When harm arises at the CENTER of the Dharma, what is “care”?

A 1983 study titled ‘The Structure of Empathy’ found a correlation between empathy and four major personality clusters: sensitivity, nonconformity, even temperedness, and social self-confidence…’The relationship between social self-confidence and empathy is the most difficult to understand,’ the study admits. But its explanation makes sense: social confidence is a prerequisite not a guarantee; it can ‘give a person the courage to enter the interpersonal world and practice empathetic skills.’ “

Empathy comes from the Greek ephatheia – em (into) and pathos (feeling – a penetration, a kind of travel. It suggests you enter another person’s pain as you’d enter another country, through immigration and customs, border crossing by way of inquiry: What grows where you are? What are the laws? What animals graze here?“

Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination. Empathy requires knowing you know nothing. Empathy means acknowledging a horizon of context that extends perpetually beyond what you can see.”

Empathy isn’t just remembering to say that must be really hard – it’s figuring out how to bring difficulty into the light so it can be seen at all. Empathy isn’t just listening, it’s asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to.”

Many survivors had reported to us that they felt as harmed by poor institutional and community responses to the abuse as by the abuse itself.”

The Zen tradition will need to respond to the claim, made by Brian Victoria, D.T. Suzuki, and others that, whatever its other impressive strengths, Zen training in its current form leaves even the most awakened practitioners in a state of moral immaturity and vulnerability. It will need to respond by rethinking and expanding Zen training, extending Zen meditation to include practices that are relevant to the cultivation of moral excellence, as well as to other reflective powers that are essential to admirable forms of human life.”

To the extent that Zen practitioners are ‘without thinking,’ they will have no choice but to take it on faith that their inherited goals are adequate because they will not have developed the skills that would allow them to think clearly about or enter into conversation and debate about the kind of life that they seek, live, and teach to others…Zen training also inculcates a certain relation to authority and hierarchy that undermines the opportunities for monks to develop these skills [of reflection, conversation, reasoning, debating, organizing, or planning].”

Meditation Safety Toolbox

“The toolbox contains documents, protocols and best practice guidelines from the UMASS Center for Mindfulness, Bangor and Oxford Mindfulness Centers, and other mindfulness researchers.”

[W]ithin this practice system, to think critically of one’s teacher is to damage one’s mind and to impair one’s progress toward enlightenment, thus risking disaster.”

In the context of [one] survivor’s long relationship with her teacher – which became sexual and which she eventually characterized as abusive and traumatic – the erosion of self also resembled a grooming process in which she was encouraged to distrust her own ethical intuitions and conventional understandings. Olivia recalls reflecting on her teacher’s effort to isolate her from her friends and family, and even from her own past, in explicitly Buddhist terms.”

RETIRN (Re-Entry Therapy, Information & Referral Network)

“Since 1983, the Re-Entry Therapy, Information & Referral Network (RETIRN) has been providing counseling, forensic (legal), consultation, information and referral services to individuals and families adversely affected by high demand groups, manipulative and totalistic social, political, transformational and/or religious movements…RETIRN Associates are consultants, psychotherapists, and counselors, many of whom themselves are former cultists or have been exposed to destructive cults or other coercive influence techniques.”

The dangers…(which often surround the evolution of ‘new’ religions in the west), have been well documented and highlight the caution people muse take when approaching any charismatic leader who makes use of esoteric practices and the imposition of rigid power structures in order to promote ‘spiritual teachings.’ “

Diane Shainberg, a psychotherapist who has dealt with many such cases [of Tibetan teachers having sexual relationships with their students], was askid if these relationships could ever be described as ‘transcendental’. She replied:

‘Never. In each and every case, the woman was not able to make sense out of it, and…was not in touch with her own needs and wants. She had gone to the figure of authority to validate her, and it had not happened. She was turned into a sexual object and she ultimately felt that she had been abandoned, not only by the authority figure, the spiritual teacher, but by the sangha…and finally, abandoned by herself…’ “

In this study of gender, identity and Tibetan Buddhism, I have set out an historical context in which religious concepts concerning the male and the female developed, and have shown how egalitarian ideals of gender equality can fail to materialize when dominant groups in society, selectively use (consciously or unconsciously) philosophical ideals to promote self-interest.”

Meditation-Related Challenges Study

A study to understand meditation-related difficulties and adverse effects.

You may be eligible to participate if you have experienced any of the following as a result of meditation:

• Difficulties or distress or
• Negative impacts on your life or daily functioning or
• You needed additional professional support or treatment
• And you are 18 years or older and can read and understand English

Call for Research Participants – Ex-Membership in New and Minority Religions

Are you a former member of a new or minority religion or cult?  If so, please consider completing our 10-minute survey!

In 2017, the #MeToo movement exposed sexual and other forms of abuse among Tibetan Buddhist lamas operating in Europe and North America.”

When confronted with the impact of their behavior, professionals who are narcissistic are unable to empathize and identify with the client’s experience…[T]hey never take responsibility for how they affect their clients.”

In my opinion, the highest value should be placed on the ethic of care, accountability, and connection.”

We have found through speaking with survivors that Buddhist doctrine can be a contributing factor in sexual abuse and misconduct cases, depending on how it is activated.”

 As a field, Buddhist Studies has yet come to terms with the issue of Buddhist sexual violence, a task made vastly more complex by Buddhist Studies’ colonial history.”

In our work, we call attention to how neutral doctrines are more likely to be used in the service of power in systems marked by gendered hierarchies, as well as to the ways in which certain Buddhist doctrines can be abuse-prone or easily weaponized to enable abuse.”

A daring greatly culture is a culture of honest, constructive, and engaged feedback…The problem is straightforward: Without feedback there can be no transformative change.”

In an organizational culture where respect and the dignity of individuals are held as the highest values…[e]mpathy is a valued asset, accountability is an expectation rather than an exception, and the primal human need for belonging is not used as leverage and social control.”