Part of my study during this practice period and sesshin has been about renewing acquaintance with the people and places that were important during the early period of my introduction to and practice of Zen Buddhism. Not just important to me but important to the Zen movie (as I call it) that was then being made and shown.
This was pre-Counterculture. 1964-1965 ish. Zen came to America earlier of course (c. 1958-59), but it only seemed to be beginning to blossom when I encountered it and got in contact with the Zen Center in San Francisco. I would see it that way because that was when I myself was "beginning to blossom" as a rebellious teenager. Zen practice was part of my rebellion. I think that was true of many Anglo early adopters. Not so much for the Japanese American Zen practitioners at the Sokoji, though. It wasn't rebellion for them. Or was it?
I have to give great credit to David Chadwick* among others for preserving so much of the Early Days literature, photos, film clips and reminiscences. People who were there then are dying off quickly, probably many more lost than would have been otherwise due to the Covid pandemic. It's a shame, but much has been preserved, and I could spend the rest of my life poring through it.
It's not just David's stuff, either. The San Francisco Zen Center has preserved extensive archives; Suzuki Roshi's archives at Shunryosuzuki.com is another source. I'm sure there is much more to explore.
*Links to other sites David maintains or recommends are available at the first linked site.
So much more to explore. And one of the insights I had about it was that all of us -- well, most of us -- were living on the surplus of the post-War (WWII) era. This was one key to the what the Counterculture would become. '64-'65 is pre-Hippie, just barely, but following the assassination of President Kennedy, young people's lives began radicalizing almost immediately. By 1965, many -- particularly on the West Coast -- had effectively separated themselves from whatever had gone before, their parents' lives, the experience and expectations of the post-War suburban life, etc., and were exploring alternatives.
Zen was (and still is) an alternative.
A certain kind of young Anglo adopted it, tried to adapt to it. Zen wasn't for everyone. It still isn't.
Suzuki Roshi gently tried to guide the newcomers into the practice through his adaptations of Japanese Zen practice as it had been when he was trained (pre-WWII).
I say gently because he was very gentle with his Anglo charges who were attempting to practice a very strict Japanese discipline.
So gentle that by the time Richard Baker took over after Suzuki Roshi's death in 1971, only the outward, visible forms of Japanese Zen remained; the inner practice had become something else, for different purposes I think.
Because it wasn't what I had been introduced to -- and what I had studied hard to start to master the practice -- I stayed well away from Richard Baker's Zen Center in San Francisco and whatever they were promoting.
It wasn't "Zen." They called it Zen but it wasn't.
It had become Baker's vision of grandeur. I hate to say it, but that's what I saw.
But maybe that grandeur was part of Suzuki Roshi's vision as well. Maybe that's what I'm trying to find out with all this study.
It's possibly useful to see the origins of Zen in America as a pre-Counterculture "living on the surplus" alternative -- ie: pointing the way for what was to come.
Sokoji, for example, was housed in a former Jewish temple, Tassajara was a former "carriage trade" resort, the City Center was a former Jewish women's center and residence. All these locations and many more were surplus, they weren't needed by their original users anymore and they could be reused for alternative purposes -- such as Zen. The alternative lifestyles that came out of the Counterculture were almost all based in the fact that there was a big surplus of practically everything needed for living from which to create and sustain alternative (at least for a while.)
Many of the branches that would arise from the SFZC began in well-off people's homes, unused commercial or religious sites, and other private but surplus locations. None have become what primary Zen sites are in Japan. They all still have this temporary, ad hoc, reused location sensibility about them.
Sometimes it's charming. No doubt about that.
There's also a sense that none of it is really here, either.
Zen is still trying to plant roots in America.
As opposed to, say, Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village in France. Which seems to be about as permanent and rooted as something Zen can be outside of Japan (and, well, Vietnam...)
I think my study will continue for as long as I can keep it up, and the two practice periods I've been part of this year have renewed my sense of Zen as it was and as it is now (something else again.)
So many elderly women participants... I've been thinking about that.
How different that is from times gone by. But then, it's probably natural, too.
