My latest essay in my ongoing push with the SZBA ...
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ANGO, AGEISM AND THE SZBA
Richard Jindo Shokai Maxwell is not a famous priest. In fact, it was only after decades as a funeral director, a lifetime raising a family, after children and grandchildren, that Shokai discovered Buddhism and, eventually, a calling to Zen priesthood late in life. Before that, Shokai devoted himself to a long career in Canada tending to the dead with respect, facing daily what most of us avoid, while helping bereaved survivors through their greatest time of grief and vulnerability, Toward the end of his career, Shokai found himself presented with an opportunity to work and teach embalming in Japan of all places, at a funeral home near Hiroshima, where he dove deeply into the world of Japanese Buddhism and mortuary traditions.
Although surprisingly positive, cheerful and vibrant for someone in such a field, he has witnessed unspeakable tragedies through the years, not only professionally but personally. He lost people in his own family. Following his Ordination as a novice priest at the age of 78(!), in 2014, his wife developed terminal cancer, which he nursed her through, right until the end. Since that time, he has been gifted with a new partner in life, a woman who is also elderly and who happens to be totally blind with progressive mobility issues. Shokai serves as her eyes and legs. He himself has had (and has) skin cancer, eye, leg, nerve, and heart disease, as well as serious dental issues. He toughs on.
Despite all that, Shokai found the time to train in Zen, to devote himself to being a good priest, receiving Dharma Transmission from me in 2017. Today, beloved by a small group of Zen students in the town of Sarnia, Ontario, Canada, Shokai overseas a little Sangha which meets at the Japanese Garden in Germain Park. The group made it through Covid. He gives Jukai now and then. His reputation is excellent, his Zazen strong, his Zen guidance honest and good. He remains a warm and wise voice within our Treeleaf Sangha, consistently insightful and helpful on issues of maturing, aging, loss, grief, serious illness and life in general.
The one thing that he has not been able to do, however, given his advanced age and poor health (not to mention his daily nursing of other sick individuals around him), is to join in an “Ango” or other similar long term, residential Zen priest training period. His training was primarily at a distance, reading and sitting and meeting with his teacher daily for several years by video, voice and word, seeing and meeting his teacher and his fellow practitioners face-to-face by modern media in our primarily online Sangha, mixed with the sometime personal meeting. His training was at the front lines of life, bringing Buddhist practice to bear in nursing his late wife through terrible illness and his visually impaired partner now. He calls it the “Ango of life and death.” It was enough, and his quality as a priest is obvious by who he has become. Just ask the other Zen folks who know and love him, and who benefit from his presence, both in our Treeleaf Sangha and in Germain Park. This man, during over eight decades of life, has experienced the hardships of life’s “monastery of hard knocks,” and has come out its gates with a heart full of wisdom and compassion.
So, in response to several recent posts and essays by me calling out the Soto Zen Buddhism Association (SZBA) for age, disability and other discrimination due to their insistence on residential training programs for all their members, the administrators of the SZBA responded to me by self-heralding, to the contrary, the “wokeness” at the SZBA, their goodness, their progressive views, their handful of minority and disabled members, that they are not the kind of folks to discriminate. So, I got Shokai to submit an application to be a full member there, to see if things had changed.
Alas, that’s where reality set in.
There is a Japanese trick of not refusing someone’s membership or application by not really accepting it in the first place. “Processing” and consideration drag on and on, and “no” is never uttered, but neither is “yes,” because consultations and red tape, additional considerations and hoops suddenly present themselves. Just this past week, Shokai was informed by Acting President Ben Connelly of the SZBA that, while the organization “aspires” to process applications in about two months, it can take several months, and might take a year in some cases. The application procedure is complex, and they apologize for any frustration. It is just typical, how things are. Ben explains that “the SZBA has never received a membership application which came with requests for disability accommodations. Our membership committee is not experienced in this field, so we have formed an ad hoc committee to provide disability accommodation recommendations to the membership committee. This probably will add a few weeks to the process. We were in the process of forming an ongoing committee to handle disability accommodation requests when we got Shokai's application but that ongoing committee is not yet in place.”
You are darn right that they have no experience with disability accommodations! That's because prior folks were simply chased away at the door. Well, it is time that they get experienced!
I will continue to report here from time to time on what transpires with Shokai’s application, and whether wisdom and compassion triumph in the end. I sure hope that they do the right thing, not only for Shokai, but for many others like him who are sure to follow. So far, I hear rumors that some hardliners in the SZBA are firmly pushing back against any changes to the requirements of Ango and residency for the simple reason that, because they themselves managed it, because they themselves had the time, wealth and health to do it, and because some disabled individuals manage to manage it, that road must be the unique path for everyone, and thus -all- disabled individuals must somehow manage it. After all, they say, not everyone need be a priest! On the other hand, the liberals in the group continue to profess how “woke” they are in wishing to open the doors of the organization to good priests who are disadvantaged. We shall see.
In the meantime, Shokai turned 85 years old just this week, on April 9th, the day following the traditional Buddha’s Birth celebration in Japan. Unfortunately, Shokai and his lady also received a positive Covid diagnosis this week too. Fully vaxed, they are toughing that out like the rest of life.
Let us hope that the SZBA does the right thing soon, for sweet Shokai and so many others like him.
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Originally Posted by Naiko
I would assume our European monks would try to join this particular association, rather than the very exclusive, fancy American one 
Sat Today
