The Atlantic has a long exposé of The Zen Predator of the Upper East Side. The leader of a Zen Buddhist group in New York has a long history of sexual harassment and abuse.
One particularly poignant letter in the archive, dated February 20, 1979, is from one female former student to another. I have interviewed both students in the past year; they asked that I not use their names, but they stand by their stories. The letter writer herself never had sex with Shimano, although, as she writes, she “experienced quite a bit of sexual ‘harassment’ from Eido Roshi (from innuendo to proposition)” during two stays at Dai Bosatsu. During the first stay, the harassment was “just a barrage.” For months she spoke of the incidents to no one. “I wanted to be thought of as a student, and not one of Roshi’s women,” she wrote. “I did not want to rock the boat. After I left I found out, in correspondence with [another woman], that Roshi had also propositioned her … We had been very close friends and yet we had kept a silence on something that was disturbing us every day, in order to protect the sangha, the kessei”—a three-month training period—“and the Roshi.”
The letter continues in a key of gratitude: “When I left [after my first stay], I seriously thought of ‘blowing the whistle.’ But I was grateful for the opportunity I’d had to practice at Dai Bosatsu, and I thought that if I said anything it would be the end of everything at Dai Bosatsu. I really thought it would fold the place … One of the problems of Dai Bosatsu is that to warn a new female student that she is likely to be propositioned by her teacher is to risk every new female student leaving in a very big hurry and telling the world.”
It’s depressing. Once upon a time I would have read that and said, “A-ha, religion really does poison everything, any religion!”, but sadly, if there’s anything I’ve learned in the last few years, it’s that even people who reject religion can be colossal jerks.
Religion is just a useful tool for these predators. It’s not the source, it’s the means. If you eliminate religion, they’ll try to find something else they can use, that’s why it is so important to eliminate the other potential tools they might use…which essentially means creating a situation in which they have no power over anyone, which is not necessarily even possible…
The one caveat i would add is that religion can not only provide the means, but can also protect, condone or magnify this kind of thing.
Why so surprised? I’ve long been baffled by Westerners’ prevailing notion that Buddhism is fuzzy and cuddly. I studied Buddhism in college (with a professor who was herself a convert and a devout Buddhist scholar). Despite Buddhism ‘s ambiance and veneer of peaceful contemplativeness, I found its core ideas to be profoundly unpalatable. And based on what I’ve learned, it makes perfect sense to me that societies where Buddhism dominates tend to be severely hierarchical, patriarchal, violent and rife with sexual exploitation.
Given that set A contains two subsets B and C, where the membership of set C is defined in such as way as to be entirely independent of membership of set B, the probability that any member of set C is also a member of set B is equal to the probability that any member of set A is a member of set B.
If set A is “people”, and set B is “colossal jerks”, set C can be pretty much anything you like – Buddhists, airline pilots, topiary artists, whatever. People can be colossal jerks, therefore people who are [X] can be colossal jerks, whenever [X] is defined as anything other than “not colossal jerks”.
Butthism: (n.) A religion of escaping reality and measuring enlightenment by how far one can shove their head up their butt.
#2 Amused: I used to suffer from the idea that Buddhism was warm and cuddly too. And yes, I got the distinct impression, when I tried to follow this religion, that I was supposed to just shut up and peacefully accept whatever awful things happened to me. I found that idea profoundly disturbing on a number of levels.
It’s got all the dangerous elements: charismatic leader, hierarchical organization, really strong “in-group” identity, institutional self-preservation against anything that might hurt the organization or leader – it shows up over and over again.
And yeah, Buddhism isn’t much of a kinder or cuddlier religion. Go ask the Rohingya people if you want confirmation of that.
People often thing of Eastern religions as less rigid or authoritarian than Western ones, but mostly that’s because they’re thinking of romanticized ideals, or modern Western appropriations mixed with new age fluff.
