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Richard Baker (Zen teacher)

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Zentatsu
Richard Baker
TitleZen Master
Personal life
Born
Richard Dudley Baker

(1936-03-30) March 30, 1936 (age 89)
Biddeford, Maine, United States
NationalityAmerican
Spouse
  1. Virginia Baker
  2. Princess Marie Louise of Baden (1999–present)
ChildrenElizabeth Baker, Mrs. Jason Kibbey
Sally Baker
Sophia Baker
EducationHarvard University
University of California, Berkley[1]
Religious life
ReligionBuddhism
SchoolSōtō
LineageShunryu Suzuki
Senior posting
Based inCrestone Mountain Zen Center
Zen Buddhistisches Zentrum Schwarzwald (Johanneshof)
PredecessorShunryu Suzuki
SuccessorReb Anderson
Philip Whalen
Issan Dorsey
Dan Welch
Paul Rosenblum
Rocio Maria Hernández Pozo
Gerald Weischede
Ottmar Engel
David Beck
Christian Dillo
Nicole Baden.[2]
Websitewww.bakerroshi.com
www.dharma-sangha.de
www.dharmasangha.org

Richard Dudley Baker (born March 30, 1936) is an American Soto Zen master (or roshi), the founder of Dharma Sangha—which consists of Crestone Mountain Zen Center located in Crestone, Colorado and the Zen Buddhist Center Black Forest[3] (Zen-Buddhistisches Zentrum Schwarzwald, or, Johanneshof) in Germany's Black Forest.[4] As the American Dharma heir to Shunryu Suzuki, Baker assumed abbotship of the San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC) shortly before Suzuki's death in 1971. He remained abbot there until 1984, the year he resigned his position after it was disclosed in the previous year that he and the wife of one of SFZC's benefactors had been having an affair.[5] Despite the controversy connected with his resignation, Baker was instrumental in helping the San Francisco Zen Center to become one of the most successful Zen institutions in the United States.

Early life and education

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Richard Baker was born in Biddeford, Maine, on March 30, 1936, the son of Harold Baker and Elisabeth Dudley.[6] Because his family moved around frequently, he lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Indiana, and Pittsburgh growing up. A descendant of Thomas Dudley,[7] Baker was raised in a family of modest means, but a scholarship allowed him to attend Harvard University, where he studied architecture and history.[8] He then arrived in San Francisco, California in 1960—beginning to sit with Shunryu Suzuki in 1961.[9] Baker was ordained a Sōtō priest by Suzuki in 1966 just before the opening of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center.[10] Baker was instrumental in orchestrating the acquisition of Tassajara, raising $150,000 for the purchase in a short period of time.[4] From 1968 to 1971, he traveled to Japan to practice at the primary Sōtō monasteries there, including Antaiji, Eiheiji, and Daitokuji.[11]

Career

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San Francisco Zen Center

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San Francisco Zen Center's Page St. location

Baker received Dharma transmission from Suzuki in 1970,[4] and then was installed as abbot of San Francisco Zen Center during the "Mountain Seat Ceremony" on November 21, 1971.[10] Baker also penned the introduction to Suzuki's famous book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.[12] Within a very short period of time Baker broadened the scope of SFZC, starting first with the acquisition of Green Gulch Farm in southern Marin county, in 1972.[10]

San Francisco Zen Center expanded quickly with Baker at the helm. In fifteen years, the center's annual budget increased from $6,000, to $4 million. It acquired property worth around $20 million and built up a network of affiliated businesses staffed by Zen Center students, which included the vegetarian Greens Restaurant in Fort Mason, a bakery, and a grocery store.[5] In the midst of the growth, Baker became a popular public figure. Although his salary was reportedly modest, he lived a lifestyle which many perceived as extravagant. With so many students and so much public attention, some felt Baker became less available to the members of the community. All of this discontent emerged when it was made public that Baker had allegedly been having an affair with the wife of an influential sangha member.[5]

Resignation

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The zendo at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center

