I have been told that I might be booted out of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association just for writing this (an organization, by the way, that has never even kicked out a priest for sexual abuse or other improprieties toward students.) There may be pressure on moderators from influential SZBA members to have these posts taken down, or they may suddenly disappear. Some will say that we should not say bad things publicly, or that we should be 'beyond' all this, or that it is just a matter of 'Tradition' and thus cannot be challenged. Still others will say, "who cares about the SZBA?" I disagree, will take the risk, because good people are being hurt, turned away, denied recognition of what they are, discriminated against.
The fact is that sincere people who would make excellent Soto Zen priests are facing closed doors because the SZBA refuses to recognize them as priests simply because they are physically or otherwise unable to meet the demands of in person, physically demanding residential priest training that the SZBA continues to insist upon year after year. It is not just the SZBA, but most or all of our major monastic training centers in America, Europe and Japan.
Some will point to a few wheelchair ramps, added railings or small adjustments and loosenings of training schedules in defense: However, I am speaking of individuals, some fully confined to bed or to home, with fragile and dangerous conditions, in need of nursing care or constant treatment, people who otherwise would risk serious injury if attempting residential training. Nonetheless, these are people having the calling to be good and dedicated priests while truly understanding the impermanence of the body and the meaning of suffering.
The SZBA is an organization which prides itself on how supposedly "woke" it is with regard to racism, social injustice and discrimination, regularly advertising such fact, and yet it continues to look the other way to its own discriminatory behavior. It studies minor adjustments, a few cut corners and small accommodations to its training standards, nothing more, pleading that it be given time, that some things cannot change or that things change only slowly. It points to some of its members who have degrees or kinds of disability which allowed them the demanded training as an excuse for its exclusion of disabled individuals who simply cannot.
Well, now is the time, and for many individuals (some already ordained and excellent priests, but whom the SZBA would refuse to recognize because their disabilities and other conditions required alternative means of training) it is time to push back. I and others will speak up about this tragedy in the coming weeks and months until this injustice, which has continued for decades, even for centuries in Zen Buddhism, is left behind in history, even if the threatened hammer of the organization comes down on some of us.
It is time to open the doors to such individuals who do not meet the "standard" definition of what is a Soto Zen Priest.
Gassho, Jundo
SatTodayLAH
Sorry to run long.
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