I recall seeing a documentary of a Zen monastery in Japan and it was pretty eye opening. To enter and begin practice the prospective student rang at the door and was rejected and insulted. So he waited and tried again the next day. And the next. After a week or two, when he was weak from hunger, he would eventually be allowed to enter. His practice then consisted of serving the older monks and sitting and meditating while being beaten for the slightest transgression from perfect stillness, or for no reason at all. And he is the correct pronoun, it was always he.
It’s certainly not the wonderful new age, enlightened ideal we see in the Western media.
brett @ 6
exactly the big problem is that kind of structure and how that tends to protect itself from scandal something that is not limited to religion. Japan is a very patriarchal society and has some what different ideas about sexuality than the west and the US generally which I am sure added to the problems.
My own path led through some study of Buddhism and Zen and it was the formal hierarchical structure that was a turn off to actually join any group.
From my personal experience and perspective I would categorize much of Buddhism as mystical atheism. Seems people respond to that kind of thing, the easier softer way, and that is what I fear when I hear talk about how atheism will replace religion and how we should do that.
uncle frogy
Buddhism — Just another name for the same old story.
It’s interesting that Buddhism, with its doctrine of peaceful detachment or whatever, became the state religion of the Mauryan king, Ashoka, in the 4th century…after he won the war! How convenient. It’s also intriguing how the life of Ashoka parallels the life of Gautama. I find the origin myth of Buddhism to be on the same level as the origin myths of Judaic Yahwehism, Christianity, and Islam.
I’m SHOCKED!!!
SHOCKED, I tell you!!
….
Oh wait — no, I’m not shocked at all.
robro@9,
Minor bit of pedantry: Ashoka was 3rd century BCE (the pfft of all knowledge gives his dates as 304–232 BCE).
I believe Julia Sweeney put it best in ‘Letting go of God’. While on a Buddhist pilgrimage in Bhutan, she commented how kind a woman was for caring for a child who had been born severely deformed. The woman’s response was:
Don’t call him a poor boy! He must have done something horrible in a previous life to be born that way!
I dated a “Zen Buddhist” once. He’s also a published author, so I won’t share much else about him. Anyway, we dated for a couple months and one day I “spoke back” to him (meaning I didn’t agree with him) and while I can’t remember what the subject was, I do remember that I *really* didn’t agree with him. He did not like that. He started threatening me right away, and it quickly escalated (after I told him to shut the fuck up) with me up on the wall, my neck in his hands. He also told me he had a gun (very Zen, right?).
Thankfully he dropped me and I was able to get dressed and leave. I called the cops and it was the first and so far only restraining order I’ve had to file. When I looked back, I realized how creepy he was. That was the first moment we got really close, though, so I suppose I got lucky. He showed himself earlier.
Several *years* later, I was sitting in my favorite restaurant, at my usual table, alone with a book, when I realized I recognized the VERY distinctive accent and voice not far behind me. It was him. I was not about to give up the bowl of ramen I had just ordered, however, so I just pretended I didn’t recognize him. I wonder if he recognized me. Surely, he did? That was some tasty ramen, though.
I’ve long been baffled by Westerners’ prevailing notion that Buddhism is fuzzy and cuddly.
It’s been substantially edited for Americans – to the point where the wikipedia entries on the history of tibetan buddhism no longer contain any references to what happened to the black hat and red hat sects (hint: the yellow hat sect; that’s what happened to them) Buddhism’s had the same fraught flirtation with secular power as every other religion – it’s unavoidable, because, at its core, religion is always about ratifying the secular power of authority in return for favored status.
I’m an atheist but I feel that I have to point out that it is not religion that is the primary commonality between sexual predators. Religion can provide opportunity, power structure, and deniability/coverup, but that’s just the dung icing on the shit cake.
The Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, is recorded as having begun his enlightenment with a visions of all of the concubines in his family’s estate becoming old and decaying, no longer a temptation of samsara.
