This is part 1 of a 2-part blog post of my article THE PROMISE AND PERIL OF BUDDHIST MEDITATION forthcoming in Psychoanalytic inquiry (2020).
The word peril evokes for me the “Perils of Pauline.” Pauline, our tortured heroine, is tied to the railroad tracks with a fast approaching train promising her gruesome and speedy demise. Who or what will rescue her? As a Zen teacher and psychological consultant, I have had personal contact with more than 50 women who have survived the speeding train of sexual predation in Buddhist communities. I have participated in several independent witness projects that have explored abuses within the Zen and Tibetan Buddhist communities, and I have noted virtually identical systemic problems in both.
Examples of sexual misconduct have been well documented, most recently in Tricycle—The Buddhist Review, Summer 2019.[1] Sexual abuses perpetrated by credentialed Buddhist teachers have occurred over decades in some of the largest Buddhist centers: Joshu Sasaki Roshi (1907-2014) at Mt. Baldy Zen Center, California; Eido Shimano Roshi at Dai Bosatsu Monastery, New York; Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche (1962-) at Shambhala Buddhist Community (worldwide); and Sogyal Lakar (1947-) formerly director of the Rigpa Community (worldwide).
Since 2018, Buddhist Project Sunshine has exposed decades long abuses in the Shambhala community. According to six of Sakyong’s personal attendants, who penned a 17,000-word open letter detailing his misconduct, “[Sakyong] has consistently shown a disturbing pattern of behavior,” including sexual misconduct, psychological abuse, and misuse of organizational funds.” [2] In addition, an independent investigation into allegations against the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Sogyal Lakar (known widely as Sogyal Rinpoche), founder of the Rigpa community, was conducted by the law firm Lewis Silkin. This investigation details allegations of physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological abuse, as well as accounts of “living a lavish, gluttonous and sybaritic lifestyle,” and “tainting the appreciation of the Dharma.”[3]
It is difficult to comprehend what steers a Buddhist leader towards such harmful transgressions and broken vows. Even more puzzling, how do we account for a community’s support of the teacher’s abusive conduct over years and in some cases decades? The affected Buddhist communities, together with the abusive head teachers, are responsible for harming the vulnerable Paulines and Pauls facing this disaster. The communities’ social forces silence the vulnerable into trusting and supporting the villains, rallying in support around the abusive teachers while discrediting the reports and reporters of abuse. This is how the train wrecks have unfolded.
As we examine Buddhism’s promises of liberation, we also need to look closely at how communities have responded to the scandals that have shaken Buddhist centers in the West. Mostly women, and some men, have been left with lasting psychological damage as a result of their membership in Buddhist communities—long term damage that has impaired their ability to function in personal, social, and professional relationships. Communities’ failure to support survivors of abuse have imperiled both the affected individuals and the wider world’s trust in Buddhism. In this chapter, I have chosen to focus on the systemic failures of the Buddhist communities to protect their vulnerable members rather than concentrating on the troubling diagnoses of the gurus, lamas, rinpoches, and roshis—all honored and well-trained teachers in the Buddhist tradition. I disagree with the explanation that “there were a few bad apples” who became Buddhist teachers. A selfish and unscrupulous teacher, serving in a place of honor, can be exposed by his community and removed from his position. From my perspective, it is the community, not just the teacher, that allows the harm in question to continue.
Why have communities accepted their teachers’ harmful abuses where enlightenment and freedom were promised? Why haven’t communities accepted and investigated the complaints? In many cases of abusive teachers, the harm continued for decades, with those reporting sexual predation labeled untrustworthy and mentally unstable. What is the larger context in which Buddhist communities promise awakening, but fall prey to factors that deliver harm instead of healing? This chapter examines Buddhism’s promises and perils—the religious, cultural, institutional, and social dynamics—that systematically endanger Buddhist communities. For some of the most vulnerable practitioners who may ignore the harms or even fall prey to the abuse, I describe personality structures that could predispose previously functional adults to enter and continue this abusive relationship.
As Buddhism has migrated to the West, misunderstood religious traditions and failures in understanding Asian cultures (lost in translation) have imbued Buddhist teachers with mythical powers. Competition and cult dynamics within spiritual communities have contributed to the problem. Finally, personal psychological issues at work in community members—dependent personality, closet narcissism, and previous trauma resulting in dissociation and spiritual bypassing—can all contribute to a student regressing rather than maturing. Through these factors, the intended benefits of meditation practice are not only derailed, but used to cause harm to practitioners, disrupt communities, and erode trust in meditation practice itself.
The Promise of Buddhist Practice: The Spacious View
What promises has Buddhism kept in order to survive for 2500 years, across continents, as a living tradition? How has Buddhist practice helped to heal the neuroses and harmful habits that all humans suffer? Buddhism is rooted in meditation practice. Consistent with current medical research, meditation has a calming and clarifying effect on the mind. More specifically, Buddhist meditation offers stability of view; the view provided by the settled mind of the arising thoughts, feelings and sensations. We can understand something of the development of this view by examining the meaning of Zen in Asia. Zen practice traveled from the Buddha’s India to China and Korea and later to Japan. The Sanskrit word dhyāna, meaning ‘meditation’ in the Buddhist sense, was introduced into China, but the Chinese had no word that expressed equivalent meaning. One Chinese character, adopted to express (Zen) Buddhist practice, meant ‘to bow respectfully to mountains and flowing water’. [4] Within this definition, we detect the possibility of lessening our attachment to the troubling habits of mind that can define our identity. By bowing down to a spacious view of nature, by rooting the mind in a wholesome natural context, we can move from distressing thoughts and feelings to calm and beauty. Buddhist practitioners exercise letting go of arising thoughts to return to an expanded view, and this effort may eventually blossom into an enlightenment experience.
