NOTE FROM JUNDO: I SPLIT THIS AS A SEPARATE THREAD TOPIC AS IT IS SO IMPORTANT

I'm not sure what the confession zone would be all about, but I certainly would love to watch the airing of grievances "bottled up" among Nishijima's heirs. What are we talking about? The causes that Mr. Cross drowned in the deep end? Any other cases of "questionable realization"?

This is important to me because for a long time I struggled (aka, more than "just sitting") with the stories of Yasutani's sick nationalism, Katagiri's affairs, Dick Baker's sick everything, Trungpa's "crazy wisdom", Maezumi's booze enlightenment, etc. This was, in my early practice, the hardest thing to come to terms with. And then eventually I came to apreciate all those that have smeared Buddhism because

a) they showed me that "zen masters" (whatever that means) are dudes no less human than my own ass, and that seeing any authority/mystical quality/ paternal figure/ role model feature in them is just a deluded attempt on my part to delegate my responsibility to them

b) they helped me better understand the purely administrative, worldly meaning of Dharma Transmission (talk about emptiness!)

c) they got themselves out of the way so that we could look more directly at the teachings

d) a long etc of subtleties

It seems to me that most of us are westerners, and just as buddhism had to incorporate a lot of bovine feces in every culture where it thrived, it is thriving as we speak in an environment where secrecy is a sign of shady character and dubious moral background.

Unless knowing painful truths hurts our personal delusions, I think most of us like to see Zen and Buddhism in general in exactly the same light that we try to see everything else in the world: "as it is"

Now if the confession zone is about venting, remorse and whining, I'll pass. Repentance as taught by Uchiyama is as far as yours truly will go.

Gassho