Half a Life Ago

It was almost exactly 38 years ago to the day that Issan welcomed me into the Zendo on Hartford Street. In about an hour and 10 minutes, he taught me everything I needed to practice Zazen, as indicated by Dogen Zenji, Suzuki Roshi, & Richard Baker Roshi.

I was in the midst of a personal crisis. By Labor Day, it was clear that my 19-year relationship was coming to a painful end. Though my partner and I still slept in the same bed, it seemed like months since I'd been able to sleep through the night. By 5 AM, I was awake, restless, and agitated. 

I’d heard that there was a meditation hall of some kind in the Castro. I either asked around or looked it up in the phone book (we still had them in 1988). A few minutes before 6 AM on a grey morning, I went down a few concrete steps on the right side of a small garden at 57 Hartford Street, opened a creaky door, and found myself alone in a small meditation hall. I took off my shoes and sat on a black cushion nearest the door in case I needed to escape quickly and quietly. I’d sat before, even done a few day-long retreats with a Theravadin teacher, but that had been at least a decade earlier.

At 6 sharp, I heard a few clacks, sounding like a wooden hammer, and another creaky door opening at the top of some narrow stairs that lead up to the first floor. A small man with a bald head slowly came down carrying a stick of incense. He seemed a bit frail, but he moved with grace and purpose. When he got to my seat, he bent down, smiled, and said quietly, “We sit facing the wall in this zendo.” I dutifully turned around. Then I heard bells and shuffling. A while later, I heard him get up, and within a few minutes I felt his index finger run gently down my spine. Immediately, something shifted in the way I was holding my lower back. Then, after some more time, there was another bell. I stood up, and Issan motioned for me to stand to his left. He handed me a card covered in plastic with a whole series of syllables.

He bowed nine times, and I followed. Then he did the whole service himself, lightly moving from drum to bell to altar, lighting incense and chanting those weird syllables. I had no idea what he was doing, but he moved with such grace and ease that I felt entirely comfortable. Then we bowed three more times. He bent down and folded up a strange cloth he’d placed on the floor; he looked at me and smiled. Then he said, “Don’t worry. If you keep coming back, it gets easier.

He disappeared upstairs, and I let myself out. I did keep coming back. There were a few more people most times. My sitting became steadier, more grounded. I learned when to bow and a few other things. A few of the chants also became easier to follow. When I joined the 6 PM sitting, I learned the Heart Sutra in English.

But looking back, there was absolutely nothing missing from Issan’s Zazen introduction: Do what you’re told, even if initially it seems to make no sense. Sit as straight as possible. Pay attention to your spine. Relax. Don't wiggle. Bow whenever you hear a bell and see others bowing. Watch the more experienced people during the service. Be respectful. Smile. Keep coming back. It did get easier.

Issan didn’t hug me and kiss my cheek that morning. He probably didn’t want to scare me off.

Oh, Issan, you were wonderful. Thank you.

Sex, Gossip, Religion? Can We Talk?

Originally published Thursday, November 18, 2021

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.–Carl Jung

I feel like I just stepped onto the set of "The View" and have been put on the spot for talking about priests, gurus, illicit sex, and sexual molestation. These words, coupled with the name of God, fling open the doors to intrigue, power, domination, manipulation, and forbidden pleasures. Has calling forth these dark forces stymied any ethical guidance?

Recently, a trusted friend stung me with criticism. She felt that some of my writing about the sexual behavior of teachers and students whom we both knew and had had some relationship with–Buddhists, Enneagram enthusiasts, meditators–verged on ‘gossip '–her words. Further, it gave fodder for some within our loose-knit community to lob attacks and discredit opposing positions. She felt that just talking about it might discourage people from undertaking the hard work of introspection, self-analysis, and meditation, which we’d like to encourage. And I also suspect that my friend feels the criticism is unfair on some level. This is the way of the world.

For me, with my Jesuit streak, this raises some thorny ethical questions. I know I have to discuss these issues openly, including my personal experience, but I want to avoid gossip and honor the confidence of friends and others I’ve known and worked with. I reject any underlying assumption that this situation is “the way of the world” and that we should be mute because some larger, more important matters are at stake.

In this essay, I will look at some of the implications of accusations of sexual misconduct, gossip, and spiritual practice. But first, I have to look at the conversations themselves and try to distinguish between gossip and real situations open to analysis and criticism.

Gossip is the “casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details that are not confirmed as being true.”

In our current culture, it’s very politically, morally, and even spiritually “correct” to talk about the consequences of sexual conduct, especially if it’s misconduct. These conversations have their own cachet and rules. But this is nothing new, is it? Every religion on the face of the earth spends a considerable part of its capital trying to corral the impulses of the lower centers, legislate sexual behavior, and devise punishments for those who stray.

One of the main reasons for the #metoo movement, including digging into the egregious behavior of many in the formal institutions of religion, is that for generations, negotiating these tricky moral areas was secret; it was never talked about in polite conversations. No matter the consequences, even challenging the wisdom of saints, there is widespread public support for this type of investigation. When the Sainted John-Paul turned a blind eye to the sins of some men in his workforce, the lid blew off.

John-Paul allowed priests who molested boys and young men to remain in positions where they could continue to abuse. The church admits no error when it comes to declaring saints, but other consequences follow when this kind of conversation breaks loose and creates its own weather system. Humans love a good stoning when the clouds begin to threaten our comfortable sunny afternoon–especially if the miscreants appear to be having their cake [bought for them] and eating it, too. We’re talking about a tabloid version of the Salem witch trials with an emphasis on sleaze.

These are factual cases of unethical behavior and, as in the case of my own abuse, criminal behavior. There’s a lot of blame, from the butcher, the baker, to the candlestick maker. Michel Foucault argues that surveillance and punishment are part of a technology that poisons institutions from the top down. I will leave that analysis for a later discussion. For now, it is enough to note that the sins of pedophile priests are at least partially shifted to the institutional mechanisms that allow them to function and, more importantly, continue in positions of authority after they’ve been discovered.

