Indra’s Spider Web

I’m wondering if Indra’s Net of Jewels is designed to catch spiders, flies, even wasps, while it at the same time drawing the captivating picture of a vast universe that gives us life, connects all of us, the good bad and indifferent, allows us to support one another, and, most importantly, makes our practice possible.

I started following the blog of a Zen teacher in Boston. I will leave out her name as I am going to be fairly critical. I do not know her personally, have not engaged with her about what I am going to discuss, nor am I out to stir up any more controversy than’s already swirling around, but if you’d like to review her writing yourself, I will direct you to her blog.

It’s sadly a familiar story. The woman is a practice leader with more than a few years of solid practice under her belt. She witnessed sexual misconduct at close range, most of which has become public knowledge. She also asserts there were financial shenanigans as well as more insidious psychological manipulation. She states that she’s not been personally harmed by the insult other than losing a few bucks. 

I do not want to make light of her concerns, and I am certainly not out to condone any of the behaviors. However I began to feel a concern that deepened the more that I read. 

My basic question, shared by most of the people I talk with, is what is the best, most productive and least harmful position we can take in the face of these kinds of behaviors? They reoccur often enough and show no signs of disappearing or fading away anytime soon. I will not sit idly by as if nothing happened, nor can I let it strangle my practice or that of my friends.

I am entirely sympathetic to the loud, and seemingly unending repetition of any complaint when the conditions have not disappeared or even really been addressed. Sometimes it feels like screaming into the wind given the persistence of the misogyny prevalent in the Eastern cultures of most of our first teachers compounded by the male dominance in early American Zen. I have heard from so many people who did serious meditation practice at the San Francisco Zen Center that they were always encouraged by the steady presence and teaching of Katagiri Roshi. They recalled something he’d said to them at some difficult point in their practice that made a world of difference, and they regret that he’d received such a “bad rap,” to quote one male priest. The mitigating factor, they claim, is that he came from Japan, where dalliances of priests, even married priests with married women, were simply a cultural artifact as long as absolute discretion was observed. These people want to leave untouched the fact that Katagiri was a gifted teacher who helped many people selflessly, and so they resort to backwards somersaults to excuse sexual misconduct. That just doesn’t fly anymore--if it ever did.

The situation has not ended with the elevation of many women teachers of the Way. Even though it is a loaded word, I say “elevation'' for reasons that I hope become clear if I can lay out my argument convincingly. It indicates the acquisition of some higher state or knowledge that is unavailable to those of us who remain lower down the ladder. I also want to pay close attention to the fact that it is mainly women who have sounded the alarm and called for setting boundaries. I want these voices to be heard. However, I have to add that I was sexually abused and raped by a closeted gay man who claimed the role of spiritual leadership, so the voices are not just women’s. I have spoken out, but what’s the expression? Crickets. There are still lots of people who make their livelihood by exploiting this New Age teacher’s reputation. For the record, Bob Hoffman was not Buddhist; in fact, his vehement knee-jerk position for anyone but himself was anti-guru, not just anti-Buddhist. That position could not save him from being a predator and a simple criminal. But before I stray too far afield, I want to stay focused as much as I can on the response of the Buddhist sangha to sexual misconduct.

There is also nothing at all wrong about this teacher’s main argument that Buddhist teachers can’t escape the ethical implications of setting and respecting boundaries with students. It comes with the territory. Of course. She uses the professional norms for therapists who do not have sexual relationships with their patients, do not exchange money outside an agreed-upon fee structure, and do not interfere in their intimate relationships between friends, lovers, and family. My impression is that she saw some violations of these boundaries and suspected others. This destroyed her trust in the teacher in question, and started her search for establishing clear boundaries for herself and her community. 

These guidelines may crimp the style of some teachers who want to push a student to examine all the nooks and crannies of his or her inner workings. Sometimes, dare I say often, even hopefully, every seemingly bizarre personal quirk, hidden agenda, or blindly held prejudice comes up for scrutiny in meditation practice, but the role of the psychotherapist and meditation mentor is quite different. I hesitate to make any pronouncements, but the aim of the therapist might be to alleviate the pain of maladjustment, while the meditation teacher’s role might be to just point to it so that the student can sort things out for themselves, or not. 

A very intelligent homeless man came to the meditation group I organized in the San Francisco Tenderloin every Tuesday night for several years until I drove him away in hopes of persuading him to find shelter. I tried to rigorously honor the boundaries of my role as the person who opened the door, set out the cushions, and watched the timer to just that, but I made what I still consider a grave mistake. 

This man was a serious student of the Talmud and Primo Levi, packing a small library while living outdoors. His former wife was an Episcopal priest. He didn’t fit my profile of a homeless man. One night after meditation I sat with him and grilled him. I am embarrassed to admit it. He tried to defend himself by speaking of the virtues of living outside, even in the cold and rain, but I wasn’t buying it. He stopped coming to the zendo. I could not locate him. I was devastated.

Perhaps the teacher of boundaries is just concerned that no wild, crazy wisdom teacher breaks up the china shoppe. After reading, I was left with the impression of a woman who has an orderly mind, academically and scientifically trained. I sympathize with her. Surely people like that, and I include myself, can be open to the unexpected stabs of enlightenment. I hope so.

But I left with the feeling, perhaps it was just her emphasis, that though everything is entirely right with her position, everything is entirely wrong. She states that every teacher relationship is prey to these violations; that every teacher will eventually do you wrong, rope you in, manipulate you, seduce you or violate your emotional boundaries. We’ll leave the sex part out, but it is certainly included. You can trust no one. She has followed the logic behind her assumptions to its inevitable conclusion: the sangha, the treasure that we are told the Lord Buddha valued above all others, is untrustworthy. It cannot do the job. 

But what if it is doing its job without manipulation? What if it’s meant to be imperfect? What happens when we posit that the Buddha was right? That the sangha does its job. That it has to be trusted. Indra’s net levels the playing field. Teachers are not elevated above their finely stretched web. There are no high wires to trip up the high and mighty. They catch us all. It can be trusted to do its job.

And once you’ve caught the spider, what do you do? Some scream, some cry foul. Some struggle. Some set up new boundaries as an extra precaution. We’re all assholes, and we got caught. We pick up the pieces and repair the net. We cradle the wounded and cremate the dead.

Tōsui Unkei is a well-known 15th-century Zen teacher who lived under a bridge in Kyoto. There’s a koan about him, but I could not locate it in any of the standard collections. From what I can glean from the unofficial commentary, it seems to be about living with whatever gifts life offers us, no matter whether they're robes or rags. Here is the verse attributed to him when he left the monastery to live the life of a homeless beggar.

Today is the end of religion's work--

Go back, all of you, to your homes.

I leave before you,

Eastward or westward,

Wherever the wind might carry me.

I missed it. I also didn't honor my own boundaries. I’m sorry. I dedicate this work to you, my homeless Tenderloin Zen student, wherever you ended up.

The Ethical Slut goes in search of a Zen teacher

I had an email exchange with a well-regarded senior Zen teacher from the same lineage as I practice in. Our conversation quickly veered off into a dead end, and I was left wondering what I’d said wrong. I am going to talk about private communication, so I will not name names, but I will flesh out the full context of our exchange. I was not teacher-shopping. I simply asked a question. 

Roshi X asked me whom I practiced with. My answer included some of the most senior teachers in his school and some well-known people in another lineage. I’ve been practicing Zen since 1988, and for most of that time, I have talked with a teacher both on retreats and at regular intervals. I’ve made the formal request to train with several different teachers, but it was always serial monogamy, never two at once. Four of my teachers are dead; two died while I was working with them, and one sent me to his senior student and then died. One died after I began koan work. We parted on very friendly terms, but I think she was happy to be rid of me--another tale.

Rigid Roshi came down on me like a ton of bricks. After questioning the credentials of several of the teachers I mentioned, he asked how I could expect to make any real progress unless I found my master, stuck it out, drilled down, and got to the heart of the matter. I may be generalizing a bit, but that was the tone. I was looking for a place to do retreats near where I live, but I quickly decided that it would not be with Rigid Roshi. 

Yesterday a Zen friend asked me why we need teachers anyway? A good question. It is, of course, pretty standard practice in Zen to seek out a teacher at some point. I’ve heard the tired old saying that when you’re ready, the teacher will come to you. I like the mystical lyricism of the sentiment. It even has a touch of magic, but there’s definitely a lot more involved. Usually, something happened on the cushion that made you want to go deeper, some experience caught you off guard and merited further exploration, perhaps you just wanted someone to talk to as you ventured into unfamiliar territory, or maybe you got lucky and met someone you clicked with, a true dharma friend. I can locate some or all of those motivations in my own search for teachers at various times. For the most part, I’ve always had a teacher over the nearly 50 years I’ve practiced. I do better when I have one. I’m more focused, happier. I actually encountered Buddhism when I met someone whom I could really call a Buddhist. I’d read a few things, and then I set out to meet a teacher. Although I didn’t ever formally become his student, I visited this very experienced meditation practitioner many times over the years, listening to him, asking him questions, participating in his practice, and observing how he behaved. So I’m prejudiced. I’ve had several connections with other men and women who were solid practitioners. I've been lucky. They were very decent human beings. There was a connection. It can go deep. And for the record, I was never emotionally, sexually, or financially abused.