He encouraged his male followers (the only kind of followers he had) to think of any woman they desired similarly– imagine her diseased and ugly. Imagine her dying and then dead. Meditate on the corpses of prostitutes, once regarded as alluring and beautiful, and recognize that decay is their true state. Realize that the value in women is their beauty, but that is a false value because it is fleeting. Women are mere playthings in the mortal world, to be given up like every other attachment in pursuit of nirvana.
Yeah. Buddhism ain’t feminist.
@Amused #2
More specifically, what is the Western obsession with the current Dalai Lama as fuzzy and cuddly? Isn’t he essentially a dictator in exile, albeit with quite a few celebrity fans/followers?
Yeah, as an actual Buddhist, I find it puzzling as well. Buddhists are just people. I like the practice and parts of the philosophy, but there’s a lot to dislike, including the dissing of women.
It’s not the first time I’ve heard of such things. From 2011:
http://www.examiner.com/article/alleged-sexual-abuse-by-buddhist-monk-sparks-protests-two-states
And this one from just yesterday:
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/101east/2014/12/thailand-tainted-robes-2014121710360199852.html
Many people are unwilling to see buddhists as capable of unethical behaviour. In 2013 when dozens of muslims were murdered in Burma, many people – including some atheists – didn’t want to view the murders as religiously motivated because the killers were buddhists.
Anyone can act unethically. All it takes is a willingness to rationalize your own actions and to have no empathy for people that will be hurt by those actions.
JoeBuddha
How can you reconcile the “dissing of women” (as you so quaintly put it) while still following the philosophy and practices? The “dissing of women” is *part* of the Buddhist philosophy. I don’t see how you can separate it. I feel much the same for women who are religious, though, I suppose. Like, so much of the doctrine is *centered around* the “dissing of women” — the origins itself are! (Refer back to Gretchen.)
I’ll never understand the cognitive dissonance involved, honestly.
Nick — I stand corrected. Your facility with ppppfff (Joyce invented everything) far outstrips mine.
#20
Cognitive dissonance is part of the human condition. We all believe things that require that dissonance. Some of us work harder at weeding that out, but it remains. Any mainstream Christian, Jew, Buddhist, etc is rife with it. Catholics in Western Democracies support any number of ideas that are at odds with church dogma from abortion to capital punishment to divorce and marriage equality and much more. For many nominal members of religions (which is I think most members in our society) it is not something they think long and deeply about, rather they latch on to the bits they like and mostly ignore the rest. That is true of the asshats that pull out bits of leviticus and deuteronomy to hate homosexuals while wearing mixed fiber clothing and eating a cheeseburger as well the people that attend church regularly, tithe and take communion while supporting a woman’s right to sovereignty over her body and marriage equality.
What’s sad about this is that you can insert anything in the above in place of “religion” and it’s still true, like the “atheist movement” for instance.
In some ways the Chinese conquest of Tibet was one of the best things that could have happened to the Dalai Lama. Had the Chinese left Tibet alone he probably would have ended up being seen as closer to a Western cult leader than a spokesman for a troubled people. Assuming of course there wasn’t some sort of revolution in Tibet in the ’50s or ’60s that turned it into an Asian equivalent of Albania or something along those lines.
I once saw a troubling BBC documentary about the treatment of servants by monks in Tibet. Not particularly worse than the way the British aristocracy once treated their servants, but certainly not enlightened detachment, unless you consider detaching people from hands, arms, and legs a form of it.
@7, pretty much standard old school military recruitment/boot camp stuff. break down the psyche and sense of self worth of the recruit and then build them anew in the image you want.
Religion ruins plenty – when people’s actions are motivated by adherence to religious dictates, imagined commands of spiritual entities, or in the interests of religious identification, or a host of other things.
People are still more than capable of being bad on their own accord.
This proves that being a Buddhist doesn’t make one immune from the same sorts of crap every sexually abusing priest has pulled since time began.