Any slowing of monetary support forces hard questions about how a religious institution spends its political capital. If donations erode, is any revision or qualification possible? There’s a tendency for an institution, an organization, or a church to sweep this kind of behavior under the rug, particularly when exposure endangers a stream of income.

I have encountered this criticism: you were raped, but it happened 40 years ago. Get over it. The pain caused by the trauma is as much a result of my inability to move on and deal with my issues as it was Bob Hoffman’s fault for abusing one of his clients in Psychic Therapy. When a senior teacher of the Hoffman Process told me that I should move on, that it was only the result of my “patterns,” he was gaslighting me. The definition of gaslighting is to “manipulate (someone) by psychological means into doubting their sanity.” He wanted me to shut up, which is the response of a cult follower with zero integrity.

There are several other characteristics of this conversation about sexual abuse in spiritual groups that I’d like to highlight.

This conversation about clergy sexual abuse is, for the most part, taking place in rich, privileged parts of the world. But it is also privileged in other ways. Privileged describes a person as having special or unique advantages and opportunities. When used to describe a position in a conversation, analysis, or controversy, it points to an unfair advantage: insisting on a position because of the speaker's status rather than the merit of their cause.

It is a conversation of privilege in that the main actors are men and, in terms of “privileging” the conversation, the conversation deals with men in power. In a study, “Female Sexual Assault Perpetrators,” we see that only recently has any attention been paid to female offenders. They exist, of course, but the conversations we are dealing with only involve male perpetrators.

Whether by rank, authority of position, or what I will call “privileged knowledge,” a dominant voice shapes the conversation. People apply different moral indicators when dealing with clergy members, gurus, or spiritual teachers. Time-honored demarcations of power and authority that accompany sexual restrictions and practices are normally unquestioned. This complicates the discussion.

The issue of misogyny: the conversations in the Catholic Church have been focused on male clergy because the actors are male and clergy. The conversation is skewed by a strong undercurrent of misogyny also present. Some indicators would be the differences in the level of condemnation between men and women listeners; the conversation is also prejudiced by their high level of homophobia.

Let's look at some other characteristics of these conversations.

The conversation can quickly be shut down as gossip because it involves private behavior. For example, what happens in secret, in the bedroom, automatically becomes hearsay. When some secretly recorded tapes were circulated of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, "Uncle Teddy,” seducing seminarians at his private beach house, I posted them to a group of primarily heterosexual former Jesuits. The response was “just crickets.” Actually, they were so explicit and damning that most of the group just didn’t believe that they could be true. After a two-year Vatican investigation, McCarrick was defrocked. The crickets had been speaking loudly, but for my listeners, they spoke a coded language.
Another indicator that the private nature of most behaviors prejudices the conversation is the evidence of widespread victim blaming. When a few victims of molestation by priests began to come forward, one of the most complex obstacles to highlighting the severity of the problem was the reluctance of other victims to speak openly, given that the abuse was sexual and, for the most part, homosexual.

There are divergent views of what is acceptable sexual behavior. The social norms in the gay community, and what is expected of a parish priest, a monk, or the leader of a New Age Spiritual Community, are quite different. Gender, marital status, age, race, level of education, income level, and sexual orientation all play a role in how severely or leniently we judge sexual misconduct.

There are even cases where sexual conduct outside the norm is excused because it is outside the norm. In an interview with Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove, Claudio Naranjo gave Swami Muktananda a free pass for breaking his religious vows: “My own interpretation of him is that he was playing the role of a saint according to Western ideals, or to cultural ideals in general. I think he was a saint in the real sense, which has nothing to do with that. For instance, it's the popular idea that a saint has no sexual life, and he was playing the role of a Brahmacharya, which I think was part of a cultural mission he was on: to be an educator on a large scale. It was fitting that he did that role, and my own evaluation of him is that he was clean because he was not a lecher. He had a healthy sexual life. . . . “ In this regard, Claudio was far too optimistic. Although Muktananda retained some following, both in India and internationally, his sex life did not help his “cultural mission to be an educator on a large scale.” He proved unworthy of the kind of trust that is required for a spiritual teacher to function. But given Claudio’s logic, again it is the fault of those of us who are uneducated rather than "the one who knows," who is enlightened or has some special knowledge.

In my view, Naranjo also had a wildly exaggerated evaluation of the role of the trickster in a spiritual teacher–the devious nature of our egos can only be highlighted when we are tricked, or forced, into seeing our personality types, our behaviors, attitudes, and mindsets, and their consequences by unorthodox methods. This led him to place undue confidence in psychics like Bob Hoffman, Ann Armstrong, or Helen Palmer, and fourth-way teachers such as E.J. Gold and Henry Korman, who were bullies. This prejudice also tended to blur or excuse any sexual misconduct on the part of the male psychics or teachers.

People also tend to compartmentalize and separate the offense from other qualities, events, and teachings that they value. This includes both those who are not directly affected by the abuse as well as the victims. A Zen priest told me that he felt Katagiri Roshi “got a bad rap” because Katagiri had been an important positive influence during a particularly difficult period of the priest’s training. Katagiri, a married man and Zen teacher, had sex with students, but in the subjective evaluation of my friend, the Roshi had other qualities that outweighed sexual misconduct. In my own case, I refused to acknowledge the damage that Hoffman caused because he was part of a radical change in my life.

False equivalences ignore and/or exaggerate both similarities and differences. The distortion is particularly confusing and pernicious when it suggests that there is a moral equivalence between two or more things that are being equated–in the Katagiri case, individual sexual misconduct and teaching meditation, or in the case of Hoffman Process, the pervasive influence of parental conditioning and my personal transference to Hoffman, who was my therapist and counselor.

In summary, these conversations about sexual abuse are not gossip. They are not casual or unconstrained, nor are they easy to categorize. However, no matter the particular case, Catholic, New Age, or Buddhist, they all seem to contain several of these characteristics:

• They take place in rich, privileged parts of the world, but they are also privileged because the main actors are men.
• These are factual cases. For generations, they were kept secret, but now open discussion has widespread public support.
• They have developed their own cachet and particular rules.
• They erode public support for institutions; they undermine the authority of teachers.
• The conversations themselves are privileged because the speaker's status is used to support a position or the perpetrator.
• Some conversations are hard to understand because they use coded language. 
• They are prejudiced by misogyny as well as a high level of homophobia. 
• There is also evidence of widespread victim-blaming. 
• There are many divergent views of what is acceptable sexual behavior. People apply different moral indicators when dealing with clergy members, gurus, and spiritual teachers.
• People compartmentalize. The arguments contain many false equivalences that ignore and/or exaggerate similarities and differences when discussing cases. 

