Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Strange American Zen, February 10, 2002
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.
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29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
the trees for the forest, November 1, 2001
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.
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69 of 77 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
the best minds of my generation . . . ., March 1, 2004
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.
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