If I demanded perfection from any institution I allied with, I’d be huddling in a hut in the wilderness. Buddhism is fundamentally about understanding. We’re supposed to achieve our own understanding and question everything. There are professed Atheists with idiotic or harmful beliefs; does that mean you shouldn’t be an Atheist? I found a lot of substance in the Buddhist point of view, so I embraced that and discarded the rest. I worked in the community to encourage others to do the same. Although I’m not part of it now, I still respect the parts they got right.
That is factually incorrect. There is a lot wrong with Buddhism (much of which is inherited from Hinduism), but being a boys only club isn’t one of them.
Legend has it that the Buddha’s wife got word that her deadbeat husband popped back up on the radar as a famous mystic/cult leader, so she went to track his ass down. When she found him she said, “If the shit you’re selling is worth leaving your family for, then I want to learn.”
The Buddha responded that he only accepted male disciples because having men and women together would distract them from their meditation with horniness.
Buddha’s wife responded, “Hey fucker, you’re preaching that you have the answer to ending suffering, and you want to deny that knowledge to half the population! That’s fucked up!”
Buddha thought on the matter and said, “You’re right, that is a pretty dick move. I’ll train monks and nuns from now on.”
How many religions, as part of their mythology, have their founder admit to being wrong and changing their ways?
Also, one of the most famous stories from Buddhism revolves around one of Buddha’s nuns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kisa_Gotami
Hell, you can even read a whole book of poems attributed to the first generation of nuns:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/thig/
Isn’t this a poster child for feminism?
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/thig/thig.01.00x.than.html#sutta-11
Or
Catholics are different from Southern Baptists are different from Unitarians are different from 7th Day Adventists etc. Buddhism is even less of a monolith than Christianity or Islam. Christianity and Islam did coopt a fair bit of cultural and religious practice from the peoples they converted, but Buddhism, at least some versions, practice whole religions alongside Buddhism. One cannot understand Japanese Buddhism without understanding Shinto, one cannot understand most Buddhism of the Indian subcontinent without understanding Hinduism, etc. Treating Zen and Jainism as the same makes even less sense than treating fire and brimstone Southern Baptists the same as Quakers or Unitarians.
The popularized Western version of Buddhism that people think of is basically Eastern Unitarianism.
I’m relieved so many people here are aware of the Buddha’s misogynistic beliefs. Another thing I found out was that he apparently thought women weren’t even CAPABLE of ‘enlightenment’ (not too. Sure how much that counts for seeing there’s probably no such thing as enlightenment?) which was one of many things that made me lose interested in Buddhism.
I’m still surprised by a lot of atheists’ views on it. It’s sort of ethnocentric how we focus on criticism of Christianity but fall for Western romantic stereotypes of other ‘foreign’ religions.
Bullshit.
The poems of the elder nuns I linked to above has multiple accounts of women that the Buddha personally trained not only attaining enlightenment (as recognized by the Buddha) but also becoming teachers and leaders of their own following of monks and nuns.
Basically, what amused said.
^^^ Yo Christopher! I’m sure that’s true as well! I forgot to add that the Buddha LATER changed his position on the topic after meeting what he found to be ‘virtuous women’ (I feel a bit weird saying that). That being said, that does reflect a bit better on Buddhism as a whole. Gautama didn’t stay stuck in his ways like a lot of MRAs ;-)
I misspoke above, it wasn’t his wife who became the first ordained nun, it was his aunt that raised him after his mother died who was the first woman to demand to become a member of the order. His wife joined later.
But even before that, he would still teach men and women in his lay classes (along with people of any age and caste, which was revolutionary in that time and place). He only would let men take the vows to become a monk, primarily because he was leading a large, mobile homeless camp full of dudes that he knew had problems keeping their minds off their dicks. The Buddha thought that adding women to the mix was bound to be problematic.