Although Baker claimed that his relationship with the woman was a love-affair which had not yet been consummated, the outcry surrounding the incident led to a series of accusations of impropriety on Baker's part, including the admissions by several female members of the community that they had had affairs with Baker before or during his tenure as abbot.[13] The community's sense of crisis sharpened when the woman's husband, one of SFZC's primary benefactors, threatened to hold the organization legally responsible for its abbot's apparent misconduct.[14]

These revelations led to community-wide pandemonium, and in 1984 Baker was forced to resign as abbot.[4] However, San Francisco Zen Center's website now comments: "Although the circumstances leading to his resignation as abbot in 1984 were difficult and complex, in recent years, there has been increased contact; a renewal of friendship and dharma relations."[15] And Baker, for his part, is quoted as having said in a 1994 interview with Sugata Schneider:

I don't think that the gossipy or official versions of what happened are right, but I feel definitely that if I were back in the situation again as the person I am now, it wouldn't have happened. Which means it's basically my fault. I had a kind of insecurity and self-importance, which I didn't see for a long time, that was a bad dynamic in the community.[9]

In 1983 Tenshin Reb Anderson received shiho (Dharma Transmission) from Richard Baker. Anderson succeeded him as abbot, and later co-abbot.[4]

In the late-1980s Baker also gave shiho to Issan Dorsey, whom he had ordained as a priest in 1975. Dorsey went on to serve as abbot of the Hartford Street Zen Center in San Francisco, where he worked to develop hospice care for AIDS patients.[16]

A once controversial figure, Richard Baker was publicly criticized for his behavior at San Francisco Zen Center. Former students have said that he was addicted to power, abusive of his position, extravagant in his personal spending, and inappropriate in his love life.[17] On the other hand, he was and continues to be appreciated for his significant contribution to the development of Buddhism within a Western cultural paradigm. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote of Baker, "To me, he embodies very much the future of Buddhism in the West with his creative intelligence and his aliveness."[18]

Dharma Sangha

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Following his departure from the San Francisco Zen Center in 1984, Baker still felt committed to continue his teacher’s lineage and to generally help establish Buddhism in the West. He relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico where he founded a new community known as Dharma Sangha. Subsequently, the educational nonprofit foundation Lindisfarne Association gave their campus in Crestone, Colorado, to Baker’s Dharma Sangha. Baker took up residence there and expanded the campus, which originally consisted of the passive solar Lindisfarne Fellows House, a so-called Founder’s House, and the dome-shaped Lindisfarne Chapel. He built a traditional Japanese Zendo with seating for several dozen practitioners, a guesthouse, and additional structures. Some of these projects were funded by Laurance Rockefeller, who had previously contributed significant donations to SFZC.[4][10]

While developing his new practice place, Crestone Mountain Zen Center, CMZC, Baker simultaneously established connections to Europe in the mid-1980s.[19] In 1983, he was first invited to speak at two conferences in Austria and Switzerland. Afterwards, he was invited to return for further conferences and asked to offer seminars, too. A group of—mostly beginning—European Zen practitioners started to gather around him. In 1989, he offered his first Sesshin, a traditional week-long Zen retreat, in Europe.[19]

For him, this marked a significant turning point in his commitment to practitioners in Europe. “As long as I was only offering seminars, I could still choose not to return the next year. But a Sesshin triggers very different kinds of processes than a weekend seminar does. It’s a substantial step towards a real teacher-student-relationship. Once you’ve done that with people, you can’t leave them alone anymore. You’ll have to continue, offer a second Sesshin, and a third and a fourth one”, he is quoted in a book about Dharma Sangha Europe.[20] So from 1989 on, he offered two week-long Sesshins per year in Germany. Between 1990 and 1996, these Sesshins were held at Haus der Stille, a renowned Buddhist retreat center near Hamburg, Germany.[21]

Several old students from his time at SFZC had followed Baker to Dharma Sangha. One of them was the poet Philip Whalen, who Baker had ordained as a priest in 1973. Whalen became tanto, head monk, of the new center in Crestone and helped Baker develop the community in Europe, too. In July 1987 Baker gave Dharma transmission to Whalen; Whalen later followed Issan Dorsey as abbot at Hartford Street Zen Center in San Francisco's Castro district.

