This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Buddhist Chaplaincy Speaker Series: Practicing What We Preach with Grace Schireson. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Buddhist Chaplaincy Speaker Series: Practicing What We Preach - Grace Schireson

The following talk was given by Grace Schireson at The Sati Center in Redwood City, CA on April 21, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Host: Welcome everyone to the Sati Center's Buddhist Chaplaincy Speaker Series. Today we are delighted to welcome Grace Schireson.

Grace is a Zen Abbess, President of the Shogaku Zen Institute¹, and a clinical psychologist. She received her doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California. She has founded two practice centers and a retreat center under the Central Valley Zen Foundation.

She is the author of two books: Naked in the Zendo and Zen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens, and Macho Masters. Grace also edited Zen Bridge: The Zen Teachings of Keido Fukushima with Peter Schireson. She has published articles in Shambhala Sun, Buddhadharma, and Tricycle magazines, and has been anthologized in many Zen books, including The Book of Mu, Receiving the Marrow, and The Hidden Lamp, as well as in a book on spiritual training, The Arts of Contemplative Care.

Welcome, Grace, and over to you.

Buddhist Chaplaincy Speaker Series: Practicing What We Preach

Grace Schireson: Great. It's terrific to see your students. I assume these are all students who are on their way to serving, and I think this is one of the most important aspects of our work.

We begin our meditation work for various reasons. Maybe we're unhappy, or maybe we want to hang out with other spiritually-minded people. But sooner or later, we recognize that our true work is helping other people. It is very important that we see that, especially because I've noticed in the communities we are in, there is a great deal of status seeking—what color robes we wear, what positions we attain. Having climbed that ladder, I know it well.

But the important thing is: how do we take care of our students? We need to develop ourselves, and not just through meditation. We need to learn skills: how to work with people who have addictions, how to work with couples, how to work with people who are depressed, and what meditations are better for people who are depressed.

These are all questions that came up for me as a psychologist. I had received this training, but I didn't understand how my fellow Zen people were able to have conversations with people who were troubled without learning some skills. In the book on chaplaincy, The Arts of Contemplative Care, where I am featured in an article with Lewis Richmond² for having started the Shogaku ongoing training, we talk about the evolution of Buddhism in the West.

I think there are two tracks that we are on. One follows a little bit of spiritual materialism—I'm kind of a grouch about that—and the other is how we develop ourselves to help other people. How do we set down the status seeking and our needs as teachers to belong, to be praised, to be cared about, and really focus on how we prevent harm to students and how we help them?

This is why we started the Shogaku Zen Institute. When Suzuki Roshi³, the founder of the school of Zen that I am in, came to the U.S., he said, "Well, you people are not quite lay and you're not quite priests."

In Japan, where he had been trained, everyone trained in a very strict monastic way. Most of the priests had a temple that they most likely inherited from their fathers or their father-in-law, or these temples were handed to them by the sect of Zen that they belonged to, like the Soto Shu⁴ (which is the sect I belong to mostly, although I've studied Rinzai Shu⁵ in Japan).

It is a very interesting thing because in Japan, being a priest is a profession. My husband loves to tell the story of when we were in Tokyo on one visit. He spoke to a man at a bar who spoke English, and asked him what he did for work. The man said, "Well, I'm either going to follow in my father's business or I'm going to have to start my own." My husband asked, "What's your father's business?" He said, "My father is a Zen priest." My husband asked, "What would you do on your own?" He said, "I would start a porn site."

So, it is a very different world.

The other thing we noticed when we were in Japan is that people don't have the same reverence—that's an interesting choice of words—for their priests. They sometimes see them as "bald-headed rascals." We saw that by finding falling-down drunk priests in full robes in the train stations. So in Japan, the projection of greatness, leadership, and holiness on the priest isn't there.

But there are priests—for example, Suzuki Roshi's son, Hoitsu Roshi⁶—who are very well respected. He is respected in part because he teaches at the training temple, and in part because he does so much work with the community: seeing prisoners, putting on bazaars to raise money for children, and working through his friends who are potters. He is well respected there. His community respects him. He lives with his wife and family in the temple, and the temple—Suzuki Roshi's home temple—will pass on to his son.

It is a very different model. Once you have seen that model in Japan, and particularly the military precision with which they carry out ceremonies, you recognize we will never be able to do that. So what can we do? This is how we started our training institute. What can we do as priests? How do we live in harmony with our lives as parents, spouses, priests, and helpers? How do we do that with the training we have?

