Grace Schireson's Articles on Lions Roar

Modern sangha leaders need skills that aren’t necessarily taught in traditional Buddhist training, such as personal counseling, organizational development, and conflict mediation. Lewis Richmond and Grace Schireson report on a program called SPOT―Shogaku Priest Ongoing Training―where Zen teachers develop the skills they need to lead contemporary communities. Shunryu Suzuki, founder of San Francisco Zen Center and Tassajara monastery, once wrote, “Here in America we cannot define Buddhists the same way we do in Japan. American students are not exactly priests and not exactly laypeople…[so] I think we must establish an American way of Zen life.” What did he mean by this? Who and what did he hope we might become? Suzuki Roshi had a vision for Buddhism in America. It was a courageous and creative vision, of a universal Buddhism based on tradition, but not limited by it. From the time he arrived here in the late 1950s, Suzuki Roshi realized that for Zen to truly take root in America, it could not be just an imitation or extension of the Japanese style of practice in which he had been trained. It would have to be transformed by his American successors into something indigenous to American culture. So what is the state of Suzuki Roshi’s vision today, fifty years later? Does it hold relevance for other Buddhist traditions in the West? Are we truly making the Asian traditions our own, or are we still imitating Asian ways? A Meeting of Zen Minds. Three years ago we got together with four other teachers empowered as dharma heirs in in the Suzuki Roshi lineage to take up this and other questions. Those teachers were Darlene Cohen, Gary McNabb, Alan Senauke, and Steve Stucky. The six of us had a lot in common. We had all been trained in one or more of the residential practice places of the San Francisco Zen Center, where we continue to teach and train; we wore the priest robes of Soto Zen; we had received dharma transmission, giving us authorization to teach in the Soto Zen lineage; and we had struck out on our own to start our own Zen sitting groups, just as Suzuki Roshi had done. Yet we were still wondering about Suzuki Roshi’s vision and were brimming with questions. Through our ongoing meetings, we realized that all of our years of Zen training―leading a regimented life, keeping a strenuous meditation schedule, ringing bells, and bowing at altars―had given us a good understanding of the dharma. It had improved our focus, concentration, and sense of Buddhist ritual, but it did not seem to have prepared us very well for what we were actually doing as American Zen teachers. We were not in monasteries or retreat centers anymore. We were helping ordinary people with jobs and families to find their Buddhist way. What was the connection between our training and this emerging vocation to share Buddhist practice with our lay sanghas? These early peer-group sessions were the first time that most of us had ever given public voice to our concerns. We were part of the first generation of graduates from the training centers that Suzuki Roshi had founded, and each of us had gone off on our own to teach Zen―and now, coming together after so long on our own, it was comforting and a bit surprising to find us all in the same boat. The role of Zen priest can be isolating and lonely, and we cherished our new companionship. As our discussions evolved, we realized that perhaps it was unrealistic to think that our training, based on Asian models of practice and pedagogy, could have prepared us fully for the work we were now doing. Moreover, our residential training at Zen Center and Tassajara was not even representative of the many ways that Zen priests in Japan receive training. Every Japanese person is reared and nurtured in a society and family that are deeply infused with Buddhist imagery, attitudes, and values. In this way the training of a priest-to-be in Japan―particularly in the realm of feelings and emotions―begins at birth. In addition, the monastic training of Japanese Zen priests is not the whole of it. Most of them do a long apprenticeship with their primary teacher, assisting in the care of the home temple and performing the myriad tasks of a temple priest. As well, most Japanese Zen priests attend a Buddhist university, and receive an academic degree. In light of all this, why should we have assumed that we had received the whole package? Suzuki Roshi only had time during his twelve years in America to give us the essentials of Zen practice. The rest, he exhorted, was up to us. Birth of the Program. These discussions led to the start of our own peer-group teacher training, offering guidance and support to each other. At the same time, we recognized an immediate need to address the training of the next generation of priests and teachers, since not only were we training lay practitioners, but many of us were already preparing to ordain our own priest disciples. What were we going to teach them about keeping their vows to make Buddhist practice the