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Zen in America: Five Teachers and the Search for an American Buddhism

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Zen in America
Five Teachers and the Search for an American Buddhism
By Helen Tworkov

Helen Tworkov wrote this book before she began Tricycle magazine, and its portrait of American Buddhism reflects the eclectic and panoramic vision that guided Tricycle through its first ten years under her leadership. Based on interviews with five prominent teachers who received dharma transmission from Japanese masters (Robert Aitken, Jakusho Kwong, Bernard Glassman, Maurine Stuart, and Richard Baker), Zen in America presents its subject as a sprawling movement filled with contradictions, true vision, hope as well as disappointment, and some serious characters. It's an enthralling read.

At the book's heart is the struggle for Americans to find an authentic Buddhist practice, which for most means an attempt to create a lay practice with the depth and resonance traditionally associated only with monastic Buddhism. Each of the five teachers profiled has pursued a different vision of Zen and its incorporation into American life. What emerges over the course of the book is how these differing visions have given rise to a wide variety of interpretations as to what practice is and what the consequences of a commitment to practice mean for the both the individual and the Buddhist community.

Tworkov's main concern in this book seems to be to throw her questions back at the reader: What is Zen? Can Zen become American, or is its transformation by American teachers into something Americans can practice changing it into something altogether different?

The book is very well written: Tworkov never stoops and her impressive command of English allows her to constantly present ideas in a fresh, original way. The book might have benefited from a different form, however; it is organized rather like a series of magazine articles each expanded to a length of fifty pages. Each article begins with a portrait of the subject in the present, and then backtracks to relate the subject's biography up to that present. This is fine journalistic style for shorter articles but with a longer text can bog the reader down without the use of chapters or other organizational devices.

Some of the portraits also seem quite incomplete, as one would expect from a magazine article. Robert Aitken's portrait in particular begs a full biography; short shrift indeed is made of his prolific (for a Zen master) authorship and its effect on "Zen in America". However, full biography is not the mission of the book, and so each section is tailored to fit the overlying sociological theme. Notably missing from the roster of Zen worthies is Philip Kapleau, who reputedly declined to participate in the project. Kapleau's influence on American Zen is considerable and his absence renders the book incomplete; even if he had not founded a lineage of his own, his The Three Pillars of Zen (1965) is perhaps the most important work on Zen to appear in English and has had tremendous influence on the transition of Zen in America from philosophy to practice over the last 37 years.

Zen in America was originally published in 1989; this expanded edition was issued five years later. Much has ensued in the time that has passed since then, and the relevance of the book's topic is slowly passing into history as the teachers profiled therein retire (Maurine Stuart died in 1990; Robert Aitken is now 85 years old.) Perhaps a new study is called for.

These reservations aside, the book is extremely interesting. Trying to understand just what makes an American take up a religious practice from a foreign culture like Zen and try to make it their own may be reason enough for some to read it. For American Zen practitioners, it provides some much needed information on the societal context within which their practice belongs.

Recommended.

Portraits of five Americans who came to head their own zen centers:
- Robert Aitken (Hawaii)
- Bernard Glassman (Los Angeles, then New York)
- Maurine Stuart (Cambridge, Mass.)
and two students of Shunryu Suzuki:
- Bill Kwong (Sonoma, Calif.)
- Richard Baker (San Francisco, then New Mexico/Colorado).

Each portrait is balanced and informative; the author takes care to include the controversies that have sprung up around each figure, then goes beyong the plain historical record to discuss in some depth the subject's philosophy and approach to zen training. Although the organization of each essay is sometimes hard to follow, and there are spots of dryness, I found this book very informative. It treats each subject as human, draws contrasts between individual perspectives and styles, and maintains a critical distance from each figure. Well worth reading for anyone whose interest has been piqued by books like "Shoes Outside the Door" or "Crooked Cucumber."

This book is a wonderful journey into the recent past. The introduction leads us through the early steps of Zen in the United States, and the afterword (in my copy - which I've already loaned to a friend) gets us nearly caught up (a point after Maureen Stuart's passing, but before Robert Aitken's wife's passing). In between those two sections are five articles about five Zen teachers with very distinct personalities.

These five profiles were each intimate, unflinching, and honest. Each shows the true humanity of each teacher, including "faults." The author never strays into gossip or judgement, but instead gives us a professional journalist's tribute to each. If you ever need to be shaken from your own flavor of teacher-worship, read this book. There is some fair discussion about the meaning of Dharma Transmission in the context of American culture, and the relationship between enlightenment and ethics.

Some criticisms: The author occasionally wanders into her own opinions and fears about Zen and its future, and those opinions are occasionally lacking in logic and insight. Were I her editor, I would have suggested cutting all of that out of the book. She did a wonderful job with the research and interviews, and the book would have stood on those merits alone. She also seemed to jump around from point to point on the timeline (worse than a "spacetime" episode of Star Trek). It didn't bother me, because I was reading the book just for the joy of it, but I pity anyone who wants to get a clear mental timeline from these articles.