In the late 1980s, some European Zen students who wanted to practice residentially with Baker for more than one Sesshin-week at a time, started coming to Crestone. In the mid-1990s, after the new zendo was completed, Baker began offering annual practice periods, also referred to as Ango, at Crestone: Ango is considered an intense form of Zen practice geared towards more experienced practitioners. People traditionally commit to staying on the temple grounds for the entire duration of practice period, which typically lasts for 90 days. The ability to offer Ango at Dharma Sangha was a significant step towards deeper, more dedicated practice for the community.[22]

In 1996, Dharma Sangha’s European branch acquired Johanneshof, its own residential practice center, at the edge of a village in Germany’s Black Forest region.[23] (Johanneshof was how the place had previously been called, but the old name stuck and is used to the day, unofficially.) A few sangha members moved in as permanent residents, many others came for Baker’s seminars and Sesshins, which were now mainly happening at Johanneshof. (Although he kept paying regular visits to some German and Austrian cities, where he offered seminars to local communities.) Just like at CMZC, residents at the new European center structured their daily lives according to a monastic schedule which included morning and evening zazen, shared formal meals in the traditional ōryōki style, and extensive periods of work practice, among other things.[23]

In 2012, Dharma Sangha Europe purchased three additional buildings right across the street from Johanneshof.[24] One of them, an architecture and design firm’s former office building, was repurposed as a residential building, with the ground floor being remodelled as a seminar space. Another building, previously the firm’s carpentry workshop, was remodelled as a traditional Japanese Zendo and Buddha Dharma hall—the former is exclusively used for zazen, Zen meditation, while daily service and other ceremonies are typically held in the latter. To the day, the extended campus is officially called Zen-Buddhist Center Black Forest (German: Zen-Buddhistisches Zentrum Schwarzwald, ZBZS).[24]

In 2013, Baker offered his first Ango at ZBZS, which became an annual tradition until it had to be cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.[25] In 2022, a group of longtime Zen students privately bought another neighbouring building, as a place where they could live permanently and participate in activities at ZBZS.[26] In 2024, ZBZS bought a former school in a neighbouring village, with the intention to create apartments for senior staff and (semi-)retired sangha members. Baker often emphasized that a key to the development of Western Buddhist centers was their ability to offer ways of participation even for aging residents who might not be able to fully follow the monastic schedule anymore. These latest acquisitions were considered an essential step towards realizing that very ambition at ZBZS.

With regard to the centers he himself helped develop in general, Baker often said that their specific physical shape was also shaping the way people were able to practice there. He conceived of centers and campuses as mandalas, or in other words, as relational fields in which buildings, practitioners, animals, plants, and even stones were constantly referring to each other. He often got involved in seemingly minute architectural and design details at his centers, and he acquired a significant number of historical artworks and statues for them, which he considered essential for his approach to practice.[27]

Throughout the early 2020s, Baker intensified his efforts at reconnecting with SFZC. Together with his longtime disciple and chosen successor, Tatsudo Nicole Baden Roshi, he paid several visits to SFZC, where he was received by current and former abbots.[28] In 2023, both Dharma Sangha centers joined Branching Streams, a network of practice centers in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki, which is organized through SFZC, and Branching Streams organizer Tova Green, a SFZC teacher herself, visited Baden and Baker at ZBZS.[29]

In September 2024, at the age of 88, Richard Baker officially resigned from his position as abbot of the two Dharma Sangha centers.[30] Both his resignation and Baden’s instalment as Dharma Sangha’s new abbot happened during a formal Mountain Seat Ceremony. Among the hundreds of guests who attended were SFZC’s central abbot, David Zimmerman, and several former abbots or senior teachers such as Fu Schroder, Norman and Kathie Fischer, Tova Green, and Victoria Austin. Some of them have known Baker since the 1960s or 70s and personally lived through the crisis of 1983. Their attendance at the ceremony was perceived as a significant expression of healing and reconciliation.[31] Other guests included Shunryu Suzuki’s son and grandson, Hoitsu and Shungo Suzuki, who are both Zen teachers, too.

