Victoria Austin is a Soto Zen Buddhist priest in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. She has practiced for forty years mostly at San Francisco Zen Center and Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. She has also taught Iyengar yoga for more than 25 years.
In our conversation, Victoria and I discuss how the Soto Zen tradition Suzuki Roshi transplanted from Japan took root in fresh ways in the United States. In particular, Victoria speaks of an emphasis on everyday life as the field of practice, of lay people moving from a supportive to a creative, participative role, the rise of women leaders, and the development of more communal structures of leadership. We also talk about the emergence of San Francisco Zen Center’s unique constellation of City Center, an urban, residential meditation center; Green Gulch, a rural farm for families and others; and Tassajara, a more traditional monastery in the remote Ventana Wilderness, inland from the Big Sur coast, which opens to guests during the summer months.
Several features of this conversation I find worth highlighting, especially in light of previous interviews. San Francisco Zen Center represents a unique translation of a monastic tradition that exhibits great flexibility, while retaining ancient practice and teaching forms. To my mind, this illustrates a wonderful “middle way” between what I see as the institutional inertia of classic Christian monasticism, and the relative lack of continuity or rootedness among communities identified, for instance, with the fledgling New Monasticism movement.
The integration of lay and ordained, monastic and householder, and the flexible permutations among these categories, along with the fluid variety of practice and lifestyle options the three Centers foster, provide a striking example for Christians seeking new forms for an emerging “new monasticism.” This model comes very close to the “concentric circles” concept for monastic communities Bruno Barnhart and I began to explore. Furthermore, this model also provides cues to what cultural and institutional support for lay intentionality (an intensity of commitment and participation analogous to that of monastic orders) might look like, which Ivan Kauffman insists Christian churches urgently need to develop.
Into/Outro music “He Prabhu” by Fr. Cyprian Consiglio, OSB Cam., and John Pennington, from Compassionate and Wise (street ambiance provided by local afternoon traffic, corner of Page and Laguna.
Dear Julian, My computer will not play the interview, but I enjoy reading the text and seeing the beautiful photos, and following your journey!
In October I was ordained into the Order of Interbeing – one of the concentric circles in my tradition! Love and best wishes. Laurene
Oh, too bad! Should be the same as previous interviews. You can try iTunes. Congratulations on your ordination!
Julian, can you unpack what you mean by institutional inertia vs flexibility?
My prof, a Dominican, suggests some monastic structures are so ‘institutionalized’ as to no longer be described as ‘intentional.’ But, are these terms not contradictory? In other words, when does a monastic institution stop being intentional?
Good question. This is emerging as a recurring theme in my interviews and reflections, one that I’ll no doubt continue to unpack for the duration of the journey. There is a paradox here, because at its best the monastic tradition attests to the creative function of enduring rules, boundaries, and limitations, which I associate with “institutionalization,” manifested in social, juridical, and physical structures. When I say “inertia,” however, I am referring to the tendency of institutions to seek their own perpetuation, of becoming ends in themselves rather than the means of enhancing the possibilities of intentional, creative living. This tendency toward self-perpetuation obviously has its psychological correlate, in terms of people’s mental-emotional investment in those structures. Abstractly, then, a monastic institution ceases to be intentional when the elements thereof cease to be understood as simply helpful means. I think Merton coined the term “juridical contemplatives” to describe those in monasteries who are convinced that merely by going through the motions of the daily round they are or are becoming true contemplatives. Hence, to such people, the structures themselves are invested with sacred value; hence, change is threatening. Obviously, this psychological inertia takes place on many levels and in many contexts.
What I find illuminating here is in how Buddhist communities in the West have weathered the cultural and geographical translation. The San Francisco Zen Center is an excellent example of a tradition, in some sense, returning to its inspirational roots to create something new from the old; that is, the root intention finds new structures (institutionalization) to suit the new context. This has largely been a matter of trial and error. For instance, when a crisis of leadership erupted in the 80s, the community developed a more communal form of governance suitable to the Western mindset. The patriarchal Japanese form just didn’t translate. Another example is from the Korean-American Kwan Um Zen School. The first or one of the first people to receive transmission from the Korean Zen Master was a woman openly partnered with another woman. Think about that: every Buddhist tradition traces its lineage, from teacher to student down through the centuries, to the historical Buddha. Never before in this lineage had there been a woman, much less an actively homosexual person, authenticated to carry the tradition forward! Regardless of what one may think of this development, it witnesses to an astounding flexibility within an ancient tradition as it encounters new cultural situations.
On the one hand, I don’t see anything approximating this level of flexibility in the Roman Catholic monastic tradition, for better or worse. And I think largely because of this fact, Bruno Barnhart, in our interview, suggests that a certain staleness has set into monastic life today, ironically at the very moment that non-monastics are coming in droves to learn from monks and nuns. On the other hand, regarding neo-monastic movements like the New Monasticism, there just isn’t as yet a strong enough historical and institutional foundation to warrant being considered a tradition in its own right. Those structures aren’t in place to foster, in an enduring way, the originating intention. They’re certainly developing, but it’s too early to say to what end.
This is why I grow more and more convinced of Ivan Kauffman’s assertion that BOTH “old” and “new” monastics would do well to engage in formal, structured dialog for their mutual enrichment and growth. Out of that may arise a better balance between spontaneity and institution, flexibility and structure.
Obviously, much more can be said on the topic, but this is my rudimentary stab at it for now.