Then he does the opposite.
He still is teaching and the sangha he ran - Kanzeon Zen Center - is selling its buildings because Merzel says the Center owes him money, lots of money:
The really funny part is that he says the 66 Zen leaders who want him to abide by his word are making Buddhism look bad.Kanzeon, Merzel said, owes Big Mind about $165,000 and Merzel himself $200,000 to $300,000. Those debts would need to be repaid, he said, and the buildings purchased by any group wanting to continue the Zen center.
“I’ve asked the [Kanzeon] board to ask the community of people still with us what they want,” Merzel said. “It seems to me … that if they want those buildings, then they have to come up with the finances for it.”
One option, he said, is to rename Kanzeon “Big Heart Center” and focus it on Big Mind.
Seriously? The person who looks pathetic here is Merzel - for claiming he slept with students because it's lonely being at the top (poor, poor rich man with a loving family that you betrayed - your life must suck with all that money and adulation), for issuing an apparently fake mia culpa, and for the bottom line with him always being about the money.Merzel accused his critics of envy because of the success of his new way of teaching enlightenment, which he calls Big Mind.
“I’m not trying to justify my actions. I’m very remorseful. But this kind of judgmental mudslinging of Buddhist teachers is worse,” Merzel said. “It’s making Buddhism look pretty pathetic.”
Merzel is just another whacked out guru who can't keep his penis out of his students - there's a lot of that in the integral community, so he might consider leaving Buddhism behind and just teaching Big Mind to the integral community - they love their sex addict teachers.
