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