San Francisco Zen Center 's Page St. location Baker received
Dharma transmission from Suzuki in 1970, 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. 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. 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."
Dharma Sangha 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. 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. 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. 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.
Resignation, Reconciliation and Legacy In September 2024, at the age of 88, Richard Baker officially resigned from his position as abbot of the two Dharma Sangha centers. 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. Other guests included Shunryu Suzuki’s son and grandson, Hoitsu and Shungo Suzuki, who are both Zen teachers, too. In a panel discussion during the event, David Chadwick, a Zen priest and Shunryu Suzuki's biographer, described Baker's impact and significance with these words: „Many people have been important in my life. Who I am now is the result of all the people I’ve known and interacted with. But there’s only two people that, if you take them out of the equation, I wouldn’t be here. And actually none of you would be either. And that is, of course, Shunryu Suzuki and Richard Baker Roshi.“ 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. Baker continues to teach at both Dharma Sangha centers. He offers a free weekly dharma lecture on Sundays, which is broadcast online. In recent years, he also took up the practice of writing poetry, and he occasionally reads at public events, for example in Berlin.
Core Concerns and Teachings Although Richard Baker’s approach to teaching has significantly evolved over the past six decades, many of his core teachings and concerns have remained the same. According to him, Buddhism provides an alternative way of viewing and being in the world—one that can be truly transformative both for the individual and on a societal level. As such, he considers the Buddhist worldview to be much more wholesome and conducive to sanity than the conventional Western worldview, which he perceives as delusional in many ways.
Establishing (Zen-)Buddhist Practice in the West Since the 1960s, Baker’s core concern has been the establishment of (Zen-)Buddhist practice in the West. Baker believes that the essence of Zen as he has received it from his Japanese teachers can be authentically transmitted within
Western culture. However, such a transmission can only work when the specific forms of practice are adapted for people who have been socialized in a Western cultural framework. Zen students work as kitchen staff, in housekeeping, guest management, and other roles, and this is considered a key part of their
spiritual practice. Baker first implemented such a model with Suzuki Roshi, his teacher, in the 1960s at SFZC’s Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. Today it is widely used by many Buddhist retreat centers around the world. Another way in which Baker adapted Zen teachings to the needs of Western students is his teaching style. The traditional Japanese approach to teaching Zen emphasizes close observation and careful imitation of the teacher by the student. This usually happens in a monastic setting where teacher and student live and practice together for many years. At SFZC, Baker still taught for a larger monastic or residential community, which allowed him to rely on the traditional model of implicit teaching. But at his new community, Dharma Sangha, most students have their own homes, from which they occasionally travel to meet Baker or another teacher for shorter periods of shared practice. These days, Baker feels he needs to teach much more explicitly, meaning he will often explain and spell out how certain Zen rituals and concepts work. However, this style of teaching presupposes the existence of words that can describe such concepts and ideas. Baker points out that English and other Western languages do not actually have words for many basic Buddhist or Asian cultural concepts and experiences, which he considers fundamental for Zen practice. According to him, many words that are generally used to describe Zen or Buddhist practice carry inappropriate Western or Christian connotations. Consequently, he considers it essential for the establishment of Buddhist practice in the West to develop a new dharma vocabulary—or “dharmacabulary”, as he likes to call it. In recent years, his creative efforts at doing just that have become a signature feature of his talks. Ultimately, these newly created terms are supposed to create new possibilities of thinking and speaking about practice.
Fundamentals of a Zen-Buddhist/Yogic World View Baker emphasizes that Zen-Buddhism is based on a Yogic worldview, which becomes practicable and liveable through Zen. According to him, the core assumptions of Yogic cultures differ from those of Western cultures in fundamental ways. In his teachings he usually refrains from statements about the accuracy or truth of either cultural paradigm. Instead, he encourages his students to—at least temporarily—adopt key assumptions from the Yogic paradigm and observe whether that changes their way of being in the world towards a more wholesome orientation. These key assumptions or differentiations include: •
Awareness versus Consciousness: Baker uses the term consciousness to describe an uninterrupted continuity or stream of conceptualized experience, as assumed in Western culture (see above). Whatever arises in consciousness does so in response to what has previously been in consciousness. As such, it follows specific personal or reactive patterns, which are conditioned and have a narrow focus. Awareness, on the other hand, is used to describe an open, free, and field-like quality of experience, in which truly spontaneous and original impulses can emerge. •
Construction of Reality and Identity: Baker uses the above distinctions to demonstrate that reality and identity are always constructed from a so-called internality – which is projected as an externality on the cultural board. Human beings have a choice as to how, and in reference to what, this construction occurs. In the Western cultural paradigm, the construction of identity is usually shaped by individual biographical events, and people are not aware of the possibility to participate in said construction, which can lead to the creation and persistence of immense suffering. The Yogic cultural paradigm on the other hand makes it obvious that a being can actively participate in the construction of identity and reality. According to Baker, Zen practice suggests to use the ideal of a Bodhisattva—a being who is committed to the liberation of all beings—as a model or reference point for constructing one’s identity. That, he says, leads to sanity and the cessation of suffering. ==Personal life==