When we began to look at what Suzuki Roshi had said to us—"you're neither lay nor priest"—and where this movement will go in the U.S., we recognized that the training people were receiving in Zen centers is about how to continue the Zen center. Everybody gets a position. They learn how to ring the bells, they learn how to place people in the zando⁷, they learn how to chant. Those are the positions that are created.

I am thinking of San Francisco Zen Center, where people live for years and learn how to do the things that will continue the functioning of the temple. They get jobs that train them. This does happen in Japan, but it only happens during the time people are in the monastery. Then they go back to their home temple, which is more like living at home with family.

When we looked at the training people were receiving at the major Zen institutions—specifically the San Francisco Zen Center lineage—we didn't see that people were actually benefiting in that way. They were not coming out of the Zen center training with a skill that enabled them to use all those years of meditation and spiritual practice to help people and to work in the world.

When I did a lot of interfaith work in the Central Valley, the ministers said, "You know, you call yourselves priests, but you don't have an M.Div., and we all have M.Div.s after two years in the seminary."

Those ideas came together for me. One thing we could do to help Zen students is to make them recognizable to the public as spiritual leaders who could help them with their problems in life, whether they be marital problems, depression, or whatever people would come to a priest to discuss. How could we help these students learn skills and get a job?

One of our first graduates came out of San Francisco Zen Center after many years of training. People will often enter at a very young, idealistic age. He came out after maybe ten years, and there he was refinishing floors. Which is a fine business, but it didn't make as much use of his Zen training as we would like. Because we do develop some capacity in meditation to feel the feelings of others and to remain calm and useful when we hear about those problems. How we use that for work in the world was very important to us.

Our first inkling of how we might work together came when we saw how the model had changed. In the beginning, everyone belonged to the Zen center and lived in apartments close to, or owned by, the Zen center. Gradually, as the years went on, we started our own small practice places and were out in the world with family and all the needs one has out in the world. We weren't being fed and supported by the Zen center; we were in our own homes and we had bills to pay.

We noticed something: our practicing and including students in our lives did not pay the bills. Sometimes there were donations, but not enough to really count as employers and to pay for health insurance. So having a profession that provided a living wage also was an important part of how we wanted to further the model that Suzuki Roshi had given us: not lay, not priest. What will we become?

We thought it would be suitable if people had a degree, an M.Div., and training, and were able to get jobs working to help people like our counterparts in Christian and Jewish traditions. So we came together to talk about how we might do that. Most of us who came together at that time were in small practice places, figuring out ways to finance sharing the Dharma.

There were maybe ten or fifteen of us in this situation. We had trained either at San Francisco Zen Center or Berkeley Zen Center and had done the practice—going to meditation daily, learning the chants, going to lectures, doing the long retreats. We all recognized the value of that training, but now we were in a different situation: how do we take care of our work in the home and our community?

What do our students need in addition to learning how to chant, ring the bells, relate to the altar, and help people enter the zando without crossing and stepping on the lines of the tatami⁸? That is a big deal in some centers—don't step on the cracks between the tatamis. There is a lot of correction to do it "just so" in the Zen center.

So, now we're in a different situation. I am going to stop now in case you have some questions for me.

Q&A and Discussion

Participant: Grace, I have a question. This element of pastoral care, we assume it's taught in seminary to Christian and Jewish counterparts. I've definitely heard horror stories of pastors coming into hospitals and having no sense of how to navigate pastoral care. I know in my Zen training it wasn't really something that came up. I'm curious for you: did that element of pastoral care come up in your training at all, or is there something new that you were trying to bring in?

Grace Schireson: Well, it was something new we wanted to establish as standard in Zen. Of course, as we began—and we later established an M.Div. program—we began offering courses following what important and upright seminaries were offering. We followed the model of the Christian seminary, from Harvard Divinity School on, regarding what people should study in order to offer pastoral care. That was an important element for us.

What we noticed right away—especially after my conversation in interfaith work with Christian ministers—is that we hadn't had that. Also, the history of Buddhism maybe wasn't quite as accurate. It reminded me of a friend who went to Catholic school, and when she started university, she found out all the history she'd learned in her parochial school wasn't the same as what they were teaching in university. So we learned something different.

Participant: I'm wondering what resources you were able to draw on. Obviously, you were looking at what the seminaries were doing. But you have your training as a clinical psychologist and your training through Zen. Was there anything more concrete from the Zen tradition you were able to draw on beyond the sense of meditation and being present?

