Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center by Michael Downing

reviewed by Frederick C. Crews in the New York Review of Books. An essay on the downfall of Richard Baker-Roshi, which was a personal disillusionment for me as well as an entire community.

‘Every school of Buddhism aims at the same characterological goals: self-insight, serene detachment from impermanent objects of desire, apprehension of the underlying unity of all things, compassion toward suffering, reaching out to the needy, and sangha, or a loving community of the faithful. In this light Richard Baker presented a disturbingly anomalous model for his flock. He maintained three residences, spent large sums from the general coffers on remodeling, surrounded himself with unpaid student clerks and servants, collected exquisite and expensive works of religious art, traveled widely, and kept company with millionaires and celebrities whose interest in Buddhism was casual at best. His abbacy, Gary Snyder told Downing in disgust, had turned into “an imperial presidency…. He had become the Dick Nixon of Zen.” ‘ [thanks, David]