Agatha Christie, through her gossip detective Miss Marple, makes a strong case for collecting useful information by paying attention to the whispers and tell-tale signs of bad behavior. Marple entered the exclusively male realm of English detective fiction as a female outsider whose methodology veered from the careful Aristotelian observation of, for example, Sherlock Holmes. I might argue along with Christie that what is commonly called rumor or innuendo is sometimes the only reliable source for gathering key information about bad behavior and holding people to account. Some would even argue that dominant male actors created the blanket prohibition against gossip and gossiping to protect themselves.

What next? Is there a way to step out of a black-and-white set of responses and look at the situation differently? Maybe we already have. We’ve been forced to–a fact not yet recognized, accepted, or fully understood.

I'm a Yellow Dog Democrat. Let’s get rid of those Blue Dog Democrat Do-Nothings.

For the record, originally posted on Facebook, 9/1/2026

Concerning your pissy little etymologically correct argument about being called the “Democrat Party” by the Orange Asshole, shove it where the Sun don’t shine. In 1994, more than 30 years ago, you argued for a less boisterous, more economically elegant party leadership. More in tune with the ideals of liberal democracy, which traces its pedigree back to John Locke. Four presidential administrations later, two Republican and two “Democratic,” you managed to hobble both Clinton and Obama, whose combined IQ was higher than today’s entire GOP caucus. And they certainly had more spine. You can’t even defeat Mitch McConnell, who apparently can still fight his way out of a body bag, much less the paper bag. Wet cardboard is your sparring partner.

I lived, worked, studied, and was active in Massachusetts politics when I was a young man. They just voted to continue supporting the nursing home residents' consulting council. I worked in California Democratic politics for many years. We’re no better. Poor Diane died in office, barely able to sit upright or speak coherently. Nancy retired her Rolodex of big donors, and is apparently ready to hand it off to a new generation. But did anyone think about who they might train instead of their legacy? Not from the look of our choices.

Am I being ageist? I am 82. Not only do I think that no one my age should make decisions for the world. I know it.

But, but you say the other guys are doing it. OK, set a mandatory retirement age of 65-66 for every officeholder in the Republic. That's what the actuarial tables for Social Security recommend, except the oligarchs who keep raking it in for as long as they can sit upright and shake their heads from right to left. Maybe I hit on something. That’s the operative table: how much can a person my age rake in? It certainly seems to be the M.O. of the current Idiot-in-Charge.

Reading the Parables of Jesus as Koans.

My Scriptural justification for reading certain passages from Holy Writ as koans!

Matthew 13:11-12

“Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. 12 Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 13 This is why I speak to them in parables: Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.”

Matthew 13:52

“He said to them, ‘Therefore every teacher of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.’”

In less than a decade, by most reckoning, we will mark two thousand years since the death of Jesus. I mention that not because I am counting the years for any particular purpose, but more to emphasize that over these many millennia the emphasis that Christians place on various aspects of his teaching has changed. It is quite clear that most early Christians in the first hundred years expected the Second Coming, and when that didn’t happen as quickly as expected, they began to refocus, and some would argue, radically alter the Teaching of the early communities.

An Indian Buddhist friend has just transferred to a University in America’s Bible Belt. Of course, some of his new friends and classmates there have encouraged him to start reading the Bible. Manik is finding some of the language and imagery jarring. I am a Christian by birth and have spent many years as a Jesuit. When I read passages from the Gospels now, the canonical ones as well as the Gnostic sources, but also the Hebrew Bible, with the possible exception of some of the prophetic writings, I find it jarring too.

But when I read one of the parables of Jesus that Manik mentioned, the Parable of the Tares, as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 13, I thought, oh, why don’t I read this as if it were a koan? If I am going to demand that Christians give up some of the unyielding ideology of their belief systems, why not try to delve into the parts of the tradition that still speak to me, or where I suspect that there might be some treasure?

The early followers of Jesus were very clear about one teaching: the Kingdom of God is at hand. When it didn’t appear in a way they might have recognized in the early sayings of Jesus, they transformed their hope, looked for the Kingdom with fresh eyes, and took action. They realized that this process itself was as endless and as boundless as the love they saw in Christ Jesus. They began to see the Kingdom wherever and whenever it appeared, and they made it appear when only they could envision it. That place is always right here. That moment is always right now.

The Great American Delusion

Americans have been subjected to religious indoctrination almost from the very beginning of our great experiment by Divines with shoddy religious training, and we’ve paid big bucks for it. We suffered two Great Awakenings that produced some of the most outrageous and hypocritical religious movements seen since the Roman Senate decreed that Julius Caesar deserved a cult statue, and a temple shared with the goddess Clementia. Mark Antony was appointed as his priest, and Caesar was to be invoked under the name Jupiter Julius. What are we going to call Rex Donald? His Divine “whatever-I-can-lick-grope-steal-and-get-away-with " Holiness?

The Evangelical Bible-thumping of our beloved forebears is the root of the religious sham afoot today. And the New Age is not exempt! “Teachers” of MacMinfulness, hucksters with a full hundred hours of meditation training under their various colored robes, earn a certificate, and charge big bucks for some humbo jumbo gibberish, laced with tongue-twisting cliches designed to anesthetize those of us subjected to the demands of a dehumanizing corporate culture that has made profit the Golden Calf.

Read Elmer Gantry, the 1927 American satirical novel by Sinclair Lewis, which satirizes religious activity in evangelistic circles and public attitudes toward it during the 1920s. It was banned in Boston. The novel centers on Elmer Gantry, an ambitious, corrupt minister who rises to prominence in the Methodist Church despite his hypocrisy, sexual misconduct, and opportunism.

