Customer Reviews

Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I'm in a different position from some of the other reviewers because I was there. Speaking from that perspective, the book is dead on accurate. It is not (only) the salacious story which compells, it is the unanswered questions, questions which, I believe, most people who went through the whole thing have to continue to ask themselves. There is a deep human need to give up our hearts completely to something/someone, and in this case, this need was manipulated and abused. This is a simultaneously old and fresh story. How was it that a man convinced highly intelligent well-educated Americans to treat him like a god come to earth? Presidents and movie stars don't get the heroically self-abasing treatment Dick Baker got from his students. Baker is a remarkable person, a genuine Zen master without a moral mirror of any kind. He still can't figure out what he did wrong.
It was enormously educational to be at Zen Center just before the Debacle. In all my varied life, I have never been in a more confusing place. Nothing seemed to add up, and I put it down to my lack of spiritual attainment. It's true I didn't have much of the latter, but that wasn't the confusion. It was that the whole place was a nest of lies and delusions. That came out later.
The amazing and hopeful part of the story is not really stressed in the book. And that is, Zen Center is alive and well. They took a situation which has destroyed many spiritual practice centers, and they survived and learned. That is a tribute to the deep moral and spiritual treasure of the committed students which are still there. If it wasn't for them, no one would bother to tell that old story.

The publishers of this of this book would probably like prospective readers to think that it's a story about sex, greed, and...well...more sex. It's not. Shoes Outside the Door is more like reading about a couple's messy divorce. Who's wrong and who's right depends on who you talk to, while no one is completely free of blame. But like most failed marriages, sex, money and inexperience are at the root of the break up---a split that would topple a Zen community and become legendary on the gossip circuit.

San Francisco Zen Center was established in the early 1960's by Shunryu Suzuki-roshi (author of the classic Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind) and a group of American-born students hungry for the teachings of Buddhism. Within two decades SFZC would grow from a small handful of students, artists, and house wives to a virtual Zen serfdom. Operations included two large practice centers, a mountain monastery (which doubled as a guest resort), real estate, plus various businesses including a 5-star vegetarian restaurant, a bakery, and a clothing store. This growth explosion can largely be attributed to vision of one Richard Baker--the Harvard educated, dharma heir to Suzuki-roshi (who died in 1971), and arguably the most charismatic, smart, and ambitious of Suzuki's core students.

Baker had an uncanny ability to rally the troops. His passion for Zen was contagious, and so was his dream of building an extended Zen empire. Few could resist falling in line with his grand plans (plans Suzuki himself was not entirely keen on). In time SFZC would become the hang out for rock stars, politicians, writers, and other luminaries. The only problem was it was Baker who was doing most of the hanging out while others put in long hours of unpaid labor ("work practice"). Thus would spark resentment and lay the foundation for Baker's eventual dethronement on more salacious charges.

The book's title is reference to a 1983 retreat at Tassajara when the shoes of Baker's best friend's wife were spotted outside his cabin door for a few days running, thereby exposing what turned out to be not the first of similar relationships between the married abbot and his students. The affair seemed scandalous to everyone but Baker, and would set off an avalanche of accusations, anger, and resentment that linger to this day. In the end Baker would reluctantly resign the abbotship, while half of his students would painfully reject their teacher and leave the institution in which they had invested their lives. Those who stayed behind were left with a sea of debt and a number of failing business ventures.  

Downing is a skilled and talented writer. His ability to piece together the many strands of this complicated story is remarkable, especially when one considers he knew next to nothing about Buddhism before taking on the task. What makes the book even more amazing is the fact that it was commissioned with the blessing and assistance of the community itself, who felt it important to open their doors and air their dirty linen. Six of the seven former or current abbots and scores of long-time students sat down with the author to tell their version of what one abbess wryly refers to as "the Apocalypse." But chronicling real life events can be like trying to untangle a ball of fishing line. There are so many disjointed events, conflicting recollections, and subjective interpretations of the Baker calamity that reading Shoes Outside the Door can seem like treading through a field of land mines. This isn't the story of a war-it's the story of its many battles. In the end the reader is left with no sense of resolution, just a severe case of battle fatigue.

