Beware of religious teachers most of them are all-too-human

Zen is not without its share of useful myths, hopefully, to inspire us to seek the truth. This might be challenged.  But I could argue that much of what we imagine Zen to be is certainly mythology, created in the Song dynasty which includes most of the classical Zen teachers being something akin to hagiographic fantasy characters.  It is only recently that much of Zen's popular history has been exposed to have been mainly a Song creation—still, a very useful one at that.  But such a well constructed myth will only take the individual so far.

One joins in this myth when they elect to seek a good Zen master to study under.  I certainly did this as did others of my generation and many more after that as Zen began to become more popular.  At the time, I had no idea that the story of Zen was like so many fingers pointing to previous, ancestral fingers, all the way back to the Buddha who had, so to speak, seen the moon (saw ultimate reality).

My teacher was one of those fingers who was pointing to ancestral fingers who really didn't know anything profound.  He was certainly not enlightened although at the time I believed he was.  Credulity was my middle name.  I had no idea, although I saw them sleeping together, that my teacher and the senior monk were lovers.  As the senior monk later confessed to me, our teacher was gay and used his position as a Zen abbot for less than noble purposes.  The senior monk was having role identity problems.  He left to get his head straight.

Not too long after the senior monk left I was told to leave by the abbot because I had a girlfriend.  It seems that the previous vows I took were not about not having sex but about the gender one has sex with.  

Before I was told to leave, Togen Sumi, the Bishop of Soto Zen in America, visited our little temple in Stockton California and gave the abbot's temple a clean bill of health for having the Buddha statue at the right height and having a proper bell from Japan, etc.  The abbot and Sumi really clicked as I could see.  I later found out, Sumi was also gay like my teacher.  He also used his position for less than noble purposes as did my teacher.  Sumi was also a drag queen!

The reader's imagination can fill in the rest.  I didn't put in the more shocking parts.  This leads me to say that the world of Zen teachers is not a pure one or the idealized one the credulous seeker hopes to find.  In fact, the odds of finding a Zen teacher who belongs to a Zen institution, who is awakened to the One Mind, is extremely low.  

At this point, the bottom line is beware of religious teachers most of them are all-too-human.  More of an insight into Zen teachers, the late abbot of Anraku-ji in Osaka told me, "Being a Zen abbot is learning how to fake being the Buddha for an hour."  I don't expect any of what I said will stop the march of the credulous to Zen centers for instruction.  It is easy to deceive people.  Almost everyone does it these days.  Our very educational system, its purpose, is to produce credulous followers of the social order.

 

Comments

[Bernd]

A good, honest and necessary piece, Zennist!

[Augustinus]

Reading this post I am reminded of this passage from Takuan Soho's (b.1573) Clear Sound of Jewels:

Strictly speaking, for priests there shouldn't be such things as amusements(...)On another level, it is not unfitting for them to lean their hearts towards the moon and cherry blossoms and, accompanied by fourteen-or fifteen year-old youths, to go to a place where the moon can be viewed from beneath the blossoms, a tasteful sake jar in hand(...)But even these are not considered correct for a priest who would have a religious spirit(...)There are those who say: "Everything is like a dream ! The only thing to do is play!" These people rattle their minds beyond limit, sink themselves in pleasure, and go to the extremes of luxury. Though they quote the words of the men of old, they are as far from the minds of the ancients as snow from soot.