I find myself a proponent of householder Zen as the way of practice of American Zen. “Very self-serving of me,” you might say. And of course you would be right. I am a householder. Vimalakirti and Layman Pang are my heroes.
I see a direction in the evolution of our path from Maezumi Roshi’s temple childhood in Japan to his simultaneous invention (along with a number of others including Shunryu Suzuki) of the American Zen Center, the Japanese American Hybrid, where students could practice in residence or as commuters, could live at the Zen Center with their families, could live at the Zen Center and work in the community.
This was a very long way from the monastery practice envisioned by Dogen. Even in Maezumi’s childhood, the arc of practice evolution had come a long way. By then, “monks” were married with families. The homeleaving which Dogen so esteemed continued to be celebrated in Tokudo, the first step on the path to ordination, and we exalted it in the lives of the great Zen teachers, of Hui-Neng, the 6th Chinese ancestor, and Tozan, the founder of our Soto sect. Maezumi had not left family behind. He was married with children, although they may have taken second place to his Zen responsibilities and, until the end of his life, he remained very attached to his mother.
Bernie took another gigantic step, abandoning the Zen Center as the form of practice. When he first returned to New York to begin teaching independently the shift was subtle, marked by a name change. Maezumi’s place was called the Zen Center of Los Angeles. Bernie called his place which wasn’t really a place in the same sense, the Zen Community of New York. Community instead of Center. It wasn’t long, however, before Bernie entirely abandoned the residential training center in order to engage with the community. He moved the center of his practice from posh Riverdale to southwest Yonkers.
Still, Bernie was shaped in many ways by his years of residential practice at the Zen Center. My experience is a further step away. Residential practice had no part in my Zen conditioning. The difference was there on many levels. Bernie had totally absorbed priest craft. He had taken it into his marrow. I had barely put it on. My priest training was largely playing dress-up on Saturday mornings.
After Maezumi’s passing, when Bernie was ready to distance himself from the Japanese Soto sect, his disrobing was a major life change and an important koan for his students and his successors.
I never needed to disrobe. The priest was in a sense never who I was. I got closest while preparing for Tokudo, Jishu asked us to wear the samu-e, the Japanese priest’s work jacket, for 6 months. I felt the rightness of her rationale. If I was afraid to appear as a Buddhist priest in public, embarrassed or ashamed, then I shouldn’t ordain. I wore my samu-e everywhere.
When Jishu found out that I was wearing it to work, she told me that I didn’t have to, but I wore it to work anyway. I was working in the family court clinic and was called, as part of my job, to testify. I wore my samu-e to court. I could feel the gaping. Would the judges and lawyers and court officers have been more surprised if I had simply floated up from the witness box and sat suspended near the ceiling?
I felt very much in accord with Jishu’s commitment to being a priest. Our practice was embedded in the interfaith world that Bernie was championing. We were being introduced to many beautiful practices of different faiths, finding joy in many paths. There was great beauty in Bernie giving Dharma transmission to teachers of other faiths. In Bernie’s way, you didn’t have to be a Buddhist to practice Zen or to be a Zen teacher. Jishu was in total accord with this, but she saw a danger. Both the Jesuit priest and the rabbi to whom Bernie gave transmission had commitments which could compete and conflict with their commitments to Zen. In her Zen ordination, Jishu saw a commitment to maintaining Dharma which was primary. Without the priests and their primary commitment to Zen practice, what Zen brought to America could be lost in the melting pot.
I shared Jishu’s concern. I had chosen to ordain as a way of giving back to Bernie and Jishu in gratitude for the gift of their teaching. Jishu’s commitment to guardianship of the Dharma carried me forward, but you wouldn’t guess it looking at me. I never shaved my head again after Tokudo, and I immediately started regrowing my beard. I stopped wearing the samu-e soon after although it still hangs in the closet along with my robes. Most of my students have never seen me in robes. I rarely wear my rakusus, although I am proud of my beautiful blue Inka rakusu. I have never called myself “Tetsuji” but that is another story.
I’m still a priest, but I’m a householder and a champion of householder Zen. I don’t feel that I have chosen a second-rate path, and I don’t want to argue about which path is better. When I have heard people say that the householder path is a more difficult path, I understand what they are talking about. The monk appears free from any competing commitments. The householder must always work at making space in his life for practice. The monk lives in community with others who share his spiritual practice priority. The householder lives in community with others who have competing agendas.
That’s true, but the monk has given up so much. The sacrifice is there in your face in the renunciation of Hui-Neng and Tozan and in the renunciation of Bob Kennedy. Even as I went through Tokudo, I knew damn well that I wasn’t leaving home.
Yet, I do see in my commitment to householder Zen a continuing progression from Maezumi’s Japanese childhood through the Zen Center and beyond. Am I living the next small step toward an authentic American Zen?
I look around me and see Dharma brothers and sisters, successors of Bernie’s, leaning backwards toward Maezumi’s Zen Center model, although it is hard for them to escape entirely from Bernie’s socially engaged practice. There is so much variation among us. Some of us have continued to use our kanji Dharma names. Some continue to wear robes and dress in Japanese monk’s clothing. Some of us continue to shave our heads.
I am a champion of householder Zen. It is my way, but when I am asked if my way is the future of American Zen, I don’t know. It has been said that it takes 500 years for Zen to firmly adapt to a new culture. We are about 60 years old according to my way of counting into the Americanization of Zen. What will American Zen look like? Will it be householder Zen? Will it be Zen center Zen? Will it be monastic Zen? I’m smiling. Check back with me in 440 years.
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