Lobbying and Pressure Department

2008 items about which to lobby the SFZC - pardon the repitition

Make suggestions on what should be and could be done with the Shunryu Suzuki lecture archive. Such a report would include suggestions such as:

Above all preserve the Shunryu Suzuki lecture archive in its original form. Suggest work be done on this now while deciding about other things.

Make this archive open and available for study in various forms.

Find unincluded and lost lectures and include in archive.

Encourage more Light Edits and deeper edits. Suggest not to waste time and stall this by trying to limit who can do this or how they do it. Heretical versions can be so identified. It is ultimately futile to try to control this body of work any more.

Suggest SFZC can have its official versions but, as with the Bible, not try to control access or work by others. Suggest using Dr. Lew Lancaster's approach to make archive freely available and to try to make money only on consumer products such as books and edited videos and sound tapes.

Survey condition and completeness of Shunryu Suzuki lecture archive.
Review location and number and quality of copies
Digitalize the whole thing.
Archive the hardware and software as well and continue to transfer into new formats.
Multiple copies of archive in various formats and locations such as distributed among Suzuki lineage practice centers.
Include in Dark Storage for preservation into future.
Hard copies - paper, metal, stone.

Update listing of lectures and versions - verbatim, edited

Latitude and longitude files for inclusion in archives that will help to assure the survival of this material.

Develop Suzuki lecture archives to be more open to students, scholars, and interested individuals.

Designate verbatim, raw, and light edit lectures as not for profit, free to the public - with books and other edited and produced products made from the archive sold for profit.

Confer with outside advisors on the ethical norms and expectations in this area. (Lew Lancaster, Huston Smith, Robert Bella, Joanna Macy, Steve Tipton, Taigen Dan Leighton, Shohaku Okamura, Hoitsu Suzuki etc)

Confer with archiving experts.

Have a person whose primary responsibility is the Shunryu Suzuki Archives periodically reporting to the board on their condition. Always have an eye on them.

Encourage board to issue a statement acknowledging its grave and never-ending responsibility and duty to make sure that Shunryu Suzuki's lectures and other physical properties directly related to him are properly archived, preserved, and made available to the public. Make sure that this understanding is passed on to future board members. Bring the Elders in on this.

Encourage SFZC to archive photos. Now.

And film and video - get that stuff digitalized. It's precious.

This project concentrates only on the Suzuki archive but encourages the SFZC and related centers to do the same for Dainin Katagiri's lectures and other abbots, teachers, and speakers.

Encourage SFZC to put more resources toward an alumni office, paying attention to aging, isolated, ill, grieving, troubled alumni. See Zen Aluminati.

Encourage the creation of a position of SFZC Ombudsman with authority to keep track of all SFZC decisions, programs, commitments, practices, and so forth with an eye to remembering relationships and agreements and protecting individuals against institutional abuse, a sort of public defender. This person, appointed by and answerable only to the board of directors (or to the elders or a combination of them?), could also function as an Alumni Advocate to balance the influence of the Development (fundraising) Department in its handling of alumni activities. The ombudsman's office could have a sign that read, "Complaint Department." They could be available to do tasks as simple as to help facilitate inquiries from outsiders that went unanswered. Not that there's anything so terrible happening at the ZC but people who work for organizations tend to get busy and to lean heavily on the side of the institution against the individual. And with the turnover of staff, no conscience is passed on so problems can be seen as the fault of people who are no longer there. This includes priests who, like other staff, tend to become docile and not want to cause trouble. Priests have traditionally been used by organizations from tiny churches to nations to justify and rationalize their policies from bake sales to genocide. An ombudsman could add a bit of balance and help to minimize genocide.