Lewis researched the novel in 1926 with the assistance of the Unitarian minister Leon Milton Birkhead, a former Methodist whose knowledge of American religious life helped shape the work. May I suggest that this might be the next worthwhile spiritual foray for James Ismael Ford?

The head of Donald Trump’s religious office is televangelist and pastor Paula White-Cain. I’ve written about her elsewhere: Call it by its correct name: Lying. “Don’t believe a word coming out of the mouth of Rev. Paula White-Cain or Bishop Robert Emmet Patrick Barron!”

The forked-tongue Bishop Baron ought to shut his filthy mouth and study the career of soon-to-be-canonized Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. Sheen knew five languages: Greek, German, Italian, Latin, and French. He spoke French, Italian, and Latin fluently. He studied at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, where his coursework was entirely in French and Latin, and he even practiced television scripts in French and Italian. Biographers noted that he was so comfortable with Latin that he naturally "thought in Latin".He had a reading/working knowledge of Greek and German, which he used heavily in his academic and philosophical studies.

After 6 years of seminary training required for ordination, he pursued an additional five years of rigorous higher education to prepare for his intellectual mission in the Church: He earned a Doctor of Canon Law degree in 1920 in one year from The Catholic University of America; after three years at the Catholic University of Leuven he earned a PhD in Philosophy by 1923; he studied in Rome for another year, earning a Doctor of Sacred Theology in 1924 from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. He authored over 70 books.

Bishop Baron can’t get his tongue out of The Divine Pussy-Grabbing Holiness’s asshole long enough to quote our Dear Lord’s sayings correctly or learn the values Fulton Sheen espoused in his modern rendition of the Teaching: “Life is Worth Living.”

Wildflowers

Song by Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt ‧ 1987

The hills were alive with wildflowers and I

Was as wild, even wilder than they

For at least I could run

They just died in the sun

And I refused to just wither in place

Just a wild mountain rose

Needing freedom to grow

So I ran fearing not where I'd go

When a flower grows wild

It can always survive

Wildflowers don't care where they grow

And the flowers I knew

In the fields where I grew

Were content to be lost in the crowd

They were common and close

I had no room for growth

And I wanted so much to branch out

So I uprooted myself from my home ground and left

Took my dreams and I took to the road

When a flower grows wild

It can always survive

Wildflowers don't care where they grow

I grew up fast and wild

And I never felt right

In a garden so different from me

I just never belonged

I just longed to be gone

So the garden one day set me free

I hitched a ride with the wind

And since he was my friend

I just let him decide where we'd go

When a flower grows wild

It can always survive

Wildflowers don't care where they grow

Just a wild rambling rose seeking mysteries untold

No regret for the path that I chose

When a flower grows wild

It can always survive

Wildflowers don't care where they grow

Wildflowers don't care where they grow

https://youtu.be/rlbDaY7UFD4?si=ENlloj6POzL_f4Ye

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Dolly Parton

Wildflowers lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Jesuit Zen Roshis, a Roster

Several questions about Jesuits authorized to teach Zen meditation led me to put together this roster:

Zen and the Birds of Appetite was my first exposure to Zen when I was in the Jesuits. Even though it seemed very esoteric to my very doctrinaire way of thinking, it made a powerful impression. When Pedro Arrupe became the General of the Society, I wondered why he did his meditation on a zafu, and that led me to discover the role of Father Enomiya-Lassalle, who, in 1979, was the first of several Jesuits to have his realization authenticated by his teacher, Yamada Kōun (though because of the time and place, it was not initially made public).

Almost two decades ago, while Tom Marshall was alive, I examined the letters Francis Xavier sent to Ignatius of Loyola between 1546-1548 describing his encounter with a Zen Master, whom he calls Nixnit. It is the first recorded meeting between a Christian priest and a Zen monk. Here is a link to my rather lengthy paper, Buddha S.J.:

At the time, I said that this encounter almost made it inevitable that a few Jesuits in the future would find their way into a zendo.

I began my list of Jesuit Zen masters with Father Lassalle, who is the first in this lineage. Four have been publicly authorized to teach. Other Catholic religious have finished their koan training, most notably Father Pat Hawk C.Ss.R., Bob Aitken’s heir, and the Benedictine monk Willigis Jäger, who was also Yamada’s student. Father Kennedy, in Maezumi Roshi’s lineage, has also given transmission to Kevin Hunt Sensei, a Trappist monk from St. Joseph's Abbey at Spencer, Mass., a sister monastery of Merton’s Gethsemani.

Yamada Kōun also gave transmission to Sister Elaine MacInnes, a member of the Canadian order of Our Lady’s Missionaries. I associate her with the Jesuit Zen Masters because of her friendship with Father Lassalle, and because she began sitting with Lassalle in his zendo at Shinmeikutsu when she first went to Japan.

I cannot even guess where their Zen practice will lead; I hope their work will open and enrich the spiritual lives of many people.

Jesuit Roshis, senseis, scholars and other meditation teachers:

Father Hugo Makibi Enomiya-Lassalle, S.J., Roshi (1898–1990). In 1956, Enomiya-Lassalle began studying Zen with Harada Daiun Sogaku. Following Harada's death in 1961, Enomiya-Lassalle became an apprentice of one of Harada's students, Yamada Kōun. Yamada authorized Father LaSalle to teach independently in 1969.

Father Heinrich Dumoulin, S.J. (1905 – 1995). Father Dumoulin was never authorized to teach the formal practice of Zen, but his scholarly work has influenced the progress of Zen in the West probably more than any other historian of religion.

Father William Thomas G. Hand, S.J. (1920 - 2005). Yamada formally accepted Father Hand as his student and worked with him for seven or eight years. However, when Hand decided not to complete his formal koan training and instead return to the United States to establish the East-West Center at the Mercy Center in Burlingame, California, Yamada gave him his “blessing.”

Father Niklaus Brantschen, S.J., Roshi. In 1988, Yamada Roshi gave him “teaching competence.” In 1999, he received "inka shōmei" from Tetsugen Bernard Glassman Roshi.