But to get back to Rigid Roshi’s criticism. Why just one? Where does that lead? What kind of relationship is required? What are the boundaries? What happens if it becomes a tired, old, stale relationship like a dead marriage, or what, and this is not unknown, if it becomes abusive? What is the value? What if, when you haven’t found true love, you play the field and sleep around? Like many Westerners, I’ve sampled from various traditions. I’ve spent time in at least two Tibetan traditions, or at least spent untold hours studying, going to classes, even seeking refuge and receiving empowerments. I’ve done Vipassana retreats and read their literature. I’ve worked with four Soto teachers, done many sesshins, and lived in practice centers. I’ve done koan practice with at least 6 authorized teachers. I’m a total slut. I began my checkered Buddhist practice in 1973. With several extended hiatuses for psychological work and a painful exploration of the world of drugs, I’m coming up on 50 years of practice. Do I still work with a teacher? Yes. Does it take time to develop a fruitful collaboration with him or her? Obviously. Do I have boundaries? You betcha. Do I recommend it? The jury’s out. But I do know this: in the West, we do not have a solid tradition of established Buddhist practices rooted in our culture. As you walk down the street, the Methodist Church is right next to Saint Catherine’s parish, but the Rinzai temple is not to be found. The Tibetan lama has just opened his center in an old fraternity house, but he's very busy, way too busy to give you much individual attention. Of course, you’re going to look around for a little love and affection. We’re humans. 

Which brings me back to my original question: How does an ethical slut find a teacher and actually develop a good relationship?

I will be clear about what I want and what I’m willing to give or give up. You have to be clear, too.

• Sure, it can get down and dirty. That’s the point. 
• We’re equals in the relationship. There's a lot I don't know. If you have the answer to a question I’m looking for, I will be grateful if you share it. But that’s it. I am assuming that it comes with no strings attached. If I see telltale signs that you are going to demand something that I’m unwilling to give, it’s time to say goodbye.
• I don’t do well with either domination or subservience.
• I do not do homophobia or sexism.
• I don’t pay for sex. I have, but it was over quickly and, in retrospect, not worth it.
• The understanding is that there will be mutual respect, and nothing lasts forever.

So, no thanks, Rigid Roshi, I will not be coming around. I don’t even know you, and you dropped a load of garbage on me. How can I expect to be treated as a unique human? You do not know something I don’t. I assume that you are in the business of offering some service to humankind for the benefit of others and a taste of freedom. In that case, I can recommend a few practitioners with a little more savoir-faire who can coach you in some interpersonal skills.

SAT, Naranjo, the Enneagram, the beginnings, and “the Work”

 Originally published in "The Enneagram Monthly"

Claudio Benjamín Naranjo Cohen (24 November 1932 – 12 July 2019) has passed away. Óscar Ichazo (24 July 1931 – 26 March 2020) died less than a year later. The meditation teacher Ajahn Dhiravamsa (5 November 1934 - 28 July 2021) passed away. More recently. Rezeleah Landman Schaeffer has left us, though I can find no obituary. The only teachers and leaders still alive from the early history of Naranjo’s SAT are Kathy Speeth, who told her story of sitting in Gurdjieff’s lap when she was a young child, and the Nyingmapa teacher Tarthang Tulku, who had an enormous influence on Naranjo. At 86, Tarthang is still teaching, though no longer traveling internationally. These were the men and women who first introduced the Enneagram in the West.

My friend Dan Kaplan forwarded an email promotion for a course by some proponents of the Enneagram that promises to unlock its radical teaching by returning to the “original intent.” Please forgive me if I'm skeptical. Are these third-generation experts going back to Naranjo’s characterization of the 9 types, or Ichazo’s prototyping, which is notably different, or the myth of an esoteric Sufi circle, or the inconclusive evidence that it lay hidden in Gurdjieff’s teaching, or William Patterson’s tracing the system back to ancient Egypt? I try to give the devil his due, but “original intent” is just hype to separate you from your money. I challenge any of these teachers to reveal the original intent in a rigorous way. If they’re just trying to distinguish themselves from Enneagram parlor games, I might be more generous.

Perhaps it is time to look at some of the threads that tie the Enneagram’s popularization in the West to the burgeoning of the psycho-spiritual integration that took California by like a New Awakening in the last part of the last century. I only know the SAT experience so that will be my focus.

Dr. Aubrey Lindgren, who was in Naranjo’s first SAT group, talked about Naranjo’s early teaching in the October 2021 edition of “The Enneagram Monthly.” Lindgren’s account tries to unwrap the Enneagram, particularly the Enneagram of Fixations, for a Western audience steeped in the language of psychotherapy. She asks why so little has been written about those early days? Her answer is “To realize the full impact of the teachings, we have to hold the container in silence. A silence that is both inside our own minds, as in not forming concepts about transformation, and outside, as in not discussing the material presented. It is a disservice to the public to hear about a theory without the full understanding and guidance as to how to effectively apply these ideas to your life.”

A gnostic response wants to keep secrets secret, or is trying to hide something, or hinting at some secret knowledge that will cost money. While I appreciate whatever caution is there about doing inner work, Lindgren's answer hides too much. As far as the Enneagram is concerned, the cat’s out of the bag. If the Enneagram ever was an esoteric teaching, it has crossed over into popular culture, at worst mimicking astrology or at best being an adjunct to the techniques of psychotherapy. The careful inner work of introspection seems too difficult for a mass audience.

I was in Naranjo’s SAT 2, which began in the Fall of 1972. By the end of the second year, the group had expanded to perhaps 60-80 people. The first group that Lindgren describes was distinct and interacted with Naranjo in a different way, often delivering his “indications” to newer students. I talked with my longtime friend Daniel Shurman, who was in Group 1; together we combed our memories and remembered many people who were and remain friends. I was particularly close to my fellow Jesuit Bob Ochs and the Franciscan priest Joe Scerbo, among others. We also remembered friends who lived communally out on Broadway and another group around Indian Rock in North Berkeley, and the women who lived with Naranjo on Allston Way. The membership included the well-known second-generation Enneagram teacher, Hameed Ali, as well as the transpersonal scholar Charlie Tart.

The influence of Oscar Ichazo on the modern Enneagram is well known, even litigated. As I pointed out in my article “The Jesuit Transmission of the Enneagram,” as well as “Muddied Roots, Psychobabble, and Inoculation.” I was aware that Naranjo was unpacking a powerful experience he’d had in Arica, and his presentation and understanding were different from Ichazo. Actually a lot of time was spent sorting out the distinctions. I am not an Enneagram teacher so I am not going to indulge in any of the arguments about theories, typing or tests. Have at it.

I will second what Lindgren says about the inspiration of Naranjo’s personal gifts, his intelligence, and his creativity. There was also the influence of Fritz Perls’ Gestalt, echoes of the Sufi school, or what we were told was the teaching of the Brotherhood, the ego reduction in our personal and group work, some dabbling in Buddhist meditation, and, of course, what is called “The Work.” Naranjo felt that the Enneagram, as it came through Ichazo, was a kind of fleshing out of the esoteric work that Mr. Gurdjieff undertook at the beginning of the last century. He could not substantiate this, and he never claimed to be an authorized Fourth Way teacher, but he loved the “trickster” myth around Gurdjieff’s teaching, and was always on the lookout for some connections, real or imagined, with Gurdjieff.

We were a group of bright, mostly young, educated westerners ready, willing, even eager for what we imagined to be the shock of eastern spiritual practice. We were also terribly naive. At times our work together became a circus. There were many dark sides. They do not discount the value of the work that we managed to accomplish--in a way some of the more thorny issues were part of that training. However they persist. In my view we cannot allow them to stay in the shadows, or sweep them under the rug. If we purge them from our telling the history of this period, we are just not being honest.

I will examine one aspect of the early SAT story, its connection with the unofficial Gurdjieff work, and my personal experience of sexual abuse and trauma after undergoing the Fisher-Hoffman Process of Psychic Therapy.

The Work

When G.I. Gurdjieff died in Paris in 1949, beside his recondite writings, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, and All and Everything, he left a large body of oral teaching that spanned nearly four decades. He had many devoted students, and though he did charge certain senior students to work with other interested people across the globe, he died with no clear transmission of a spiritual lineage. As with many powerful systems, it attracted a lot of interest, some from sane people who were intent on realizing the goals of liberation through self-awareness and observation that Gurdjieff advocated. In other cases, people seem to have been attracted by his unorthodox teaching methods. Several hung out a shingle with “The Work” predominantly displayed, and felt it gave them license to behave badly.

