Statement from Zen Studies Society Regarding Eido Shimano Roshi’s Status
by Danny Fisher
In response to a comment request from Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, the Zen Studies Society (ZSS) issued the following statement for publication:
We are grateful beyond words for the incomparable gift of Eido Roshi’s Dharma treasure, and for his unstinting efforts to root Rinzai Zen Buddhism in American soil. Ever at home in the unconditional realm he spurs us to go beyond the relative vista.
Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the world of causation.
On July 4, 2010, Eido Shimano Roshi stepped down from the board of directors of the Zen Studies Society (ZSS). This was prompted by allegations of clergy misconduct. The ZSS is committed to fully investigating, clarifying and bringing resolution to this matter. Eido Roshi’s wife, Aiho-san Shimano, also stepped down from the Board at that time.
It was with deepest gratitude and respect for their years of service to this organization and their humble effort to assist us in honestly processing this matter and preparing us for their transition from temporal authority, that we accepted their resignations from the ZSS Board.
After discussion with senior members of the American Zen Teachers Association, the ZSS’s board has decided to seek outside professional assistance to move this process forward with openness and compassion for all.
I previously reported on controversy surrounding Eido Shimano Roshi for Shambhala SunSpace:
This via H-Buddhism (The Buddhist Scholars Information Network): Zen teacher Stuart Lachs and colleague “Vladamir K.” have co-authored a summary of a collection of letters held at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa Library Archives. In their introduction, the authors write, “The letters cover the period of 1964 through to 1984 and are devoted to the interactions, directly and indirectly, between [Diamond Sangha founder Robert Aitken Roshi] and Eido Shimano Roshi of the New York-based Zen Studies Society. Although there are some letters between Shimano and Aitken, and between Aitken and his Japanese teachers Soen Roshi, Yasutani Roshi, and Yamada Roshi, many are to others in the wider American Zen movement. The letters are concerned primarily with the…alleged sexual misbehaviour of Eido Shimano Roshi that first arose in 1964 in Hawai’i, where Aitken Roshi is based.” Until now, the letters have been part of a sealed holding of Aitken Roshi’s personal papers in the archives.
NellaLou has a post on this latest development at Smiling Buddha Cabaret. Take a look.
I have only recently learned of two events that make me sad, but in very different ways. First, I mourn the death, but nearly-selfless life, of Robert Aitken Roshi. My sadness comes from the end of Aitken’s steady influence for peace and justice in our world. I pray that his disciples (and there are many) will continue his legacy.
The second event that makes me sad is the recent public flap over Eido Roshi’s unrestrained love of women. Unfortunately, he is not alone among Japanese Zen teachers outside of Japan in seducing or being seduced by his female students.
I am 75 this year. At least fifty of those years were spent training in Zen monasteries in Japan. As a serious student of Japan and Buddhism I witnessed the considerable restraint that “parishioners” (danka, in Japanese) impose on the Buddhist leaders in their neighborhoods.
Those restraints come from rules that make it absolutely forbidden to have a child with a woman and refuse to marry her. I know of dozens of Japanese priests who have broken that rule and who have been summarily been dismissed from their training temples.
There is no similar rule in Japanese temples governing the conduct of a married priest who has sex outside of marriage. But all of the priests who have done the latter have done so with a professional (bar-girl, geisha, etc.) I know of only two who have had sex with a female STUDENT.
To be clear, there are no female students in the main Zen priest-training temples in Japan; the two instances I mention were with foreign women who came to the priests asking to train with them privately. This is a post-war phenomenon, and similar to the situation we have in Zen centers outside of Japan.
I think the sexual misconduct that has gone on in American and European Zen centers has taken place because the Japanese teachers have no parishioners to restrain their sexual urges. They have been treated like holy sages, gurus, whose every whim is taken very seriously. They could not easily get away with their behavior in their home country.
What I have learned from all of this cultural and religious cross-breeding is how fragile our lives are. And how easily we damage them. Out of ignorance or selfish motives we fail to fulfill the very tenets of the Buddhadharma when we take ourselves so seriously that we feel we can tear down accepted social standards of behavior.
Zen Buddhism seems especially guilty of allowing contradictory behavior to seem enlightened. But even Tibetan priests who left their Tibetan communities to teach foreigners have similarly been allowed to act upon their sexual urges with impunity.
As I approach my last years in this amazing dance of life and death, marveling in the self-and-other trips we all must play, I can only hope that Zen and other forms of Buddhism will survive this crisis and not be characterized by it in Wikipedia forever.
