A Modest Call for A Reformation of Ordained Zen Leadership in the West

James Ishmael Ford

The Vinaya, the Buddhist monastic code can be traced to its founder, Gautama Siddhartha. It is a strict code of behavior monitoring most every action and even thought of those who embrace it. It remains the normative form of Buddhist leadership throughout most of the world to this day.

Over the years, however, there have been various attempts at reformation of this model. This has been most significant in Japan, where in the thirteenth century the monk Shinran Shonin explicitly repudiated clerical celibacy and married without renouncing clerical status. In the West many are familiar with Buddhist ministers of the Buddhist Churches of America, who are ordained in this lineage established by Shinran.

More Westerners are likely to be familiar with Zen priests most of whom following in lineages that derive from Japan. As an institution, while coming along later than Shinran’s Shin Buddhism, over a period of evolution brought to its full form as a result of Meiji era reforms, Japanese Zen Buddhist priests are also non-celibate, or at least the large majority are, and there is no assumption of celibacy. Today in Japan Zen clerical leadership is roughly more analogous to Anglican parish ministry than to the monasticism of any tradition, where clerics are responsible for the rites of the community, particularly funerals and related memorials.

Here in the West this Japanese trend toward ordination meaning ministry rather than monasticism has continued and expanded.

There have been bumps along the Western road. Most especially I’ve observed problems that arise out of a romance on the part of priests with their monastic origins. Japanese Buddhist terms for their clergy are all monastic. We see this commonly in the West where ordained Zen religious leaders call themselves and are often called monks (and less commonly nuns), while in fact married or even living in more informal cohabitation with another person. So, right at the beginning there are confusions, for those who encounter these clerics, and, often, for the clerics themselves.

To my mind continuing to use monastic terminology is a mistake and one that would wisely be dropped by ordained Zen leaders. Even more important would be dropping many of the attendant attitudes about what it means to be a serious Zen practitioner, which are obscured by a continuing romancing of a monastic model.

Zen has been in the West for nearly a century, for over half a century it has had serious practitioners, and for the last quarter of a century increasing numbers of clergy, as well as formally sanctioned lay leaders, something largely unique to the West.

During this time we have seen a reformation of what Zen practice can be. It is a substantive shift from what we inherited from our Asian teachers. And with endless bows of gratitude for their gift to us of the Zen dharma, I think it well past time for us to look at what we have come to be and to formally embrace this Western vision of Zen as a viable alternative, a new strand of Zen practice. We find this when we step away from the blinders of monastic terminology and monastic assumptions.

The monastic and later quasi-monastic and occasionally pseudo-monastic Zen practitioners in varying degree all see practice as belonging within the cloister. Most notably Zen teachers have seen the training period of three months a necessary gateway to leadership; and not one of these training periods, but many. And there are all sorts of assumptions buried within this continuation of a monastic rhythm to practice. I know Zen priests who think one cannot really practice Zen without these intensive aspects of practice. While I haven’t polled them, based upon many informal conversations over many years, I strongly suspect, most.

Similarly, there is a belief that one’s best training happens in close proximity to a teacher, living together, practicing together. That is when the teacher doesn’t think it is the only way. Again, this follows the monastic model, or rather a particular version of it. Best I can tell in earlier aspects of Chinese practice, a student would meet her or his teacher infrequently, often not even practicing in the same monastic institution.

Among those who closely identify with this model we often hear of two tracks, lay and monastic. And while rhetorically these “tracks” are said to be equally valid, the truth lies elsewhere. Those committed to the “monastic” model too often believe what they have embraced is the real way to practice. Again, based in my observation of many Zen teachers over many years. Frankly, their disdain of lay practitioners as dilettantes should be pretty obvious to any observer who has not already drunk the cool aid.

And they claim this superiority even though they have actually condemned themselves to marginal lives where there is no true monastic community. They get the hierarchy where everyone has a place, in several meanings of that word, if for a time. But they rarely get a community that actually supports them, particularly as they age. I look at several institutions that have tried to make this deal, a life of practice for a life of support; but as they begin to age with too few new practitioners coming in to support the older ones, I worry about what will happen. It doesn’t look good.

But, frankly, that is a personal choice.

