Tag Archives: ethics

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when straw men rule: an analysis of the Plum Village Lineage conflict guide – part 1

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Well, Happy Fourth Anniversary to 108 Zen Books. What a way to celebrate!

All That Has Come to Pass

First, I’d like to thank everyone who has responded to the previous post announcing the Conflict Resolution Guide from the Plum Village Lineage North American Dharma Teachers Sangha. Your comments, here and elsewhere on the social media, have been instructive, decisive, and very reassuring. Some of you have called me and offered wise words of advice and support. I thank you, one and all!

Second, this is a difficult issue, one which can devolve quickly into mud-slinging and histrionic allegations. And let’s not lose sight of what for me is a painful reality that we are addressing a community lead by Thich Nhat Hanh, one of the most beloved Buddhist teachers in the Western World. I freely admit my blindness in this regard. Thấy is my root teacher and I continue to hold a defensiveness about his responsibility and accountability in this. In my own rationalizing process, the teacher is at a far distance from the industry that is the global sangha he has fostered. While the Industry of the Plum Village Lineage has demonstrated a resistance to learning appropriate processes and protocols from the world around them, I continue to believe that Thich Nhat Hanh is willing to live what he teaches. In a telling example, I watched as Thấy tried once to bring an offending Dharma Teacher into line. However, without the support of the larger community, Thấy’s directives that this teacher suspend his teachings for a year and work under the supervision of other teachers were ignored and the Dharma Teacher continued to be supported by peers and communities. In my view, the machinery that is the Plum Village Four Fold Community appeared to have slipped the ethical moorings of its teacher and to be navigating without its North Star.

Third, to my own knowledge, I can speak to only one victim of sexual harassment. While this is a necessary piece of information through which to examine the existence and viability of due process in reporting issues of sexual, emotional, and physical misconduct, it is not sufficient.  Without someone stepping forward and being willing to speak to her/his experience, there is nothing to investigate, report, or engage in; and to do so as an ad hoc speculative process would be irresponsible. To be charitable, I can see the Dharma Teachers in the PVL trying to meet the escalating need for guidelines to deal with the many and varied sensitive issues with which they are faced – yet falling far short of what is immediately necessary. As I once wrote on the Order of Interbeing forum, there is no need to use terms like “if” sexual abuse occurs, it is a safe bet that it already has. The real issue is whether we as a community are prepared to meet these incidents with an unrelenting commitment to transparency and the truth-seeking mind.

Of course, there is so much embedded in the philosophy of the PVL that is idiosyncratic in its interpretation of the Dharma. The adherence to “harmony” and “balance” is one. Another is the persistent use of the phrase “Are you sure?”  While I acknowledge that harmony, balance, and incisive inquiry into my perceptions is crucial, it has been my experience that, in the PVL sangha, these concepts are perverted to serve the process of oppression rather than openness.

It is with all of these realizations, struggles, and blindnesses that I approached the Conflict-Guide. After reading it in detail and considering the input from various Zen teachers, lay practitioners, comments on this blog, and personal communications with Buddhist practitioners, I stand in agreement that the document is a fair attempt at outlining a process for dealing with interpersonal, low-level conflict. However, and most important to victims of serious conflict, the document fails in defining the ethical principles of the North American Dharma Teachers in the PVL. It fails definitively as a means of holding the teachers accountable because it does not define their scope of practice and what constitutes operating outside that scope. And, it fails catastrophically as compassionate and sensitive model of due process for a victim of sexual, emotional, and physical misconduct by a dharma teacher or member of the Order of Interbeing.

However, the document does serve as a straw man whose deconstruction can feed many a crow.

So let me begin with an overall commentary of the Conflict Resolution Guide. Then I will take most of the paragraphs in sequence and set them up against the mirror of what they implicitly demand of someone who has been traumatized. For this, I will be drawing from my professional work as advocate of victims of assault who suffer from complex PTSD, as a police and military psychologist, and my own experience of boundary violation by my therapist, physical assault by a peer member of the PVL Order of Interbeing, and a strong resister of emotional seduction by a PVL Dharma Teacher. I acknowledge at the outset that I am coming from a biased perspective, coloured by my beliefs of what I expect of Dharma Teachers and my own unskillfulness in challenging their inappropriate actions.

When Straw Men Rule

The purpose of a real Straw Man is to scare away birds and animals that would otherwise deplete a field of its seeds. Its intent is to protect future resources and to ensure the continuation of beings outside its circle of awareness but inside its circle of care. The Conflict Resolution Guide of the Plum Village Lineage (CRG-PVL) does just that. In its unwieldy format, language, and controlled access to the real people behind the scene, it creates a set of obstacles that only the very angry, determined, and/or strong of heart could navigate.

In structure, it outlines what the North American Dharma Teachers expect of their sangha members who are in the grasp of a conflict. It offers a background of concepts and intentions to transcend the “adversarial punitive approaches” of “our greater society.” It promises a “moving ahead from the stuck place.” It educates on the historic origins of conflict and suggests that a model of victimology is not useful. It offers readings and practices that could possibly help to develop insight, understanding, and steadiness in the face of distress. And, up to this point, the Straw Man seems quite friendly and truly interested in the well-being of the person suffering in the conflictual situation.

In its description of the process to seek resolution, the Straw man begins its dance and realizes its true intent: to scare away those who would need its resources.

….. more to come

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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