Buddhism, Patriarchy, Abuse, and Violence: We Need to Talk

If you have seen the movie Spotlight, you’ll know the lengths to which organizations can go to ignore, avoid, and eventually cover up abuse from within. Or perhaps you have heard of the blue code or blue wall of silence said to exist among police officers in the United States.

What may surprise some Western Buddhists is that many of the same beliefs and structures that led to and continue to support abuses in the Catholic Church and American police forces also exist in many Buddhist communities.

• Rigid structures of hierarchy
• Defined in-group behaviors
• Sense of superiority over outsiders
• Codes of silence – especially related to lapses in ethics amongst leadership

No one of these or combination is guaranteed to lead to violence or abuse. And violence and abuse can arise in the absence of all of them. But what too commonly occurs in communities with these ideals is abuse which, once uncovered, is seen to have gone on for years, even decades. It is simply kept in the dark.

In the darkness are whispers saying, “It was just once, let it go.”

“Maybe it was the victim’s fault.”

“We’re the good guys – we bring salvation, safety, true teachings (etc). We can’t have word getting out that will hurt us.”

“Okay, we have a couple bad apples; we can toss them out, or move them around, and everything will be fine.”

“This problem is getting really big. It could really hurt us; so we really need people to be silent now.”

If you’re hearing these things, it’s quite possible that you will need to leave your sangha. In any case, you’ll want to talk to wise friends, perhaps within and outside of your sangha, about the real possibility that things will spiral down and, sooner or later, become public. “Why didn’t they speak out when they first knew about this?” is a question often asked of those in abusive communities.

As for myself, I support those who have talked. It is important to talk early, talk often, and talk openly about what is happening. On that note, I am glad for Lion’s Roar’s discussion (and about Rigpa here) of the latest incident of sangha abuse and the recommendations they published from An Olive Branch.

And I am also grateful for and glad to reshare the words of Lama Rod Owens (via facebook) on this current situation. It is my hope that they will give courage to others to speak out, to confront abuse, to acknowledge the mix of feelings that arise, and move forward, out of silence, out of the darkness:

The relationship between student and teacher in tantric traditions is very unordinary and is outside of anything that I had ever experienced before accepting a teacher. Kagyu Thubten Choling is my home monastery and though I have several teachers Norlha Rinpoche is my primary or root teacher which means that he was the first teacher that I committed to being vulnerable with in order to facilitate my interpersonal transformative using the dharma as a vehicle. This strategy of personal vulnerability with one person whom I believed to be realized and accomplished within this particular spiritual path saved my life. I talk about this some in Radical Dharma. In anycase, this level of vulnerability is extremely delicate and if the teacher is not mature enough then boundaries are crossed and violence happens resulting in trauma. There was another teacher whom I trusted and was vulnerable with whom I experienced a non sexual boundary crossing with and I am still dealing with the trauma from it. We take a tremendous risk when we enter into these relationships. Right now I am feeling many things. Primarily I am feeling pissed, sad, anxious, ashamed, and afraid. Sexual and ethical misconduct happens in all religious traditions and especially in Buddhist communities. It is especially rampant in Tibetan Buddhist communities where young monastics in monasteries in Asia are abused by older monastics, where young reincarnate lamas are identified, confiscated, and subjected to years of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse as part of their religious training, and here in this country the sexual abuse of female identified people by male Asian and western teachers as well as other ethical misconducts around money management, racism, ableism, misogyny, and other misconducts. This is not the practice of dharma, religion, or spirituality. It is the practice of humans struggling to relate to their own suffering and how we act out of our suffering often in ways that are very unskillful and which ends up creating suffering for others.