” Both Richard and Bobby wear the title lightly. They also both have “day jobs” by which they support themselves. Kwan Um teachers don’t make a career of it. Bobby Rhodes is a hospice nurse. Richard is a psychotherapist. One gets the sense that the Korean school, on the whole, is a little less stiff, a little less formal, than Japanese schools can be at times.

                Richard is a former jazz musician and hard-drug user. “The two kind of went together.” When he realized he needed to do something about his life, he, his wife, and young daughter moved into a Hindu Community run by Satchidananda. It was the 60s. Satchidananda was the opening speaker at the 1969 “Woodstock Music and Arts Festival”—the one with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplan, and the Jefferson Airplane.

                Five years later, Richard decided that the Satchidananda’s Integral Yoga program wasn’t doing all that he’d hoped it would, so the family moved out. Later, he learned about Master Seung Sahn and found his teacher.

                He wasn’t, he admits, one of the students who went out of his way to attend every retreat or rush off to Korea. He made it clear early on that he was intent on balancing family, career, and his Zen practice. But he was committed to the practice, and eventually Seung Sahn gave him inka—the first of two stages of authorization. The second—transmission—came some time later.

                When I ask Richard what the function of Zen is, he tells me: “Zen is a practice of becoming clear, returning to your original mind before concept, opinion, and idea.” The answer isn’t substantially different from what Patrick Gallagher gave me a week ago.  I ask Richard if he believes there’s any difference in the way the Japanese Schools and the Korean School approach this function. “Not fundamentally. The flavor might be a little different in terms of the cultural underpinnings.” I’ve already sensed that.

                An interesting aspect of Kwan Um training is that, before a student is given inka, he or she is sent to visit a number of Japanese Zen sites in North America to undertake Dharma Combat with the teachers in those centers. The Japanese centers aren’t blind-sided in this arrangement; they know the Kwan Um students are coming, and they accommodate them. Richard sat sesshin with Maezumi Roshi, Eido Roshi, and others. Today, teachers like Chozen Bays in Oregon [March 26, 2013, posting] and Shinge Sherry Chayat [June 12] continue the tradition.

                The Kwan Um School makes use of the same koan (the say “kung-an”) collections as the Japanese Rinzai—the Mumonkan and the Blue Cliff Record. But their approach is a little different. Early in their training, students are assigned an initial kung-an such as “What is it?” which if dwelled upon with sufficient sincerity and perseverance will help the student arrive at what they call “Don’t Know Mind.”

                “It’s like the story of Bodhidharma,” Richard tells me, referring to the opening koan (kung-an) in the Blue Cliff Record. “When he’s before the Emperor Wu, and the Emperor asks him, ‘Who are you?’ Bodhidharma says, ‘Don’t know.’”

                One of the most significant factors in the development of both Zen and Buddhism in general in North America has been the way various schools have encountered one another and begun interacting. I remember during my visit to Chozen Bays’ Great Vow Monastery that one of the monks was actually a practitioner in a Tibetan School. This “ecumenicism” certainly has been and will, doubtless, continue to be to the benefit of all parties.

Cypress Trees in the Garden: pp. 423-438

1/20 - Sanbo Zen and Patrick Gallagher

                                

I first met Patrick Gallagher when I interviewed the Roman Catholic nun and Zen Master, Sister Elaine MacInnis, last June in Toronto [see my posting for June 15]. She had requested that someone with whom she felt comfortable be present and asked Patrick to join us. He arrived at her residence by bicycle just as I pulled up in my car. At that time, I was told he was an Assistant Teacher. He is a slight man with wavy grey hair and a full beard. He has a quick smile and, one senses, a genuine affection and regard for Sister Elaine.

                Since that meeting Patrick has been appointed a full Teacher in the school of Zen to which Sister Elaine belongs. Formerly known as the Sanbo Kyodan—Fellowship of the Three Treasures—it is changing its name to Sanbo Zen—Three Treasures Zen. I arranged a Skype interview with Patrick in order to ask about this name change and to clear up some other details about the school. His image on the screen was relaxed and informal. He was wearing an old sweatshirt with what appeared to be paint stains on one sleeve.

