Eido Shimano and Where You Really Don’t Want to Wind Up

I’ve been reflecting on the Eido Shimano situation (read more here and here). There’s a lot to the story. Sex, power, enlightenment, denial, self-righteousness, pretense, etc. 

And then there’s the Roshi.

Anyway, the above image keeps coming to mind. 

You might be scratching your head about now wondering, “What the heck, Dosho?” Or “Are those really snowshoes?”

Let me assure you, they are snowshoes and this is a post with a moral … so first we need to take a trip to a big lake. 

Last summer, I was on vacation, driving through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (separating two big lakes) and I stumbled on the shrine for the “Snowshoe Priest,” Bishop Baraga. Ever hear of him? I hadn’t.

Turns out that in the mid-1800’s this Slovanian priest travelled many hundreds of miles in winter with snowshoes from native village to native village, establishing and visiting missions. One of them was about where the above statue sits. 

He had a cousin known as the Mosquito Priest who did the rounds in the summer (not really).

Baraga really learned Ojibwa and Ottawa and wrote the first Ojibwa dictionary. He also wrote a bunch of respectful stuff about native people for his superiors. Despite his mission to missionize them, it seems like he was a pretty level guy. Then he died.

Sometime in the 1950’s a group formed dedicated to getting him declared a saint. Think of all the meetings with weak coffee and bars (this kind)! I don’t understand why anybody would want to do that (tourism?) but they raised money and built the above monument, almost completing it in 1972.

But it’s hard to be a priest, even a dead one that others wanna-be-a saint. As the Roadside America.com link  says, “As the Bishop’s statue was being lowered onto the cloud, a portion of the statue’s hemline caught on one of the beams. When an acetylene torch was used to cut it away, the polyurethane lining within the statue ignited, and in moments smoke and fire engulfed the sculpture.”

Here’s Father Baraga on fire:

They did finally get it done and it’s pretty impressive in a retro kind-of-way: six stories high, made from bronze, and standing on a stainless steel cloud. 

The Vatican, though, has many applications for the “who wants to be a saint” competition, so they haven’t ruled on Father Baraga yet, even though I bet he has as good a statue as anybody.

Now the Snowshoe Priest had nothing to do with putting himself on a cloud (especially of the stainless steel variety) or the accidental torching. We don’t even know if he smoked. Like I said, seems like he was a pretty level guy.

In Eido Shimano’s situation (or so it seems) and for many of us in Zen teaching positions, it’s very attractive to collude with others in order to get elevated like the Snowshoe Priest – maybe even addictive. Sometimes Zen teachers (and others, of course, but just to be specific) use elevated positions to trade for other stuff – sex, power, donations, laughs at dharma talks, what have you.

People’s opinions, though, are not made of stainless steel and few of us even have a polyurethane lining (although I have seen Zen priests wearing koromo and kesa that looked like they might … but I digress).

Then there’s the issue of serving the dharma.

The moral of the post is this: be careful not to stand on clouds and be especially careful with the hemline of your robe.