If, like me, you read this book and feel like history passed you by, please don't sell all your belongings and move to Green Gulch. There is the other sub-textual lesson found in any historic account: Don't lament about having missed the glorious past. Today is tomorrow's exciting history. I will certainly look upon my own wonderful teachers and aging sangha-members with more interest and compassion.

My chief reservation about this book, is that the five key figures featured in it (Robert Aitken, Bill Kwong, Bernie Glassman, Maurine Stuart and Richard Baker) are just that - five people, who do not necesarily embody other facets of Zen in America, however centrally involved with its development in their own way. Even with revisions, it is now a dated text, and without an account of Philip Kapleau's founding contribution, rather incomplete. (For this, you might want to read Kenneth Kraft's study of Kapleau's legacy: Three Pillars of Zen. Training and Practice).

Some heartfelt views are expressed in Tworkov's profiles - but, I felt too much time and energy had been devoted to agonising over the future of Zen in America, as if we could pre-empt the life-situation, and work out what American Zen means, as a kind of abstract entity. I hope this is not unkind, but it did make me wonder what happened to the actualities - of Zen, the un-encapsulated moment of wonder - the 'always-so' - announcing itself - in way-side weeds, tinkling spoons and clattering dishes, traffic tail lights in misty rain, the reflection of neon in puddles and street windows, sunsets and sun-rises, flowing waters in the ungraspable stream of life, almost motionless breath, seated on a Zafu, spiralling coils of incense smoke, the yellow glow of a candle. . .

I know the five individuals concerned have given earnest consideration to the pros and cons of 'right livelihood' etc. But is it such a problem? In some respects, there is a kind of 'fear-of-flying' element to this. While hardly any different in Japan these days, there is a tendency to want to make Zen a means to something else - better management, better this, better that. But it isn't a pep-pill or a quick fix, nor is it a secret weapon to get one over on one's competitors in business. It might be there - to get one over, on yourself, by breaking out of the 'horizontal' hold - trying to make sense of a world which is apparently lived forwards, but seemingly understood backwards. This moment is all you will ever have.
Of the five people profiled here, Robert Aitken struck me as the closest to that liberating perspective.

Perhaps too much is made of cultural identity-crises. Joshu says: "Liken the Tao to a crystal ball: when a native Chinese(Han) comes near - it reflects him as such; when a foreigner (Hu)come near, it reflects him as such. "

What we have to re-cognise is this 'as-suchness' - and let the reflections look after themselves.

ZEN IN AMERICA (1989 original edition) was a sort of guidebook for me in my quest to follow the Japanese Buddhist movement in America. It has always been a favorite read, along with Rev. David Chadwick's THANK YOU, AND OK!!! and his classic biography CROOKED CUCUMBER.

As it treats with "the Big Five" American Japanese Zen Buddhist teachers, it seemed like a good investment of time. Here, we read about Richard Aitken, Richard Baker, Bernard Glassman, Maureen Stuart and Jakusho Kwong. Of these, I think only Rev. Kwong and Richard Baker survive. I THINK ....

Though more than a bit 'full of itself' as I would expect, it is an excellent historiography of Buddhism in modern America. Tworkov (who founded the equally pretentious "Tricycle" Buddhist magazine) does not shy away from the internal violations committed by Baker, for example. It is a fascinating though fair reading of his life and errors.

The most gentle of the priests (hence the most boring) is Maureen Stuart; other than Baker, the tale of Glassman's Buddhist journey is pretty riveting. What I loved most about this book is its attention to the genuine history of Japanese Soto Zen in America, starting in the 1890s with the arrival of Rev. Suzuki.

Tworkov of course writes extensively about our era's Suzuki, Shunryu Suzuki and his successorship attitude toward both Baker and Kwong. Rev. Katagiri, an attendant and famous disciple of Suzuki's, is well profiled as is the little-known "hobo priest" Rev. Senzaki. This may be my favorite section, in which Tworkov describes Rev. Senzaki's casting off of robes, titles, and even refusing to shave his head.

Though he taught and ordained some, he really did not approach Zen like that and wanted only to be "a happy Jap in the streets". He accomplished that goal, and firmly bridged the imaginary "gap" between clerics and the laity - a gap which the Japanese and too many Americans love to push into people's faces. Hence Tworkov's rightful expressions of worry for our future.

Tworkov gives a clean, balanced and fair examination of everything the book promises ... and then some. As I have given copies of this book as gifts to some of my old students, I could never recommend a better book about modern Buddhism than Tworkov's tour de force.

Do not expect an easy-to-follow timeline here, as one reviewer rightly stated. Only, it is impossible to do a book in the five sections as Tworkov did and not jump around in time. She has to start each chapter without choice as to the time period. As I said, a bit pretentious, but that is what American Zen Buddhism always has been. Don't expect this to be Tworkov's Reformation. It is a good history with some ideas of her own.

Only, be careful: Tworkov is honest and thorough. This book just might make you feel angry toward American Zen, as it did for me. The feeling won't last: it is a teaching experience. And I can't knock a book that speaks so eloquently about my master's master, Rev. Yasutani Haku'un.