Tricycle | Awake in the World

In 1983 there were seven American Zen teachers who had received teaching authority from their Japanese teachers and, at that point, had established independent centers. Today, no selection of seven teachers would represent all the expressions of Japanese-derived Zen in the United States. Some teachers have broken off long-term apprenticeships with their own teachers whose ethical behavior became too problematic for them to support; cut off from the face-to-face intimacy considered critical to the traditional ideal of transmission, they subsequently sought accreditation from other teachers, who, in certain cases, were outside their own lineages. On the one hand, teachers with proper credentials have been publicly criticized for having sex with students.