I don’t doubt that Kathy Speeth sat in Mr. Gurdjieff’s lap. But it is extremely unlikely, as Lindgren recounts, that it happened during the summers that her parents spent in Paris studying with Gurdjieff at 6 Rue des Colonels Rénard in the 17th arrondissement. Her parents were prominent New Yorkers who had been students of A.R. Orage, perhaps continuing to work with Jane Heap or Willem Nyland after Orage’s early death. Kathy was born in 1937 and the Second World War began in September of 1939. Her meeting with Mr. Gurdjieff was probably on one of his trips to the United States, and he did make one trip to the United States after the surrender of Germany so the timing sounds likely.

Why am I making such a big deal about the exact time that Kathy sat in Gurdjieff’s lap and where it took place? It is probably one of two verifiable connections with “the Work” in the early SAT. Kathy and Pamela Travers were the only people he introduced to the group who had actually met Mr. Gurdjieff. I want to avoid the sloppy thinking that comes from blurring facts with fanciful stories.

When Naranjo began to teach, there were several legitimate, respected Fourth Way teachers in the Bay Area, Lord John Pentland in San Francisco, Mr. Willem A. Nyland on “The Land” up near Cazadero and Mr. Robert S. de Ropp. I know that Pentland and Nyland stayed away from Naranjo’s Enneagram work although each one knew about it. Instead we were introduced to Alex Horn (by proxy--he never visited the group), EJ Gold aka “The Beast,” and Henry Korman as Fourth Way connections. Carlos Castaneda, who never claimed to have any connection with the Work but was a Hollywood example of crazy wisdom, appeared at some point to entertain us. None of these teachers had any interest in the Enneagram as Naranjo presented it, but Naranjo was interested in their teaching methods.

Lindgren describes working with Alex Horn during one of his late-night, early-morning marathon sessions on a secluded ranch north of San Francisco as a revelatory experience. It could have simply been the result of sleep deprivation and hypnosis. My only experience with Horn was at his Everyman Theater on 24th Street and Mission in San Francisco, where I watched a preposterous production about the assassination of JFK staged by Horn and his then-wife, Sharon. Horn prowled the audience before, after, and during the intermission. That was enough for me.

Horn claimed that he was in the lineage of Mr. Gurdjieff, but there is zero evidence of a real connection. I assert that Horn was attracted to the power he could reap from Gurdjieff’s unorthodox teaching methods. Period. Naranjo never encouraged me to work with Horn although several members of the early SAT groups did. I know several people who were not Naranjo’s students but had been in Horn’s group. They report sexual exploitation, coercion and even physical violence. For example, Horn would instigate a dispute between several of the men in the group and then instruct them to have a wrestling match, or even fist fight without gloves. Horn was also a known sexual predator with a voracious appetite for young women. His Bible was not anything that Gurdjieff or Ouspensky wrote but Atlas Shrugged.

E.J. Gold claimed to have been authorized to teach as “The Beast” by an esoteric Sufi School. As far as I can ascertain, he fabricated his connection with Mr. Gurdjieff. He was also the author of a cult book called The American Book of the Dead. When I met him, I could not shake the feeling that he was devoid of compassion. He invited anyone of the SAT group to come to Southern California and do an “intensive training.” By the time my friend Hal Slate arrived at a secluded bunker somewhere up on the Grapevine, the title and authority of “The Beast” had been given to one of Gold’s very young disciples who had learned everything he needed to know by performing for three days straight with a garage rock band made up of people who had no musical training. Ripping a page from the script of Luis Buñuel’s 1962 film, “The Exterminating Angel,” Gold seized on an unexpected change in the weather to concoct a scenario that it was the end of the world and all his trapped guests had to make some serious ontological choices. Hal escaped, walking out of the canyon on foot during the freak Southern California blizzard. As the saying goes, “Never miss the opportunity provided by a catastrophe.” I would add, “real or imagined, there are always several choices available.”

Of all the Gurdjieff students and teachers who visited our groups, meeting Pamela Travers was remarkable. The real Mary Poppins had actually been Gurdjieff’s student. Because I’d actually read some of her books, despite all the technicolor dancing and singing I knew that Poppins would be very English prim and proper with a mystical bent. And here was a middle aged woman, not at all glamorous, as much the portrait of an English nanny as my imagination allowed, who was also very present. She talked and answered our questions in a completely no nonsense way but with a lilt in her voice; she mentioned that she still met with a group and she named one of Mr. Gurdjieff’s senior students as her teacher.

By 1975 Naranjo began to withdraw from teaching the Enneagram. Others with more personal knowledge can comment or speculate on his motivation. My sense is that the initial work had been exhausting and the inspired impulse of his Arica experience had petered out and drained him personally. Some of the second generation Enneagram teachers have speculated that his drug experimentation had taken a toll which from my observation was a strong possibility. One member of the first group told me that much of his distress stemmed from the end of his intimate relationship with Kathy Speeth. All these are possible scenarios. There was also the concern that he felt after that the Enneagram materials had also been released to a wider audience. I do know from my conversations with him that he was apprehensive about the possible distortion of the Enneagram. He also told me that popularizers had watered it down. The SAT experiment would go dark at least temporarily.

He introduced Henry Korman as a person who would possibly inherit his SAT groups. Korman was leading a group in New York but had agreed to come and work with anyone who wished to continue to do what we imagined was Gurdjieff’s Work.

I worked with Korman for almost 3 years, group meetings twice a week and every Sunday. We began with an exercise called “Sensing, Looking and Listening,” then observations and questions from the group under Korman’s heavy-handed direction. Korman also organized elaborate dinners with exacting preparation, like the ones we read about in former Gurdjieff students’ memoirs. Sundays were dedicated to a Work exercise, and once a month we would begin on Saturday and extend it throughout the whole night. This pattern of group meetings, intensive concentration and work coupled with sleep deprivation seemed to be something imitated from the way Gurdjieff is said to have worked with his students. Alex Horn and E.J. Gold also made ample, and often manipulative, use of forcibly breaking up normal cycles.

While there was none of the physical violence that was reported in Horn’s groups, my experience of Korman was that he was a bully. He had no qualms about interfering in the sexual relationships of couples in the group or openly sleeping with students. He tried to arrange for a woman in the group to introduce me to heterosexual experience. Thank god she had the presence of mind to say no. He “strongly” suggested that I join with two other group members and start a construction company which he named “Double Action Builders.” This is the one real regret of getting involved in his group. It set me up to follow a dead end career for way too long.

After I had left Henry’s group, I was living in San Francisco, and trying to piece together some of that frayed experience. A Jesuit whom I knew and worked with was a member of the San Francisco Gurdjieff Group. He arranged for me to meet Lord John Pentland. I arrived at the upper middle class home in Saint Francis Woods at the appointed time for a congenial conversation with Pentland. He asked about my intentions, my experience, and talked about our mutual friend whom he knew well and respected. Pentland suggested that one of his longtime students, the woman who owned Fields Book Store on Polk, would meet and talk with me while we decided if I should join the group. When he asked me if I had any questions, I asked if he knew Korman and about the exercise of “Sensing, Looking and Listening.” Pentland said that yes, he had heard of Korman. Then he asked me to describe the exercise completely and fully which I did. He then asked about some specific details, particularly the attention to breath, or really the absence of any instruction about the breath. He paused, then looked at me directly and said that the exercise had absolutely no relationship to anything Mr. Gurdjieff taught. He would not comment about its possible usefulness.

I’m not going to say that my time with Korman was completely wasted, but I cannot pretend that I was in any way participating in “The Work.” Just a quick footnote--Korman met Mr. William Patrick Patterson, and began to work with him. He stopped teaching, admitted to a “grave” mistake, and wrote a letter of apology to his former students. He did not include me. I had to read a copy of the letter sent to a friend. He was in many ways brilliant, and I hesitate to put him into the category of an arrogant, destructive prick. Sadly he belongs in that bin.


Bob Hoffman and the Fisher-Hoffman Process of Psychic Therapy

Both Lindgren and Ernest Lowe talk about the psychic Bob Hoffman. They both used Hoffman’s Process working with clients as did I. Naranjo introduced this tailor who had zero psychological training to SAT. Hoffman claimed to have had a midnight vision of Dr. Siegfried Fisher, a well known and respected psychiatrist and also a family friend, who revealed the secret of what Hoffman called Negative Love and the Fisher-Hoffman Process of Psychic Therapy that allowed us to undo the negative consequences of our childhood programming.

Most of my first year in SAT was spent doing the Fisher-Hoffman Process. Hoffman became infatuated with me, and within 6 months after I finished working with him, Hoffman began stalking me at Berkeley’s gay bar. After a few more months invited me to dinner and raped me. He was a psychotic and a criminal.