However, too often they bring along a spouse to this lifestyle, and not infrequently children. They create families who are condemned to live at the edge of society to my mind to no obvious purpose. And that’s not the only problem. It has been my observation how the seriously cloistered life, rather than opening us, tends to shut us down. Following the flow of rule with strict hierarchies of relationship, people are less likely to mature in their interpersonal relationships. This may be a worthy price for those whose goal is that deeper insight often associated with the single-mindedness of rule. But, too often people spending too many years under close supervision just do not flower into fully functioning human beings. And for those with families, I worry…

Now, I’m not condemning the monastic lifestyle writ large. I think it has a place, even with the costs involved. But it is not for those who also live in substantial ways in the world, specifically with spouse or partner, and with children. Frankly, it seems to me non-celibate “monastic” practitioners tend to have the worst of both worlds. As do their loved ones.

Now, I’m not calling these people to lives of fame and gain, but I am challenging the ordained practitioners of Zen to look at what they’re doing and to what the consequences there are in assuming a monastic identity when one is not in fact becoming a renunciant.

And there’s a more important point, some good news.

Actually, two things.

First about practice in lay communities. Yes, there are many dilettantes, people passing through, people who don’t dig deep. I’ve known hundreds, maybe over the years I’ve been involved in practice thousands. It’s easy to hide within lay practice, to show up when it is convenient, and not when not. I’m not selling lay practice as a panacea.

Still, when people do throw themselves into the practice, it turns out do just fine. It works. Living at home, alone or with a partner, practicing daily and participating in one, three, five and seven-day retreats as one can is enough.

Lives are transformed, people grow deep and wise.

And the many beings are saved.

My direct observation is with koan practitioners. Those of us who use the koan introspection discipline developed by Hakuin Ekaku and his disciples have observed there is no obvious difference in the advancement through the curriculum between cloistered and non-cloistered, except as regards the actual amount of time one gets in the formal interview where one may pass from one case to the next.

The eye opens just as easily for those who do not entry monasteries as for those who do.

And, I see no reason one cannot assume the practices of a “pure” shikantaza found in the Soto schools that have not embraced the Harada-Yasutani Soto adaptation of koan introspection practice, should not have the same experience. After all the practice of just sitting needs to lead to just standing, just walking, just working, just raising our children. It must. Or, it becomes a quaint artifact, and an obstacle to real life…

And those who clearly are living in the “world,” gather the wealth of experiences that more incline them to psychological maturity, to become more rounded human beings. All the while supporting themselves and their families, no mean thing all by itself.

No guarantees here, of course. But, increases the odds, I think…

And, so, to that second point.

This good news about non-monastic practice I suggest this should inform our clerical leadership, people who are neither lay nor monastic.

What I suggest for us in the West, is that unless one feels a call to an actual cloistered life and wishes to become a monastic in the traditional celibate sense, if one feels called to ordination, one’s ordination path should be seen as an adjunct to practice, rather than as some special or more intense form of practice.

There is no deeper practice than practice. Water does not get wetter.

Through off the monastic terminology. And more importantly, throw off the monastic mindset. And see what can happen. It is already happening, in spite of the obstacles thrown up by tradition, or myopic following of tradition.

Here in the West, most of us are going to be called to bring that practice into the world.

Let monks and nuns do the work of monks and nuns.

And the rest of us, let us embrace our life as our life.

And let our priests become ministers, where ordination is about a calling to service. Heaven knows, we need such ministers, such priests.

Acknowledging this we can shift the focus of training beyond the primary disciplines of Zen meditation, which we all share, from the cycle of monastic liturgy to professional pastoral training. Let us look to the Western seminary tradition and see what we can learn. Let our priests in training learn a little about pastoral counseling. Let’s require clinical pastoral education units of our clerics in training. Let clerical aspirants learn how to organize a spiritual community and a religious education program for our children. Let them learn how to read a financial statement.

There are people more than willing to help. I think of our sisters and brothers within the Unitarian Universalist Association who are getting many of us (including me) who were looking for some basic pastoral services, like religious education for our children, but who could not find them within the Zen sanghas.

Let our Zen clergy do some of the many things that might actually help as Zen takes root here in the West.

And out of all this let these priests go into the world establishing sitting groups while also working in the fields of need.

Could do a world of good.