Eido Shimano “roshi” is still in denial.
A letter has been added to the Shimano Archives, it is dated December 1st, 2010.
It was written to the editor of the New York Times… and it’s signed by Eido Shimano – He denies EVERYTHING.
http://www.shimanoarchive.com/PDFs/20101201_Shimano_NYT.pdf
Here is an excerpt:
“I do not want this article and my retirement to be linked. One has nothing to do with the other – there is no cause and effect.”
“When I returned to the United States, many people brought this article to my attention. The effect has been profound. Many people are hurt and confused. As an aside, minutes from our Board of Directors meetings are private documents. If they wound up in Hawaii or in Mark Oppenheimer’s possession, they were improperly obtained and or delivered. Did anyone question why Mr. Aitken would write about a Buddhist monk for 50 years, when I have had contact with him only twice since 1964? I shall look forward to hear what your journalist, Mark Oppenheimer. has to say about the contents of my letter.”
When Eido’s dharma heir Genjo saw this he posted the following on Zen forum International’s thread about Eido…
“I just saw the letter yesterday dated Dec. 1st to the NYT Editor signed by Eido Shimano Roshi. I am shocked, disturbed and offended. In this letter he says that that he has been falsely accused. In my mind it makes a mockery of Eido Roshi’s public apology of September 7th. I understand trying to “save face” but this is an attempt to rewrite history and is and example of denial pure and simple.”
MEN THINK WITH THEIR COCKS
Men think with their cocks. I’ve said this all my life, and I’ve lived a long life (75 years and counting.) Can it be that we were “born this way”? If not at birth at least since around two, in my case. We think about how our cocks feel from morning to night. Sometimes all night. Gay or straight, young or old, it doesn’t matter: when we get old the thinking cock keeps on thinking, even if our performance diminishes or stops altogether.
Our cock-brains are oblivious to everything except their own pleasure. They can and do have their way with anything or anybody. Nothing stands in their way. The good effect they may have on others is automatically assumed. Any bad effect their sexual actions may have on others doesn’t even register to them. There seems to be no room in the cock-brain for such thoughts.
Society and religion have tried valiantly for eons to speak sense to men on this subject, but to little avail. The denial mechanism of the cock-brain never shuts off. Only a man of impeccable moral honesty, like Hugh Hefner, has taken control of his thinking cock. Did you know that he was “faithful” to the wife who bore his children for as long as they were married? The rest of the time Hugh seems to have given his cock notice that it would not be allowed to enjoy itself unless its actions were indeed respectful of his partners’ beliefs and feelings.
But Hugh is such an exception! The mindless excesses of the cock-brain are always denied, by almost every man, whether powerful or weak, rich or poor, president or priest. To be sure, Shimano Eido Roshi is in denial. You might think that years of sitting quietly on a cushion and entering into a near-Buddha-like realization of the human condition would make it impossible to deny the potentially harmful actions and repercussions of your own cock. But I’m afraid it doesn’t.
How nice it would be if every man in a position of authority and leadership would not listen to his cock when it begins to tell him to go ahead with his agenda to bed the woman or man in his cock’s cross-hairs (so to speak.) Or at least if he would be up front with his potential partner by confessing that his cock-brain was talking. Then the partner could decide if the coupling was worth the trouble. The romantic or mystical aspects of the situation would be gone in a poof. If for some reason the two people decide to have sex, it would really be nice if neither one of them denies the affair (out of religious or political correctness, or some other stupid reason.) I say let them face the consequences.
As I have said before, what really irks me about the denials of Buddhist priests for their sexual misbehavior is that they either say it doesn’t matter in the spiritual long run (they put it more vaguely), or that they were not to blame. But I believe a sexual coupling between teacher and student that is based on a cock-brain’s reasoning is bad in the long as well as short run, spiritual or otherwise, and of course the person in the position of spiritual guidance is to blame for confusing a student about spiritual matters, especially those concerning the Buddha-dharma.
To be fully honest here, I freely admit there are exceptions to the rule prohibiting teacher-student sexual relationships because I am the result of what must be counted as an exception: my father was one of my mother’s professors in college. But they were true to each other for fifty years before he died in 1970, and she stayed celibate until her death in 1980. Carol and I have also known no other sexual partners before or after our marriage in 1955. We’re like a pair of ducks, or geese, or whoever else in the animal chain stays together for life. I’m not bragging. My dad just warned me about my cock-brain very early. How lucky can an old Zen student be?
Glenn (Cold Rock) Webb