Grace Schireson: No, not in my Zen training. Although, as I continued up the ladder of Zen positions, I was given the opportunity to offer what was called "practice discussion" and to help people along. But as a psychologist, I knew where to go and where not to go in these conversations. I really wondered about how other people coped because they didn't have that training.

It is interesting that you mentioned that chaplaincy is new in Japan. I know Joan Halifax is over there now talking about her program. In Europe as well, I study Spanish with a teacher in Madrid and he had never really heard of chaplaincy. They have Catholic priests, period. They do not have a pastoral care program there either.

No, I don't think I got the training in Zen. Although, there was one thing we did in both psychology and Zen training. In psychology or counseling, it's called "group soup" or group supervision, where you talk about your cases. It is a little more delicate in the Zen community because we all knew who people were talking about. We did try to talk a little bit about the situations that arose and difficulties we were having, but it was harder because of the issue of confidentiality. Everybody knew everybody.

When we started the Shogaku Zen Institute, we had a lot of fun creating cases. The most fun I had was when we created a case with a male teacher and a female student coming on to that teacher. There seems to be something almost inevitable in the magnetism there, of women being attracted to men in power. It was really a great deal of fun to watch how uncomfortable our priests became when the women were flirting with them.

We would create very elaborate scenarios. For example: "Oh, it's your birthday. I'd love to join you for your birthday," and keep ramping it up and watch the discomfort of the priest because he didn't know what to say. They hadn't yet been in that situation. It seems to come not for the priest in training, but for the priests who take a position of power in the community.

Finally, I remember how happy I was to hear one of our young male priests answer and refer to his own feelings and say, "I'm becoming uncomfortable with this conversation." That was a model—that people could actually not be the perfect Zen person alone on the mountain, but a human being who was having feelings.

This kind of training—exposing people through role plays—was a big part of how we trained people. We also created same-sex scenarios, but it didn't seem to be as difficult for people in those scenarios to recognize what was happening and set boundaries. That was just anecdotal evidence, but it was interesting.

What I've noticed in the work I've done preventing sexual misconduct—which is one of the main themes of the courses we teach at the Shogaku Zen Institute—is that early on, these teachers understood the boundaries and were not swayed by them. But there was something in their position of power that was a bit of an aphrodisiac for the students and blurred things for the teacher.

Some people talk about the "bad apples" or the narcissists or psychopaths in the Buddhist community, but I don't think that's the problem. My understanding is that it is a problem of what happens in a community when someone is in power, and when the community is about protecting the teacher versus the members. It is almost like we designed our communities to promote this problem. We have a teacher in a singular position of power, we have the board of directors chosen who are mostly loyalists to the teacher, and there is a distance between the teacher and the community.

When we teach the skills it takes to be a spiritual teacher and a pastoral counselor, we talk about these issues of power, communication, and boundaries. It is important to understand this and to get help when you feel the pull of that tide.

Historically, in Japan, the geisha houses were positioned around the temples. It wasn't that they had female students; they had the geisha to have a relationship or sex with, so they didn't really have this to work on. Later, as the temple priests became married, it became a very different dynamic—much more of a community togetherness versus the teacher being way up high. We saw when we were in Japan at Rinso-in, Suzuki Roshi's home temple, how much interaction there was when Hoitsu Roshi was there, doing things like drawing prawns along with the community.

Participant: I've had an experience regarding this issue of power. I live in Montreal, Canada. We know the Catholic and Christian churches have had abuse issues, but my experience has been that if I go into a church, I'm welcomed with open arms, no questions asked. If I don't kneel at the right time, it doesn't matter.

In all the Buddhist centers I have been to, when you enter, you have to prove your privilege of being there. It's like, "How long have you been practicing? Do you know how to practice? Why are you here?" You have to prove that you belong. I wonder if part of it is that in Christianity, the only person that chooses if you're worthy is God, whereas in Buddhism, a lot of the time it's the teacher who says you're good enough.

Grace Schireson: It is a big problem. In fact, I wrote about it in my most recent book, Naked in the Zendo, discussing Suzuki Roshi in contrast to people in the Zen center today.

When I was about twenty-one, I was getting married. We were leaving the country to go to Canada to escape the draft, and Suzuki Roshi was performing the ceremony. When I went for my rehearsal, I saw he was wearing tabi, so I said, "Oh, I should wear tabi." What I didn't know was you only wear the tabi inside, not when you're walking across the street bringing the dirt into the zando.