Modern day Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck (1917-2011) in her book Everyday Zen described this process as creating “A Bigger Container.” We develop this bigger container, a kind of consciousness space, in the same way that one exercises the muscles by using weights over and over again. We return to observing, rather than indulging ourselves in tangled thoughts and feelings, and through this exercise, the space with which we observe grows larger and more stable. This observing space may help us see our delusions for what they are. Joko Beck emphasizes the importance of using the practice of observing our own reactivity in the midst of our relationships. If we continue to be reactive, if we do not use the observing space we are developing on the cushion in everyday situations, the Zen enlightenment experience becomes useless. If our enlightenment experience is not applied to our own moment by moment thoughts and experiences, our ego may claim the Zen experience as a special power. Disconnecting practice from everyday experience can lead to increased pride, arrogance, and other forms of selfishness. This practice can also may take a wrong turn and become a way to dissociate from painful thoughts or emotions; this is known as spiritual bypassing.
Comparing Zen Meditation to Psychotherapy
To compare and contrast Zen meditation with psychotherapy, a patient in psychotherapy might return to the strength of the therapist or analyst’s view for help during stressful situations. In a similar fashion, a meditator might return to “bowing to mountains and waters.” I have heard my own psychotherapy patients say that they reflect on what I might do, or what advice I might give them when they are troubled. Thus, the relationship with the therapist may help stabilize a patient’s mind. In the same vein, Buddhism teaches the importance of working with an awakened teacher. Through the teacher, meditation students have their first contact with a “living Buddha.” Buddhism teaches the importance of experiencing the Buddha mind through the teacher’s presence, actions, and teachings. Well-trained Buddhist teachers may, through private interview and group interactions, notice defensive behaviors in their students. With appropriate boundaries and careful instruction, students may be encouraged to develop and employ a more stable view of meditation to watch defensive behaviors arise.
In contrast, the psychotherapist is human and his/her mind, while (ideally) more stable than the patient’s, whose view is by definition partial and not a view considered to be as boundless as nature or the Buddha’s mind. However, there are more checks and balances in the psychotherapeutic relationship than in the Buddhist teacher-student relationship. With a little luck, the therapist is practicing ethically, with healthy boundaries, and is accountable to a licensing board and state laws. In Buddhist meditation, the practitioner may be in relationship to a teacher and a community who have little training in ethical standards and are unaccountable legally for boundary violations—sexual or financial—with their students.
Imagine a psychotherapist who has no training in transference, countertransference or projection. Such is the case for many Buddhist teachers. A Buddhist teacher helping a student with troubling emotions may mistakenly experience the student’s gratitude, affection, or loving transference as an expression of personal love rather than an expected outcome in an intimate helping relationship. This is especially true when teacher and student meet in one-to-one interviews. A Buddhist teacher’s countertransference can lead to sexual boundary violations. This kind of limited teacher understanding of transference and countertransference, coupled with the community’s idealization of the teacher and a zealous vow to support him have caused pervasive problems.
Failure to understand psychological dynamics (eg, transference, projection) are not the only problems that have led to serious boundary violations and harm. The problems or scandals in the Buddhist world are not just the challenges of a few unethical practitioners. Nor are they simply arrogance arising from pride in the enlightenment experience. There are also historical religious teachings that are often naively misinterpreted by Westerners in ways that undermine Buddhism’s promises.
- Religious Beliefs and Inadequate Cultural Understanding of Teacher and Training
- Social Dynamics and Cult Characteristics
- Personal and Psychological Tendencies that Can Contribute to Supporting an Abusive Buddhist Teacher and Community
[1] https://tricycle.org/magazine/bernhard-porksen/
[2] Sam Littlefair, Lion’s Roar, February 19, 2019, https://www.lionsroar.com/kusung-letter-sakyong-mipham-abuse-misconduct/
[3] Lion’s Roar, Sept. 6, 2018 https://www.lionsroar.com/independent-investigation-confirms-physical-sexual-emotional-abuse-by-sogyal-rinpoche/
[4] Carl Bielefeldt, On the Spiritual Discourses on the Mountains and the Water, www.thezensite.com/ZenTeachings/Dogen_Teachings/Shobogenzo/013sansuikyo.pdf
2. These guidelines were condensed from cult scholars Lalich Janja and Tobias Madeleine, Take Back Your Life (Bay Tree Publishing, 2006).
[6] Andy Newman, New York Times, July 11, 2018. “The ‘King of Tibetan Buddhism is Undone by Abuse Report”.
[7] PG Zimbardo – The Encyclopedia of Peace Psychology, 2011 – Wiley Online Library
[8] Berns, Gregory; Jonathan Chappelow; Caroline F. Zink; Giuseppe Pagnoni; Megan E. Martin-Skurski; Jim Richards (August 2005). “Neurobiological Correlates of Social Conformity and Independence During Mental Rotation”. Biological Psychiatry. 58 (3): 245–253. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2005.04.012. PMID 15978553. Retrieved 15 November 2013.
[9] Berkeley Zen Center chant
[10] Adultsabusedbyclergy.org
[11]Dec. 18, 2014 https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/12/the-zen-predator-of-the-upper-east-side/383831/
[12] American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition.
[13] Masterson, J. F. (2004). A Therapist’s Guide to the Personality Disorders: The Masterson Approach: A Handbook and Workbook. Phoenix, Az.: Zeig, Tucker, & Theisen, Inv.
[14] https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/dissociative-disorders/what-are-dissociative-disorders