                Lineages and schools are serious stuff in Zen. In part, it is a matter of establishing qualifications and authorization. Zen Masters still trace their ancestry back to Bodhidharma—the Indian missionary who brought Zen from India to China—and beyond him to the Buddha himself. Certificates are issued asserting that the person named therein has been officially recognized to have attained a certain degree of insight and is authorized to assist others to attain that insight.

                The way in which various teachers worked—the upaya, the skillful means, they used to pass on that insight—sometimes differed, resulting eventually in Five Houses within Chinese Zen, which in turn evolved into Seven Schools. Of these, two achieved prominence and traveled to Japan—the Rinzai and the Soto.

                Those two schools differ both in matters of form and focus. As an example of form, Rinzai students, sit facing into the room while Soto students face a wall. As for focus, Rinzai students generally work with koans, and, while koans are used occasionally in the Soto tradition, its primary practice is shikan-taza or “just-sitting.”

                The Japanese teacher Sogaku Harada (1871 – 1961) was raised and trained in the Soto school but felt that shikan-taza was not adequate to bring him to full awakening. So after completing high school, he entered a Rinzai temple where, after working with the koan Mu for more than two years, he achieved kensho. Once he was authorized to teach, he did so as a Soto priest, but he made use of koans and other Rinzai elements. His Dharma heir, Haku’un Yasutani, founded the Sanbo Kyodan school based on the Harada’s blending of the Rinzai and Soto traditions.

                Yasutani was a significant figure in the evolution of North American Zen, both because he accepted foreign students at his temple in Japan and because he made frequent visits to the United States to conduct sesshin throughout the 1960s.  The Three Pillars of Zen, attributed to Philip Kapleau, largely consists of Yasutani’s talks given during those retreats. Kapleau studied with Yasutani, but the two became estranged, and Sanbo Zen people are quick to remind you that Kapleau failed to complete his koan training and was, therefore, not actually qualified to teach.

Ryoun Yamada

                Yasutani’s heir and the second abbot of the Sanbo Kyodan was Koun Yamada, who probably contributed as much to the editing of Three Pillars of Zen as did Kapleau although did not get the credit he deserved for doing so. Yamada Roshi was Sister Elaine’s teacher. He was succeeded by his son, Ryoun Yamada, the order’s current abbot.

                Sanbo Zen is much more tightly structured than the Soto or Rinzai traditions. In those two schools, transmitted teachers have the autonomy to appoint others to be teachers as well. In Sanbo Zen, teachers can recommend suitable students, but the final decision about who becomes a teacher rests with the abbot. All assistant teachers, teachers, associate Zen Masters (such as Henry Shukman; see October 3rd entry), and Zen Masters—wherever in the world they are located—are appointed by the abbot alone, a factor which Shukman believes has helped the order avoid some of the troubles which have arisen elsewhere.

                Patrick is now the most recently appointed teacher I’ve interviewed, so I took the opportunity our Skype conversation provided to put to him the question I have begun most of my interviews with: “What is the function, the purpose of Zen?”

                “Well, there’s different ways you could say it. To wake up. To see who you are. To see things as they are.”

                It can be put other ways as well: to discover one’s True Self, one’s Original Mind, or even—as the Sixth Patriarch put it—one’s face before one’s parents’ birth. The etymological root of "Prajna"--as Joan Sutherland reminded me [October 4th posting]--is "before thought."

                The schools may differ in any number of ways, but their intentions remain the same.

Cypress Trees in the Garden:
Gallagher, Patrick – 134, 140-45

1/15/2014 - Yoshin David Radin

                When I was at Zen Mountain Monastery, a young monk asked me what I hoped to

accomplish with my book. I started to give him a publisher’s spiel—“to demonstrate the scope of contemporary teaching, practice, and engagement”—then I stopped and said, “You know, basically I just want people to continue to see Zen as a viable spiritual practice.”

                There has been a shadow hanging over the interviews that I’ve been conducting: news items about Joshu Sasaki’s inappropriate behavior with female students, similar allegations about Eido Shimano, the autocratic and--at times--simply petty behavior of both men. Zen’s reputation has suffered a number of substantial body-blows in recent years.