So there I am on my wedding day, with a skirt I made—full-out hippie—and my tabi. Suzuki Roshi is standing at the top of the stairs watching me with the tabi, no sandal underneath, walking across the street, up the stairs, and dragging that schmutz into the zando. Did he say anything? Not a word. Not a word of correction. He probably calculated, "This young lady is nervous enough, I'm not going to make her more nervous."

On the other hand, when I gave a talk at San Francisco Zen Center as the invited speaker, someone crossed the Buddha Hall to move me two inches over to correct me.

What do I think causes that? I think it's because in the centers where there is a residential community, there is a clique—almost a cult—which says "we know and you don't know." I think the social dynamics create that unwelcoming atmosphere. When I had a Zen center, I was very clear with my students: "You are not to correct people. This is not a correction machine. That's not our job. Our job is to welcome people." But that message has not penetrated.

I remember one time Hoitsu Roshi was at the Zen center helping to perform a ceremony. I came in, and I heard a loud voice say, "Who invited Grace?" It is that "in and out" dynamic.

In the Christian community, there is a value of recruiting and welcoming people. Generally, the people who help run the church do not live there. It is my belief that we have tribal instincts of who belongs and who doesn't belong because that's how we survived. Belonging means survival. The idea of loneliness is a hazard to our survival. Now they can measure that people who don't have a social group where they belong are more stressed; their immune system is more stressed.

So there is a very strong pull to have this in-group and out-group. We need to teach this to people who are becoming Buddhist leaders. I certainly went through this phase—a strong feeling that Buddhism is way superior because it doesn't have these kinds of cult-like feelings and beliefs. We need to work on that. It is a good system for helping yourself and belonging, but it's not perfect.

Participant: I have another question about emotions and awareness. In my clinical pastoral education, I'm starting to have more awareness about my emotions, how I interact in groups, and even body language—proximity, distance, eye contact. This is stuff that I think is important to spiritual care, and it is kind of new for me. I wonder how you see that aspect?

Grace Schireson: I do see it as lacking in our Zen training. I did some Tibetan training with a Zen group, and they talk about emotions more and knowing emotions more than we do in Zen. In Zen, there is this idea that somehow we're going to go beyond emotions or transcend them.

Because it isn't part of the curriculum of our Zen training, I almost always recommend that people also do therapy as a way of getting in touch with what's painful for them. What is painful sometimes is hidden from us.

Even as a therapist in training—my father died when I was six—if you asked me how that affected me, I would say, "Oh, not at all." I wasn't really in touch with those feelings. The first time I sat down with a young female patient whose father had died, and she started talking about how much she missed her daddy, I was a goner. That was an unexplored area for me.

If we are going to be present for other people's emotions—which is something our meditation can help us with—then we need to understand what traumas we are carrying. We don't get much of that in Zen training. It was like, "If it arises, let it go." I would tell my students, "Okay, let it go during the meditation, but make a note. I'm going to get back to that and work on that with a therapist."

We don't really have that technology of working with emotions, allowing them, exploring them, and processing them. From our Zen training, the solution can be "just push it away," versus really feeling that feeling and allowing it to arise so that it creates a connection to the other person.

Participant: I find it interesting we're talking about emotions and grief side by side. We often approach grief attached to death, but there's grief around so many other things. In the work I do, grief is connected to hospital people dying, but there are a lot of other griefs—loss of health, identity, relationships.

Grace Schireson: Yes, you're right. One of the things is the kind of grief one experiences by being in contact with other people—vicarious traumatization. For me, it has been very hard to be part of any Zen institution after I've worked with many women who have been damaged within the Zen tradition, either by a teacher or by sexism. That vicarious traumatization and grief is so powerful that it has definitely affected how I can relate to the Zen tradition and be part of a community anymore.

I think this is a very interesting topic. As we process our own feelings, we can become aware of how much grief we experience. I worked at a children's hospital in my training, and my experience of seeing what parents were going through made me want to go outside and kiss the sidewalk for the blessing that I had not to go through that. But I had a lot of suffering. I remember talking to my Zen teacher about it, and he said, "It's like you have to build up the ability to handle this suffering. Right now you're overwhelmed with it, you don't have the skills to process it."

That is part of our training in working with other people: being able to experience the grief of others, to be affected by it, and to continue and not be destroyed by it.

Host: Thank you so much, Grace. That was a wonderful talk, very inspiring. We're going to meet next month with Alice Kabat speaking on May 18th about spiritual care as Koan⁹ formation and embodiment. Thank you to everyone for being with us today.