Finding Zen Teachers & Spiritual Directors
“Vigorous people who study and practice Zen: You absolutely must meet a dharma teacher who, through right view, embodies the Way. Then stay close and serve them for three-five years. Ask for their instructions for body, speech, and mind; carefully, precisely follow their instructions for body, speech, and mind. First, awaken ‘withered tree, dead ash.’ Next, use a bamboo staff and all day long, month after month, knock it all into one. Round and smooth like a pearl rolling without exhausting the limits. How would one not become a true buddha lion?!”
Eihei Dogen (translation by Dosho Port)
Early in my Zen life, when I was a monastic at Shasta Abbey, a new monk joined our community. The buzz was how he was a fully transmitted Obaku priest, which we were given to understand was a sub-branch of the Rinzai schools. As the weeks unfolded it came out that he had just made up these ordinations.
While he was the first fraudulent teacher I would meet, over the years there have been a number of such individuals. Some I’ve known personally. Often, they’re charming rogues. Sometimes it’s shocking that they have any kind of following at all. They leave trails of something unsavory behind them. Some even have something to offer. But each had decided the best route to teaching authority was simply to make up one’s authorizations. And always there are negative consequences.
As the years have progressed there have been fewer and fewer of these people who just make it all up. Sadly, I believe, because getting a “real” authorization has become easy. I’ve met and read the teachings of a lot of people who have real enough titles. But who seem to have little insight into the tradition. And who can only be problematic teachers. Even in a tradition where the student is actually more important than the teacher.
Dharma transmission is both a myth in all sense of that word, and a historical fact. It arises in early medieval China, which in its Confucian inheritance, is deeply concerned with relationships, and as part of that wants to know where you come from, who your parents are. Out of this the early uniquely Chinese Buddhist meditation schools began to construct a lineage chart that went back to the Buddha himself.
However, starting with the disciples of Damon Hongren in the seventh century, this mythic chart rapidly became something historic. And for better than a thousand years, Zen has been defined in significant part by its claim of a lineage of Dharma transmission. A “special transmission outside of the scriptures, not founded upon words and letters.”
It is often oversold. The rhetoric around it is grand. And it often suggests awakening and its recognition by a teacher is in some way disconnected with our ordinary lives. And that the mastery of transmission means one is no longer bound by the laws of cause and effect. A sad state of affairs when reality happens.
What dharma transmission really is when it is being true is fairly simple. It means that someone who has transmission in the lineage sees in another person three things. They are a sense of awakening, the ability to guide people in Zen meditation, and a sense a person can take on spiritual direction, what in the West is sometimes called the cure of souls.
Depending on the school the ordering of importance for these three things is different. All expect someone to be able to guide others in the disciplines of Zen meditation. Pretty much everyone understands the need for this skill, and it is often the most obvious reason someone is given transmission. They’re good at meditation and they seem capable of guiding others.
Few in the West seem to give a lot of attention to having a sense of usefulness to people in their care over a long period of time. Mostly this is picked up over time by a teacher. Something of an argument for finding a teacher who has been doing it for a while.
And then there’s awakening. In the mythic version of transmission this is all that it’s about. Has someone seen deeply into the matter of not one and not two? In some Zen lineages this is not at all the case. Instead, years of practice, monastic experience, and the ability to lead a retreat are the markers. While it isn’t an absolute, for the most part only lineages with an emphasis on traditional koan training expect some sense of awakening to boundlessness, to nonduality.
I was for several years involved in a conversation about minimum standards within the Soto branches of our convert Zen communities. There tended to be three camps. First there were those who wished to carry over the expectations of the Japanese Sotoshu, the institution our priestly credentials all traced to. Second, there were those who felt there needed to be substantial reforms to address the unique conditions here in the West and specifically North America. And third, there were those who felt dharma transmission was all that was required.
In truth each of these approaches have produced good and bad teachers. But the bare assertion of dharma transmission has been the weakest link in creating people with credentials but with little meaning to them. The “we only need dharma transmission camp” has been the primary source of teachers with extremely limited formation.
Such teachers often gravitate to the internet and social media. Their teachings tend to reflect a lot of reading if not a lot of practice, and often show less actual encounter with the fundamental matters of the heart. Lots of right and wrong, not a lot of invitation into intimacy. With just enough exceptions to make me draw short any blanket assertion.
There will always be those more concerned with titles. There will always be snakes with the dragons. Always. All that noted, I suspect for some time to come the backbone of our North American Zen will continue to be those attempting to adapt as closely as possible the patterns we’ve inherited, including expecting monastic experience as central to formation.
But, also, there is very much a growing edge, seeking rigor in formation, but acknowledging we are no longer primarily a monastic movement. And seeing ways to continue to find depth in our paths without necessitating going into a monastery.
So, you want a teacher. How do you sort through the people on offer? Today we have the advantages as well as the problems in access to the internet and google searches. Look for people who are clear who authorized them. If they don’t, you can safely move on. If they have stated their relationships, and you don’t know who the teachers are that are listed, look them up. You should be able to trace the lineage back into traditional charts.
Then what about their formation? What kind of training did they have? And what do other people say about them? Don’t let the fact they might be controversial stop you if they otherwise seem like the sort of teacher right for you. Dig a bit deeper. And make your own decisions.
Today Zen teachers come through lineages transmitted through China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. There are traditional monastics, mostly in Chinese, Korean, or Vietnamese lines. There are non-celibate priestly lines from Japan and Korea. And there are Householder lineages, mostly derived from Japan, but there are Korean and Chinese lines as well. These Householder teachers are becoming increasingly important in North America and the West.
Much is made of having clear ethical guidelines. This has followed a range of scandals, mostly of a sexual nature, among the first and second generation of Zen teachers. I personally wouldn’t recommend a group that doesn’t have such clear guidelines. It means the institutions are paying attention to basics. But, one needs to understand in smaller organizations, and organizations that rely heavily on teachers, the guidelines are only as good as the teachers and their senior students make them.
Personally, I suggest teachers who followed clear paths to insight. And who clearly state this is their primary project. Usually this means people who’ve had extensive training on the koan way. But, again, any categorical assertion should be suspect here. The right fit is the right person.
There is sort of a bottom line to this. Seek with an open heart. And open eyes.
Take your time.
And then, when the time is right, throw yourself into the project with all your heart.
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