Tag Archives: ethics

zen & the art of winning and losing in sexual misconduct

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If you’ve been reading blogs of greater import than 108ZenBooks, you’ve likely become intrigued by, enthralled with, or perhaps stupefied by the ever-increasing flow of revelations and denouncement of (typically male) Zen teachers who have allegedly violated boundaries with their (typically female) students.  That’s not to say there are no female perpetrators by the way; the statistics for females is clouded by the myth that women can’t commit rape or engage in sexual interference.

I tend to stay away from eruptions such are the accusations and robe rattling that follow.  As a psychologist (and thankfully never to be a Zen teacher), I spend enough time working with women (and occasionally men) who have been caught in the trap of sexual advances and/or assault to know that public revelations of potentially criminal actions undermine any investigation into them and threaten the possibility of due process.  Trial by public opinion and debate doesn’t win cases and perpetrators just love to see these things self-destruct through misguided passion for justice.

But this isn’t the purpose of this post – if it has a purpose at all.  I want to bring your attention to two women I have admired ever since I began writing (though I will admit to having had a fear of their fierceness when I first came online).  NellaLou of Smiling Buddha Cabaret has put together a cogent and detailed examination of the discussions on Sweeping Zen.  I’d encourage you to read it here.  The issue is very simple: Harm is always a possibility and has many guises.  Have a system in place that can mitigate it.  NellaLou uses the Boundless Way code of ethics to navigate the inevitability of boundary blurring and outright violations.  I have tremendous respect for the teachers at Boundless Way so I say read it too.

Many Zen teachers and practitioners become defensive when faced with the reality that shit like this happens.  That shit happens* is, by the way, the first Dharma Seal.  In other words, sexual harassment/interference/assault happens.  However, it’s wrong and in most upright organizations there are rules for dealing with it.  So as a member of an organization in which it may be happening, don’t take it personally; that’s the second Dharma Seal.  Unless you are the perpetrator or have colluded with one, it has nothing to do with your personal ethics; however it is a call for you to figure out how your ethics get traction in this skid.  Shit that happens doesn’t last is the third Dharma Seal.  Other shit will happen and keep happening.  And the consequences for not preventing the collateral harm are karmic.

Now onto Tanya McG’s post on Full Contact Enlightenment.  Please read it here.  Tanya addresses something we rarely consider.  In any assault, be it emotional or physical/sexual, the person most likely to lose (in many senses of the word) is the woman.  The humiliation and hurt are overpowering and few survive the workplace or small town mentalities; few can follow the adage to walk around with their head held high or that survival is best form of revenge.  Adding insult to assault, women are more likely to experience financial and career loss in sexual harassment cases (for stats go here and here).

Tanya’s experience is not unique.  I don’t say that to diminish her experience but to make two points.  First, it happens to more women than you may believe or been told.  Consider the possibility that messages of the uniqueness of your experience is a method of controlling you through shame and blame.  That message is false.  In other words, sexual misconduct didn’t happen because of something specific about you; it’s a systemic poison that’s maintained by fear, anger, and delusion.  Second, if you are reading this and you have read Tanya’s post and you see yourself in it, know that you could not have sustained yourself in a poisoned environment and that has nothing to do with strength or survival.

Ethical conduct is not about the extreme in actions.  It’s the areas in the middle ground of human frailty that cause us to fall over from uprightness.  Professional and personal ethics are means of addressing the outcome of being  terribly human.  And importantly, without the latter, the former is toothless.  That is, being a Zen teacher (or Psychologist) no more makes us upright than sacrificing birds on an altar.  Standing up is the only practice that does and each time we do so we create a community of uprightness and from that emerges a model of ethical living.  Simply put, actions among people in a community are operationalized as acceptable or not; it doesn’t arise out of a naïve belief that our inherent goodness is sufficient for moral action to occur.

The message from NellaLou and Tanya is clear.  Ultimately, who really wins and loses in sexual misconduct?  Everybody.  Who survives?  The community that is fearlessly transparent and the people who build it.

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* from a talk by Jon Kabat-Zinn

angulimala and the price of belonging

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Every so often, I come back to the story of Angulimala.  There’s a well-written version here and it is one of the most beloved Buddhist stories of salvation.  Angulimala was a brilliant student of a well-known teacher who turned against him when other students became jealous.  The teacher set a task to test Angulimala’s dedication to his teachings: he was to collect a thousand human little fingers.  In some versions, Angulimala was set the task to prove his unquestioning loyalty to the teacher.  In others, the teacher believed Angulimala had slept with his wife and set him up to commit these crimes so that he would be punished by the law, a rather passive-aggressive move on the teacher’s part.

There’s the obvious cautionary message about what teachers can do when caught in their own tangles of desire.  I would say it’s regardless of enlightenment because I don’t believe true enlightenment is a permanent condition anyway.  There’s also the obvious moral call to be one’s own lamp in matters of principled action.   But that’s not really where the power of the story lies.

At its heart, this is a story about the restrictions we place on our vision of others.  We need them be a certain way, to act a certain way, to meet our needs a certain way.  We believe certainty is a scripted safety net which makes life safe within margins.  When that script is challenged it doesn’t matter if the challenge is real or not; the ripples of fear are immediate and cannot be calmed easily.  