Rubén L. F. Hábito (born c. 1947) is a Filipino Zen Rōshi of the Sanbō Kyōdan lineage. Yamada Kōun gave him dharma transmission in 1989 while he was still a Jesuit. After he left the Jesuits in 1989, he founded the Maria Kannon Zen Center in 1991, a lay organization in Dallas, Texas.

Father William Johnson, S.J. (30 July 1925 — 12 October 2010) was an Irish Jesuit influenced by Shigeto Oshida and later practiced Zen under the guidance of Yamada Kōun. Johnson insisted on continuing to recite the Jesus Prayer despite Yamada's contrary instructions, which ended their master-disciple relationship. He later met Bernard Lonergan, and further study of Lonergan influenced him. (I am almost certain that I was also at that summer session at Boston College that Lonergan taught in 1968). He had many Jesuit disciples practicing his hybrid Zen-Christian mystical prayer.

Father Gregory Meyers, C.Ss.R., Roshi, was authorized by Yamada’s son, Yamada Ryôun Roshi. I mention him because he took over the Zendo at Mercy Center in Burlingame from Father William Thomas Hand, S.J.

Father Kakichi Kadowaki, S.J., Roshi (1926 - 2017). Father Kadowaki practiced Zen under both Yamada Roshi and Omori Sogen. He achieved authorization as a Zen master (Roshi) from the Rinzai Master Sogen. He wrote “Zen and the Bible.”

Father Robert Edward Jinsen Kennedy, S.J., Roshi (born June 20, 1933), is in Maezumi Roshi’s White Plum Asanga. He was a student of both Yamada and Maezumi. Tetsugen Bernard Glassman Roshi gave him formal inka in 1997.

Brother Tom Marshall, S.J. (1922 - 2010). Tom was ordained a Soto priest by Les Kaye, Roshi, at Kannon Do in Los Altos and completed koan training with Gempo Roshi in Utah. Tom never formally taught; though, in many ways, like Issan Dorsey Roshi, he taught me all I needed to know to practice Zen wholeheartedly.

Father Ama Samy, S.J., Gen'un-ken, Roshi, received authorization to teach from Yamada Roshi in 1989.

Father Mathew Cyril Antony, S.J., Jnana Bodhi Ken, Roshi, is a dharma heir of Father Samy. Father Anthony runs Bodhi “Little Flower” Zendo, which Father Samy established in Tamil Nadu, India.

_______________

Additions (after I posted my roster, I stumbled across a post on Patheos by James Ismael Ford and uncovered two more former Jesuits who have been authorized to teach Zen):

Stefan Bauberger (1969), School of the Heart's Ground, Nordwald Zendo; former Jesuit; left the Jesuits in 2025; Father Samy’s dharma heir.

Johannes Fischer, Bodhi Ken (1957), former Jesuit, Zen Circle Sinntal; Father Samy’s dharma heir.

Mother Teresa in hotpants

Mata-Ji's Tomb

When I was at Maitri Hospice, I struggled several times with the Gift of Love, Mother Teresa’s San Francisco home for the dying. I was not alone. More than once, I got a call from a distressed mother, sister, or friend of a radical fairy who got stuck in the “Gift of Love,” where a well-intentioned Indian nun was beating the Devil out of him with a bunch of peacock feathers. There was nothing we could do to stop it because the Mother’s missions were entirely self-funded and exempt from any anti-discrimination regulation, and she was a saint. Unless we were family (which did not include boyfriends), we weren’t even allowed in to witness the loud calls to say the rosary together at 4 PM.

It fit the rumors of her Indian house for dying destitutes where baptism came before any medical treatment.  I found myself siding with Christopher Hitchens. As a liberal Catholic, at least in my history, I resented that this woman enforced heavy-handed religious demands by her saintly persona and rumors of being a living saint. A few younger, mostly Latino gay kids who really did feel that AIDS was punishment for being gay found some consolation in the care of the sisters. Most San Francisco gay men did not. I found it abhorrent. But we all kept our mouths shut. A hundred men were dying every week, and so many were homeless we needed every act of kindness that was offered.

Many years later, around 2015-16, when she was canonized, I visited Mata-Ji's tomb in Kolkata. My opinion shifted in a way I did not expect. I didn’t find myself less critical of the “loving” behavior of Mata-Ji’s sisters in the Gift of Love, but my experience of her presence at the Mother House did shake some of my preconceived ideas.

My partner and I hired a car and followed the Ganges from Rishikesh towards the delta east of Kolkata where its holy waters empty into the Bay of Bengal. I’ll try to write about our trip along the Ganges another time. In almost every way, it was a very disturbing experience. For all the planning, money, and repeated efforts to care for holy Ganga Mata, every government and every Lok Sabha has proven helpless to clean its waters, making more hollow promises and postponing the drastic work required.

A few days later, when we drove through the long delta and reached the shore of the Bay, we could only spend a few hours before we had to leave; the sludge was thick and black; we couldn’t escape its foul smell; it coated everything; the volume of untreated sewage, chemical run-off from the factories along the river, discharge from the tanneries, mixed with human remains, was overwhelming. I said out loud that it was a cesspool and my partner told me to shut up. Slandering the holy ground could get us in big trouble.

We quickly decided to double back to Kolkata and spend the rest of our time there. The seat of the British East India Company since the 17th century, the central city and some of the suburbs are very beautiful, filled with lovely colonial buildings; even the typical Indian middle-class neighborhoods are incredibly clean for India.

On the last day before the flight back to Delhi, we decided to visit Mother Teresa's tomb. We either didn’t read the guidebook carefully enough or just didn’t plan well, but we arrived at the very unassuming Mother House just after 1 PM. A simple sign over the gate clearly said it was closed from 1-3. Our plane was either 4:30 or 5. We’d missed our chance. We rang the bell at the gate anyway. A lovely young nun answered and explained that the sisters needed time for prayer and rest. Their chapel was closed. But then, in the next breath, she said she could open the door for us and let us visit the shrine room for a few minutes. Of course we said yes.