Some would argue that it's too soon for a book like this to come out. The dust hasn't finished settling. This may be true. But there are lessons to be gleamed from what's happened so far. Though it was brought to its knees by the Baker affair, SFZC eventually managed to stand up and dust itself off. (Many thought it never would). To this day it remains an unprecedented experiment in American Buddhism. And while it still walks with a residual limp, SFZC has chosen to swallow its pride and share its hard knocks so other Buddhist communities can avoid making similar mistakes. For this we should all bow deeply in gasho.

Buddhism is here to stay, and this book will have historical importance. It recounts the crisis that nearly destroyed the first Buddhist monastery ever built outside of Asia, in the 2,300 year history of that religion, after the death of its founder, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. I hope that the author will put his notes and taped interviews in some university library, since historians of religion will want to consult them in the coming centuries. Wouldn't scholars love to have first person accounts of the disputes mentioned in Acts of the Apostles between Peter and Paul about admitting gentiles to the Christian community?

When I first began to read about Buddhism in the early 70's, I thought that a Zen master was a type of saint. He or she could make mistakes, but was infinitely compassionate, above fleshy desires, and as enlightened as the Buddha. But facts in the last thirty years show that Zen masters (and teachers in other traditions) can be insensitive to others' needs, have plenty of desire, and have (so far as one can judge) less than perfect understanding. One can pass many koans or receive transmission from a certified Zen master and still be a jerk--or worse. This book documents the rise and fall of one such man, Richard Baker, the handpicked successor to Suzuki Roshi.

Baker, although married, had affairs with female students, ignored the monastic community to hobnob with the rich and famous, and started zen related businesses that, instead of providing money for the zen community, turned into money and time sponges only profitable because the monks provided practically free labor. People were working so hard in the businesses that they had little time or energy for meditation. Finally, Baker had one affair too many and people realized that they were slaving to provide him with a nice BMW, three houses, and a great lifestyle. He was asked to resign and the members of the community, after some initial floundering, hired management consultants, sold the businesses, and put limits on the power of future leaders. The men and women of the zen community deserve great credit for preserving Suzuki Roshi's legacy this crisis could have destroyed it.

Another lesson of this book and others such as After Zen by Janwillem van de Wetering or Ambivalent Zen by Lawrence Shainberg is that spiritual wisdom and worldly wisdom (or practical common sense) are not the same. The virtues of Mother Teresa and Abraham Lincoln seldom occur in the same person. Even if Baker was a complete opportunist taking a sweet deal for all it was worth, he should have realized that he was living to high on the hog for it to last.

This book should be read by any Westerner who has or is thinking of attaching himself to a Buddhist teacher, or for that matter, any type of guru. The book teaches that faith in a teacher must be provisional and that you must not surrender your own judgment. Reason is our greatest gift from God, and we must never fail to use it. The Buddha himself said that we should believe not because he said something but because we find it true in our own lives and practice and to work out our salvation with diligence. Don't forget that.

This is not some truly great book like Robert Fagles' translation of The Iliad, or Thomas Aquinas' Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, but it sure is a fascinating and exceptionally good read, and a refreshing critique of the narcissism that led to the Sixties counter-culture and its interest in Zen. At the very least it is a cautionary tale, as others have said here, and perhaps something of an unintentional Dharma text in that regard. I liked the style very much, and found the narrative easy to follow. The humor and irony were nicely done, and it was especially poignant to read an outsider's insight into the nonsense we Buddhists engage in.

I have practiced Buddhism for almost twenty years. I have seen this sort of stuff firsthand in EVERY setting with which I have been affiliated, including a short Zen stint periodically sitting at Aitken-roshi's Diamond Sangha, where I was blessed to hear his senior student and heir-apparent rationalize banging the wife, Japanese of course, of a fellow practitioner. This stuff saddens me greatly, to the point where I mostly just practice on my own and stay away from "The Buddhist Scene." We are encouraged as Buddhists to examine our own faults, rather than those of others. Yes. Good advice, but I don't think it translates into wholesale abandonment of discriminating wisdom or good judgement. We are encouraged to transcend ordinary views. Yes, but I don't believe this is license to jettison common decency and common sense.