I lived in the city of San Francisco for a year or so in the mid 1970s. The Hippie era had passed, of course, but the Counterculture was still very much underway. San Francisco was still providing the heartbeat of many alternative ways of life, most of which proved to be dead ends, quite literally in some cases such as the People's Temple mass suicide in Guyana. That happened after I departed San Francisco for the country at large, but Jim Jones and his operation on Geary were very much apparent and in the news when I lived there.
As was the San Francisco Zen Center on Post, no Bush, or was it Page (I think! Man, I lose track of locations over the years...) where I was invited to attend zazen many times but never did. No. I stayed away.
Here's the thing. Some of the people I was working with had attended zazen at the Sokoji Temple and had moved with Suzuki Roshi to the Page Street facility in the later '60s. Zen was popular among a certain set of artists and actors and such -- as it still is.
I'd been practicing on my own for oh, a decade or more, a practice I began after getting in touch with the San Francisco Zen Center when I was a teenager, possibly no more than 15. I forget the exact year, it was either 1965 or '66 -- or in a partial memory as early as 1964. The literature and instruction I received was enough to start me on a lifetime Zen path, but because I was not in San Francisco at the time and could not be and there was no nearby Zen sangha become part of, I was essentially a solitary Zen practitioner in the wilderness and I became accustomed to that state. "The Buddha is within you; the Dharma is you; the sangha is among whomever you find along the Dharma Path."
By the time I lived in San Francisco, the Zen Center had become fashionable. In fact, it was so fashionable that people competed for spots in the zendo in hopes of brushing knees and elbows with some of its famous practitioners. This grated on me, rubbed me very much the wrong way. What was the point of sitting zazen among a crowd whose minds were taken up with fame and notoriety. Was this any better than the jostling at the People's Temple or the ever-passing scene at Grace Cathedral? (Note: a friend from my time in San Francisco got AIDS and died and his ashes are interred at Grace Cathedral I learned years later...)
I blamed Richard Baker for the fame-seeking that seemed to overwhelm the San Francisco Zen Center. He had been the one I corresponded with early on. He took over when Suzuki Roshi died in 1971, but he'd been kind of the shaper of the Zen Center as an institution from well before that, and his influence is still strong -- which I don't judge as either good or bad, but it is an influence that shapes the SFZC and many others in this country and elsewhere -- toward an appeal to the rich, famous, renowned, politically powerful and those prominent in the arts and academics.
That's not in and of itself a bad thing, but when it becomes the totality or near totality of the focus of the institution, it warps it, I think, in ways that do it no service in a Buddhist context and form barriers to the bodhisattva way of life for practitioners.
I struggle with this a bit in the context of my current Zen practice and setting. The Zen Center I'm associated with is a legacy of Richard Baker, quite directly in fact. He founded a sangha at the facility in the '80s and eventually gave the facility, lock, stock, and barrel, to the current roshi in the '90s when he set out on a different quest.
That legacy is more than just buildings -- though they are very important to the current sangha. I carry some of that legacy with me, but it is very different because it is earlier, much earlier in origin, more closely aligned to Suzuki Roshi who I keep saying I never met, nor did I ever meet Richard Baker, yet when I see and hear film and video and audio recordings of them, I recognize them immediately, and even the zendo at Sokoji -- the earliest Center in San Francisco -- is instantly familiar. I don't know where these memories come from. I attribute them to having seen films of Suzuki and Baker at the Midnight Movies in the later '60s. On the other hand, maybe I did visit Sokoji and maybe I did meet them somewhere, sometime, and I've just lost track.
This is somewhat similar to my memories of meeting Jerry Rubin in San Francisco in the '60s. I'm more certain of those meetings, and where and when they took place and why, but sometimes I wonder: are they false memories? Did it really happen?
Was I really at the Oakland Induction Center in October of 1967 during the Moratorium police riots? As a potential inductee? Yes, I'm certain I was, and there is film of me there and yet... maybe it's all an illusion...
Which ultimately is the foundation of Buddhist enlightenment. It is all an Illusion, you see? Memories are real and false at the same time. "Reality" is real and false at the same time.
I didn't want to be part of the fame-seeking at the San Francisco Zen Center in the '70s. Even if I had kept to myself, there wasn't a way I could see to avoid it while in the company of others there. So. I didn't take up the invitations, I didn't go, and I continued practicing on my own in the apartment on Geary with the wonderful garden outside the living room bay windows. It was to me very much a Zen garden.