A very simple, unadorned wooden door stood just to our right. Inside, almost nothing indicated a sacred place: it was a fairly large room with a low ceiling, the ubiquitous cheap floor tile that was in every Indian house, simply painted cement walls, the rough timber beams with single harsh fluorescent bulbs, a few wooden benches, and stacks of the cheap plastic chairs that were in every house, on every balcony, every restaurant. There was a nondescript altar for Mass against one wall, and in the middle of the room, her tomb. Just that, a very plain white marble box, about the size of a large dining table, with an inscription and a painted statue of the Virgin Mary, which was very nice, but something that looked mass-produced for the shops that sold icons and statues of every saint and god of India. Totally, absolutely ordinary. One sister in prayer on a kneeler in a back corner; our rule-breaking sister standing in the doorway. The only thing that set the room apart was that it was immaculately clean and absolutely unlike any other religious holy place that I’d ever visited in India.

It also felt absolutely appropriate.

I walked directly to Mata Ji’s tomb and knelt on the hard, wide step that surrounded it. I know that I touched it. I might have even lowered my forehead until it touched the top, but I’m quite sure that I didn’t kiss it. Regardless, I began to feel very different, not like I’d walked into a room with a famous person, maybe a movie star, and was in awe, but I sensed a presence. It was a very powerful sensation. It felt personal, like meeting someone. I might have been so blown away by the incredible mix of humility, love, and devotion in the way the room was set up, but the feeling went very deep, and I started to cry, softly, but the tears were there just as they are now while I’m writing about the memory. Regardless of whatever opinions I had, I knew that I was in the presence of a Great Being, to borrow a Buddhist term. After a few more minutes, our very kind nun signaled that she had to close the door and do whatever was next in her day. At the gate, she gave us some small miraculous metals, like the ones that the nuns gave us for a correct answer in catechism class, and we left a few hundred rupees in the alms box. We said goodbye and left. My memory may be tricking me, but she had a lovely smile.


During the last Companions Zoom, someone mentioned that it would be entirely inappropriate to put Mother Teresa in hotpants. Then I came across this picture of HH Dalai Lama on his first international trip after escaping from Lhasa. This is the picture taken when he landed in Tokyo. It had to be sometime in the early 60’s. The Japanese stewardesses certainly didn’t dress like nuns, but it doesn’t seem to have bothered HH a whole lot.

Christopher Hitchens vs. the Blessed Venerable Unassailable Saint Mātā-ji, aka Mother Teresa

15th December 2011

Enlightenment figure Marquis de Condorcet's idea of what a public intellectual ought to be is someone who devotes himself to "the tracking down of prejudices in the hiding places where priests, the schools, the government, and all long-established institutions had gathered and protected them."

This morning, I got further confirmation that Mother Teresa is not what the world would like us to believe she was. As I was reading that the Missionaries of Charity worldwide are praying for the soul of Christopher Hitchens, the touching sentiment arrived within seconds of news from India that her followers rejected my then partner’s offer to teach English in one of their schools because—his words, a loose translation from the Hindi—“we don’t want fags.” Ah! Homophobes. I was not surprised, but what a loss for the kids who might have really learned something from a very smart, educated guy, fluent in Hindi and English.

I’ve had history with the Missionaries here in San Francisco, though my personal contact has been no more than smiling at some of them on the bus.

Back in 1991, when I was running Maitri Hospice, I got a panicked call from the sister of a man who wound up in the Gift of Love, the Missionaries AIDS Hospice. The woman was completely outraged: her brother felt that he had been taken captive by religious fanatics who cut off his TV, made him say the rosary, and beat the devil out of him with bunches of peacock feathers attached to the beds of recalcitrant patients.

I was never able to verify these practices because the Missionaries did not accept public funding and escaped the normal oversight required for hospice. So it’s only hearsay. I spoke with the guy who felt trapped there and moved him to the top of our waiting list. He moved to Peter Claver House and died before we had a bed.

After leaving Maitri and dealing with my own PTSD, I went to work as the Assistant Director of The Spiritual Center for AIDS Services in Oakland, soon to become just “The Center” as the street folks, sex workers, called us. A few of the men missionaries started The Center, especially one American guy with a deep sense of compassion and commitment to the poor. But he was also gay, came out, and left.

When Mātā-ji learned that a good portion of the infected sex industry workers still worked and that the majority of the injection drug users did not embrace total abstinence, she pulled her support. The Center was taken over by a ragtag group of outsider nuns, priests, gays, blacks, catholic lay people and Jews—Jacinta from the Sisters of the Holy Family was the main stay of the program, really our priest, who did the memorial services, hospital visits, and many hours of counseling; Anne who was a Franciscan ran a day care for kids with HIV and the children of women with HIV; an older Dominican woman, perhaps in her late 80’s, who sat at the door and greeted everyone warmly; a gay priest who did the reports to the CDC; a full cadre of catholic lay people from the suburbs who prepared meals everyday for about a hundred or so. The staff was rounded out with a few other gay men, a Latino Jew who was the social worker and case manager, a black lesbian who did drug and alcohol counseling, a huge, handsome, grounded brother who drove the van, getting folks to medical appointments.

So what’s my point other than my walk into the past to feel deep gratitude and love for a whole bunch of people who really did step up and give of themselves during a terrible epidemic? When I wrote to foundations for money, the board chair, a good friend, told me to milk the Mother Teresa thing as much as possible. Which I did—until we heard through the grapevine that Mātā-ji wouldn't be happy if she discovered her name was associated with the project—that we’d bowed to the idols of case-management, drug counseling, and infectious disease control.

After all, her nuns had ripped out the carpet of the abandoned convent that they’d occupied on Church St. So, of course, they had the blessing of the Most-High on her hijacking social services to covertly turn the world to Jesus.

I throw my total support to Hitchens in the controversy, and will add some Buddhist prayer that his soul winds up Nowhere, and not in a constricted heaven presided over by fanatics. It seems to me that there is more than enough evidence that “Mother Teresa makes no real effort at medical or social relief, and that her mission is religious and propagandistic and includes surreptitious baptism of unbelievers.”

And finally, from an interview with Christopher, who makes my point very concisely.
Free Inquiry: According to polls, Mother Teresa is the most respected woman in the world. Her name is a byword for selfless dedication in the service of humanity. So why are you picking on this sainted old woman?