Whether or not Zen is a religion, a "spiritual path" or even a form of Buddhism is a matter of definition. If it is Buddhism, it is a rather strange sort, especially the way Zen has evolved in the US. For basics, Buddha taught clearly that a student was to train in moral discipline first, that this foundational practice would then allow a settling of the mind in meditation, and once one could meditate well one was to begin meditating on the profound wisdom teachings. Certainly, meditation and wisdom could be introduced from the very beginning, but the progression of emphasis was clearly moral discipline, then meditation, then wisdom. Zen, especially American Zen, turns this on its head, starting with merely a nod to morality of a decidedly counter-cultural variety, focusing instead on meditation technique and a very sloppy and unsystematic, but oh-so clever "Zen-speak" approach to the epistemological wisdom teachings of the Mahayana, with the hope that once one becomes "enlightened" one's moral discipline will then fall into place naturally, or even the sophistry that, once enlightened, whatever one does automatically IS enlightened moral conduct. Ha! This book makes mincemeat of that little conceit, simply by telling this tale in all its glory. Besides, the idea that these characters might be enlightened is simply laughable; that some of their students believed so is both laughable and tragic. How naive to mistake charisma, a bit of knowledge, a good rap and perhaps a few minor psychic powers for the enlightened state of the Buddha. From a moral standpoint, it is particularly telling that the author emphasizes how Suzuki-roshi wanted to "give the precepts" to students. In my tradition, yes, someone gives the vows (not mere precepts) when the student requests them, but the emphasis is not on the "giving," rather it is on the student "requesting," "taking" and "KEEPING!" these vows of moral discipline.

Buddhism is Buddhism. It is not liberalism, socialism, pacifism, environmentalism, utopianism, feminism, social activism, hedonism, nor any other "ism." It is Buddhism. IMHO, Buddhism in America all too often has little to do with Buddhism, and everything to do with "The Buddhist Scene," as it was so accurately (but, I think, unintendedly) described by one of those quoted in the book. American Buddhism seems to be populated to an unfortunate degree by a certain breed of social malcontents with woefully unresolved ambivalence toward some very basic life skills and attitudes such as discipline, autonomy, identity, integrity, sexuality, and other-centeredness. Rather than addressing these areas and maturing, they take the "Spiritual Bypass." That a bunch of spoiled, disaffected and sadly confused youth rejected their own rich cultural and religious heritage to indulge in a search for meaning and salvation in exotic cultures is probably silly enough, but harmless. That they then took only the most superficial, self-serving parts of the precious teachings they found there, and used them to justify behavior and attitudes that would never have been condoned or admired in those other cultures has probably set the "project" of bringing Buddhism to America back many years. Most ordinary people I talk to are decidedly wary of Buddhism and Buddhists, and I think these sorts of shenanigans are the reason. "The Buddhist Scene" has brought dishonor on the Dharma, no small karmic matter. Pitifully, many of these people, in their narcissisim, still don't seem to get it, especially Baker-roshi. Arrogance and self-deception spring eternal. Sometimes I think us practitioners, our society, and Buddhism itself, all would have been better served if we had merely stayed at home and studied the Judeo-Christian scriptures or the discourses of Epictetus, and put the immense wisdom we found THERE into practice.

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness..." Indeed. Read it and weep. But read it.