Naranjo did not condone or in any way encourage aggression, violence or sexual exploitation between students and teachers or among SAT members, but I do fault him for not doing appropriate due diligence before allowing Hoffman to work with SAT members. Hoffman was a “psychic.” Hoffman allegedly told Naranjo several things about his childhood which he could not have known. The normal training for a mental health professional was superseded or abrogated.

Although I don’t think he would have approved of Hoffman’s sexual conduct, Naranjo did sleep with students. To my knowledge he did not coerce or manipulate anyone, but inevitably it had negative consequences.


The Soup of the Soup

Looking back, I find it odd that none of the teachers that Naranjo introduced to the group were conversant or really even interested in the Enneagram as Naranjo presented it. They were generally teachers, monks, therapists devoted to the Path of Liberation, but mixed in were some who lied about being in the lineage of Mr. Gurdjieff and fraudsters who made preposterous claims but really were just out for power, money or sex. It was the soup we swam in, and, like the air we breathe, no matter how careful we try to be, we cannot be certain that we’re not getting a whiff of poison.

Naranjo loved a Sufi story, attributed to Mulla Nasruddin, called the Soup of the Soup. A generous neighbor gave the Mulla a fat duck, which his wife dressed and made into a fine dinner. Everyone was happy. The next day, a guest knocked on the door, “I heard that Mustafa gave you a big duck, do you have any left?” Of course, observing the obligation of hospitality, the Mulla invited the guest in for some hearty soup made from the leftovers. The next day, a friend of Mustafa's friend smelled the still rich soup bubbling in the kitchen, knocked on the Mulla’s door, and asked to taste the savory dish. The Mulla invited him in. This goes on for several more days and several more friends of the friends of Mustafa. (In the West, we’d call this a shaggy dog story.) About the 10th day, after the now familiar knock on the door, the Mulla invited another friend of the friend of the friend of Mustafa's friend in for the remainder of the soup, but when the guest sat and tasted nothing more than hot water, he asked, “Where’s the duck?” The Mulla answered, “I’m sorry, but all I have to offer you is the soup of the soup of the soup of the soup of the duck that Mustafa gave me.”

That is my impression of the end of our work with SAT. We were just going through the motions of the Work of the Work, but we’d lost the taste of that fine fat duck that we were given for our feast. However we'd also tasted real Duck Soup that Naranjo had served, and, with persistence and a bit of luck, we could buy a fat bird and recreate the recipe ourselves. We can, in the words of Lord John Pentland, create what Mr. Gurdjieff called self-remembering, “. . . a state of attention . . . a state of vibrant attentiveness, of inner alignment and attunement, which, when we are sufficiently still inside, possesses a potency reminding us that the real inner work is a response to a higher and deeper calling.”

Goa, Saint Francis and Me

McLeodganj, Himachal Pradesh, India
April 7, 2014

Part of this article was written for the publication of "Spiritual Journeys" by a group of former Jesuits.

One Sunday this past February, my partner and I went to the English mass at the Basilica of Bom Jesu in Goa. We were initially directed towards that queue, but after some negotiation, we found our way into a back pew in the main church. During mass, people venerating Saint Francis Xavier wind through the courtyard of the Jesuit residence and pass his shrine, a small Baroque-style altar where what’s left of his body is encased in glass.

I began to feel at home with the familiarity of the Jesuit ceremony and was able to pay more attention. The priest’s sermon was not easy to follow. He struggled to connect Xavier’s religious enthusiasm to martyrdom, comparing the Saint’s remarkable life with the current situation of Christians in India. But Xavier died a natural death and, though some are in fact persecuted, Christians in India are generally very well accepted. In fact, in Goa, they pretty much control everything. I gave up on following the Jesuits’ exhortations and drifted off, studying the congregation, mostly Indians, and indeed, as English speakers, well educated. They were not paying much attention to the sermon either; women looked after crying children, men closed their eyes and nodded, in many ways similar to the Irish American parish of my childhood.

The sermon and the ceremony were also disconnected from what was happening at the side altar, where men, women, and children, Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs, pushed their way forward towards the barely visible body of the saint. We’d seen almost identical scenes at the many temples, mosques, shrines, gurdwaras we’ve visited across India, people seeking healing, relief from suffering, forgiveness for a personal transgression, blessings for a new marriage, a prayer for a child’s good fortune, or perhaps even a superstitious belief that touching his statue would produce a child. To be honest, it felt disconnected from the Catholic, Jesuit saint I thought I knew, but it was real.

I turned my attention back to the altar and suddenly felt deep compassion, even kinship with the Indian Jesuit. He was obviously a competent, educated, thoughtful, even a devout, spiritual man who was sincerely trying to connect our messy lives with another dimension. With any luck, I might have turned out like him, but in that same moment, I also realized why I’d left the Society.

After I graduated from Dartmouth in 1966, over the objections of my parents, I entered the Jesuits and stayed for more than a decade. When the time came for me to be ordained, I took a leave of absence and extended it for 2 years before I asked to be relieved of religious vows. During that exclaustration, I realized that I had to confront, and deal with coming out as a gay man, my addictive personality, and, at the time, I thought that the most effective path was psychological work rather than prayer or meditation.

I had, of course, done the spiritual exercises of Father Ignatius many times. The experience was rich. When I was trying to decide whether to leave or stick it out, I undertook them again, as well as trying to recreate some of that experience through a study of the enneagram, and beginning Buddhist meditation practice. Then, for more than three decades, I either wore the designation “ex-Jesuit” as a badge of honor or disavowed any value in my religious training except on the rare occasion when I ran into someone from that era.

Twenty-five years ago, a chance meeting with a Zen priest who was starting a hospice for people with AIDS turned my attention back to meditation practice. It also allowed me to carefully trace the roots of suffering through a spiritual practice that is agnostic with regard to any particular religious system of beliefs.

Today, my experience in the Society of Jesus grows dim, like a series of events in a very distant land, but what remains is a sense of intimacy that feels indelible and timeless. Most of the struggles of my youth, coming out in an unaccepting culture, finding a spiritual expression that suited me, have faded into the background. I no longer seek the kind of answers that I demanded years ago.

I regard spirituality as reflecting on the questions that life presents squarely, and I value seeing things through to the end, even things that did not turn out well. Most of the ordinary language of spiritual conversation feels inadequate. If I describe my particular path as a series of transitions, I feel I’m being melodramatic. Speaking of a path or a journey sounds like I just bought some nifty running shoes to train for a marathon at my unlikely age.

That morning in Goa, I didn’t feel distant or unconnected, but rather like I’d just grown up and realized that even if my life amounted to only a brief second, in that time I could leave things better than I found them, that I was not alone, and that the universe is vast and awe-inspiring.

__________________

The Experience of the Spiritual Exercises is indelible.

I entered the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, on August 15th, 1966, at Shadowbrook in Lenox, Massachusetts. After a few months to acclimate to the schedule of getting up at 5:25 and bed at 9:30, the first-year novices were guided through the Spiritual Exercises. For a full month, the whole community was totally focused on the discipline of the Exercises, as strict as the discipline of any Zen hall--total silence, 7 hours of contemplation every day, an unwavering methodical sequence of meditations, invocations, and most importantly, in retrospect, the Examen.

The bell that alerted us to prayer, or mass, or spiritual reading, or the daily conferences with the Master of novices, was not a beautiful, clear temple bell. Rather, it had the urgency of the alarm that gets firemen out of bed in the middle of the night. We were not to be monks dedicated to a life of prayer within exclusionary monastic walls. We were being trained to pray hard and work hard for the Kingdom of God.

After we took religious vows, every year we dedicated 8 days to the exercises. These were the heady days that followed Vatican II, so the strict retreat format, the fire and brimstone of the 1st week, for example, had fallen into disfavor.

Now, more than 50 years later, it is hard to believe that the Exercises had such a visceral effect, creating an opening for an experience of the Transcendent in the way that they did. I remember as a teenager reading Joyce’s description of the preacher's sermon on Hell in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. My Novice Master, Fr. T. J. C. O'Callaghan, may have lacked the dramatic flair of Joyce’s retreat master, but he followed the same script to create a picture of the fiery world of the unforgivable. That, combined with a retreat environment created by the 80 men who shared the life of the novitiate, the silence, the liturgies, the homilies, the food, and the penances, our lives were geared to the meditations of 4 weeks of the Exercises.

I remained in the Society until 1976. But 5 years before I left, I began to realize that the traditional rigidity of religious life was not going to be a happy fit for me. Leaving the Jesuits was a difficult choice. I had been very happy studying theology and exploring religious practice. I wanted to show the same respect for my choice to abandon the Society as I did for my choice to take religious vows. And so I undertook the Exercises again in a form called the 19th annotation. In place of 30 days of seclusion and intense prayer, I dedicated an hour every day for almost a year and, with a director, followed the order of prayer and meditation that Ignatius set within the four weeks. I was already practicing both zazen and Vipassana meditation by then, and though I didn’t consciously try to blend the two practices, that is in fact exactly what I was doing.

