stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

36 STRIPPING THE GURUS
[One] of the marks of the meditation monk [as opposed to the
monastery administrators, etc.] is to wear old clothes covered
with layer upon layer of patches. While such garments are
supposed to show his detachment from material possessions,
they more often serve as a kind of monastic status symbol.
On several occasions I even knew a monk new to the meditation
hall to trade a brand-new set of polyester robes for old
patchwork clothes. During their free time, the meditation
monks can often be found adding still more patches to their
raiments (Buswell, 1992).
More accurately, then, the death of other people’s egos remains
a strong motivating factor for meditators everywhere, with the leverage
of their respected power both acting to effect that, and aiding
in the indulgence of their own desires.
Mo-san’s trap turned out to be his very “noncaring diligence”
.... I heard that, some ten years later, he became a substitute
master in an American Zen temple on the West Coast. During
his tenure he hid his shortness by wearing platform soles
under lengthened robes and insisted that his lay disciples
buy him a Cadillac to glide about in. He evoked a scandal by
trying to trade insights for intimate encounters with tall
blondes (van de Wetering, 2001).
Or, expressed in haiku:
Tall blonde, high heels, wow!
Is that a lengthened silk robe?
Happy to see you
We should hardly be surprised that relocating stick-wielding
“Eastern truths” into the materialistic and unconstrained West
would result in a dilution of their transformative value. But in
their native, sacred East?
Despite the disastrous problems most of his students had encountered
trying to study Zen in Japan, [Shunryu] Suzuki [of
the San Francisco Zen Center, author of the million-selling
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind] continued to explore the possibility....
Suzuki had ordained [a] couple before they went to
Japan. The wife did fine at a nunnery, but her husband was
forcibly sedated and shipped out of [the Soto headquarters,
mountain monastery at] Eiheiji. A woman from Zen Center