stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

38 STRIPPING THE GURUS
Transmission happens outside the limits of identity and ego.
The fact that an acknowledged master acknowledges you as a
Zen master means “you are no longer a Buddhist; what you
do is Buddhism” (Downing, 2001; italics added).
And what, then, “is Buddhism”?
As abbot of San Francisco Zen Center, between the abbot’s
budget and use of community-owned residences and resources,
[Baker] lived in a style that he estimates could be
duplicated by a private citizen with an annual salary of close
to half a million dollars a year (Tworkov, 1994).
Discipline under the transmitted “Frisco Zen master” then reportedly
(Downing, 2001) included:
• Baker dictating to his followers as to whom they could or
couldn’t be involved with in sexual relationships
• The master having his followers “stand in rows and bow as
he drove away from Tassajara” in a “fantastic to drive”
BMW, thereby causing himself to be viewed by at least one
of those bowing disciples as the “Richard Nixon of Zen”
• Ostensibly “lifetime” members of the Tassajara Board of
Directors involuntarily “going on sabbatical” when not being
sufficiently supportive of Baker’s wishes
“What Baker transmitted,” said a senior priest, “was power
and arrogance and an attitude that ‘I have it and you don’t’”
(Tworkov, 1994).
At the San Francisco Zen Center, the problems that came to
a head in 1983 [involved] a number of master-disciple sexual
affairs, as well as a complex pattern of alleged misuses of authority
and charisma, both psychologically and financially
(Anthony, et al., 1987).
More specifically, the Harvard-educated, married Baker “was
forced to resign after his affair with a married student was revealed”
(Schwartz, 1996). The frantic husband of the rich, lithe
blonde in question—whom Baker reportedly claimed had seduced
him (we should all have such luck)—was a writer by the name of
Paul Hawken. He, in turn, was of upscale Smith & Hawken garden