Practicing Safe Zen

The book was released in June 2025, and is can be purchased from Indiepubs and other booksellers. With the publisher’s permission, I’ve reproduced (most of) the introduction below. I hope you will be inspired to read the rest!

Introduction

Perhaps you have only heard Zen mentioned or read a bit about Zen or Buddhist or other Eastern philosophies…Or perhaps you’ve been leaning towards trying Zen or another Eastern spiritual practice. From what you’ve learned from reading, listening to podcasts, or watching videos, it sounds great. But so far you have only meditated at home. You are thinking about trying to find a sangha (community) or teacher, but don’t know where to start…

Long-time practitioners also seek answers. But having more experience, we tend to be mystified about other things. Are my opening (awakening) experiences authentic? How can I know when I am acting from self-centeredness, as contrasted to enacting universal Buddha nature? We may hear about a spiritual teacher who abused power and are deeply bewildered about how someone so “enlightened” could have gone so badly off course.

Perhaps you are a spiritual teacher who thinks you already know all that you need to know. To the extent that any of us (including me) take a know-it-all attitude, we are a danger to our students.

            Welcome to this book. It’s for you.

What We Do (and Don’t) Talk About

Hundreds if not more books, articles, and websites have been published about the benefits, power, practice, philosophy, and history of Zen practice. This is somewhat amusing, since it is a core principle of Zen that the most important things can’t be communicated in words! Silence is an integral part of the practice. The basic instructions are:

            Sit down.
            Shut up.
            Pay attention.

Yet these are really hard for most of us to follow, so some instruction is a good thing. Combining a practice of silence with guidance by words and example can be transformative. The liberation Zen promises is a real thing.

Yet precisely because Zen is a powerful practice for liberation, there are also dangers involved. A whole lot fewer publications deal with these.

 Let me suggest that you will save yourself (and probably others) a lot of time, trouble, and anguish if you learn about these neglected or silenced topics! This book is my attempt to give you the truth and the whole truth, at least as I understand it after years of practice and hard knocks. It includes not only how to (and why to) practice Zen, but also how not to. It covers what I really wish I’d learned as a student. This book may not be #1 on your Zen reading list, but I recommend that it be #2. And it includes what I believe was sorely missing in my initial training to become a spiritual teacher.

Some of these dangers come from meditation itself. Others arise from misunderstandings. Many arise when our old habit energies, including our desires to get approval and avoid unpleasantness, hijack Zen teachings towards self-serving purposes. No practitioner, from the beginner to the most experienced and esteemed senior teacher, can entirely avoid these dangers. That’s not because we are bad people. It’s because we are human beings.

Practicing Safe Zen

Odd things happen to you when you venture away from the familiar. Sitting as upright as possible, and still, is a physical practice. Strange sensations may arise, as well as pain, and possibly physical damage. So there are physical risks.

Not able to converse or look at our cell phones or bury ourselves in activity, our mental and emotional worlds shift as well. This is meant to be, and often is, liberating. But it’s also possible for the practice to invite in emotional damage if we are overloaded with incessant negative thoughts or overwhelming feelings.

Even if you find the physical and emotional dangers in individual practice manageable, there are further dangers. Every group has leaders and histories, and even the most innocuous meditation workshop, mindfulness group, or yoga retreat can have unsavory ones. Many of the cautions in this book could apply to any such group.

But Zen and related spiritual practices go beyond mere meditation or mindfulness. These practices are deliberately destabilizing, at a very deep level. We are led to question all our beliefs, including our fundamental belief about who we are. When this process goes well, we discover who we really are. We discover “just this.” We start to experience living at a level of presence and embodiment that we couldn’t even have imagined before. We fully enter our own lives. This process is life-long, as old knots of habits and karma slowly loosen.