Where something happened.
I've described it, I think, in other posts, and I went into considerable detail about "what happened" with one of the Zen teachers I deal with these days. The Void. I entered the Void while sitting zazen in my apartment on Geary one day. I wasn't entirely sure what it was, and after a time, I could not not enter it when sitting zazen. So I stopped regular practice.
I described "what happened" and I also described an incident in San Francisco that took place while not sitting zazen, an incident that came back in brilliant technicolor detail when I was late for a morning sit during Spring Practice. The Zen teacher I described this incident to said, "You know what? That sounds like you were dreaming." Thinking back about it, it was very much like a dream. Yet the memory of it -- after sitting zazen and entering the Void for perhaps the first time that day in 1970-something in San Francisco -- is crystal clear, even now, and I am certain it "happened", but on what plane of existence?
Was it a dream? Is it all a dream? Was my avoidance of attending zazen at the San Francisco Zen Center justified or even necessary? Or did it even "happen?" But the zendo at the Page Street Center is not at all familiar to me, whereas the Sokoji zendo very much is. So what happened? Or did anything?
Was I there or was I not there? Or both or neither?
I was considering a lot of Zenish nonsense not long ago and found some wonderful archival videos (home movies and tv film excerpts) of the San Francisco Zen Center and Tassajara from the 1960s that was very evocative and memory jogging. What I liked especially were the segments featuring Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, the Japanese founder of the Zen Center.
I was driven to find these YouTube videos by part of a day-long intensive program through the New Mexico Zen center I associate with that featured Kazuaki Tanahashi, a Japanese Zen artist, writer and elder who had been a colleague of Suzuki Roshi and who became part of the San Francisco Zen Center after Suzuki Roshi's death in 1971. He shared some of his memories of those long-ago times, and I sought to rekindle some of my own. The videos I found more than satisfied my interest and curiosity, and I suspect I'll go back to them many more times. This is one of the playlists I found consisting of segments of a KQED documentary from 1968, close to the time when I first got in contact with the SFZC (c. 1964-65). The film above is quite long but includes most of the clips on the playlist as well as quite a lot of other archival material.
Zen has evolved so much in this country since then it's sometimes hard to believe it's the same practice, and I believe that in many centers these days, it's not. Sukzuki Roshi might laugh, I think, at what passes for Zen these days, and yet he'd probably say "Why not? Sure." Zen Not Zen.
Zen practice had been evaporating in Japan since before the War in the Pacific, and after the War it seemed close to disappearing altogether from the land of its birth in the 1200s AD.
This is kind of ironic given Zen's cultural grounding among samurai and the shogunate; ie: warrior culture. It was in effect Buddhism for warriors and rebels.
And that was the essence of what Suzuki Roshi brought to the United States starting in the late 1950s.
That was still the essence of what I came across through the SFZC in the mid-1960s.
In those days, Zen was sitting practice (zazen) and other Japanese Zen rituals, study of the sutras, Dharma talks which involved extensive Q&A with participants, and learning to live a fulfilling, happy, and 'generous" life. It was not psychotherapy, grief counseling, or rehab. It was practice, training. It was based on Japanese Soto Zen practice, but it was not monastic Zen, at least not for lay people though some monastic practices were incorporated. And after the Tassajara retreat opened, monastic Zen was offered to those who were interested and could withstand the rigor.
But for the most part the rigors of the Japanese monastery were applied lightly if at all, and the practice was less about form and ritual than it was about doing more or less what came naturally within the structure of Zen. The structural outlines of Japanese Zen practice were there, some of the fashion and props, but most of the practice was involved with the rebel counterculture of the era, and that meant many modifications from the stricter Japanese Zen observance, even if those who were involved with Zen practice in San Francisco and Tassajara didn't quite know what was being modified to accommodate them, how or why.
Following those outlines kept Zen in America sort of Japanese yet not. Zen was becoming Americanized, and after Suzuki Roshi's death in 1971, the San Francisco Zen Center became something else again under his successor, Richard Baker. Something Big. Important. And Eccentrically Fashionable. It was "out there" in the sense that Zen still wasn't commonplace, but it was attracting the rich, the famous or would-be famous, and the well-connected. It was a hotbed for striving to see and be seen among the powerful and influential in California and San Francisco society and what was left of the counter culture. And it began to change.