This is an invaluable chronicle of what happened when a profound spiritual practice became disconnected from the psychological reality of its practitioners' daily lives. Although the book takes its title from and revolves around the sexual scandal that led to the resignation of Richard Baker-Roshi as Abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center in 1983, the real value of this book lies in the extensive interviews Michael Downing has collected from current and former Zen Center members, including Baker-Roshi himself. These interviews chronicle four decades in the evolution of Zen practice in America, from the early years under Suzuki Roshi, through the expansion of the Zen Center to include not only the Tassajara monastery, but also Green Gulch farm, Greens restaurant and other businesses, all under Baker-Roshi's charismatic leadership. We hear how the Zen community struggled with the problems of authority, hierarchy, the authenticity of Dharma Transmission, the meaning of an enlightened life, and how their understanding of Zen practice was transformed not only by the 1983 leadership crisis, but by the subsequent struggle to "democratize" American Zen.
What emerges are important questions about the nature of practice and the role of a teacher. How did meditation itself become a vehicle for denial and for the maintainence of a veil of silence that prevented anyone from confronting the master about his behavior? Just how much authority should a teacher have over students lives and to what extent should the teacher's behavior be a model for his students? At a time when Baker-Roshi was living lavishly with tens of thousands of dollars in discretionary funds at his disposal,his students lived on monthly stipends that averaged $115 - with no health insurance. At what point does "work practice" turn into merely long hours of low paid work? Remarkably, Baker-Roshi repeatedly asserts that for years he had no idea what impact his sexual affairs and extravagent lifestyle might be having on his students. The master of "just sitting" comes across as having had a great deal of difficulty just listening.
This is not a simple story about saints and sinners, but a complex account of how sincere, dedicated and, yes, even "enlightened" people became entangled by their personal conflicts and blindspots regarding authority, sexuality and personal responsibility. This record of how everyone concerned has struggled with these issues, both in their individual practice and together as a sangha will provide valuable lessons to generations of students and teachers to come.

The best compliment I can pay this book is that I read it twice, starting again immediately after I finished it the first time. Of course, given the way this book is written, you really have to read it twice to understand it. The purpose of my review is to tell people why they might want to read this book (at least once) despite its manifest and rather peculiar defects.

One criticism of this book which I believe is just plain unfair is that the book is gossipy in a prurient, trashy, sensationalistic way. The author actually shows very little interest in sexual behavior, or in the details of specific sexual of financial scandals. The author appears to be driven by a genuine passion to answer much deeper and more interesting, if ultimately unresolved, questions: What drew people to Zen Center? How did Zen Center achieve its meteoric worldly success? What about Zen Center was right? What about Zen Center went wrong? Did or can the Japanese culture of Zen Buddhism translate to American culture? Etc. The author interviewed something like 80 people over a period of several years in a diligent, sincere effort to explore these interesting questions.

One major strength of this book is the author's ability to present a fresh, unbiased, and often provocative or irreverent perspective. The author's position as an outsider with no vested interests or emotional baggage is a crucially important asset. Given the emotionally charged explosion which almost sank Zen Center in 1983, it is hard to imagine anyone who is now or ever was associated with Zen Center having the objectivity necessary to write this book.

As for provocative perspectives, here's just one example. I was initially offended by the author's scathing dismissal of the value of that beloved and revered collection of edited dharma lectures, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. The author writes: "It really wasn't better than nothing, but it certainly was bigger. *** After the book's publication, students of Zen who had never met Suzuki-roshi could memorize what he hadn't exactly said and quote him out of context." Ouch. But the more I thought about it, the more I saw that the author has a valid point.

The author also makes a tremendously diligent effort to present both sides of almost every issue he raises, even issues concerning small factual details. Nobody can be purely objective, but the author strives mightily to achieve that end.

One criticism of this book which is accurate is that the book is poorly organized. In fact, I can discern no organizational scheme of any kind, from one chapter to the next or even within individual chapters. The story is not told chronologically, and it is not told thematically; the picture emerges only gradually from a barrage of randomly applied dots and squiggles. The author appears to believe that this lack of organization mystically reflects the "Zen" character of the subject matter. But, with all due respect, that is a feeble excuse for what is really just a lack of structural discipline on the part of both author and editor.