Christopher Hitchens: Partly because that impression is so widespread. But also because the sheer fact that this is considered unquestionable is a sign of what we are up against, namely the problem of credulity. One of the most salient examples of people's willingness to believe anything if it is garbed in the appearance of holiness is the uncritical acceptance of the idea of Mother Teresa as a saint by people who would normally be thinking—however lazily—in a secular or rational manner. In other words, in every sense it is an unexamined claim.

Saint Francis Xavier and the Goan Inquisition

“O Tempora, O Mores” -- Not so Fast!

The Miracles of Saint Francis Xavier, Peter Paul Rubens, 1617/1618 

I have been fascinated by the relatively short career of Francis Xavier since Jesuit Prep School. When I started practicing Zen and learned that he was the first Christian with any religious training to contact a Japanese Zen monk, my admiration grew. Then, reading his letters to Ignatius under the direction of Jesuit Brother Tom Marshall, I was struck both by what seemed to be genuine curiosity, an ability to form friendships, and then, in the blink of an eye, to jump into an extremely myopic, dogmatic mindset, hurling condemnations equal to the most ferocious defender of the faith, espousing positions I find barbaric.

When I first went to India, perhaps the second or third trip, we went to Mass in the Basilica of Bom Jesu, where the mummified body of Xavier is venerated. I wrote about it in my blog: Goa, Saint Francis and Me. My first impression was that this was another take on the Indian custom of veneration of saints. But then I discovered an indigenous movement to send Francis’s body back to Lisbon or Rome. The Konkani Christian Victims of Francis Xavier’s Atrocities group began their campaign in 1961 when the Republic of India seized control of Goa and its territories. Based in Mangalore, the Konkani victims claim to be descendants of the people whose lives were destroyed by the Portuguese Inquisition. Xavier asked the King of Portugal to send Inquisitors to Goa. They arrived eight years after Xavier’s death, but that does not absolve him of the murder of 57 Hindus, Muslims and new Indian Christians burned at the stake, nor the property confiscated by those whose baptism secured their status in the upper class or their Portuguese overlords.

In 1994, the Indian Cardinal Simon Pimenta was asked about the controversy surrounding the veneration of the body of Francis Xavier in Goa. He said: “The beliefs and actions of people of earlier ages cannot be judged by the principles of a later age.” The Cardinal was perhaps a bit confused by his own good deeds and his personal, compassionate response to the Teaching of our Lord. Or, like many otherwise good men improperly trained by Jesuits in the classics, when at a loss for words, he grabbed a line from Cicero and tried to construct a plausible excuse. Or perhaps he had fallen under the spell of hagiographers who inflated the number of Xavier’s already impressive 30,000 converts to 700,000 people across Asia between his arrival in Goa, India in May of 1542 and his death on Shangchuan Island off the coast of China in December of 1552. Whatever the case, one thing is clear: a man of the church he loved was embarrassed by the clear and deeply inhuman acts of one of the most important founding fathers, and he fumbled.

But I will condemn him. Our lovely Cardinal friend fumbled. He had no other choice. Hagiography is a straitjacket. The formula dictates stories of saints carefully crafted to “edify,” even if it requires erasing or editing, exaggeration, or stuffing inconvenient facts into an unnoticed corner where they won’t attract attention. Miracles, of course, are required before the Church recommends a particular person’s holy life as worth imitating. They usually also embody some praiseworthy trait beyond avoiding sin, believing dogma, and submitting to the will of God, as if it were contained in the holy rule of a sanctioned religious institute. That’s all lumped together as heroic virtue. I am concerned here with what was left out.

Hagiography leaves enormous room to fuddle. In the recent case of Josemaría Escrivá, both Pope Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict wanted to elevate Opus Dei because it produced the conservative priests they both favored, but they rushed the job and got sucked in by Opus’s self-aggrandizement and propaganda. This left the infallible Church defending the indefensible: human trafficking, the exploitation of women and teenagers, financial irregularities, and other cult-like behaviors. But dear God, don’t touch the halo over Josemaria’s head.

In the case of Francis Xavier, the Jesuits waited until the footnotes to mention that he asked the Portuguese to send the Inquisition to Goa. The only other prominent Jesuit tainted by the Inquisition was Robert Bellarmine, another saint who actually signed the warrant for Giordano Bruno’s execution, and was an Inquisitor at the trial of Fulgenzio Manfredi, who was also burned at the stake. Bellarmine did convince Galileo to renounce the Copernican theory that the Earth revolved around the sun, based on the evidence of scripture, which was scientifically wrong but does not concern me as I’m examining his misguided use of the death penalty.

Xavier’s conversion strategy and subsequent enforcement of Christian discipline among his fledgling churches used the deadly force of a conquering army. I was present at a conference where Father X DeSousa, a Goan Jesuit, described his ancestors' conversion by drawing his index finger across his neck. The choice between baptism or execution leaves little room for free will.

Xavier died when he was only 46. He built a massive and inflated record as a missionary while still a relatively young man. I always felt that under the heroism was a full-blown fanatic, a religious soldier of fortune with a magical worldview. He jumped aboard a Portuguese carrack, becoming its chaplain, as it sailed to India in the service of a greedy colonial power. He was no doubt brilliant, initiating a conversation about the numinous world, but then too quickly expropriating every means at hand to gain dominance and force submission.

I am not insinuating, nor do I believe that Pimenta condones or justifies any of the methods or goals of the Inquisition, yet here we are: it is indisputable that Xavier requested that Portuguese inquisitors enforce the straight-and-narrow in doctrine and politics, supporting an imperial, colonializing, slave-trading complex to plunder Goa. His presence gave God’s blessing to their colonial designs.

Adhering to Archbishop Pimenta’s warning about extracting facts from their particular tempora et mores, we’ll have to wait another century for the Age of Enlightenment. It’’s not particularly fair to burden a religious figure of the sixteenth century with attitudes from our own post-colonial experience, but I refuse to condone participating in the fiery executions of the Inquisition as worthy of any saint, not even a swashbuckling Jesuit.