When his adoptive mother showed up and called him on his shit, he reassessed the situation and realized that denying half the population the knowledge he thought so highly of was worse than having to deal with a mixed gender homeless camp, so he changed the rules. This happened pretty early in his cult leading career, so the majority of time that the Buddha was teaching as the Buddha, he was surrounded with both monks and nuns who had chosen the beggar’s life in order to follow him.
Again, there is a fair amount of bullshit in Buddhism, but the founder believing that women couldn’t attain enlightenment isn’t one of them:
Of course, nuns have to take on more vows than the monks and most of those are bullshit. And the lineage of nuns in the Theravada tradition had a break in the 11th to 13th century so some scholars get all snooty and say that the current Theravada nuns aren’t authentic. And Buddhist nuns have had to deal with rape culture just as much as Catholic nuns. And, and, and.
Again, lots of bullshit. But not included in that bullshit is the Buddha ever believing that women couldn’t attain enlightenment.
The only Western democracy where Catholics support the death penalty in large numbers is the USA. You’re right on everything else, though.
Understand: I was one of thousands who got cult inducted in the ’70s. I did my time as a believer and fanatic, although I never fully bought into it. I was intrigued. Did lots of studying. I learned that people have intrinsic value. I consider myself a Buddhist because I believe in the Humanity of everyone. The Buddha supposedly said I should “pursue your salvation with diligence”. That’s why I lurk here; the modern atheist movement You’re pursuing the same thing I am. That’s why I lurk.
It was my understanding that Buddhists (or at least some of them) held that women couldn’t achieve enlightenment but if they were really really devout, they’d reincarnate as men and have a shot at it in the next life? Lucky you!
As far as I’m concerned, Buddhism, like Christianity, fails to give a good solution to the “problem of evil”. Saying that human suffering is caused by an over-attachment to material things is good as far as it goes, but what about the suffering of people who are killed or injured in floods and other natural disasters? Their suffering is hardly the consequence of over-attachment.
Oh yes? And when were these poems actually written? The earliest Buddhist manuscripts date from the 1st century C.E., several centuries after the supposed life of Gautama Siddhartha – whose dates are not known even to within a century. I’d say that what we can justifiably assert with confidence about this person is a flat zero, including whether he actually existed.
In this case it doesn’t really matter if the writings are factually true or not.
What matters is the mythology that Buddhists tell themselves about themselves.
If the Buddha didn’t exist, if the whole thing is just a made up story, it is still a made up story that features the religion’s founder acknowledging a woman’s ability to attain the highest rank in the religion, then acknowledging that it would be wrong to not help women attain said rank, and finally changing the way he acted in light of these acknowledgments. That is a powerful story to pass down for generations upon generations. To an adherent, the verses of the elder nuns were written by women taught directly by the Buddha just like they strongly believe that the verses attributed to the Buddha was something he actually taught. These stories have been passed down monk-to-monk, nun-to-nun, for centuries, with each generation believing that they are passing down the recorded history of their religion’s earliest days. Each generation that had to memorize the poems, each generation that re-transcribed the holy suttras, had to memorize, internalize, and accept that the Buddha said women could attain enlightenment just as well as a man and, furthermore, the Buddha had women disciples who attained enlightenment in his lifetime. These aren’t some obscure texts akin to the Gospel of Mary, the verses of the elder nuns sit right beside the Dhammapada which is the meat and potatoes of the whole damn religion.
You can’t claim Zeus was an asexual, then when called on that description violating everything we know about the Zeus character, fall back on, “well Zeus isn’t real, so he could be anything I say.”
The Buddha, according to generations of Buddhists, always knew women could attain enlightenment and when the discrepancy between his ideals of equality and his actions were pointed out to him, changed his actions and ordained nuns whom he taught till his death. You can hold a lot against Buddhism, especially in practice where power, money, and humans come into contact. But you can’t claim that the mythic founder was misogynist through and through when the mythology directly contradicts that claim.