HH The Dalai Lama is visiting the UK.

[Paulclem]

I am studying in London and was invited to come to the talk, but missed it because I was on my year abroad in china

Unlucky.

You could catch teachings by his assistant in the UK and the official Buddhist Monk present at the Olympics, Geshe Tashi.

He teaches at the Jamyang Buddhist Centre in London.

Lucky.

[ftil]

Poulclem

You have killed my thread about mythology and religion in art.....I had no chance to respond. Hopefully this thread will not be closed. I love intelligent discussion. You have had a thread about catholic nuns. It was good to expose it. Let's expose Buddhists monks.

Once you receive transmission and form the [guru-disciple] bond of samaya, you have committed yourself to the teacher as guru, and from then on, the guru can do no wrong, no matter what. It follows that if you obey the guru in all things, you can do no wrong either. This is the basis of Osel Tendzin’s [Trungpa’s eventual successor] teaching that “if you keep your samaya, you cannot make a mistake.” He was not deviating into his own megalomania when he said this, but repeating the most essential idea of mainstream Vajrayana [i.e., Tantric Buddhism] (Butterfield, 1994).

Q [student]: What if you feel the necessity for a violent act in order ultimately to do good for a person?

A [Trungpa]: You just do it (Trungpa, 1973).

A woman is stripped naked, apparently at Trungpa’s joking command, and hoisted into the air by [his] guards, and passed around—presumably in fun, although the woman does not think so (Marin, 1995).

We were admonished ... not to talk about our practice. “May I shrivel up instantly and rot,” we vowed, “if I ever discuss these teachings with anyone who has not been initiated into them by a qualified master.” As if this were not enough, Trungpa told us that if we ever tried to leave the Vajrayana, we would suffer unbearable, subtle, continuous anguish, and disasters would pursue us like furies....

To be part of Trungpa’s inner circle, you had to take a vow never to reveal or even discuss some of the things he did. This personal secrecy is common with gurus, especially in Vajrayana Buddhism. It is also common in the dysfunctional family systems of alcoholics and sexual abusers. This inner circle secrecy puts up an almost insurmountable barrier to a healthy skeptical mind....
[T]he vow of silence means that you cannot get near him until you have already given up your own perception of enlightenment and committed yourself to his (Butterfield, 1994).

The traditional Vajrayana teachings on the importance of loyalty to the guru are no less categorical:

Breaking tantric samaya [i.e., leaving one’s guru] is more harmful than breaking other vows. It is like falling from an airplane compared to falling from a horse (Tulku Thondup, in [Panchen and Wangyi, 1996]).

Allen [Ginsberg] asked Trungpa why he drank so much. Trungpa explained he hoped to determine the illumination of American drunkenness. In the United States, he said, alcohol was the main drug, and he wanted to use his acquired knowledge of drunkenness as a source of wisdom (Schumacher, 1992).
Geoffrey D. Falk, Stripping the Gurus:Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment
http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stg...rs/trungpa.asp

LOL! That’s an enlightened justification….

Trungpa appointed an American acolyte named Thomas Rich, also known as Osel Tendzin, as his successor. Rich, a married father of four, died of AIDS in 1990 amid published reports that he had had unprotected sex with [over a hundred] male and female students without telling them of his illness (Horgan, 2003a). Tendzin had asked Trungpa what he should do if students wanted to have sex with him, and Trungpa’s reply was that as long as he did his Vajrayana purification practices, it did not matter, because they would not get the disease. Tendzin’s answer, in short, was that he had obeyed the instructions of his guru.
http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stg...rs/trungpa.asp

Interesting, I thoughts that his students looked for enlightenment not a sex with a guru. But sexual exploitation has been a modus operandi fir Buddhist teachers. Vajrayana purification practices didn’t help Trungpa as he died of acute alcoholism in 1987.

Let’s at another “guru”.

Sex Scandals In Religion,
Episode Three: In The Name Of Enlightenment.
Directed by Debi Goodwin.

An image of peace, meditation, gentle respect. Not serial sex abuse. But accusations of tawdry sexual exploitation are breaking out all over, threatening the elevated status of this beautiful religion. One of the Dalai Lama’s star protégés Sogyal Rinpoche, the author of one of the most powerful and popular books in the history of Buddhism, and the leader of a global network of holy centers, has left a wake of damaged women. Until now, they have been kept silent. Speaking out for the first time in this documentary, they accuse him of seduction, physical assault and moral deceit. It’s an extraordinary story of sexual aggression, spiritual arrogance and avoidance of moral leadership…to the very top.