center of their lives? How were we going to train them? Here was a chance to figure that out together. Until these discussions, we had not given a whole lot of thought to disciple training, except to assume that it would be much like our own. But in most cases that was not really practical. We had done our residential training while relatively young and unencumbered. In contrast, our own students were older, with partners, families, and professions or careers. Long residential training at a Buddhist monastery like Tassajara was impractical for them. In most cases, their aspiration was to be like us, out in the world as hospice workers and chaplains, meditation teachers and sangha leaders. They needed focused and comprehensive preparation aimed at helping them teach Buddhism without the enhancements of Zen centers, altars, priests’ robes, and residential schedules. In short, they needed to know how to do the work of a Buddhist priest without depending on the trappings of formal practice. From these peer group meetings, the SPOT program was born. SPOT stands for Shogaku Priest Ongoing Training (Shogaku is one of Suzuki Roshi’s Buddhist names). The six of us formed the faculty and invited our own priest trainees to join. As well, a few other teachers from lineages related to the San Francisco Zen Center sent some of their own disciples. When we started the program we had thirty trainees, including some still in residence at the San Francisco Zen Center. From the outset we made it clear that SPOT was not a substitute for the one-on-one relationship of teacher and disciple. All participants must have their teacher’s permission to join and that relationship is honored, since the relationship between root teacher and disciple is an essential part of our Zen tradition. Nor is the program a substitute for monastic experience. Trainees who can manage a training period in a monastery or residential center are encouraged do so. Our intention is to supplement and support those traditional training methods with new ones that embody Suzuki Roshi’s vision that we find our practice in our own Western culture. At our first SPOT meeting, one of the trainees, recently ordained, began to tell of his new life as a priest. “As soon as people found out I was a priest,” he recalled, “they began to share all their troubles with me. They began to ask me all sorts of questions. They poured their hearts out to me. I was overwhelmed. I didn’t know what to say.” And he began to cry. We were moved by his story and found it sobering to realize what we had taken on. Addressing Misunderstandings. Early on in our curriculum planning, SPOT faculty homed in on three common distortions of Zen practice in America. The first we referred to as idealization of the exotic. Some practitioners work with a hidden assumption that an Asian teacher is naturally spiritually superior to a Western teacher, and that their mere otherness makes them wiser. Suzuki Roshi did not encourage our idealized notions of Japanese culture, or even of him. Once, when asked what honorific title we should call him after his death, he responded forcefully, “No! It is not a question of what I should be called, but what you be called. You are the ones! Give me five or ten more years and you will be strong teachers yourselves!” Sadly, he made this remark only a year before his death. In the last few decades we have learned―sometimes painfully―that Asian teachers come in all shapes, sizes, and levels of realization, just like human beings everywhere. Our idealized sense of their superiority may be due in part to our own lack of confidence, as well as our need for an idealized parent or authority figure. The best Asian teachers, like Suzuki Roshi, avoided taking on our unrealistic projections. Another misconception in American Buddhism is that Asian forms and rituals are essential to practice. In many Buddhist practice centers, the robes and rituals are mistaken for the practice itself, as are the special ways that people move and hold their bodies, and even the way they talk. We must remind ourselves that Buddhism and Zen are not just Japanese, Chinese, or Indian, but universally human pursuits to relieve suffering. Of course, we need to honor the forms and rituals of our traditions, which have deep practice meaning, but we must realize that simply imitating these Asian rituals (which are imbued with meaning from their own cultures) will not result in deep understanding, nor will it transform our suffering. The essence of Buddhist practice involves finding our own way and our own rituals in our American culture. That is what Suzuki Roshi wanted us to do. A third common mistake is using meditation to repress our emotions. In the environment of the meditation hall, where there is no eye contact, no talking, and a constant effort to remain focused on our own inner state, meditation can sometimes be used to create a sense of emotional distance or...

Grace Schireson’s tribute to Fukushima Roshi

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