I cannot cut myself off from the life-giving roots in the Exercises. For most successful Jesuits, the Exercises have been grafted into their bones. I was not immune—it can even happen in 10 years. I have discovered several links between meditation practice and Ignatian discipline. I have written about two aspects, the Examen and the Discernment of Spirits. If you want to read further, follow the links on the Page “Writings about Father Ignatius.”

Food for the Moon

August 6th, 2022

In August 2019, after I learned that Father Bob Ochs had died, I tried to acknowledge my enormous debt to him. He brought the teaching of the Enneagram to some very hungry Catholic religious whose sputtering religious practices were on life support, me among them. I tried to recount as carefully as I could the story of his post-Enneagram years when I wrote about the Jesuit transmission of the Enneagram. I will revisit some of them here. Last night, a friend who was peripherally involved in the beginning of SAT and the whole Berkeley New Age psychic scene told me that Susan Diordoni, Bob’s longtime companion, died of cancer. I now feel free to tell a less edited, much sadder story.

Gurdjieff used the term “Food for the Moon” to describe some of the process of awakening and becoming a true person of the Way as if it were organic digesting and processing esoteric teaching. We, all our living and dying, become food for the moon. The process of shedding our old beliefs and habits of perception is akin to consigning this dead weight of the alleged mysterious powers of the moon: the relentless, predictable ebbing and flooding of the tides control the shifts and flow of our ingrained emotions, thoughts, inclinations, and mindsets. I heard Naranjo use “Food for the Moon” pejoratively several times to refer to a person who begins the work and, for whatever reason, just doesn’t have the stuff it takes to see it through to a successful conclusion, whatever that means. (This mystical moonshine talk offers some clues about the exclusionary tendencies of cults).

Bob Ochs was a respected member of SAT 1, the first group that gathered around Naranjo after he returned from Arica and began to teach. Ochs, along with Charlie Tart, had the highest recognized level of academic training of all the group members. He was a professor at a prestigious Jesuit seminary with a degree from one the best Universities in France. I never asked Bob how he came to know Naranjo or what drew him to the group, but when we met at the beginning of the second year of that exploration, Naranjo had already delegated him to teach the Enneagram to groups of Jesuits, first at Loyola University in Chicago, and then at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley. Naranjo told me unequivocally that he’d entrusted Ochs to be his emissary, to teach the nine personality fixations and guide people in discovering their own type and subtype. Only one other person shared this responsibility, Aubrey Lundgren; others had various teaching responsibilities within SAT, notably Reza Leah Schaffer and, eventually, Kathy Speeth, though their responsibility was limited to new SAT students in Berkeley.

In that first year, a lot would change the dynamic of teaching the Enneagram in the West. Naranjo trusted Ochs, and Ochs had a knack for teaching. His presentation of the ideas behind the Enneagram was engaging and provocative. He was genuinely interested in ideas, as you might expect from the exemplary Jesuit that he was. But other forces were at work that would revoke both Naranjo’s and Ichazo’s lock on this esoteric system.

Almost everyone who teaches the Enneagram outside Naranjo’s immediate circle owes some debt to Ochs for their basic understanding, the impetus of their investigation, the outline of the nine types and 27 subtypes, their books, their students and for teachers, their livelihood. I will name a few names, but it’s by no means complete. This group has its roots in what I have labeled the Jesuit transmission. Here is a partial list of the Enneagram teachers who are linked to Ochs as the source of their practice: Father Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Jerome Wagner at Loyola University in Chicago; Joanna Quintrell at the Journey Center in Santa Rosa, California; Sr. Suzanne Zuercher at the Institute for Spiritual Leadership at Loyola University; Father William Meninger of St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass Colorado; Don Richard Riso, a former Jesuit, (d.2012) and Russ Hudson of the Enneagram Institute, Stone Ridge, New York; Paul Robb, S.J., the founder of the Institute for Spiritual Leadership; Tad Dunne, S.J.; Maria Beesing; Robert Nogosek, C.S.C.; Patrick O'Leary. Father Mitch Pacwa, S.J., a very vocal opponent of the Catholic adoption of the Enneagram, was Bob’s student.

Helen Palmer also owes a debt to Ochs, which she may or may not have acknowledged, though it is not as direct as the people in Ochs's groups. She was not in Claudio’s SAT groups either, but she was practicing as a psychic reader in Berkeley at about the same time Naranjo’s groups were forming. She did readings with almost every member of the early SAT group, often multiple sessions. It was in large part through these readings that she became aware of the Enneagram and got a taste of the system’s power. When I did a reading with her almost 50 years ago, one of her first questions was about my fixation on the Enneagram. I also know she had access to some of our private notes about Naranjo’s Enneagram presentation and extensive notes from Ichazo’s 1968 talks at the Institute of Applied Psychology in Santiago, Chile. Ochs had a hand in delivering some of these materials into her hands.

This is a good jumping-off point to describe the start of the Enneagram Wars, which also marked the beginning of Ochs’s estrangement from Naranjo. The flood of Enneagram books had started before Palmer’s creation and popularization of the “kinder, gentler,” more saleable Enneagram. When I researched and compiled my Enneagram Bibliography a few years ago, there were over 150 books and studies, a huge number for such a recondite discipline. In less than two decades, more than 100 separate practitioners, experts, and authorities, claiming some insight, led groups and individuals on an inner exploration. The armies were assembling.

You know that you are on an intellectual battlefield when, after a Google search on the origins of the Enneagram, the “Let’s set the record straight” articles appear first. I’m not going to enter that fray. Have at it. Hope y’all have fun. The main battle, the Waterloo, was the lawsuit that Ichazo brought against Palmer. Again, I am not going to put on soul armor and take sides other than to point out that there had to be some monetary upside to winning or losing to justify the enormous costs of any litigation. My interest here is the casualties resulting from friendly fire.

As various leaders and teachers waged battle about the authenticity and effectiveness, the “truth” of their particular take on the teaching, whether it came from Pythagoras, the Sufis, or some Egyptian cult, Naranjo knew that he’d lost control. And because many of the people who had forged their versions and adaptations of the teaching he’d stolen or received from Ichazo had been Ochs's students, Naranjo stopped taking Ochs's phone calls. Although very clearly in the Naranjo camp, Ochs was ostracized.

At this point in my life, I took a clear break from any investigation and controversy. I had a host of personal reasons for my hiatus, among them caring for people dying from HIV/AIDS, but I had no personal stake in the negotiated settlement. Everybody was to lay down their weapons, carry on, and do what they’ve been doing. No one was going to corner the market for the Enneagram. The command was to leave the final judgment to the Archangel Metatron when he settles all disputes among the lesser inhabitants of the heavenly realm.

After several years hiatus, Bob and I met. I was overwhelmed by what had become of my vibrant friend. He had given up his position on the faculty of the Jesuit school, stopped seeing most of his friends, and was living in a small, Spartan, nearly windowless basement apartment in a modest suburb a few miles from the epicenter of the Enneagram Wars. His only regular visitor was Susan Diordoni. Bob was not the first heterosexual Jesuit to seek a deep emotional connection with a woman. I do not know (or care) if he maintained his vow of celibacy, but I am happy that he at least had some comfort and companionship.

He and I had started to separate from regimented Jesuit life when we shared a floor in the faulty residence at the American Baptist Seminary of the West in 1973. He, however, was a priest, 14 years my senior, and had no possible means of outside support. He chose to remain within the institutional framework. I did not. He received a modest stipend and tried to justify his seclusion as work on a book. His superiors, with some recognition of his contribution to the Jesuit enterprise, did not press him to produce.

While the people whom Ochs had trained were writing, advertising, going to conferences, producing, and leading trainings that cost thousands of dollars, he was living on a few hundred dollars a month and struggling to write. He felt that he still had something to say. I will rephrase that—he felt an obligation to say something as one of the first proponents of the system. He may have also been jealous of the money his one-time students were making on “the gravy train,” but that was never his primary focus, and ultimately he would be unsuccessful. He was an Enneagram One, and the burden of trying to frame his thoughts against the conflict of the Enneagram wars proved impossible. He could never persuade himself that he’d successfully argued his case. There would be no book, but his efforts came with all of a One’s self-recrimination and doubt. Ironically, I remember that the analysis was based on typing some famous writers, but I could be conflating a couple of conversations.

He claimed he had almost no physical energy. He was eating a stringent diet whose contents and restrictions baffled me as much as they obsessed him. We only met at a Peruvian restaurant in the Mission in San Francisco because he could eat and enjoy several dishes on their menu.

Here, he told me about another obsession. He’d become infatuated with the work of Doris Lessing. “Infatuated'' is not too strong a word. Idries Shah had introduced Lessing to Sufi teachings, and she was also apparently interested in the Gurdjieff school. I do not know whether she worked with any of Gurdjieff’s longtime English students, but she was conversant with “the Work '' and its alleged connections to ancient Sufi orders. The link here is twofold: Ochs was as obsessed with discovering Enneagram’s esoteric roots as he was frustrated in his attempts to create what he considered an adequate language to describe the teaching.