When I lived in San Francisco in the mid-1970s, I consciously avoided the San Francisco Zen Center though some of the people I worked with attended zazen there (At the Page St. facility) more or less regularly and encouraged me to attend as well as I'd been introduced to Buddhism through the Center when it was at the Sokoji Temple in Japantown. I declined. At the time I was practicing zazen on my own, usually in my apartment on Geary St., but not infrequently in Union Square or in North Beach, Fisherman's Wharf, and other destinations where the cable car or 38 Geary bus would take me. (I had a car but hardly ever used it in the City.)
I had learned very early on that zazen practice did not require a formal set up, a zendo, a cushion, or really any of the trappings of traditional Zen practice. It could be done anywhere, any time, for as long or as short a time as one wanted or could, and in any position. Full lotus or no lotus or anywhere in between, or lying down, sitting in a chair, it was fine. The point was to sit without conscious desire or aspiration, without conscious thought, just sit. Once you learned to do that -- it takes practice -- you've found your center, and once you do, you can return to it pretty much any time under almost any circumstance. It was liberating.
After 10 years or so of regular practice I entered into what I called The Void whenever I sat zazen. It's a state we were warned about because it could be (probably was) a delusion and it was best to let it go if you wound up there. Well, needless to say, striving to "let it go" merely reinforced it in me, so I let go of regular zazen practice instead.
Afterwards, I engaged in zazen practice a few times a year, always encountering The Void, and being wary about it. I didn't have a formal teacher, so there wasn't really anybody I could discuss it with.
But I think these encounters with The Void changed me significantly.
After I returned to regular practice this spring, I did not encounter The Void -- so far as I know, and things may have been happening that I was not aware of consciously. I did mention it to one of the teachers, but she didn't think it was particularly worrisome. I found sitting zazen to be easy most times, and that the way of zazen practice was akin to a body memory in me. It centered me. And it was almost automatic.
I sat to sit, no other aspiration or motivation, and each time it was like a renewal.
I usually didn't sit for more than 20 minutes at a time, sometimes quite a bit less, but I found myself sitting throughout the day, not just at scheduled zazen times. I still do. It's still refreshing and centering and enables me to continue my tasks in a "proper" frame of mind, which means focused on the now and what is real in the now, not wandering (too much) off on tangential matters.
Richard Baker, who took over operations of the San Francisco Zen Center after Suzuki Roshi died in 1971, appears in a number of the films from the '60s. Though I don't recall ever meeting him or Roshi for that matter, I recognized him immediately even when he wasn't identified. Though advanced in age, he's still around I understand, founder of Zen centers in Colorado and Germany between which he spends his time, an honored if somewhat tarnished elder. As far as I know, the Zen center I associate with in New Mexico was started by him after he left SFZC in the '80s, and gifted in the '90s to the current roshi.
Baker took SFZC into realms and in directions I have a hard time thinking Suzukl Roshi would have imagined, particularly when it came to raising oodles of money, going into business, numerous businesses, buying lots of property and otherwise becoming a significant economic and cultural force in the City and the Bay Area. Numerous offshoots were set up around the country as Baker's vision of expansion came true. Much of it wasn't really Zen in traditional sense at all.
Zen Not Zen.
But it was very rewarding financially and very appealing to some people of wealth, fame, and/or power and that helped keep the expansion going for some time, even after Baker Roshi was asked to resign as abbot.
I won't detail the scandal or scandals to come at SFZC, but I will say that abuse of authority at Zen and Buddhist centers, monasteries and temples is not unheard of and in fact seems to closely parallel financial and sexual improprieties and scandals that have riven most religious endeavours -- probably throughout history. I'm pretty sure it's in the nature of the beast. Zen abbots and roshis are often granted enormous spiritual, moral, and temporal power and authority over their followers and over quite a lot of property and investments. They are supposed to act with wisdom, and most do, most of the time (at least we'd like to think so), but the kind of power and authority religious and spiritual leaders have or can acquire may lead to significant abuse, too. Zen monasteries in Japan can be notoriously abusive to monks and sometimes lay people as well. Mostly it's been forgiven or excused, or even routinized, but the power abbots and roshis have over participants and monks is nearly absolute, and that too often leads to inappropriate action and uproar.