The most frustrating task which the book's lack of organization gives the reader is trying to keep track of the identities of the many people whose lives are the subject of the story. That is why I read the book twice; so I could understand more clearly who was who. The book would benefit enormously from an appendix with one or two paragraph "mini-biographies" of, say, the 10 or 20 people who are mentioned most often. If you don't want to read the book twice, keep notes.

Yet, at the end of the book, you do know something of the story of Zen Center, and it is a fascinating story. It is a story about what I believe boils down to one crucially important question: How can Americans -- boisterous, individualistic, naive, pleasure loving, hard working, undisciplined Americans -- satisfy their genuinely desperate yearning to integrate into their hectic and fractured modern lives some form of authentic spiritual practice? Is it hopeless to think that we can? Or is it possible? What does the rise and fall and slow re-emergence of Zen Center mean for that possibility?

If you are interested in that kind of question, I believe this book, which is the product of much hard work and a genuinely passionate interest in the subject matter, is worth your time.

Peace and love to all.

I loved this book, but then, I was at SF Zen Center attending a meditation intensive when Suzuki-roshi died in 1970, and spent 8 months at Tassajara in 1972. The winter training period was conducted by my own teacher, Katagiri-roshi. I spent the summer working there for the guest season, then left in the fall when I learned that the training period would be run by Dick Baker. I already knew Reb Anderson too well, and thought that the two of them were arrogant fools, an amazingly irritating combination of faults. I couldn't imagine trying to study and practice Zen Buddhism with these two self-important guys.
At the time, although I knew some other students had left with Dick's installation as abbot and grand potentate, I thought I was one of very few who thought Dick and Reb were travesties of Zen teachers.
Now, 30 years later, I read this wonderfully well-written, well-researched, funny, germane, anecdotal book, with a cast of characters so many of whom I knew, and I feel both amused and delightfully vindicated in my young man's judgement. I was amazed to read how many otherwise fine and intelligent women and men with whom I practiced zazen so many years ago were so thoroughly taken in by the Dick and the Reb. It's laughable and pitiable when they finally realize they've been had by the Dick.
And of course it ain't over till it's over, to quote my favorite Zen Master, Yogi Berra: they took power away from Dick Baker only to give it to Reb Anderson, another Dick Baker but without the intelligence, humor, or style.
It was also good to read the fine insights of Ed Brown (Tassajara Bread Book) and Yvonne Rand, two of the people I most admired both in 1972 and now.
What I particularly like about the book is the way it shows how very quickly, in religion, reform and a fresh start (Suzuki-roshi coming to the US) turn into the sour-tasting mix of empty ritual, self-aggrandizing antics, and mind-numbing bureaucracy within a few years of the original master's death.
A sweet and much needed exposé of SF Zen Center, written with care and humor and insight. The mixing up of the time-line, at first disconcerting, becomes a beautiful way into the wholeness of real Zen Buddhist practice.
Although the book is obviously of interest to those with curiosity or connection to Buddhism or Eastern religion in America, its resonance as a cautionary tale of sincere simplicity turning into arrogant complexity will attract a wider audience.

As a longtime Zen practitioner who has attended retreats led by senior teachers of the SF Zen Center, I could barely resist the urge to read this book cover to cover in one sitting. Morbidly fascinating it is, and deeply enlightening as well---for me it connected a huge number of dots, yielding insight into the social, cultural, historical and institutional baggage that is inextricable from the Zen experience that SFZC (often referred to half-jokingly as "the Vatican of American Zen") and many other American Zen organizations offer.

The book is also frustrating in that the author does jump around a bit...though it appears that he has spent a little time around Zen centers and may have done a bit of sitting meditation himself, he often seems to veer off on various tangents. Until the last 1/3 of the book that is, when he keeps coming back to interviews with Richard Baker, who keeps selling us the same maddening horse manure about being, why, simply unaware of the consequences of what he was doing during his tumultuous tenure as head of SFZC. This repetition quickly becomes monotonous.

