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Like everything else, Zen is a work in progress.

Like everything else, Zen is a work in progress.

Last updated on: March 15, 2025 at 6:55 am by James Ford

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Like everything else, Zen is a work in progress. 2025-03-15T06:55:39-07:00 James Ford

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Gathering of Zen priests in San Francisco in the 1960s. Shunryu Suzuki Roshi is third from the left

A friend just pointed me to this article I wrote for Huffington Post in 2013.

I thought it might be worth sharing again…

I’ve had a brief exchange of notes with someone concerned about the large number of scandals related to Zen teachers. He suggested the ratio is almost one to one. A bit of an exaggeration, but a real question. He also puffed me up a bit suggesting that Barry Magid and I were among the few sane teachers he was aware of, so he was addressing this burning question to me. Flattered at being thought one of the sane ones, but also knowing I better fess up quickly, here’s my response, slightly modified and with a couple of expansions here and there that I realized I needed to add after I sent the note off…

Dear one,

Thank you for the kind words and clearly articulated concern.

But fair warning, I do not claim to be a “sane” Zen teacher.

Like you, I had to work my way through the mythic structures of Zen.

At first I was aware the rhetoric around the Zen master was different than the rhetoric around gurus. It was one of the two reasons I did not pursue Vedanta the first spiritual tradition to attract me after my rejection of my childhood Christian fundamentalism. In the Hindu vedantic model, the guru is perfect — in fact, God. My brief experience of Hindu teachers in the Bay Area did not support the story. The other, which no doubt, turns closely on the same issue, was an intuition that the natural world had to be where I would find what I needed. And assertions of some sort of purity to which one should aspire, a transmutation of matter, didn’t resonate for me.

I heard many things about Shunryu Suzuki, some included miracle stories, but mostly that he was some sort of “Zen master,” and that he taught a very simple form of meditation. I was attracted to the meditation. But from the beginning I found the miracle stories unlikely, and was relieved when I began to sit with a branch of his organization that no one actually there told such stories.

I was very young when I began. I had one thing going for me and against me: a critical nature.

I quickly saw that zazen was good.

I also quickly learned that teachers were problematic creatures. From my perspective, the person who was my first real teacher, in the sense of my having a formal relationship, Jiyu Kennett, did see herself as a guru.

After not quite three years I left her. I had learned how to sit in the Zen style. I also carried a number of scars and one open wound. That wound which haunted me for many, many years was having been given her Dharma transmission.

I tried to find a way within Western culture. I loved the Episcopalians but couldn’t embrace that single metaphor upon which the Christian story is built, and particularly the assertion it was literally true. I tried a looser organization, what I would call ecclesiastical gnostics, trying to reinvent the whole thing. But too many, just about all of the leadership were just playing games. By my best read, anyway. I then tried a universalist school of Sufism. I learned much but ultimately knew that with my character, I needed a prajna school more than a bhakti one. That’s when I found what seemed to work for me for the long haul, a combination of Unitarian Universalism and Zen practice.

The teacher I picked after a bit of weighing and fretting was John Tarrant. He never pretended to be a guru, or any kind of perfect master, and over the years he proved that was true. He once observed to me that a friend will help you move, but a real friend will help you move a body. Says a lot about him, of course not all good, I hope you notice. He remains my real friend, and I his… But also I feel a need to work as a teacher in a different way than he does.

My take away.

I believe there is such a thing as awakening. I have experienced it. It is the direct insight into the fact we are two things at once. We are creatures woven out of a constantly moving dynamic of relationships, including genes and our experiences. And we are one. Or, I do like the Buddhist metaphor for this, we are empty. We lack any abiding essence. But that “essencelessness” is actually an openness. My experience of this is that this knowing, or again, the Zen metaphor better describes, there is a not knowing that is permanently a part of who I am. But, but both things are happening at once, the constrained and the open. In fact there is no way to unravel the temporal and conditioned from the boundless and free.

So, the basic way we’re made is always, always there.

I am fond of that little pseudo-psychological model based in the observation we’re created out of three demons: greed, hatred and ignorance. I see these as the constellation of grasping, the constellation of aversion, and after much reflection, the constellation of certanties.

So, I am aware of who I am, at least in all the big strokes and many of the smaller ones. And I can tell you, I am a greed type. I want. I have always wanted. And I have to report I know I shall always want. My chances of becoming one of the scandals is always there. I am aware of it.

I don’t know Barry well, although I admire him very, very much. And I can assure you as a creature woven out of these three demons, there is always a chance of fucking up. True for Barry. True for me. True for all Zen teachers, just like it is true for everyone…

So, my assessment of the Zen scene.

I think Zen masters are useful. They have walked the way a long time and someone who has also walked the way a long time has endorsed them. They have no magical powers. Their shit stinks. And if they don’t bind themselves to rule and direction, they are liable to moral drift, as is true of anyone. And even if they do bind themselves, they’re liable to various abuses of themselves and others. Like all of us. I would be wary of teachers who do not have some form of continuing checking of themselves, either with teachers or peers.

But teachers remain important. My sense about this is simple.

I think we need to be able to bow, to be able to take instruction. And we need to never put someone else’s head on top of ours.

A difficult enterprise, no doubt.

But I haven’t seen a way around it.

The people I’ve seen who are completely independent, who do not put themselves under rule of some sort, seem even more prone to mistakes, to missing the mark, and mostly confuse the rumblings of ego with wisdom.

I think Zen has a great deal to offer. And I think it needs reformation. Like everything else, it is a work in progress.

The parts that work for me are the disciplines of shikantaza and koan introspection. I also think conscious adherence to the Bodhisattva precepts, as formulated in the Japanese-derived Zen schools are critical. I constantly think of the first five of the grave precepts, the same as lay precepts in world Buddhism. I bind myself to them and watch my constant failures with them. And I think spiritual directors are critical and I think Zen teachers are, on balance, among the better one may choose. So, I am committed to practice within the school, to bow to something larger than me in a real and tangible way, my sangha, and my co-teachers. To teach and to learn. And to try to not screw up, at least too much… And when I do, to wake up to it as soon as possible, and try to clean up after myself in appropriate ways.

I hope this is helpful.

Yrs,

James

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About James Ishmael Ford

James Ishmael Ford's most recent book is the Intimate Way of Zen. You can read more about the author here.

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