Kenneth Folk featured in WIRED

"I was wondering when that would come to light. I didn't want to be the meany. "

I consider what we're doing here to be collaborative research; I have no problem either with having been ignorant or with being corrected. So, please, EVERYONE be as "mean" as necessary! God knows, that's what I do!

Chris Marti wrote:

"… she has been a serial apologist for some pretty questionable behavior."

I was wondering when that would come to light. I didn't want to be the meany.

Man, you've _changed_. (To be said in "dude" voice.)

Centuries seem not to change much except the names...

(from here: www.existentialbuddhist.com/2013/07/tokugawa-zen/ )

"There were pockets of awareness about the fallen state of Zen. As early as 1455, Zen master Ikkyū Sōjun criticized a fellow teacher, saying “Whether it’s a man, a dog, a fart, or a turd, he’s ready to cajole them, selling koans and then calling it transmission.”

"Dokuan Genkō (1630-1698) said “those nowadays who claim to be Dharma heirs are merely receiving paper Zen.” Neo-Confucianist scholar Kumazawa Banzan (1609-1691) thought Zen teachers were prepared to “flatter any daimyo (feudal warlord), millionaire, or rascal” and proclaim him enlightened..."

Can't find the reference now, but in my Zen days I read somewhere that koan practice itself was introduced as a corrective because the people doing what we'd now call Soto-style were seen as sitting like stones (not in a good way)...

I read something quite different: the 'inventor' of koans (whose name I forgot) first "taught" them to chinese nobility and statesmen, because these men and women did not have the time nor the propensity to sit. (Carl Bielfeldt's Dogen' s Manuals of Zen Meditation , IIRC).
Zen for its lay benefactors, Zen for the busy men.

Hi Kate,
Could you post a link to the Gurdjieff magazine article about Oscar Ichazo? I happen to have a lot of personal knowledge about the Arica Institute, from back in the 1970s, but haven't kept up with it since then.

Here's a link (with no content) to the current issue of William Patrick Patterson's magazine, in which he discusses OI:
www.gurdjiefflegacy.org/10journal/tgjcurrent.htm

Here's a link for a blogger going over some of the material:
jesuskoan.blogspot.com/2007/05/enneagram.html

And here's a fair synopsis:
www.oocities.org/enneagram.geo/1879514109sample.html

How did you know I was leafing through the magazine a week ago at the bookstore??

edited to add: looked back up-thread and found the answer-- 'cuz I said so awhile back. Ah, the delights of the aging memory...