stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

ZEN IN THE ART OF SEX AND VIOLENCE 41
Zen at War, Van Wolferen’s (1990) The Enigma of Japanese Power,
and Barry’s (1992) Dave Barry Does Japan.
Consider, further, the private life of Gyokujun So-on, the Japanese
teacher of the late Shunryu Suzuki. Suzuki became a disciple
of So-on in 1917, at age thirteen. In those same years, So-on
was carrying on an affair with the wife of a local (Japanese) merchant.
[E]veryone knew about their relationship.... No one did anything
to stop their trysts, but there was general disapproval.
It was a contributing factor to So-on’s loss of students (Chadwick,
1999).
Note that this rule-breaking was met merely with a milquetoast
“general disapproval,” not with discipline or meaningful censure
or career impediments sufficient to cause it to stop. That is so
regardless of whatever one might propose the local cultural effect
of such “general disapproval” to otherwise be in terms of lost
honor, etc. In that behavior, further, So-on was merely carrying on
a long-standing “tradition” himself:
In the Edo Era [1600 – 1868], Buddhist priests did not marry,
but temples were busy places, and the priests in many
cases were somewhat worldly. Women began living in the
temples, to work and, at times, to love. They did not show
their faces because they weren’t supposed to be there to begin
with (Chadwick, 1999; italics added).
Otori [1814 – 1904] recognized that a large number of Buddhist
priests were already married, in spite of regulations
prohibiting it (Victoria, 1997; italics added).
[I]n Zen monasteries in Japan ... sex between men has long
been both a common practice and a prohibited activity
(Downing, 2001; italics added).
[A]t the same time every evening, there was the faint smell
of smoke from the dark graveyard. It wasn’t until the third
or fourth day that I realized that the monks weren’t piously
lighting joss sticks for the old masters’ graves at all; they
were sneaking a quick forbidden [italics added] cigarette in
the shadows of the mossy tombstones....