Viewing each troubling thought or incident in isolation and never
stepping back enough to see that there's an overall pattern.

If you subtract all the spiritual terms and substitute 'addict' or 'alcoholic'
for 'guru' 'master''lama' 'reverend' 'father', 'rinpoche', 'murshid', 'baba'
what you get is the same pattern of secret keeping and rationalizing
that is typical for a dysfunctional family.

"It was so much tougher in the old days. You have it easy."

"Master doesn't let just anyone stay here, most applicants get turned away.
They'd love to take your place."

"Guru was really traumatized when he escaped from China/Iran/Russia/Afghanistan her family
were killed and tortured. So expect him to be crabby now and then."

"Murshid or Baba or Guru got sick because you had all those negative thoughts
about him."

"Guru is enlightened and you can't pass judgement on what he/she does."

*Rinpoche is only harsh with people who have special potential
-- its a compliment."

"But that is how Rinpoche's own master taught him/her."

"You're a whiny Westerner with a big ego"

"You're an immature Westerner who wants to be spoonfed".

" It's a Tibetan cultural thing, you can't understand."

"We give the authentic training here. The other sanghas don't
have the guts to challenge your ego."

"If you give up now, you'll lose all progress you've made".

* You're overthinking this"

* You're intellectuallizing this"

* Analytical thinking hinders your spiritual progress"

* "It is crazy wisdom"

* "Other places are worse than here, or other places are not even taking students, this is your only option."

If you do point out that there is a pattern, having someone reply:

* Your'e projecting YOUR issues onto this".

(A devastating version of this is for someone to whom you've confided
your own history of trauma to state that these are your own specific hangups being projected. Suppose someone confides to a senior student that she's been
abused in the past. Later, this person is hit on by a lama. (Abusers are
clever at sensing which students lack strong boundaries)

So someone who has confided her past history of trauma to a senior student
may when trying to tell that senior student that the Rinpoche hit on her
by be told by the senior student that she's just projecting fears of past abuse onto the present moment, stop conplaining about Rinpoche and instead, 'deepen her practice'.

You clam up and assume someone else is overseeing the finances or sangha
and that they will remedy the abuses. In Vajrayana it is common to hope that
a few words from the throne holder of the lineage or from the Dalai Lama
will cure all the problems. Troubled followers of Ole Nydahl (Diamond Sanga)
spent years upon years expecting the Karmapa (leader of their sect) to step in
and Make The Problems Go Away. This is the ostrich head in the sand approach.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/09/2017 03:10AM by corboy.

"You're supposed to observe a teacher for 10 years before becoming a
vowed disciple."

This is not possible, even if the Dalai Lama has said it. Here is why.

Spending all that time observing a teacher means you will, without
any awareness, let your guard down and lose your objectivity.

You'll tell yourself you've kept your critical thinking alive and well,
but that's just an alibi.

Underneath, you'll bond to the teacher and group
while seemingly being objective.

Anthropologists know all about this. It is called "going native"

[www.google.com]

We are social mammals. Spend lots of time
in the same environment and you feel at home
after awhile.

Once you feel as though a place and a group is homey and familiar --
you don't want to imagine that anything or anyone unsafe could
be there.

If you spend 10 years (or even 2 years) "observing a teacher" this means
you must do the following:


* Spend years in a sangha observing the teacher. This means you are
attending lectures, paying for and attending classes, 'teachings', volunteering.

Travelling to the sangha and empowerment teachings, paying for parking space, arriving on time so you get a seat, becoming friends with
sangha members, bowing, prostrating, chanting -- all of this will
bond you to the teacher and sangha.

Hours spent waiting for a teacher or visiting dignitary train you in docility.
You get accustomed to rationalizing bad behavior from lamas
that you'd never tolerate from anyone else. A non Tibetan Buddhist who shows up late, who wiggles and giggles and scratches himself during lectures, gives childish and unsatisfactory answers to serious questions -
you'd feel disgusted, say 'Fuck this!' and leave. Not if the person is a lama, guru, rinpoche.

* You spend all this time in a social setting where you must, to participate, follow the etiquette ('forms and ceremonies'). You sit, stand, bow, prostrate. When the teacher makes stupid jokes you laugh with the group. When the teacher
giggles and wiggles, you laugh along with the group.

You socialize and make friends in the sangha. This means listening to miracle stories about the teacher and or other teachers in the lineage. Tales of
paranormal events begin to seem normal. People who are fluent in Tibetan, who are gossiped about has having received permission to do ngondro, while others
are still waiting for the same permission after years of loyal service --
all this will influence your sense of what is normal, what is valuable.

As a newbie, you are told only the encouraging stories. No one wants to
give the dharma a bad name. Because you are a newbie, it is likely you
will be kept in the dark. Older students do not want to lose merit by
discouraging someone.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/17/2017 09:47PM by corboy.

Sexual assaults and violent rages… Inside the dark world of Buddhist teacher Sogyal Rinpoche by Mick Brown


[dialogueireland.wordpress.com]

corboy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sexual assaults and violent rages… Inside the dark
> world of Buddhist teacher Sogyal Rinpoche by Mick
> Brown
>
>
> [dialogueireland.wordpress.com]

Thank you for posting this. I'm going to have to read it in segments. It's too much to deal with, all at once.

From the article:
To see the master not as a human being but as the Buddha himself,’ Sogyal has often told his students, ‘is the source of the highest blessing.’

How convenient for him! The way to tell from the start if a teacher is not operating legitimately, is if he tells the students they're supposed to see the master as the Buddha himself, and assume he has the students' best interests at heart.

I found the photo of Sogyal in Switzerland with Richard Gere and Joan Halifax disturbing. Roughly a decade before that, Joan had been raped by her Zen roshi. But there she was, getting cozy with Soggy, apparently not minding that he'd grabed her hand. That's chilling, in hindsight. Clearly, she was not aware that 15 years before their meeting in Switzerland, Sogyal had said that he wanted everything that Trungpa had: the string of Buddhist centers, the money, the fame, the women, the sex.

At the time, he was only Dudjom Rinpoche's interpreter. He began to gather students in the 70's, assisted to some extent by Dudjom Rinpoche, I think. After the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying was published (which he didn't write, nor understand, for the most part), his career as a guru took off like gangbusters.