It’s also a story about our need to belong and what we are willing to forfeit to have that place where we are accepted as trusted and valued members of a community.  It’s easy to fall into the mind-trap that gives precedence to a felt sense of belonging over principled action because the former “feels” more real, has more “real” correlates with safety than the latter.  We all need something we can hold onto; a dharma name, a robe, a shawl, a jacket.  Nothing wrong with that unless we look away from the coin we’ve used to purchase it.

I don’t claim to know what the teacher and his student should have done or might have done.  I need to spend a bit of time counting the little fingers I’ve collected while thinking I was truly practicing.

what price my soul

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A little while ago I was asked to offer one of my projects as bait for a rather large fish.  Ah, you know the ending already.  I wasn’t distressed by the outcome really.  Well, I was briefly, but having had reservations about the whole thing, I was relieved that the fish spit out the bait (no idea if it took the hook).  What I am putting myself through the ringer over is the (eventual) willingness to be bait.  

In the process of deconstructing my decisions, I heard various explanations.  That’s what you get for wanting to be famous.  That’s what you get for wanting their approval.  That’s what you get for trying to prove you’re better than they are.  That’s what you get for (fill in the blank with some attribute that points to greed, anger, and ignorance).  Perhaps.  I don’t deny that these baser desires course through my nightmares and day dreams.  And yet, there is something else that wasn’t being offered.

We want things.  We work hard for recognition, acknowledgment, visibility.  But it can’t stop there if it is to be truly the work from the heart.  And my decision – ambivalent as I was about it – had at its heart the desire to create accessibility, to open doors.  And perhaps I wanted that too much, so much that I was willing to sell my soul for it.

On the funny side, one might say that as a Buddhist and hence not having a soul, I thought it was a pretty cheap trade.  My empty soul for a big fish.  On the sad side, it was another wake up call to not make assumptions about practice and communities of practitioners.  One friend emailed me saying he was sorry my project was “hindered by mundane superficialities.”  I liked that.  Hindered, not scuttled.  It puts it into perspective.  It reminded me of a dear friend who used to say, “That’s a non-problem.”

When we have aspirations, we are willing to do what we believe is necessary to achieve them.  In fact, wise diligence says we must be willing to do what is necessary to bring something to fruition, to make it real, to realize it.  Effort – it’s not just for the cushion.  Yet somehow, it’s easier with coming back to the breath than with finding solid ground in the light and shadow of human (and corporate) interactions.  

But practice is not about “easy.”  Practice is about discovering that edge where we’re entangled in desire and principle.

what can you do?

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Step Four: Take Action.  The final step in The Misleading Mind by Karuna Cayton is to use the clarity developed through the practices of stilling and connecting with our emotions.  As we see that our reality is constructed, we detach from its power to define us, to set our identity in stone.  The remainder of Cayton’s book covers a lot of ground, beginning with the way we create (and re-create) our reality and diving into the need for ethics and self-compassion.  By his definition, the litmus test of ethics – or rather the way one knows if an action is ethical – is if it leads to creating health and well being.  

I’m chewing on this.  Harkening back to the first post of this series about past actions that ripen into present karmic consequences, I have to wonder about Cayton’s definition.  I wish things were so clear-cut when choosing actions that avoid harm and foster good.  One thing I’ve learned about making decisions to divert harm: someone is always invested in the trajectory of the present moment and you’re bound to piss them off when you mess with their equation.  And the reason is simple: in your mind, their actions may bear harmful fruit; in their mind, your actions may bear harmful fruit.  I’ve often found it useful to sit with some people and, as a starting point, agree that we are likely both delusional in our perceptions.  We strike up a partnership to pool our investments and determine the best course possible.  Sometimes it works.  Sometimes it doesn’t.

There’s no “most times” because inevitably someone decides that their delusion is more important to defend than adapt.

In matters of determining ethical actions, I keep returning to René Girard’s monkeys and the banana (see Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World).  Initially, the conflict is about eating the banana.  Inevitably however, it becomes about who owns the banana.  Getting caught in right and wrong is also like that.  Initially, it’s about the right thing to do.  Eventually, it’s about who is seen as doing the right thing.  This is where the self-awareness and clarity of mind is crucial.  Once I can see that I’ve become invested in being the one who is doing the right thing, I’ve lost the ground I stand on.

Nevertheless, I’m pleased that Cayton raises the issue of ethics as an important aspect of practice.  There can never be enough said, written, or taught about it.

hearts that open

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At the end of a retreat conducted in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh, retreatants are invited to take the Five Mindfulness Trainings.  These are the lay precepts cast in terms of positive engagement by Thich Nhat Hanh.  At one level that is so; at another, they continue to contain elements of the “do not” found in all calls for ethical behaviours.  While the terminology is not as directive, the commitment to not kill, not steal, not engage in sexual misconduct, not speak in anger or untruthfully, and not to use intoxicants is very much evident.  It’s unavoidable really.  The first step of any practice whose intention is well being begins with restraint.

This aspect of ethics is a touchy one for many of us.  We don’t like being told what to do; even more, we dislike being told what not to do.  And yet, in the liminal space between moving forward and holding back, there may be something valuable that can emerge.

So today, I’m watching the many ways in which I can act with restraint, hold back, pause.  Not as a process of denying myself or others but rather as a practice of awareness, of not obstructing the possibility of something different arising.