Dirty Laundry: 100 Days in a Zen Monastery

Miriam Sagan and Robert Winson's book is a very small slice of the truth told in a crafty and interesting way through the convention of simultaneous diary entries. It's the description of 100 days in Crestone Zen Monastery in Colorado, but it is also a synopsis of how dysfunctional a group of human beings can become when they allow a sociopath zen "teacher",like Richard Baker, to run their lives. To me this is just more of the same "zen neurosis" spread by Mr. Baker and his corrupt followers put down on paper for everyone to see.I know many of the principals in this book, and their descriptions by Winson and Sagan are scarily accurate.(Sadly Robert died not a long after this 100 day retreat.) But don't fret, dear reader, you too can experience such humiliating and dehumanizing treatment...just head to your local Soto Zen Center under the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki. And not to worry. They're everywhere!

"Dirty Laundry" is a journal in two voices -- as such, it is full of the details of daily life: cooking, lovemaking, childraising, cleaning, fighting, moodiness. It's not so much a "Zen book" as it is a book about the possibility that what we do every day is worthy of reflection and learning. Robert Winson, who died in his mid-30s before the book was published, was clearly a passionate, sparky, sexy, earnest, empathetic, witty guy. . . . Reading "Dirty Laundry" makes you a little more awake to the brief life we share.

Robert Winson and Miriam Sagan writes alternating chapters in this engrossing book. Robert is going to spend 100 days in a zen monastery in New Mexico. Miriam stays at home with their daughter. This book describes vividly their lives inbetween visits and their weekend meetings at the monastery. The book also has much to say on the inner life of a monastery and on the role of the resident zen master : Richard Baker roshi. It's a relief to read autobiographical writings on zen that is not written from an academic, male, 60-ies only perspective. I've read several of them and this book beats them all! The authors were involved in Santa Fe punk-groups "The Poetry Devils" and "Bichos". Robert Winson died in 1995.