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<\/a>\nThere appears to be a low bubbling concern raised every now and again about authorization in Zen asking what exactly a Zen teacher is supposed to be, anyway?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an important question. <\/p>\n
There are people who claim to be Zen teachers without any justification. They seem to have just awakened one morning (I guess there\u2019s a pun there) and declared themselves Zen teachers. There are people with the normative credentials of the tradition, but little apparent training leading to the titles. There are people who stand in clear and unambiguous lines with years and years of training with prominent teachers, all the right credentials, who do bad things. <\/p>\n
Some suggest Zen teachers, at least the real ones, are artists. Maybe. But, beyond the first flush of recognition, I don\u2019t know what this is actually supposed to mean, or what it justifies.<\/p>\n
Others, drawing upon the tradition would say there are no teachers. And no students. Let\u2019s stipulate there is an empty place where all words collapse. No Zen in China. No Zen in America.<\/p>\n
And the form realm is just as real as the empty. <\/p>\n
And in the realm of differentiation we need to act. And our actions have consequences.<\/p>\n
Both truths at once.<\/p>\n
That, my friends, is Zen. <\/p>\n
So, knowing the world of emptiness, what to do in this world of form?<\/p>\n
How do make the invisible visible?<\/p>\n
This is the work of the Zen teacher\u2026<\/p>\n
But how to deal with teachers, how to sort the good, the bad & the indifferent? How are they to be trained? How to be disciplined?<\/p>\n
Some think it\u2019s all very personal between one teacher and one student. And, if something goes wrong there isn\u2019t much to do other, perhaps, than blow the whistle on the bad ones. Write scathing blog entries\u2026<\/p>\n
Speaking of such, among the Zen blogging commentariate there appears to be near consensus that the idea of professionalizing the status of Zen teachers is a bad thing.<\/p>\n
I beg to differ. <\/p>\n
Although I have to admit I\u2019m not in fact finding much of a great push for such a thing among the Zen teachers, themselves. Ourselves.<\/p>\n
Now, I\u2019ve run across one or two assertions about the American Zen Teachers Association as trying to become such a thing. Obviously these are assertions from people who have never attended AZTA meetings. As one who has, I can tell anyone interested, it is a very loose gathering, with no officers and no dues, and limited interests beyond being a peer support group. It has a sole committee, a membership committee which with the consent of the larger gathering defines who may be a member of the body. Which has consequences for people who see it simply as the largest gathering of Zen teachers. But it also publicly acknowledges there are many legitimate teachers not affiliated. Possibly, I would add, the majority of the sum total of legitimate Zen teachers in the West.<\/p>\n
This is not a professional organization.<\/p>\n
Would that it were\u2026<\/p>\n
Ironically, they, we, have been variously dragged over the coals recently for not disciplining errant Zen teachers, one not even a member of the AZTA, the other a founder but not a participant in decades. Then when a number of us, many AZTA, but not exclusively, wrote letters (individually in the first case, forty-four signing a single letter in the second case, chastising them as people while who while flying the Zen flag have committed egregious violations of trust; they, we\u2019ve been accused of power grabbing, of over reaching.<\/p>\n
Come on folks\u2026<\/p>\n
Do we want accountability among Zen teachers or not?<\/p>\n
Me, I think it is a good idea.<\/p>\n