Zen is unique in schools of Buddhism, it is the only school
of Buddhism that has what it calls priests.
I have written another blog post a long time ago on this subject so I'm not going to
go into that right now. The problems
that this has caused in America and other Western countries are many. Starting with the problem of us ending up
with priests who seem to have been corrupted by the West. Usually this took the
form of sexual exploitation of would be students. This problem of course is not
unique to Zen or Buddhism or religion in general it seems to be its constant
traveling companion. But a new an
increasing problem in Zen is the phony. There are people out there claiming to
be Zen priests who have no qualifications or credentials to make that claim.
I recently ran across one of these charlatans when doing a
little research about the different Buddhist centers in my old hometown. I saw person that I have met on an off for
several years who was now claiming to be a Zen priest. The fact that I personally knew that he was
not a Zen priest bothered me. So I did
further research on what his claims were based on and discovered that his
credentials were entirely false. One of
the things that really stuck out was the fact that he claimed to have been
ordained by Zen priest at a center I have been a member of for decades, So I contacted the Abbot of the center and
some of its elder members to make sure I wasn't mistaken. Not only had no one there ever ordained him as
a priest. The person that he claimed had ordained him as a priest there has
never been there. I checked into the
person he said had ordained him and as far as I can tell that person has no
authority to ordain anyone. Several
years ago that person created his own school of Buddhism and declared himself a
priest without ordination and even he makes no claim of having ordain this man
as a priest. This p3erson Is not only running his own group but telling other non Zen centers he is a priest and giving lectures at these centers on Zen.
We are coming to a time when very many of the truly
ordained Western teachers are reaching an elderly age and will soon be passing
away. I heard this referred to by one of
those elderly priests as the great die off. I have never been a great admirer of the
claims of 1000 year lineage that many Zen groups make but I do believe that
making up your own phony credentials is simply fraud,
So I'm writing this small post with the hopes that it along
with my blog having been digitally transcribed onto the ether we call the
Internet will outlive me. I hope that it
serves as a warning to all future people wishing to pursue Buddhism and Zen to
beware of frauds. Zen does require training and its nature is such that it
almost always requires a teacher at some point. The Tibetan schools of Buddhism
adhere to a text (a small book in English) that tells potential students what to
look for in a teacher and a teacher what to look for in a student. Unfortunately
few people who pursue Buddhism in the West actually take the time to do
in-depth studies of what they hope to practice and this sets them up to be
victims of the frauds, the fakers, the sexual predators and the charlatans. I know right now a
teacher in lower Georgia who has almost no understanding of Buddhism at all. I know others that have practiced for years
and still do not have an inkling of what they're supposed to be teaching. Most
of these people are very good salespeople but they're not Buddhist teachers. So
I'm leaving this word of warning to all the young people who will follow after
us to make an effort to understand what Buddhism and what Zen are about and what to look for in a teacher . Be very careful before you call a person your
teacher.