He also told me about corresponding with Idries Shah, claiming that letter writing was a revered spiritual instruction among Sufis. After Shah died in 1996, Ochs tried to initiate a correspondence with Shah’s son Tahir because Ochs was sure he had been designated as his father’s spiritual heir. When Tahir replied that he was a writer, not a Sufi teacher, that his father had not designated him to teach, and that he was not interested in the job. Ochs said, “He’s supposed to say that. It’s his job to put me off.”

I tried my best not to be put off by Ochs’ increasing reclusiveness, but eventually, I gave up waiting for him to return my phone calls. Looking back, I do feel some remorse for not persisting. But I also ask myself, after the truce was called in the Enneagram Wars, where were any of his former students? Did you play any role in his life? Did he shut you out? I didn’t have a lot of contact, so I don’t know if you visited, called, or offered support, but I do know that he was not included in your conferences; he was not invited to speak or write an article. I’m not suggesting that you should have included him as an obligation, like inviting a cantankerous uncle to Thanksgiving dinner, but because he had something to contribute. You missed out, yes, you, narrow-minded, parochial, greedy, war-mongering Enneagram enthusiasts. He dedicated his life, every waking minute, to making the possibility of human freedom real. If you don’t do that in all your life, relationships, and work, you’re just food for the moon.

Finally, this Midwesterner who’d learned French and earned a degree in Paris, a man who’d introduced Gurdjieff, Ichazo, Naranjo, and the Enneagram to Catholic religious, a man who’d struggled to make his own mystical experience available to others, returned to Michigan to die at a Jesuit house dedicated to the French priest who’d promoted devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus—no food for the moon, but rather a full circle.

More Enneagram Posts:

Why choose to work with the Enneagram?

Connecting G.I. Gurdjieff with Naranjo’s Enneagram

Claudio Naranjo’s first SAT Groups in Berkeley

The Jesuit Transmission of the Enneagram

Helen Palmer and Claudio Naranjo in Berkeley

The Enneagram, the Final Reckoning, Banishment to the Darkness of Ignorance

Enneagram Bibliography

Roshi Ignatius on Planting Buddhism in the West

Planting Buddhism in the West

The early Jesuit model might be something to explore because it matches the scale of our project--creating a new cultural model, even a revolutionary one, for Buddhism in the West. It captures the enthusiasm for change, along with the scholarship and spiritual discipline required for creating new forms.

With due respect to Ignatius, who inspired the Jesuits’ operation, some other dynamic kicked in that created a genuine spiritual movement, one that would be derailed at various points by the normative Roman ecclesial culture of the day, but still persisted. I am not suggesting that we should expand the list of Jesuit Roshis, much less appoint a Father General Roshi to spearhead the endeavor, but I do want to at least examine the foundational tasks the Jesuits undertook.

There is a saying among Catholic religious, “Our founders had visions. Their disciples built hospitals.” Creating a vibrant, sustainable Buddhist culture will take time, money, and a lot of organization, but most of all, it will take talent and inspiration, the kind of religious pride that the Irish used to build Saint Patrick's or the spiritual and intellectual discipline that the Jesuits used to found Georgetown, the first Catholic University in America.

The Catholic, mostly Irish experience of planting the Roman Church in the New World was a European tradition of arriving in the New World along with European immigrants. It is different from an Asian practice taking root on foreign soil among people who do not share any cultural or family ties. Saint Ignatius parish may not easily translate into a small local Buddhist temple, but the Jesuits did far more than just lend their founder’s name to a parish church.

The Jesuits based their success on a few simple operating principles. I have outlined the ones that I think were important, but I am certainly open to hearing other points of view.

Service based on need

This may be a bit of a stretch to get “service based on need” from the Jesuits’ organizational principle that they would go wherever the Pope wanted them to go, and do whatever he directed (commanded), but bear with me. This was not always done by fiat, but with dialogue, needs assessment, manpower, as well as securing the money. Less than a year after the Jesuit Constitutions were approved by Paul the Third in 1540, Francis Xavier, one of the first companions of Ignatius, boarded the Portuguese warship Santiago bound for Goa. This unleashed a series of important historical firsts in the history of religion. More Jesuits quickly followed Xavier into Asia with their particular skill sets. In a relatively short time there were the first Indo-European dictionaries for several Indian languages, Tibetan, and Japanese; the first translations of the Gospels; the first encounter between Christians and Zen Buddhist monks; the first attempt at crafting Christian rituals in Chinese; the first seminaries in Asia; the first Christian congregations in Japan and China.

Dictionaries, translations, rituals, contact with local religions, all within a generation. Enlisting the assistance of the US or a European navy, No. Churches, check. Seminaries, partial check, after a fashion. These efforts are ongoing, but substantial progress has been made, all within the first generation of Western Buddhists.

Scholarship & Inquisitiveness

Back in Europe, the Jesuits began to marshal their considerable intellectual force to combat the Protestant Reformation (a dubious initiative in the eyes of some, but a response to the times). With their openness to the new humanistic scholarship, they attracted some of the best minds from universities but not so much from existing monastic colleges. As a matter of fact, they started to develop an alternative “ratio studiorum*.” Although heavily doctrinaire, mostly as a formulation for the Counter-Reformation that they would lead, it still laid the foundation for Jesuit scholarship and universities that would help shape the intellectual backbone of the Enlightenment.

Their scholarship forged institutions and a line of inquiry that yielded profound results.

A crop of bright, intelligent Buddhist scholars, thoroughly trained in Buddhist philosophy, linguistics, epistemology, and hermeneutics, check. Again, within a generation. This scholarship is not limited to Zen Buddhism. A huge area of inquiry has been Tibetan practices. Sometimes, Zen scholars and Tibetan scholars talk to one another when they have to. But the parochialism remains parochial. I will have more to say about Zen “our wayism,” when I draw my tentative conclusions.

Seeking common ground & Communication

Francis Xavier began a famous conversation with a Zen Roshi, whom he calls “Ninxit,” (whom I've traced to an actual Roshi, Ninjitsu, the abbot of the Zen Temple, Kinryu-zan Fukushoji). We can read about the encounter in Xavier’s letters to Ignatius; he describes Zen meditation practice in some recognizable detail, at first with admiration and then, when he put on his missionary hat, with an eye to finding the weak points for polemical debate.

Beginning with Father Enomiya-LaSalle, S.J, followed by several more Jesuits and religious sisters, an Episcopal priest, and Unitarian and Church of Christ ministers, there are fully trained Zen teachers with feet firmly in both Buddhist and Christian religious traditions.

The hallmark of this unprecedented exploration, coupled with a zealous missionary effort, was communication. Given the technology of the day, there were problems. Delivery of Xavier’s letters to Ignatius took at least 6 months, even aboard the fastest Portuguese caravel. Brother Tom Marshall, a great Zen adept and the archivist for the Jesuit California Province, told me about his discovery exploring the archives at the Gesù in Rome. Father Nobili had decided to follow the 49s to California; the letter from Father General ordering him to establish a mission for indigenous tribes in the Northwest arrived after he had accepted the invitation of the Bishop of Monterey to establish a college at the old mission of Mission Santa Clara de Asís. If the internet had been around in 1851, Santa Clara University would not be.

Communication also involved careful observation of the people with whom they interacted. In the 17th century, a whole new field of ethnography flourished from places as far afield as Tibet and the cultures of Central America.

Friends who have worked with teachers in Japan tell me that there are Rinzai priests who have never had a serious conversation with a Soto monk. If that is the baseline, the communication between the various schools in the West is revolutionary. There are students with experience in all the major schools of Zen, plus some training with Tibetan and vipassana teachers, even if our leadership remains somewhat parochial, given the amount of time and effort required to become fluent in the particular practice.

Seeking common ground, check. Without, for the most part, any polemical, doctrinal conversion motivations. Check plus+!

Mobility & adaptability

The early Jesuits pledged to poverty, chastity, and obedience, which helped their mobility, and with the generous support of European colonial powers to be sure, traveled to the ends of the earth. Within the first generation, Jesuits had traveled and settled in Japan, China, India, Tibet, Africa, and North and South America. Siberia would have to wait until 1814 and Australia until 1848. Even with a fair amount of philanthropic support, Zen teachers and their relatively small communities have been restricted to the major university hubs in the West as well as several well-heeled retirement communities where aging Buddhist boomers go to watch the setting sun. The mobility of our mostly middle-class senior teachers is restricted by the economic realities of middle-class life. The few attempts to foster meditation practice in marginal communities have fizzled out. I have personal experience with two.

No pass. I don’t know how or if this situation will change. Buddhists cannot print their own money. The real costs of establishing and funding practice centers are a luxury for people struggling to put food on the table.

