| Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center Contributor(s): Downing, Michael (Author) |
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ISBN: 1582432546 ISBN-13: 9781582432540 Publisher: Counterpoint LLC OUR PRICE: $18.00 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: August 2002 Annotation: Eastern tradition collides with Western individualism in this provocative and compulsively readable investigation of Buddhism, American-style. A genuine spiritual movement becomes strangely entangled with elitist aesthetics, the culture of celebrity, multi-million-dollar investment portfolios, sex scandals, and an unsolved crime. Told Rashomon-fashion by a singular mix of hippies, millionaires, intellectuals, and lost souls whose lives are almost unbelievably intertwined, Shoes Outside the Door is the first book to examine the inner workings of the profoundly influential San Francisco Zen Center. In exploring the history of the most important institution in American Buddhism, author Michael Downing provocatively captures the profound ambivalence of people who earnestly seek both inner peace and worldly satisfaction. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Religion | Buddhism - Zen (see Also Philosophy - Zen) - History |
| Dewey: 294.392 |
| LCCN: 2001028895 |
| Lexile Measure: 1050 |
| Physical Information: 1.1" H x 6" W x 9" (1.20 lbs) 406 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - West Coast - Geographic Orientation - California - Locality - San Francisco, California - Religious Orientation - Buddhist |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: A close-up look at the scandals that rocked the San Francisco Zen Center, a leader in alternative religious practice and the counterculture in America, and their repercussions. The remarkable forty-year history of the people who established the first Buddhist monastery outside of Asia in the history of the world has never been told. Michael Downing wondered why. I'm living proof of why you better not speak out, explained one ordained Zen priest. The degree to which I was scapegoated publicly was most effective in keeping everyone else quiet. In 1959, a Soto Zen priest took leave of his family in Japan to minister to the congregation of a Buddhist temple in San Francisco. Alan Watts and others spread the word that an authentic Zen Roshi was living there, and students, poets, drifters, and seekers began to attend his lectures. Impressed by their sincerity and commitment, Suzuki Roshi began to offer instruction in zazen (meditation) and other Buddhist practices to these devoted young spiritual pioneers. The San Francisco Zen Center was born. And then, in 1983, meltdown. A sex scandal rocked Zen Center, and it triggered tragedies and headlines about abuse of power that called into question the whole matter of alternative religious practice in America. Overnight the most prominent community of Buddhists in the West found itself at the vanguard of a cultural revolt against spiritual authority. For Shoes Outside the Door, Michael Downing spent three years studying documents and interviewing more than eighty people who were there, at ground zero. As engaging as any mystery, as mysterious as any political campaign, as political as any family gathering, this story will haunt and challenge readers as they unravel this essential chapter of American history. |