The Zen Predator of the Upper East Side

Interesting, though frustrating, read.

Frustrating for three reasons: first, it's frustrating - maddening even - to read about the sleazy, manipulative Zen monk, Eido Shimano. This guy is basically your stereotypically awful person who hides behind a shroud of spiritual authority. He harasses and molests the women who come to his Zen center (he had two, one in Manhattan and one in upstate New York). He gaslights people who try to accuse him of wrongdoing. He sounds like an ass. :/

The second frustration is his sangha's inability to call him out on it (this shit went on for YEARS), and their consequent enabling of it. The author, Mark Oppenheimer, theorizes that this is characteristic of American Zen Buddhism - if not American Buddhism in general. Indeed, many of these charismatic Buddhist pilgrims from Japan and Tibet who came to the US in the 1960s and got the whole Buddhist thing going turned out to be really, hmm, how to put it... controversial? Ahem. Controversial because several of them were accused of sexual harassment, one may have been an alcoholic who died of cirrhosis of the liver, and yet they attracted and still attract plenty of defenders. Oppenheimer alleges that this is because the American Buddhist community was so enamored with these mystical men from the East that they were, at best, willfully blind to some of their crazy shit and, at worst, covering it up in order to Protect Buddhism in America (glorious music, lots of gongs).

And it's this interpretation - or rather, the way Oppenheimer stretches it to some limits - that became my third frustration with the book. Disclaimer: I'm an American Buddhist, and have practiced Buddhism stuff in daaa West for well nigh 14 years (hollaaaa experience). I can definitely believe that some of these communities willfully covered up or turned a blind eye to Buddhist teachers abusing their positions. It happens in all sorts of religious communities, and, alas, if there's one thing Buddhists can be relied on, it's to be just as awful as anyone else! So much for being the “nice ones”!

But what Oppenheimer then proposes is that American Buddhists are, almost by definition, a bunch of Orientalist “damaged people” who willingly suspend their critical faculties when joining a Buddhist community. Dare I say, the word “cult” comes up, in a sort of equivocatey, wishy-washy “I'm not saying it's aliens, but it's aliens” way. Hmmm. In particular, Oppenheimer kinda goes on and on about how the ladies that had been victimized by Eido Shimano were just - so - damn - victimy! He paints them as such fragile beings, gosh, it almost sounds like he's starting to gaslight them. I had to take issue. Sir, I am an American Buddhist lady and I have indeed been a bit of an Orientalist in my day. But to maintain that every Buddhist is some New Agey “seeker” misfit trying to fill a giant hole in their life is just - oh, come on. What about all those nice American Buddhists that just like to meditate, and think about the philosophy of epistemology, and still have a brain?! What about Harold Ramis, for the love of God? Anyway, I found Oppenheimer's pseudo-Freudian assessment of all our silly New Agey brains reductive and, like much of the rest of the book, a little salacious.

Soooo my whole take on the book was (1) yay for American Buddhist history, cuz I do find that interesting, but (2) arghhhh for the story and the way it was told.