Education, including Developing Spiritual Leadership

The Jesuits created and staffed their new Colleges to educate the sons of the elite class. They also founded a series of houses of formation for the spiritual education of their own leadership. They also changed the system for educating the ordinary clergy. In the current Zen model, again coming from the Japanese teachers who founded the first practice centers, and the resources available to them, any formal Buddhist education, sutra study, ethics, philosophy comes mixed in with meditation practice.

We don’t have the numbers to support institutions such as the Rinzai Hanazono or the Soto Komazawa Universities. Western students cannot go to Japan without fluency in the Japanese language. There are more than a few Western Zen students who have done serious work in Buddhist studies, but their numbers haven’t reached the critical mass required to staff a university, even if the other necessary support systems were in place. Here, where I live in northern India, all Buddhist education takes place in monastic colleges. There are a few auxiliary programs for Westerners, some taught in English, but for the most part, advanced training requires proficiency in Tibetan; one I am familiar with, The Lotsawa Rinchen Zangpo Translator Program, focuses on training translators for the geshes who teach in Europe, the US, and South America.

There are excellent Buddhist study programs at Emory, the University of Virginia, Harvard, and Stanford, just to name a few. However, it is a huge commitment of time and money to undertake this level of academic training as well as, for example, mastering the koan curriculum. I know only one or two people who have done both and lived to tell the tale. Most people I know on the academic scholarship side perhaps have a sitting practice, but they’re not on a Zen teacher track. Because university teaching positions for Buddhist scholars are limited and highly competitive, practitioners who opt for an academic degree are more likely to slip into a mindfulness based psychology program such as California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) where “right livelihood” career opportunities have a higher pay scale. One of the few Buddhist Universities in the United States, Naropa in Boulder, has adopted a similar program as one of the main economic engines of their enterprise.

The Institute of Buddhist Studies, a Jodo Shinshu Seminary, is the only non-Christian graduate school in Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union. The ethnic Buddhist Churches of America have been in decline and face a shortage of priests. The enrollment at IBS must be low also as they have only a dean and 4 core faculty on staff, one of whom heads a chaplaincy program, non-denominational chaplains becoming a career opportunity for serious practitioners. I went to IBS as a special student, hoping to fill in the gaps in my understanding of Buddhist texts, philosophy, and epistemology. Although modest, it became an expense I could not manage while struggling with my career in a small non-profit.

Education and Development of Spiritual Leadership get non-passing marks in our examination of the core operating principles for aiding and abetting a spiritual revolution. Most serious Buddhist practitioners know the problem, but good solutions have not yet appeared. Part of the reason is that it takes time, energy, and money. Most centers are independent, small operations that struggle financially to begin with. Systematic, careful analysis of the texts and their commentaries and the history of the spread of the teaching is not seen as critical. Offer a Tuesday night class reading the latest book promoted in Tricycle. Handled. The Zen emphasis on immediate experience also leaves the troublesome side effect of an anti-intellectual bias, which is not helpful. And finally there is a “Our Way” parochialism and rivalry, not just for example, between Tibetan and Pureland schools, or Zen schools that include koan study and those that emphasize sitting practice, but also between teachers whose teachers were Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Thai or Burmese.

If we are to make progress on this front, the New Buddhist Universal University has to cut through these barriers and be non-sectarian in the broadest sense; it has to develop innovative programs that are affordable and available to people who work, practice, and perhaps even have family obligations; the programs have to be basically in English or Spanish, with as little academic jargon as possible; the courses have to be developed and taught by Buddhist practitioners who have the highest level of academic professional training. I know that the elements for a solution exist. They just haven’t been assembled in the workable form.

Forgive me for mixing Francis Xavier and the Jesuits into the recipe. I don’t think that the title Roshi comes with a Ph.D. or vice versa. Roshi also doesn't mean Saint, not even in the lost usage.

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*The Ratio atque Institutio Studiorum Societatis Iesu, often abbreviated as Ratio Studiorum, was a document that standardized the globally influential system of Jesuit education in 1599. It was a collection of regulations for school officials and teachers.

The Myth of the Zen Roshi

Myths, Super Heroes and Real People

The issue is making something new available in our multi-dimensional, weirdly disconnected world. Buddhist practice predates Christianity by several hundred years, but really, it’s little more than a generation old in the West. If it were a product like the iPhone, proponents might apply Apple’s high-tech marketing tools, though I fear we might misfire the synapses and get a ham radio set instead of a shiny device with the cool logo. What we expect and what can be delivered--will they match up? It might be helpful to cut through some of the zigzags that are already visible in the landscape.

James Ford recently posted a fairly detailed précis of the various conventions and forms that have been handed to us for labeling our Zen teachers, and perhaps identifying their skill set, Holders of Lineage: A Small Meditation on Leadership in Contemporary Western Zen Buddhist Sanghas. If you’re in the market for a Zen teacher, you will quickly learn about Roshi and Sensei, but as with any title, there are hidden meanings, nuances, and misunderstandings attached. I suppose that we could call Roshis Bishops, and from a certain perspective, it makes sense. The crossover from East to West has been littered with misunderstandings at both ends. In the Western Jodo Shinshu, the presiding priest in a jurisdiction is in fact called Bishop, but is Pure Land Buddhism some version of Methodism? Where does that leave Zen? In the Pennsylvania wilderness?

Stuart Lachs has written persuasively about the role of the Roshi, and this blurry area where East meets West. (Cf the provocative title "When the Saints Go Marching In: Modern Day Zen Hagiography"). I hesitate to blur the edges of his argument. I concur that making any Roshi into some kind of irrefutable font of wisdom is a sure way of setting up for disappointment, but my thesis is that we in the West have set up our own set of expectations that can be equally debilitating.

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With many westerners interested in Buddhism, committed to self-inquiry and practicing meditation in the various forms that have been carried to these shores by our Asian teachers, we have already seen new forms of practice and support for the teaching as well as senior practice leaders. And more will continue to emerge. Our communities, our teachers, and practice centers will be distinctly Western. It’s inevitable. We have to create our own practice places and support our teachers.

As James points out, different skills and talents may or may not be present in all teachers, or they may be available to varying degrees, which may or may not overlap. Let me add a footnote to James’s piece: time, place, and circumstance call forth a particular skill set. In our brief history, we have so far relied on the genius of a few pioneering teachers who were, and are, to varying degrees charismatic, skilled in directing people in meditation practice, and very resourceful in using the materials at hand, building out zendos in their garages.

The first generation of teachers, both Asian and Western, has left us a legacy. We’re already a generation away from our Asian teachers; a whole new generation of homegrown American and European teachers has authorized a new crop of dharma heirs, and although I think for the most part that they’ve served the dharma well, there have been a few who would give a bathtub full of bodhisattvas pause.

From my reading, Suzuki Roshi was a fairly ordinary temple priest from Japan who blossomed in America and became the stuff of legend. His successor, Richard Baker, is a particular kind of entrepreneurial genius. If he’d left Harvard a few years later and hit the golden shores of California when the Silicon Valley was being born, he might have become a Gates or an Ellison. He’s certainly much smarter than Zuckerberg. Instead, we had the luck of his finding his way to the Sotoshu in Japantown. His personality, charisma and skill set created the San Francisco Zen Center as a platform for Suzuki. He matched the role Suzuki Roshi entrusted to him. Acknowledging this, old-time students still call Baker “Roshi'' instead of the familiar first-name basis adopted by the second wave.

Lachs deconstructs the enlightenment myth of transmission in terms of something added and misunderstood during the dharma’s transport to the Western shores. There is a lot to consider in his analysis, but I am equally interested in Richard Baker’s seemingly endless creativity for adapting traditional forms. Old wine in new skin. I don’t think that there is any Westerner who is more careful of traditional Japanese priestly rituals while at the same time being extremely resourceful, creating innovative ways of combining livelihood and practice. Some ventures were more successful than others, but Baker built a large, successful center with several campuses, and he opened the first secluded Zen monastery in the West. Maezumi and Glassman also created large and important institutions, but, at least from my reading, they relied more on some very creative people who were attracted to the practice. Not that Suzuki and Richard didn’t attract bright and creative people, but they were always in Baker’s shadow, which, in my view, was as much the source of the upheaval at Zen Center as any alleged sexual impropriety.

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I’ve had direct experience in many different American Zen Centers with several authorized teachers; some felt a bit tangential, while others quite settled and profound (again, this is subjective for sure). While each was distinct, there were always certain features that held constant, which was in a way reassuring. They are all led by American or Australian second and third-generation teachers. None of the centers were even close to the San Francisco Zen Center in terms of wealth, number of students, or notoriety, but each reflects the personality of its leadership. Hartford Street Zen Center was a small, tight-knit family, very much dependent on the charisma of Issan Dorsey. Issan relied on many people to do the work of paying the water bill, keeping food in the refrigerator, and taking care of young men dying from HIV disease, while he did the heavy lifting of directing and inspiring us. Mel Wietzman’s Berkeley Center was more formal, focused on sitting practice. Though certainly not unfriendly, I got the sense that there was a definite inner and outer circle. It was Mel's center. It fit him. It really fit Maylie Scott, who maintained a separate residence with her mother and several students, me among them, and at that point in my practice, being separate from the day-to-day hubbub of a practice center was what I felt I needed.

