Crossing Nebraska

  In my previous post, I related the story of something of a power clash I was both privy to and part of. I was attending a religious service where a woman was singled out for not being spiritually powerful enough to take part, even though no men in attendance were questioned in this way. I ended up involving myself in this cultural (?) clash by later questioning the Tibetan Buddhist Lama who’d performed the service. You may read the whole story here . Thinking of this occurrence in terms of a cultural clash is perhaps the most benign way to interpret what happened. A male practitioner of a very patriarchal religious system likely acted precisely as he’d been taught by his teachers from his home country. For my part, I behaved in precisely the way I was taught during my egalitarian Western upbringing. Hence, the clash. Rorschach test inkblot #8 Perhaps we might also consider this conflict through the lens of the developmental model theorized by Ken Wilber in, for instance, Inte...

  My previous couple of posts focused on the unequivocally abusive behavior of one particular teacher and the subtle and not-so-subtle actions of some of his students to shield him from accountability or otherwise burnish his reputation as if his abusive behavior had never occurred. Sexual gratification and a thirst for power seem to have been what motivated that teacher. But what was/is in it for those students that ignored or minimized his abuse and who continue to speak of him with the highest regard? It's easy to conclude that the reason must be their enjoyment of the power that comes with being in the circle of one who wields power. However, some will no doubt maintain that the “apparently abusive” behavior of an enlightened individual cannot be judged by those of us who are not enlightened! Hmmm. What does your bullshit detector tell you? And yet, there are indeed some apparently abusive or discriminatory power dynamics that are not so black and white. Tibetan monks prepar...

Perhaps I opened a can of worms with my previous post . But how can a Zen Buddhist writing on issues of Power, Practice, andPeace not at least touch on the sordid mess that Joshu Sasaki created and which so many of his students enabled for so many years. Would the Zen monk of my previous post, the one who told of Sasaki’s “otherworldly” power, have spoken of him so glowingly if he thought we’d already caught wind of his serial sexual abuse? We had not. But he almost certainly had. Allegations of Sasaki’s sexual abuse of his female students didn’t reach the wider Zen community until November 16, 2012. It was then that Eshu Martin, another of Sasaki’s ordained students, had a letter published on Sweeping Zen, a now defunct website. Publication of that letter, entitled Everybody Knows , was well after the Zen talk spoken of in my previous post. However, if Martin is accurate in his characterization of the sexual abuse scandal enabled by Sasaki’s monastic community, then that monk who...

  Some years ago, I attended a talk given by a Western Zen teacher. He was an affable guy, both entertaining and insightful. One of the more profound things I remember him saying is that “zazen has its own built-in bullshit detector.” It was a comment that instantly resonated with me. In other words, the process of seated meditation is a purifying one—like sitting in a crucible with the impurity of delusory thought boiling away.   What I found ironic, however, is that later in his talk he told the following story of an event that occurred during his monastic training: He’d received word that his mother was ailing and might die, so he asked his teacher during a private interview whether he could and should go visit her. As the story goes, prior to giving his permission the teacher proceeded to “channel” the ailing mother somehow, imitating the demeanor and mannerisms of a sick and depleted old woman. It was as if he were checking in on her condition from afar. At least, that’...

I began this Power, Practice, and Peace series by thinking of power as physicists do, as work done per unit of time. Unfortunately, this technical definition fails us much of the time when talking about power. Perhaps this already occurred to you while reading my recent posts about the power of our voice. We also speak of the powers of concentration, will, forgiveness, and gratitude. And, of course, we speak of the power of love.  But what about spiritual power? I suspect we all know some who are more spiritual than most. Perhaps they have a felt (and lived) connection to a deeper truth than this mundane reality that most of us attach to. Perhaps they seem to have tapped into a wellspring of energy, creativity, or meaning, for instance, that keeps them focused, uplifted, and resolute. Unbloomed Tulip To be sure, even avowed atheists can have great spiritual power. After all, the word spiritual derives from the Latin, spiritus , which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as...

  There is much at stake at the present time. Each passing day seems to bring to the fore yet another threat to something we once took for granted. Speaking out can be daunting, exhausting, and even scary. Which is why it’s so uplifting when voices of wisdom and goodness join together. There is power in unity. It also doesn’t hurt if we can find someone rich, famous, and powerful to speak out along with us. The rich, famous, and powerful seem to have whatever je ne sais quoi it takes to influence large numbers of people. They amplify our message, and we vicariously enjoy the benefit of their power. Do you recall Taylor Swift being criticized for not taking a stand this past election season? We apparently couldn’t bear to see such power go unused! The Left wanted the power of her voice, and so did the Right, even though nobody really knew which way she was leaning for quite some time. No doubt many of her fans were hugely disappointed once she finally did endorse her candidate. Bu...