Word: zenning
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...author of four novels, including Breakfast With Scot, was an outsider to Buddhism before beginning the three years of research that went into his latest effort. With a newcomer's sense of discovery, Downing lays out the crowded, complex and extremely unlikely story of how the San Francisco Zen Center became the first genuine Buddhist institution ever established outside of Asia, and how it transformed from a roomful of earnest protohippies trying their hand at an exotic religious practice into what, for a time at least, was arguably the single most significant center of alternative spirituality in America...
...Downing begins in 1961, when Shunryu Suzuki, a quirky but brilliant monk in Japan's Soto Zen lineage, hung out a shingle in one of San Francisco's bohemian neighborhoods offering instruction in zazen. Unlike Rinzai Zen, which uses intellectual methods like koans to free the mind from itself, Soto Zen has few features that are susceptible to coffeehouse dilettantism. Zazen, the Soto school's central practice, is a unique method of wordless, thoughtless "just sitting," in which the mind seeks to become as empty as a puddle reflecting a cloudless sky. It is demanding, frustrating...
...primary student and confidant, and through their combined charms and abilities, the center grew from a shoestring institution with a handful of members and an annual budget of around $2,000 to something of a mini empire. At the height of its popularity and influence in the '70s, Zen Center's assets included a best-selling cookbook, a hugely popular vegetarian restaurant, and Tassajara, the first American Buddhist monastery, located amid rugged, gorgeous forestland 240 km south of San Francisco...
...Jumping from year to year and narrator to narrator in a patchwork style that mirrors his cluttered subject matter, Downing chronicles the predictable drift from the heady promise of Zen Center's early days to the sourness and disillusionment that followed its growth into a spiritual brand name. As Zen Center's membership and renown increased, so too did Baker's sense of self-importance and entitlement. In 1971, Suzuki died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 69. Before he did so, he established Baker as his sole American dharma heir, making him the uncontestable arbiter of Zen Center...
...Procuring such objects only got easier for Baker as the years went by. Zen was now a business, and a booming one. The center's droves of eager young disciples turned out to be the next best thing to slave labor as they were willing to work tirelessly for almost no money as part of their spiritual training. Female acolytes ready to have sex with Zen Center's new master were another perquisite of Baker's office. Driving a white BMW and consorting with the likes of Jerry Brown and Linda Rondstadt, Baker grew increasingly out of touch with...