I practiced with Bob Aitken on Oahu. Aitken Roshi had the most diverse international crowd, though nowhere near the size of the San Francisco Zen Center, besides the Manoa zendo. I sat in the Palolo Valley Temple before construction was complete, and in a way that was perfect--my work with Bob never felt really finished. Officially, he was the most scholarly of all the teachers I worked with. He could be uncomfortably rigid when lecturing; then in the blink of an eye, he became very personal, even vulnerable, but the feeling was not disconcerting. I always felt that if I were a good student, I'd be part of his next chapter. His students were dedicated; everybody had their job, did their work, and seemed to maintain their own autonomy. People were building the temple around him. By contrast, I also sat several sesshins at Crestone Mountain Zen Center when it was in its infancy. It was clear the minute you took your seat that it was Baker Roshi’s project.

John Tarrant’s California Diamond Sangha and the Pacific Zen Institute were very dependent on Tarrant Roshi’s inspiration. Like many of the early Diamond sangha, we depended on rented halls or members’ living rooms for a floating zendo with sesshin conducted in a ramshackle, drafty Episcopal retreat campus. One of my tasks when I was president of PZI was to find a site for a retreat center in the north country. I failed. I learned that teaching is not dependent on the convenience of a fancy temple, but rather on having a comfortable, reliable place to put down a zafu. In a very real sense, John, more than any other teacher, allowed me to disconnect from whatever ties to a cultural Japanese religion remained.

A marginal note, not meant to disparage any particular teacher, it seems that when I hold impermanence close and real, not becoming obsessed with real estate or dependent on income from student housing fees, my practice becomes freer and expansive. That might be just my experience. As I age, schlepping cushions up and down country roads has lost its Dharma Bums romanticism. However, holing up in cheap rooms in a gentrifying ghetto might even lead Roshi to become a Grumpy Old Man. Some facts of life are inescapable.

I am grateful to the many Buddhist teachers who have done everything they’ve done to plant dharma seeds here in the West. In my estimation, all the teachers I mentioned above deserve the revered title of Roshi. Each very willingly shared their meditation experience. Each was unique, some even quirky, truth be told, but I revere their teaching. They helped me in ways I didn't expect. They made a difference in my life, and I don’t know if they were enlightened.

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No one is perfect. Richard Baker, with his knack for envisioning and accomplishing huge projects, could have done things better. He admits it, and it is even possible that had he the chance to redo a few things, he might entertain the prospect. But owing to the nature of karma, that is not going to happen. And so there are stories and conversations that saddle us on the one hand with the myth of “Super Roshi,” he who can keep the coffers full, invent delicious yet simple foods for the sangha’s table, procure awesome religious art for the zendo, interest important and influential people in the possibility of Zen, deliver talks that inspire as well as calm emotional storms and say the perfect turning word at the exact moment required. For contrast or in opposition is the “Teacher of No Rank.” There are several versions of this I’ve heard over the years, but the one I chose to poke gentle fun at here is the “Lady in Sneakers,” a Miss Marple Roshi who lets the path take whatever twists and turns are in the cards, all the while quietly and stealthily watching out for Truth, Justice and the Buddha Way. (And of course never getting involved in any sexual intrigue).

Although I had to pick and choose from my heap of memories to create this SNL Zen sketch, each of the characteristics I highlight I’ve overheard in Zen centers. I confess to making up the character of the “Super Roshi,” but the “Lady in Sneakers” comes from a dharma talk by a woman who has received transmission. I intended for them to be funny, but blog posts don't allow for hearing feedback chuckles. These myths are also the stuff that fuels expectations. We’ve all heard some variations of these myths, and I submit that they stand in our way as much as “Transmitted Enlightenment Roshi.”

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One renowned teacher described the task of planting Buddhism in the West like “holding a lotus to a rock” (also the title of another piece by James). I hold that it ain’t necessarily so. Even if disguised as a koan or a fragment of poetry, what does the feigned impossibility of a project do other than inflate the person doing the work? To be fair, it might point to the difficulty of the task, but I’ve done the work, not perfectly by any means but it got done. I’m just an ordinary guy, and my mistakes will keep me in that category, but I know that it’s not impossible. It’s not heroic. It’s just a task that the dharma requires, a task the world sets in our path.

Buddhism is Buddhism, and Zen is a particular flavor. It is as Bodhidharma pointed to, a transmission outside the scriptures. We trust our practice to guide us, but first it directs us to go deeper and dig for real solutions to all the problems that we didn’t even realize we had. Maybe they are problems that we only imagine that we have. Maybe the solution is there already and will find us. It all began for me when I started to contrast Super-Roshi with the Buddhist Lady in Sneakers, but I made those up.

I also know that we can do this. With apologies to Bobby McFerrin, I will close with a tune that Issan used to hum with a little sing-along,“Don’t worry. Be happy. Do the best that you can.” He sang while he was creating a way for Buddhists to continue to practice until they took their last breath...He did that while he was taking his last breaths. Remarkable.

Response to a homophobic book--Don't even open it.

My friend David Chadwick sent me a pdf of the draft of a book by a Buddhist practitioner filled with homophobic rantings. He was distressed and didn't know what to tell his friend and didn't even want to ask other gay friends for fear of being associated with it. We've known each other a long time, so he came to me. I will not cite the author or quote the book for reasons that will become obvious.

David, I tried to read a bit of your friend’s book as you requested to see if there were something that I might be able to say to diffuse the homophobia in the "gay" poems. Sadly I can only tell you of my personal reaction. I am filled with sadness. There was a time in my life when I would have felt anger, and my reaction would have been to protest, even burning the damn thing. But I am almost 80 now. I was a Jesuit for 11 years, I have been practicing Buddhism diligently for almost 40 years. I have heard some version of your friend’s argument since I was very young, certainly since the time I started to realize that I was gay. It is a script. It doesn’t change. I am not sure of its origins, whether sexual taboo, or repressed homophile feelings, but I do know that control and power play a role. Gay people make an easy scape goat which makes publishing, reading and promoting this garbage sinful. It foments violence and hatred.

Every gay person I know has heard this rant. Believe me, we have taken it to heart, listened to it, considered it, and reacted to it. We’ve been forced to. It is painful. Some protest, some hide in a closet, some try to change creating more pain and suffering, some commit suicide, but most of us simply come to a level of acceptance with who we are and try as best we can to create a way to live our lives with dignity, compassion and service to others, and yes, even love.

I have nothing to say about the actual substance of your friend’s argument other than it has no place in Buddhist practice. It is a hindrance. It clouds the mind and seeds hatred, the very things that we are trying to mollify, to clear away the debris of our karmic actions. This is the only way I can deal with it--to set it aside and go on with my life. But there are also times when I have to comment, and this is one.

I have two stories that I would like to share. I now live in Dharamsala, India. This is a community of as many as 14,000 monks and nuns with HH the Dalai Lama in residence about 200 meters from my rooms. We are a very conservative community. I practice Zen and follow some classes with Tibetan geshes. There was a monk here who took off his robes and began living as a woman. She is now known as Tenzin Mariko. She is not in hiding, nor has she withdrawn from spiritual practice. She goes to teachings and initiations. And like some men who discover the trans-nature of their sexuality, she is quite stylish. She stands out, and, after a good deal of rejection, she is accepted, even admired. I attend class with one of HH's translators, Kelsang Wangmo, a ground breaker herself as the first woman to attain the degree of geshe. At some point when discussing karmic imprints, Geshe-la used Mariko as an example of a person who discovered their true nature and has the sheer gumption to live it out. I invite your friend to be inspired by Mariko's (she/her) courage.

Then there is the story of Tommy Dorsey, whom you know David, but whom your friend may not know. Tommy, or Issan as he became known, was a very much a gay man. He could not pass as straight so he never tried. And he did face vicious homophobia, and suffered some side effects, drug addiction, poverty, ostracization. Then he discovered the Buddha Way and totally dedicated himself. He did not stop being gay. That was impossible. When circumstances gave him the opportunity to live out his life heroically, he did not shy away. At the height of the AIDS epidemic, when hundreds of men were suffering and dying in his neighborhood, he used all his energy, every bit of what he learned in practice to take care of them with compassion and love, plus a few chocolate bars and drag shows. I had the honor and the blessing of working with him, helping him, learning from him, serving him. It changed my life. There are people now who honor him as a Bodhisattva. For those of us who knew him, of course he was, there is no question, but he will never fit into the straightjacket myth of a heavenly being. Perhaps we just have to change our view and allow him to take his rightful place.

I hope your friend can at least find the courage to use a big red pencil on his draft even if he cannot personally give up his preconceived notions. It is a stain on our practice.