Amazing,
This is exactly the kind of input that I am looking for.
Seriously. I have been reading about the institutional history of
buddhism, and I am trying to understand why some Zen Centers are
sucessful and others are not. "Instructions to the cook", written by
Bernard Glassmann, is an inspiring story of sucess. "Shoes outside
the door", on the other hand, shows the negative (and positive)
aspects of the early days of the San Francisco Zen Center. I have
also read "Zen War Stories", written by Brian Victoria, which
demonstrates the instutional connections between the Zen Schools in
Japan and the Empire.
However, I fail to see the connection between this posting and my
project. Sincerely, I am not trying to take over the Zen Center and
control other members. It�s the opposite. I want the Zen Center to be
as open and democratic as possible, and I want the newcomers to feel
that our Zen Center is effectively a place in which they can practice
and find a human and open attitude.
Regards,
Francisco.
--- In [email protected], "amazing63" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> From: Francisco Garcia Scherer casual conversation
> can not be recorded, and, latter, analysed by other (authorized)
Zen Center members.>>
>
> I have been to a Zen Center like the one you are helping to run.
There was this lawyer and his Insurance Agent friend who set up about
four Zen Centers in this area, and they all failed.
>
> Those two guys had to be the biggest stiffs that I ever met, and
they thought that if you went to their "Zen Center" you somehow
became a member of their little kingdom. They took themselves so
seriously that I used to go just to see how disappointed they would
be when nobody showed up.
>
> Each time that these guys would open a Zen Center, the first couple
of weeks they got about ten people, and by the 4th week they would
have about five people. I always used to stop going around the 4th
week. Then a few months later I would drive by and the location where
the Zen Center had been would have a FOR RENT sign on the door or a
window.
>
> I remember the third or fourth time they opened a Zen Center, it
was the Insurance Agent "Master" by himself. The lawyer guy was no
longer his friend. The Insurance Master had bought a set of about
five or six really fancy ceremonial gongs of different sizes. He
literally bristled with anger when a lady playfully banged one of the
gongs before the "ceremony" began, while we were all sitting around
waiting for all the other people that never showed up.
>
> The Insurance Agent "sensei" gave that lady a five minute lecture
about "who" could hit the gongs in the Japanese Zen Temples, and
how "he" was the only one who had that authority, because "he" was
the sensei, and the rest of us were just visitors and/or prospective
students, and visitors don't touch the gongs, etc. I thought the poor
lady was going to cry!
>
> Finally he gave up waiting on more folks, and we did about twenty
minutes of zazen and then 45 minutes of him playing the gongs while
we chanted in Japanese from a pamphlet that he gave us. This guy was
banging on those gongs like it was some kind of rock concert, and I
got a major headache.
>
> I did not go back, and sure enough the Zen Center was out of
business a couple of months later.
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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