And the central teaching of “no-self” presents profound risks. When the process doesn’t go well, we may stay simply destabilized. Or we may build back a new identity around false ideas and distorted beliefs. There are so many ways “no self” can be misunderstood! Does “no-self” mean you never get angry? Does “no-self” mean you dedicate yourself to serving your teacher and community? Is achieving the realization of “no-self” a once-and-for-ever state of Enlightenment? Is that what makes someone a Zen “master”? If we believe such things, I believe we misunderstand Zen. We are at high risk for suffering harm. Even worse, we may do harm.

A safe place to practice, where we can share our wisdom and open our hearts to transformation, is vital to Zen practice. Skilled and healthy spiritual guidance can be very helpful for keeping our practice on track. In the best-case scenario, a healthy sangha (community) and a trustworthy teacher will provide the companionship, guardrails, and guidance that is needed. If those are for some reason not available to you right now, this book, I hope, will give you some helpful advice about what to do with some of your personal experiences. If you are looking for a sangha or teacher, I hope it will help you in your search for a reasonably sound one, whether online or in person.

 Tragically, however, teachers and sanghas are, in my personal experience with Zen, too often neither trustworthy nor healthy. They can be dangerous. I’ve seen a tendency to neglect the possibility of emotional damage. Even worse, I have witnessed three major crises perpetrated by abuse of power by authorized, and often widely respected, Zen teachers. What I will call Betrayal #1 in the chapters which follow involved emotional and financial abuses. Betrayal #2 involved emotional and sexual misconduct, followed by additional emotional damage. Betrayal #3 broke commitments yet again. All threatened to chip away at my spirit, and the spirits of other targets and witnesses. If you know anything about the history of Buddhist sanghas or of guru-led communities (or glance at chapter 5), you know that my experience is far from unique. Too often, instead of helping students, teachers have helped themselves to students. Sexual misconduct, corrupt financial practices, bullying, and other abuses of power by teachers happen far, far too frequently.

And the offenders usually get away with it. This is often because it’s simply assumed that authorized, lineage-transmitted teachers know best. Or those around the offender may come to believe that staying close to the teacher or protecting the institutions of Zen from scandal is more important than protecting vulnerable students. They refuse to listen to complaints of harm. Or they pretend to listen, but then dismiss. They often turn on the student victim(s), claiming that they are liars, or unbalanced, or that they are just troublemakers who like to create conflict and drama. The direct victims usually end up leaving the community—and perhaps leaving Zen and spiritual practice altogether. Those who witnessed the harm may also leave. Meanwhile, the abusive authorized teachers keep their power. Their personal charisma and teaching about wisdom and compassion continue to attract new students.

In the middle of Betrayal #2, I became a lineage-authorized teacher myself. As you might imagine, I have had considerable reason to investigate deeply what it means to be a teacher. What does it mean if we take seriously the heart of our Zen or other spiritual practice, which is the realization of non-duality? What does it mean to be a student? What does it mean for my home community, Greater Boston Zen Center? What does it mean for Zen on a larger scale?

My hope is that this book will help practitioners, both new and old, approach our work with open eyes as well as open hearts.

A Note on Naming and Accountability

When mentioning teachers, I have deliberately refrained from mentioning formal teaching titles. This in not out of disrespect, but because these titles often change over time and the variety across different Buddhist groups can be confusing. When I write about “teachers,” I generally mean those who are authorized to meet individually with students, since this is a practice that particularly creates vulnerability.

I will be naming some of the teachers I believe—based on personal observation or public and what I believe to be reliable documentation—have committed or minimized abuses. This is a delicate matter, so I name in the text only those teachers who are already in some sense a public figure. They have led organizations that are larger than a single sitting group and/or written books. They have brushed off previous discussions (or attempts to have private discussions) about the harmfulness of their actions. They could be of danger to people who come to them for help—although I would never presume to tell a student with whom they should or shouldn’t study. Finally, the teachers whose names I mention are well-equipped to tell their own version of events should they choose to.

Is it unkind to mention the names of some of the people who have harmed others, or taken the harms committed too lightly? Does it break the precept (Buddhist ethical teaching) of “not finding fault with others”? It’s often said that nearly every philosophy or religion encourages three values: truth, beauty, and kindness. I believe we get in trouble if we prioritize any one over the others.