So in some ways, I feel lucky to have encountered SFZC relatively early on, before it became famous and fashionable, before it expanded into Marin, Berkeley, and other locations, before Tassajara, before it was what it became and to some extent still is. I'm grateful that my first encounters with Buddhism and Zen were through Suzuki Roshi, not through some of his successors -- although apparently I was corresponding with Richard Baker when I contacted the Zen Center '60s, all the literature I received was either Suzuki Roshi's own work or that of previous Buddhist and Zen teachers.
As for Suzuki Roshi himself, I think I must have seen some short films of his Dharma talks back in the day, probably at the Midnight Movies which I attended fairly regularly in the late '60s. When I see the clips now, though I may not remember the individual clips, I do remember the settings, the man, and the sound of his voice rather clearly. "This I've heard before" even though it may not have been that particular talk.
The zendo at the Sokoji temple in San Francisco looks identical to my memories of it -- even though I'm almost certain I was never physically there. I probably saw films of it, again at the Midnight Movies, and that's what I remember. There is a bare possibility I was there once during a visit to San Francisco with my mother when I was 16 or maybe 17, as we would sometimes go on adventures in the City, but I don't remember seeing the outside of the building (very distinctive) which I'm sure I would recall if I'd been there.
I have no memories of Tassajara as such. When i see films of it, it's an unknown place to me. I was aware of it, though, soon after its acquisition and I can recall meeting some people who had been there. I was encouraged to go to the Zen Mountain Center myself, but I never did.
As for Green Gulch Farm in Marin, until I heard Wendy Johnson talk about it during an intensive workshop this spring, I can't say I'd ever heard of it at all. Isn't that something? How could I have been so oblivious? However it came about, I was oblivious to Green Gulch and to the various business enterprises SFZC set up around San Francisco and the Bay Area, as well as to the various centers and temples that sprang up around the Bay Area led by former students of Suzuki Roshi and Baker Roshi.
Much of the history of SFZC under Baker Roshi and his successors is still around, the players are still active, and their influence is strong. I'm convinced there wouldn't be more than a tiny bit of Zen in the US or much of anywhere outside Japan but for them. I saw a statistic once indicating that there were more Buddhist practitioners and Zen practitioners in the United States than in Japan and that Japanese Buddhism is slowly fading away. Zen was never a popular practice in Japan in any case, as it was meant for the upper classes where it has largely stayed. Some of what passes for Zen in the United States is also very class conscious and seeks to appeal primarily to the upper strata -- where it's had some success.
In Zen, lineage and history are very important. Though it may be convoluted, you can trace any number of Buddhist endeavors right back to Shakyamuni Buddha or his immediate successors. Some lineages may be partly legendary, but others are extensively documented and there is no doubt of their authenticity.
Those lineages can show how and when the practice was modified and by whom. Adaptations and modifications were going on all the time and still are. Various schools of Buddhism and Zen have developed over the centuries, and they sometimes dispute vigorously and occasionally violently with one another.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Buddhists generally make terrible national rulers. Buddhism is not a governing ideology or philosophy; often it's just the opposite. Not anarchy as such, but rebellion, individualism, and practical autonomy are core principles. Gautama Buddha was, after all, a rebel, and his followers were rebels back in the day, and many stories from Buddhist history are of rebellion from whatever Establishment then existed. Even as part of the Establishment, Buddhists are intrinsically rebelling against it.
Buddhism concentrates attention on the individual coming to "know" him/herself from the inside out, and from that knowing, coming to realize how interconnected all people and things -- physical phenomena -- are. In the end, you come to the realization that at the ground state of being there is no separation into individuals. Everything is one thing, and one thing is everything.
But you can't do much with that realization as it has no practical application in everyday life. So Buddhists are encouraged to see their autonomous existence as connected with all of existence and thus be compassionate toward existence as one would be with oneself.
It doesn't always work on the individual level, and it seems impossible to work on a large scale.