In The Name Of Enlightenment

http://www.earthbook.tv/religion/cha...ideos/148/678/

It is not only “avant-garde” lamas who have “bent” the rules which one would otherwise have reasonably assumed were governing their behaviors. Rather, as June Campbell (1996) has noted from her own experience:

In the 1970s, I traveled throughout Europe and North America as a Tibetan interpreter, providing the link, through language, between my lama-guru [Kalu Rinpoche, 1905 – 1989] and his many students. Subsequently he requested that I become his sexual consort, and take part in secret activities with him, despite the fact that to outsiders he was a very high-ranking yogi-lama of the Kagya lineage who, as abbot of his own monastery, had taken vows of celibacy. Given that he was one of the oldest lamas in exile at that time, had personally spent fourteen years in solitary retreat, and counted amongst his students the highest ranking lamas in Tibet, his own status was unquestioned in the Tibetan community, and his holiness attested to by all....

It was plainly emphasized that any indiscretion [on my part] in maintaining silence over our affair might lead to madness, trouble, or even death [e.g., via magical curses placed upon the indiscreet one].

And how did the compassionate, bodhisattva-filled Tibetan Buddhist community react to such allegations?

[M]any rejected out of hand Campbell’s claims as sheer fabrication coming from somebody eager to gain fame at the expense of a deceased lama (Lehnert, 1998; italics added).
Geoffrey D. Falk, Stripping the Gurus:Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment
Secrecy is the modus operandi.

For more of the inside story on Tibetan Buddhism, consult Trimondi and Trimondi’s (2003) The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism.

Let’s look close at Vajrayana.


To have sexual relations with a prostitute paid by you and not by a third person does not, on the other hand, constitute improper behavior (Lama, 1996).
Geoffrey D. Falk, Stripping the Gurus:Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment


Nice! So, prostitution is not considered as improper behavior by Dalai Lama.

Every type of passion (sexual pleasure, fits of rage, hate and loathing) which is normally considered taboo by Buddhist ethical standards, is activated and nurtured in Vajrayana with the goal of then transforming it into its opposite. The Buddhist monks, who are usually subject to a strict, puritanical-seeming set of rules, cultivate such “breaches of taboo” without restriction, once they have decided to follow the “Diamond Path”.

Suitably radical instructions can be found in the Hevajra Tantra: “A wise man ... should remove the filth of his mind by filth ... one must rise by that through which one falls”, or, more vividly, “As flatulence is cured by eating beans so that wind may expel wind, as a thorn in the foot can be removed by another thorn, and as a poison can be neutralized by poison, so sin can purge sin” (Walker, 1982, p. 34). For the same reason, the Kalachakra Tantra exhorts its pupils to commit the following: to kill, to lie, to steal, to break the marriage vows, to drink alcohol, to have sexual relations with lower-class girls (Broido, 1988, p. 71). A Tantric is freed from the chains of the wheel of life by precisely that which imprisons a normal person.

In order to keep hidden from the public all the offensive things which are implicated by the required breaches of taboo, some tantra texts make use of a so-called “twilight language” (samdhya-bhasa).

For example, one says “lotus” and means “vagina”, or employs the term “enlightenment consciousness” (bodhicitta) for sperm, or the word “sun” (surya) for menstrual blood. Such a list of synonyms can be extended indefinitely.

Women were regarded as the greatest obstacle along the masculine path to enlightenment. Because the woman represents the feared gateway to rebirth, because she produces the world of illusion, because she steals the forces of the man — the origins of evil lie within her. Accordingly, to touch a woman was also the most serious breach of taboo for a Buddhist from the pre-tantric phase.

According to the “law of inversion”, the more gloomy, repulsive, aggressive and perverse a woman is, the more suitable she must be to serve as a sexual partner in the rituals.

But the preference of the yogis for especially young and attractive girls (which we mention above) seems to contradict this postulated ugliness.

Incidentally, the Kalachakra Tantra is itself aware of this contradiction, but is unable to resolve it. Thus the third book of the Time Tantra has the following suggestions to make: “Terrible women, furious, stuck-up, money-hungry, quarrelsome...are to be avoided” (Grünwedel, Kalacakra III, p. 121). But then, a few pages later, we find precisely the opposite: “A woman, who has abandoned herself to a lust for life, who takes delight in human blood ... is to be revered by the yogi” (Grünwedel, Kalacakra III, p. 146).

Due to their attractiveness the virgins are far more dangerous for the yogi than an old hag. The chances that he lose his emotional and sexual self-control in such a relationship are thus many times higher. This means that attractive women present him with a even greater challenge than do the ugly.

Women from lower castes are not just recommendable, but rather appear to be downright necessary for the performance of certain rituals. The Kalachakra Tantra lists female gardeners, butchers, potters, whores, and needle-workers among its recommendations (Grünwedel, Kalacakra III, pp. 130, 131)

“Courtesans are also favored”, writes the Tibet researcher Matthias Hermanns, “since the more lecherous, depraved, dirty, morally repugnant and dissolute they are, the better suited they are to their role” (Hermanns, 1975, p. 191).
http://www.trimondi.de/SDLE/Part-1-04.htm

More about Kalachkara rituals Victor & Victoria Trimondi, The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism.
http://www.trimondi.de/SDLE/Contents.htm


Scandals, corruptions, violence, or intrigues in Buddhist Zen. I wasn’t aware that it is that bad.