Over the course of his life, Richard Baker has given dharma transmission in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki to eleven disciples, thus authorizing them as independent teachers. They are: Reb Anderson, Issan Dorsey, Philip Whalen, Dan Welch, Paul Rosenblum, Rocio Maria Hernández Pozo, Gerald Weischede, Ottmar Engel, David Beck, Christian Dillo, and Nicole Baden.[32]

Baker continues to teach at both Dharma Sangha centers. He offers a free weekly dharma lecture on Sundays, which is broadcast online.[33] In recent years, he also took up the practice of writing poetry, and he occasionally reads at public events, for example in Berlin.[34]

Personal life

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On September 25, 1999, in Salem, Baker married Marie Louise, daughter of Maximilian, Margrave of Baden, and grandniece of Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. They have a daughter, born in Alamosa, Colorado, on March 10, 2001.[6] He has two daughters from a prior marriage to Virginia Baker.[35]

Collected works

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Books

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  • Baker, Richard (1999). Original Mind: The Practice of Zen in the West. London: Thorsons. ISBN 1-85538-221-0. OCLC 60190068.

Audio

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See also

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References

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Citations

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  1. ^ https://www.bakerroshi.com/about
  2. ^ https://www.cuke.com/Cucumber-Project/baker/baker-richard.htm
  3. ^ Kotler (1996), p. 254.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Ford (2006), pp. 124–128.
  5. ^ a b c Coleman (2002), pp. 167–168.
  6. ^ a b Eilers (2004), p. 47.
  7. ^ Tworkov (1989), p. 208.
  8. ^ https://www.bakerroshi.com/about
  9. ^ a b Schneider (1994).
  10. ^ a b c d Prebish (1999), pp. 14–15.
  11. ^ "Richard Baker-roshi". Crestone Mountain Zen Center. Archived from the original on 2008-03-05.
  12. ^ Azara (2002), p. 33.
  13. ^ Schneider (1993), pp. 138–140.
  14. ^ Crews (2006), pp. 283–284.
  15. ^ "Lineage". San Francisco Zen Center.
  16. ^ Schneider (1993), pp. 113, 162, 170.
  17. ^ Boucher, Sandy. Turning the Wheel. p. 250.[full citation needed]
  18. ^ Schneider (1993), pp. 145–146.
  19. ^ a b Borrée (2023), pp. 19–38.
  20. ^ Borrée (2023), p. 29.
  21. ^ Borrée (2023), p. 32.
  22. ^ Borrée (2023), p. 37.
  23. ^ a b Borrée (2023), pp. 39–54.
  24. ^ a b Borrée (2023), pp. 67–90.
  25. ^ Borrée (2023), p. 79.
  26. ^ https://www.dharma-sangha.de/neuigkeit/neuigkeiten-aus-dem-lindenweg-jetzt-sind-wir-da
  27. ^ Borrée (2023), p. 83.
  28. ^ https://blogs.sfzc.org/blog/2025/05/02/how-to-inhabit-a-life-an-interview-with-tatsudo-nicole-baden/
  29. ^ https://branchingstreams.sfzc.org/2024/12/
  30. ^ https://www.dharma-sangha.de/uber-uns/lehrende
  31. ^ https://branchingstreams.sfzc.org/2024/09/18/newsette-9-18-2024/
  32. ^ https://www.cuke.com/Cucumber-Project/baker/baker-richard.htm
  33. ^ https://weekly-zen.bakerroshi.com/
  34. ^ https://www.akazienzendo.de/en/guest
  35. ^ Pogash, Carol (July 31, 2005). "Jason Kibbey and Elizabeth Baker". The New York Times.

Works cited

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Further reading

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