_________________

Notes:

During the Goa Inquisition, which lasted from 1560 to 1812, about 16,000 people were brought to trial. Out of these cases, records show that 57 people were put to death by burning, and 64 were burned in effigy (using a statue because they had already died or fled). Thousands more faced other punishments, such as prison, exile, or the loss of their property. The Portuguese colonial government destroyed most of the records in 1812, so these figures are likely low, conservative estimates.

The First Provincial Council (1567): In Goa, church authorities played a major role in refining legal definitions of slavery. The Council condemned "unjust" slavery (such as capturing people during peacetime) but validated slavery resulting from a "just war" or self-sale during extreme famines.

Xavier personal attitude contributed to (not just condoned) the continuation of enslavement by the Portuguese. Though far fewer Indians were enslaved than West Africans, Indians were captured and sold as chattel. According to Teotonio de Souza, the former head of the Xavier Center of Historical Research, “[Xavier’s] appreciation of Indians, whom he called Negroes, was negative, and he became enthusiastic in his mission to Asia only after discovering the ‘white people’ of Japan and China.”

Are Books Next?

Originally posted Monday, January 26, 2009. I stand by my prediction.


Liberal education as we know it will soon become a thing of the past. I wonder if anyone really cares or realizes the cost?

Here is a comment from a reader, Andrew Davis, of The New Republic:

“In other news, American Airlines announces they will no longer fly airplanes.

“After careful analysis, we discovered that we make most of our profit selling tickets, not flying planes, so we are canceling all flights henceforth. Tickets, however, are still available online, over the phone, or from an agent. Our customers will also be glad to know that we are also reducing our fuel surcharge by fifty percent."

clipped from blogs.tnr.com

Why Book Reviews Matter

Rumors surfaced last Friday that Book World, the Washington Post's highly-respected weekly stand-alone on all things literary, might be closing. Politico's Michael Calderone quickly confirmed that, while no decision has been made, it's under high-level discussion as a cost-cutting measure. This would leave the New York Times' Book Review as the last stand-alone book section in American dailies.

In recent years, in-house book reviewing has been eliminated, abridged, or downgraded by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Cleveland's Plain Dealer, and The San Diego Union-Tribune — the list goes on.



*For more of my collages, go to Application of the Senses
:

A saint for the East or the Portuguese expansion into the East?

Originally posted May 21st, 2010

After many years of Jesuit training, I took as a matter of faith that Francis Xavier was the first multi-cultural saint, having spent 11 of his 46 short years in the East. Nothing could be farther from the truth. His mission was closely tied to the Portuguese colonization of India, begun in 1498 by Vasco da Gama. Xavier arrived in Goa on May 6th 1542, along with Portuguese explorers, seamen, soldiers, and merchants—the first or second wave of occupiers. As a Jesuit, he vowed to spread the gospel of Jesus, but he was so fully aligned with European/Portuguese plans to dominate the East that it creates a very messy picture. Pope John Paul the Second, of Blessed Memory, was not around to hound Jesuits who delved into politics, though the army of God five hundred years ago was firmly in the pocket of the colonial, military-industrial, slave-trading complex. The exact opposite of Bob Drinan or Fernando Cardenal Martínez.

The history of any revolution or period of innovation is hard to read. I am skeptical of any authorized version, particularly a story of the human and divine interacting. Though the Roman church and the Jesuits insist that Jesus came to save all humankind regardless of race, or language, or tradition, when I look at the cultural artifacts of Xavier's mission, the architecture and iconography, I see a different story.

Portuguese governance of the territories they occupied in India lasted from 1505 through 1947. After Gandhi, these scattered coastal enclaves, known as Portuguese India, or Goa in popular parlance, began to be taken over by India. The pace accelerated in 1954, when peaceful Satyagrahis' attempts at forcing the Portuguese to leave were brutally suppressed.

This postcard commemorates the Saint issued by Portuguese India in 1946, a year before Indian independence.

The following images are presented as evidence that Xavier was, and is still, a very European saint. The photographs are of Bom Jesu (1695 C.E.) and the Se Cathedral in Old Goa. (Photography by Garry Demarest.)

Xavier’s casket in the Basilica of Bom Jesu.

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The nave of the Basilica of Bom Jesu

Close-up of the main altar in Bom Jesu

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Another altar in Bom Jesu

Se Cathedral, Old Goa.

The nave of Se Cathedral.

Xavier is still part of the life of many Indian Christians, many generations removed from his appearance in Goa more than 450 years ago.

This is an older church in Old Goa that predates the current Basilica of 1695.

Roman Catholicism didn't completely conquer the hearts and minds of the local peoples. It is still India. Christianity can never be more than a competing cult.

The Creation of a European Saint in Baroque Art

Nicolas Poussin (1595-1664)

The Miracle of Saint Francis Xavier

Saint Francis Xavier by Andrea Pozo (1642-1709), lay brother of the Society of Jesus, 1701, Oil on canvas, Kiscelli Museum, Budapest.

Peter Paul Rubens 1617/1618



This monumental painting was displayed alternately with The Miracles of St. Ignatius of Loyola on the high altar of Antwerp's Jesuit Church.



St. Francis Xavier stands preaching to a crowd of people. Some of the miracles he performed as part of his missionary activity in Asia are vividly depicted, both as a testimony to the Counter-Reformation and as preparation for the beatification of St. Francis Xavier in 1619. A man is summoned back from the dead, the blind and lame are healed, and in the temple an idol is falling, broken, to the ground.

Depiction of one of the miracles of Francis Xavier.

André Reinoso, The Miracle of Saint Francis Xavier (1619)
at the Santa Casa de Misericórdia de Lisboa / Museu de São Roque, Lisbon, Portugal

Images from Japanese Art

Traditional screens. Images of the great Portuguese trading ships. Jesuits, or priests, are among the passengers.

And finally some of the sweeter images of Xavier. Although my analysis has portrayed Xavier as a very European figure, that is not to say that his influence was entirely negative. (The tonsure on Xavier might indicate that he has been incorrectly identified with one of the Franciscans who followed the Jesuits in Japan).