The Zen tradition has a history of famous drunken poets and masters.... Public encouragement for drinking in several communities where the teacher was alcoholic has led many students to follow suit, and certain Buddhist and Hindu communities have needed to start AA groups to begin to deal with their addiction problems....
Students who enter spiritual communities do not imagine they will encounter these kinds of difficulties (Kornfield, 1993).
It became known that Maezumi [roshi/guru of the Zen Center in Los Angeles] had had a number of affairs with female students and had also entered a dry-out clinic for alcoholics (Rawlinson, 1997).
In 1975 and 1979, as well as later in 1982, the Zen Studies Society had been rocked by rumors of Eido Roshi’s alleged sexual liaisons with female students....
Nor were the allegations limited to sexual misconduct. They spread to financial mismanagement and incorrect behavior (Tworkov, 1994).

Zen teachers have an excellent method of dealing with students who start comparing themselves to Buddha or God [after their early enlightenment experiences, says Ken Wilber]. “They take the stick and beat the crap out of you. And after five or ten years of that, you finally get over yourself” (Horgan, 2003a).
http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stg...apters/zen.asp

Hm….an interesting way to help students “ to get rid of the ego”

That, however, is simply a ludicrously romanticized version of physical abuse meted out in the name of spirituality. In reality, such “crap-beating” behavior only shows the tempers and tendencies toward violence of individuals who are naïvely viewed by their followers as being spiritually enlightened.

Richard Rumbold, an English Zen enthusiast, who spent about five months at the Shokokuji, a monastery in Kyoto, describes some savage beatings-up administered by the head monk and his assistant for trifling disciplinary offences (Koestler, 1960).

Such brutal discipline could, further, easily get completely out of hand. Indeed, as a true story told to Janwillem van de Wetering (1999) during his long-term stay at a Japanese Zen monastery in Kyoto in the early 1970s goes:

In Tokyo there are some Zen monasteries as well. In one of these monasteries ... there was a Zen monk who happened to be very conceited. He refused to listen to whatever the master was trying to tell him and used the early morning interviews with the master to air all his pet theories. The masters have a special stick for this type of pupil. Our master has one, too, you will have seen it, a short thick stick. One morning the master hit the monk so hard that the monk didn’t get up any more. He couldn’t, because he was dead....
The head monk reported the incident to the police, but the master was never charged. Even the police know that there is an extraordinary relationship between master and pupil, a relationship outside the law.

The scandals, often of a sexual nature, that have rocked a number of American Zen (and other Buddhist) centers in recent years may seem a world apart from Zen-supported Japanese militarism. The difference, however, may not be as great as it first appears, for I suggest the common factor is Zen’s long-standing and self-serving lack of interest in, or commitment to, Buddhism’s ethical precepts (Victoria, 2003).

As to the actual life and mindset of Zen monks in Asia, then, when seeking entrance to a monastery as a trainee the prospective monk will first prostrate himself at the gate for hours or days.

When asked why he wishes to enter the monastery, the monk should reply, “I know nothing. Please accept my request!” indicating that his mind is like a blank sheet of paper, ready to be inscribed by his superiors as they wish. If a monk fails to give the proper answer, he is struck repeatedly with the kyosaku until his shoulders are black and blue and the desired state of mind is achieved (Victoria, 1997).
Having been accepted into the community with that “desired state of mind,” even monks who were admitted just hours earlier will exercise authority over the neophyte, preceding him at meals and on other semiformal or formal occasions.
http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stg...apters/zen.asp

Well, Socrates also said, “ I know that I know nothing” but he made a good use of his brain and arrived to that conclusion. He didn’t get rid of his ego either.

What, then, of the widespread enlightenment which one might idealistically wish to attribute to practitioners of Zen?

I once asked Katagiri Roshi, with whom I had my first breakthrough ... how many truly great Ch’an and Zen masters there have historically been. Without hesitating, he said, “Maybe one thousand altogether.” I asked another Zen master how many truly enlightened—deeply enlightened—Japanese Zen masters there were alive today, and he said, “Not more than a dozen” (Wilber, 2000a).

Thus, we have over a millennium of Zen teachers “beating the crap out of” their numerous disciples on a regular basis, to generate a scant thousand (i.e., around one per year, globally) “enlightened” individuals. That, however, would never be a reasonable trade-off, via any “calculus of suffering.” That is so particularly since such enlightenment primarily benefits only the specific person “blessed” by it, not the world at large.

In the Edo Era [1600 – 1868], Buddhist priests did not marry, but temples were busy places, and the priests in many cases were somewhat worldly. Women began living in the temples, to work and, at times, to love. They did not show their faces because they weren’t supposed to be there to begin with (Chadwick, 1999; italics added).

Otori [1814 – 1904] recognized that a large number of Buddhist priests were already married, in spite of regulations prohibiting it (Victoria, 1997; italics added).

[I]n Zen monasteries in Japan ... sex between men has long been both a common practice and a prohibited activity (Downing, 2001; italics added).
http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stg...apters/zen.asp