                These aren’t issues I intend to gloss over, nor will I defend those who have kept these and other stories under wraps. But it remains that both men also seem to have been effective teachers. That does not excuse their personal behavior, but it does help to explain why they retain both male and female supporters. It is also true that they are both now elderly Japanese males, representatives of a cultural tradition very different from that of 21st Century North America. Again, not an excuse but a factor.

                Joshu Sasaki’s story has probably received greater coverage because of his age. He is now 106 years old. I had visited two of his “oshos”—priests he ordained who now run their own centers—Myokyo McLean in Montreal (April 29 posting) and Seiju Mammoser in Albuquerque (October 18 posting). But I wanted to speak to a third, so I arranged a distance interview with Yoshin David Radin in Ithaca, New York, who was kind enough to install Skype on his I-Pad specifically to permit the interview.

                Radin was the editor of a book which celebrated Sasaki’s one hundredth year. He clearly still admires Sasaki and named his first child, a daughter, “Joshi” after him. “He was able to transmit the highest wisdom,” he tells to me. How did he do that? “First there was a sense that he was residing in a different residence than I was residing. . . I am an individual seeking the higher wisdom. He seemed to be radiating from the higher wisdom. . . He could, through koan training and just his own presence, he could evoke that experience within me.”

                Radin’s own story is interesting. He grew up in New York, the son of a rabbi, and attended Jewish Parochial School. “It kept me out of bars and brothels.” After graduating high school, he went on a trip around the world, and in places like Hawaii and India discovered hashish and LSD. A number of Zen practitioners from the late 60s and early 70s—including me—followed a similar path to Zen practice.

                He did a sesshin with Richard Baker at the San Francisco Zen Center, but the experience was “unfruitful. A lot of pain and no intelligence.” He went back to New York state to live on a commune. I ask how he supported himself. “Chopping wood and hauling water. Literally.” It was a working farm but not self-sustaining.

                A friend in Canada suggested he try a retreat at Mount Baldy with Joshu Sasaki, and during that retreat he had experiences so moving that—at one point—he couldn’t return to the zendo after an interview with the Roshi but, instead, hid behind the building and lay beneath a tree just relishing the insights he had acquired.

                Radin established the Ithaca Zen Center and maintains a sitting group at nearby Cornell University. His wife is a sheikh in the Sufi tradition, and together they host popular body-mind retreats during the summer months. These bring in enough income to support the maintenance of a zendo for the smaller Zen sangha. Still, he offers five sesshin a year and maintains a weekly practice schedule. He has chosen, however, to remain removed from the formal structures associated with Rinzai-ji. But not because of any dissatisfaction with Sasaki.

                Sasaki Roshi has not given transmission—inka—to any of his oshos. When I ask Radin what he thinks will happen to the Rinzai-ji lineage after Sasaki dies, he tells me he doesn’t “have any concern about it. . . It doesn’t make a difference to me whether the line continues or not. It’s just the question of whether the wisdom continues.” One wonders, however, how the “wisdom” can continue without teachers authorized to transmit it. Oshos, for example, have been told not to use the koan system Sasaki had used in their teaching; so that part of the Rinzai-ji tradition will end with him.

                I suspect Yoshin Radin is the kind of guy it would be fun to spend a day trading stories with—we share that hippie-background—and I can respect his loyalty to Sasaki Roshi, but I still find myself wondering about which lineages are going to persist and which are going to wither. It is not just a matter of “authorization,” it is a matter of addressing a wide range of ethical and training issues. It is certainly clear from the interviews that I’ve conducted that whatever Zen in North America is becoming, it is going to very different—in many ways—from what was brought to these shores from Asia.

Note: The following May, I visited Yoshin at the Ithaca Zen Center and continued my conversation with him. I also interviewed his wife--Khadija--who is both a Buddhist nun and a Sufi Sheikh. See the posting for 5/25.

Cypress Trees in the Garden:

Radin, David Yoshin – 55-66, 469