I know that, as a lifelong scholar, I tend to enter through the door of seeking truth. Sometimes the truth is not particularly warm or lovely. Yet it is because I yearn for people to experience the brilliant and deep beauty of practice, rather than harm or cruel betrayal, that I write this book. Kindness that is one-size-fits-all, and too “nice” to speak truth to power, is terribly unkind to those who have been harmed by power’s misuse. A purely poetic and aesthetic approach to practice is similarly ill-equipped.

So I am writing in accord with another precept of our precepts, that which encourages us to “speak truthfully.” Calling for accountability is not the same as blaming. Blaming is defined as “finding fault with,” and is associated with condemnation. It is essentially personalized and backwards looking. Accountability, on the other hand, means accepting responsibility for one’s actions—whether one has acted directly as a perpetrator or, perhaps simply through ignorance or inertia, indirectly as an enabler. It results in apologies, restitution, and prevention. The need for accountability arises not because some individuals are bad apples, but simply because to err is human. Accountability is forward-looking and less personal. It involves not only the individual who directly caused harm but also those who are able to influence systems and structures that have failed to support ethical behavior. I am trying (as beautifully and kindly as I can manage!) to call for accountability while avoiding laying blame. I am aware that I carry within myself the seeds of every fault, failing, or weakness I point out in another. I hope that every reader will also remember that every incident I recount took place at a particular time. It’s possible that individuals or organizations may have changed between the time that I am writing the time when you are reading.

I also believe that respect is not the same as deference. Deference is “yielding to the judgment of a superior.” There will be readers who will be outraged that I, an upstart with far fewer years of study and teaching under my belt than some teachers I mention, should venture to say anything about them that is not flattering. That sort of attitude, I believe, is a big factor in the atrophying of once-vibrant traditions. In contrast, one definition of respect is having “due regard for…the wishes of others.” The teachers I mention have all vowed, many times over, to “refrain from evil,” “end delusion” and “enter every Dharma gate.” I’m appealing to them from these shared values, and to that part of themselves that made these vows sincerely. We should all welcome assistance in waking up to harm that we have caused or tolerated. Or at least (being human) we should be able to tolerate it being pointed out instead of trying to kill the messenger.

My goal is to make Zen safer. In order to do that, we need to face up to our history in the area of abuse. Otherwise, we will keep repeating it.

Overview

Part One of this book is addressed to individual practitioners. Many of these warnings would also apply to any sort of meditation practice. My hope is that being forewarned may help newcomers to develop a healthier practice. My even more sincere hope is that experienced practitioners will recognize that we all, as individuals, are never guaranteed to be past these dangers either! At the heart of Zen is a non-dualistic and dynamic understanding of self and other, form and emptiness. At the times we can truly act from this understanding, we are acting as an enlightened person, with wisdom and compassion. But doing so is hard. It is very hard. We all carry seeds of greed and hatred. All our usual ingrained habits of thought and action are based on delusions of separation and stasis. To investigate and loosen these, I will also introduce some images—one ancient and one newer—that may help us use our thinking minds (in addition to our opening experiences) to get past “one or two.”

Part Two looks at structural issues that create or perpetuate harm. Why do so many teachers and sanghas get derailed, and end up doing harm? How can teachers and other sangha leaders avoid this? Most of this section would also apply to Tibetan Buddhist sanghas and lamas, churches and congregations, yoga communities and gurus, or most any form of community spiritual practice. I write about Zen because that is what I know best. Most of this second part is also useful information for new or newish practitioners, though chapter 8 is especially directed to those with more experience.

When I started writing this book, Betrayals #1 and #2 were in the past, and I thought I was in a sangha that was progressing well in dealing with these questions. But that was before Betrayal #3. So I, and my home sangha, are still learning. I hope you, dear reader, will join me in exploring these issues, and trying to find that next step on this Way.

You can find (pre-)ordering information at https://indiepubs.com/products/practicing-safe-zen/ and at other bookseller websites.