Baker is clearly a highly developed narcissistic personality (a google search of "Narcissistic Personality Disorder" sums him up pretty well) which is both hilariously ironic and doubly unfortunate---and I'm afraid to say, hardly uncommon---for a leader of a religion that's supposed to be all about teaching us to let go of our conditioned egoistical delusions.

This book begs the question: how on earth did such a borderline-sociopathic personality become head of what would become the largest, most influential Zen group in North America...and how did he get away with so much for so long? Zen Buddhists, especially the Western variety, are hardly idiots or cult-addled automatons...yet how was Baker able to do so much damage for as long as he did before the feces finally hit the fan?

Downing barely brushes up against the answer, and makes no attempt to synthesize all the information that he manages to unearth. (It's worth noting that he gained access to SFZC senior members through the pretense of writing a book about SFZC, rather than about Richard Baker's 1983 scandal that nearly wrecked the place. But perhaps this was his editor's commercial-minded imposition.)

What comes through loud and clear is just how INSTITUTIONAL (i.e. mainly concerned with its own survival/prosperity rather than its spiritual underpinnings) Shunryu Suzuki's mushrooming-mega-sangha quickly became, despite its cultural and religious pretensions. It is obvious that Suzuki appointed Baker to succeed him mainly because he knew Baker was a phenomenally charismatic fundraiser and networker. It is also obvious that Baker got away with murder for so long in large part due to the community's dog-like devotion to upholding Papa Suzuki's legacy, i.e. his decision to grant to Baker alone the dubious "dharma transmission" ritual.

Most of all it is sadly obvious that the great majority of the well-educated and socioeconomically priviledged Americans who built SFZC, were desperately thirsty for what they perceived as institutional validation of their Zen practice through this sort of mindless adherence to Japanese Zen's traditional forms and formalism, which are of course also themselves byproducts of the mother country's own sociological and institutional pressures.

Downing's book is a much needed wake-up call for those who would practice Zen with an uncritical eye towards its inherent institutional biases and limitations, which are not much different from those of any other religion.

Had it contained a bit more analysis instead of just repetitive interviews, I would give it 5 stars.

What a powerful, engrossing read this book is! Excellent writing, deeply researched, and as honest as I could image (I know lots of the story, what I know was accurate in the book).

Any one with ties to the SF Zen Center, or interested in how Religious Leaders can self-destruct and alienate thousands of sincere people from their organizations. This story is amazing, but now so familar with the fall of so many preachers and gurus. It leaves the opinion that religions are magnets for those who rush in to be dupped.

I was fortunate enough to met Suzuki-roshi, had the highest opinion of him, yet the failure of Richard must ultimately be seen as Suzuki's failure. He put Richard in a position that he could not possibly have performed. In all those years (1960-1983) Richard was the only "enlightened" student (signified by formal transmission) he produced. Dedicated students, sitting in meditation for ten's of thousands of hours! For what???? The purpose was just to create this story. I think this story is the greatest lesson. Read it and it will awaken you better than decades of Zen practice.

...obviously, something big and bad happened at the SF Zen Center in the late 1970s and early 1980s. We heard some vague details in the revised edition of "How The Swans Came To The Lake," and David Chadwick skirted the issue in various ways in "Crooked Cucumber," and left us a few clues. I guess if one had lived in SF during that period, some of it would have surfaced in the local papers too.

So now we have a comprehensive overview of the Zen Center's problems, what do we do?

We carry on practising, and remember than people are only human. But if you want to learn how even the best-intentioned organizations can run off the rails, for your own future benefit, this book has a lot to recommend it. The author is not a Buddhist, but he is attentive to the topic, and presents what appears to be a fair and balanced account.

It's not mere gossip -- which would be Wrong Speech and Wrong View -- but an attempt to clarify what has been a mystery for nearly two decades. It doesn't reflect badly on Sunryo Suzuki, or on Zen itself, that wrong choices were made, and that selfishness and commercialism came to spoil the Center. Materialism and lust are powerful undertones of American society, and we must be mindful of them. Here, you can read of many who were not.