Institutions and Zen

Peg Syverson
8-21-11

Usually, we tend to focus on our personal meditation practice, and the details of our own everyday lives. But sometimes it is useful to look at the bigger picture. So I want to talk a bit today about institutions. Why? What do we mean by “institution” and what does this have to do with our Zen practice? As Mary Douglas pointed out, an institution is not just any gathering of people waiting for a bus, so what makes something an institution?  When I talk about institutions I am not talking only about such things as universities and hospitals, marriage, a corporation, or the Navy. Any social structure that maintains coherence over time can be considered an institution. Institutions organize activity and resources, and provide a way to coordinate enduring patterns of relating. Those structures emerge as a response to a particular situation, and serve a needed function. 

Over 2500 years, many different kinds of Buddhist institutions have emerged, even though the Buddha did not create a single one during his lifetime, with the exception of the sangha. He gave detailed rules and instructions, apparently, for the operation and coordination of the sangha, that were appropriate for the people of his time. Over time, many other Buddhist institutions, including universities, hospitals, monasteries, and centers have arisen in response to local conditions and needs. In Zen, despite its inherently anti-institutional teachings, other social structures have also become institutionalized: ceremonies, priest ordination, koan study, temple roles, the concept of lineage, and dharma transmission. Each of these has developed as an appropriate response to a particular historical and cultural situation. 

Today, we can see many long-time, taken-for-granted institutions crumbling or failing: schooling, medical care, air travel, marriage, religious institutions,  professional careers. It’s not that people are not engaging with these institutions, but it is increasingly apparent that the institutions are not able to maintain their coherence, legitimacy, and usefulness in a changing world. Schools are faltering and teachers are overwhelmed and failing. We face epidemics of conditions such as autism, obesity, asthma, rushed doctors with 6 minutes to see a patient, and crushing and intrusive insurance companies. Traveling by plane has become a nightmare of delays, missed connections, and oppressive security measures.  Churches have faced devastating scandals that have destroyed their spiritual legitimacy. Still we cling to these dysfunctional institutions with all our might. The alternative is unthinkable to most people: chaos and complete collapse. But that is only a dualistic view of the situation, and certainly not the only alternative. The current distress we have across the board with existing institutions is a result of one pervasive problem with established institutions: their inability to adapt to changing conditions. 

How does this relate to our Zen practice? Joko recognized something absolutely crucial for Zen to thrive in America: it would need to adapt. Still, this is a dangerous and difficult path. Adaptations sometimes fail; in fact, most often they fail, and fail spectacularly, in the evolution of a successful new organism. We were lucky. Joko’s adaptation of Zen for Americans did not fail; it became a genuine success. Through her straightforward, direct approach to Zen, stripping off much of the Japanese rituals, forms, and roles, she connected the ancient teachings and practices of Zen directly with Western audiences. She continued the institution of dharma transmission, which she later confided she wished she had resisted, but dropped priest ordination, special roles, and ceremonies. In this, she was not alone: other Zen teachers throughout the history of Zen, and even more recently, had come to the same conclusions in their own teachings: in China, in Japan, in Korea. You can read about some of these famous historical Zen teachers in Zen Radicals, Rebels, and Reformers. So she was in good company with those authentic teachers who dedicated themselves to the heart of the teachings, rather than its institutional forms. 

Roy Bhaskar, a British philosopher, writes:

“…emancipation depends on the transformation of structures, not the amelioration of states of affairs. Indeed, in present and foreseeable circumstances, the transformation of structures may be a practically necessary condition for more humane states of affairs. But this transformation does not involve a magic transportation into a realm free of determination. Rather, it consists in the move or transition from unneeded, unwanted, and oppressive to needed, wanted and empowering sources of determination.”

All right, this sounds a bit academic, so to put this in our terms: True liberation is not accomplished by changing our circumstances or relieving our symptoms—our difficult marriage, unsatisfying job, our unhappiness, anxiety, dread, grief, anger, and fear— but by transformation of deep structures. This transformation is necessary for creating more humane circumstances. But liberation doesn’t mean the demolition of all structure: instead it means a shift from structures that are “unneeded, unwanted, and oppressive” to those that are “needed, wanted, and empowering.” 

This understanding applies not only at the individual level, but also at the level of the sangha, at the level of Zen in contemporary life, and beyond. It applies to our relationships with our partners and spouses, our children, our employees or supervisors. Most importantly, it applies to our sangha and our teachings. Our intention is to support a transition from structures that are “unneeded, unwanted, and oppressive” and to create and maintain structures that are “needed, wanted, and empowering.” This means transformational shifts in both inner structures—painful beliefs and limiting conditioning—and external structures—work, social organizations, schools, and most especially Zen teaching,  training, and sangha life. This is a radical notion. 

But it is hard. The traditional institutional forms—robes, chants, rituals, and roles, for example— provide a kind of ready-made scaffolding to support the teachings and the practice of Zen. People may become dissatisfied because it seems as though “there is no there there.” Joko was unconcerned about that, and so am I. Flint and I are cultivating this path in which forms emerge to serve particular functions that seem to be needed by the practice or the sangha in this moment. And when they have fulfilled their function, if they are no longer needed, they are abandoned. The practice, after all, as we have said many times, is about waking up and growing up, not about preserving structures or forms. Our task, as teachers, as sangha members, and as human beings on this planet at this moment, is to keep a lively attention on what is needed, on the potential for liberation in every situation. 

So our structures are inside out from Zen’s traditional institutions. Rather than asking people to train for a particular role, for example, we ask them to investigate what their role is, how it keeps unfolding, and how it connects with others. Rather than providing a lot of formal ritual, we keep forms, rituals, and ceremonies simple and heartfelt. In this way, they can be most meaningful in their appropriate function: to make the personal transformations public and shared. The life of the sangha becomes not an organization itself, but a way of attending to our whole life, with nothing left out, nothing dismissed. In the monastery, this is rather easy: the monastic schedule, architectures, forms, and practices all determine what is attended to, how activity is coordinated. What we are asking is far, far more difficult. Can we create, together, a fresh kind of institution that reflects and supports both the ancient teachings for waking up and growing up, and contemporary lives in an explosively changing environment? In order to thrive in a time of vast change, such an institution or community needs to be a healthy living system, as Dan Siegel described it with his acronym FACES. It needs to be:

Flexible: Not rigid in forms or procedures or social structures

Adaptive: Able to change in ways needed to meet changing conditions well

Coherent: Siegel describes this as the kind of integration that includes both differentiation and connection: the merging of difference and unity. Is there a sense of wholeness?

Energized: Alive, active, productive, creative, motivated, applied

Stable: Able to maintain itself in the face of a constantly changing environment; able to “right” itself when it gets off course or off balance.

Can we do this together? I don’t think this is a question that can be answered definitively. We have been doing this together, and the ongoing inquiry is how we continue to do this together. There is no end point. But in the process we are describing a new form of institution, an institution that is truly transformational, not only for the people who participate in it, but for the evolution of Zen in the west. It is an institution that is genuinely responsive to this moment with all of its change and disruptions, and expressive of the fresh, immediate Buddha dharma. We are not the only people working on the frontiers of this particular experiment. So we are in good company. The consequences will depend on our sincerity, dedication, effort, and aspiration. It is not the product of some heroic individual effort. And this is why we come together in mutual support and care, learning to be intimate, together, with all that is.