Two Shores of Zen: Are Western Sanghas All of That?

I’ve been reading Two Shores of Zen: An American Monk’s Japan, by Jiryu Mark Rutschman-Byler. I’d stumbled upon the book while doing some late-night poking around the web last week and then the next day I received an email from Jiryu (who I haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting) asking if I’d review it. 

I said I would but because there are several themes that his book brings up for me, I’m thinking I might put up a few posts inspired by his book – less reviews and more of a series of responses to various issues that Jiryu raises. 

Chapter 2, “No Zen in the West,” for example, deserves more of a response than I could do justice in a review so I’ll write something up sometime soon on that topic. Today I want give some general sense of what’s going on in the book and then address the issue of “sangha” and “harmony” and “not making yourself better than others.” In this post, I get controversial at the end so you might gird your attention loins and stick it out until the end (or, yeah, scroll away) if you are attracted to such things.

Jiryu is a young priest (about 30) – an anomaly in American Soto Zen where the average age of a priest with dharma transmission is 65 and the average age of priests-in-training like Jiryu is 58 (yes, thems the real “reliable” numbers – crunched em myself – and we could be in deep trouble with the Last of the Mohicans soundtrack about to become our very own if things don’t change). If this tradition is going to survive with any strength, I’m praying for more like him in age and spunk! 

Looks like we believe that 60 is the new 40. Well, 53 doesn’t feel like 40 to me! 

Anyway, Jiryu is a priest in the San Francisco Zen system who isn’t averse to cussing, at least in print – and I like that. After some years of practice, including at Tassajara, Jiryu became concerned with what he saw going on around him, struggled to be nice, but had to admit that he found the practice lacking the intensity and single-mindedness that he’d found in Zen lore, so off he went to Japan, looking for the real deal. 

Jiryu trained both at a traditional monastery with a history going back to one of Dogen’s students, Hokyoji, and a not-so-traditional monastery, Bukkokuji (pictured above), with Harada Tangen Roshi – the only surviving direct discendent of Harada Diun Roshi (of the Yasutani-Harada lineage and thus the White Plum, Diamond Sangha, and Kapleau Roshi lineages to name just a few). 

I too trained at Bukkokuji in 1990-91 and find Jiryu’s  descriptions of his experiences very evocative and quite similar to my own. Harada Tangen Roshi is the real deal. Everyplace is different but if you want a clear view of Bukkokuji and get a sense of practice in Japan, read this book. 

However, I find that my own interest piques in his descriptions of San Francisco Zen Center. I’ve visited their various centers a few times, had friends that were high up in the organization, even helped foil their attempts in about ’85 to make Katagiri Roshi abbot after Baker Roshi left (another story!) but am very much an outsider, an interested onlooker. Katagiri Roshi helped get the place started afterall and Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind, Crooked Cucumber and Shoes Outside the Door have all been important books for me in very different ways – all three are really important contributions to American Zen, imv. 

So I’ve watched from afar, usually living in the fly-over, far from one of the shores of Zen. Okay, that’s one minor beef I have with the book – “two shores” is so Californiacentric, so Californicationish, forgetting perhaps that there’s more to Zen than what’s going on in the altered state and the old country.

So Jiryu struggled with priests living comfortably with spouses and kids, the lack of zazen zeal, organizational priorities, etc., and told his SF teacher that this was all “bullshit.”

His teacher’s response included the following,  “A disciple of Buddha does not disparage the triple treasure. Please be careful. Don’t make yourself better than the rest of us. I think you know that’s the furthest thing from our practice.” 

Jiryu’s comments here summarize much of his perspective: I do know that; I have heard it many times anyway. But I’m frustrated, and I’m tired, and it’s dawning on me, like a slow, unstoppable train, that if I’m really serious about this Buddhism thing, I may well need to abandon this California imitation of it. I don’t mean to disparage the Sangha, my peers and my teachers, but I have vowed to end all suffering, my own and others’. And I’ve glimpsed the possibility of that kind of salvation, but the lifestyle here is not pushing me to take the plunge, to realize the one final truth that will shatter all delusions and liberate all beings. 

Now that’s all well and good. I’d say, “What’s holding you back? Sit until you break through your zafu, etc.”

What concerns me is Jiryu’s teacher’s response, “Don’t make yourself better than the rest of us.” On the one hand, “making” yourself better than others really isn’t possible (what’s the measure?) so what’s the point of saying it? And on the other hand, is it a violation of the tenth of the ten grave precepts, “not disparage the triple treasure,” by suggesting that your co-practitioners are engaged in some bullshit? 

In order to disparge the sangha, the community of San Francisco Zen Center, or any Zen Center (I could say dharma center but rather stay closer to home), would have to be a “sangha” in the triple treasures of buddha, dharma and sangha.

The value of the triple treasures lies in how they are reliable refuges in the ocean of suffering like the old buddha or the dharma teachings and practices. What constitutes a sangha, a community of practitioners, whom we can rely on?

According to the Buddha, the sangha was composed of people who had become home-leavers, following all the hundreds of precepts (which we mostly do not in Zen) and/or those who had attained stream entry (a kensho-esque initial breakthrough). Following all those precepts restricts activity to the point that it makes sense to me that a person would be reliable – at least on the surface – because they couldn’t even tickle anyone without having to confess it. Breakthrough experiences … well, I’m less convinced (and am speaking about myself too, just to be clear).

In the Mahayana, especially in China, the definition of sangha expanded to include birds and trees, tiles, rocks and pebbles. This was an important expansion of our tribe to no boundaries. And yet … the definition also collapses any practical utility. A bird is really reliably a bird and doesn’t much care if a priest calls his/her lifestyle bullshit.

Maybe it’s just me being presumptuous, but I find using the “sangha” word a bit presumptuous and call myself and those who practice here a practice community because, let me be clear, I am unreliable.

And I haven’t found others reliable either, including Katagiri Roshi – that’s either one of the wonderful qualities of humans that I usually enjoy or is a cynical song of experience or both.

My view that people are unreliability, btw, includes people who are members at Zen Centers, enlightened teachers, and myself as I said. Even if only finally, in death, everybody is unreliable.

In other words, the reliable thing about people is their unreliability. To assert that anybody who wanders through the doors of a Zen Center and pays dues is sangha (in any sense other than birds and trees) and therefore a reliable refuge is really idealistic and doesn’t really prepare a community for the hard parts of the journey. It’s like cutting out the horrific dragons and witches from fairy stories.

My first sesshin with Daido Roshi, I said to him, “Seems like a really good group of practitioners.”

“Aa,” he said, “they’re just barely alright.”

Anyway, if someone were sangha, shouldn’t we honor them by meeting them completely, playing full out, with whatever can be said fairly and kindly? This is part of the “mutual polishing” (more about that in the future for our online practice community) practice of the Japanese monastic system that we don’t do much of here in the US. “Ugly potatoes in potato peeler,” said Katagiri Roshi, “all become shiny and beautiful.”

Anyway, the importance of reliability is overstated, especially when we need incredible creativity and boldness to establish Zen practice in such a way that it can be transmitted to future generations.

Therefore, to suggest that Jiryu’s earnest-sounding doubts about San Francisco Zen Center (and American Zen generally) – maybe like the kid who saw that the emperor had no clothes and was willing to call out – should not be raised because he’s breaking the precepts seems like both a way of repressing investigation in order to maintain the organizational status-quo and a missed opportunity for a full-out meeting. 

Comments welcome, of course. Let’s explore this more together.