Behind The Thangkas ~ Sogyal Rimpoche ~ The imbalance of power and abuse of spiritual authority
by Dialogue Ireland
Posted on 15 December 2011
Dialogue Ireland has hosted a dossier which points to issues of sexual and inappropriate cultist behaviour involving women.
https://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2 ... -rinpoche/
We have also become aware of extreme teaching methods which are applied in seminars. We publish this in the knowledge that some may hold different views. We always allow contrary views as our comment section shows. However, we go beyond and will allow an official response from Rigpa to be published without censorship. Also if any individual in the body of this text feels a need to respond we will publish this in full following editorial scrutiny. Sexual assault, abuse, an imbalance of power and abuse of spiritual authority concerning Sogyal Rimpoche are all features of this article.
-- Mike Garde Director Dialogue Ireland.
It is a cloudy day in August 2008 in the Languedoc-Rousillon region of southern France. Hundreds of people dressed in their best party clothes line both sides of a narrow country road. Most of them hold a khata — a long white scarf, presented as a ceremonial offering to Tibetan dignitaries. A rainbow array of prayer flags flutter, and the breeze catches plumes of fragrant juniper smoke rising from pot-bellied stoves placed at intervals along the route.
A ripple of excitement runs through the crowd as a procession comes into view. As it approaches some people wave, others bow with hands clasped in the prayer gesture, others offer their khatas, holding them at arm’s length towards a small, elderly man wearing maroon monastic robes and a huge smile. Even at a distance he radiates charisma. He has acquired unique status on the world stage as the man who loves everyone — and many people nowadays accept that the joy on his face originates from a genuinely open heart. As he passes, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, reaches out to touch members of his adoring fan club. The Dalai Lama strides alongside Carla Bruni Sarkozy at the head of a cluster of monks, security men and journalists, towards a multi-coloured, ornate portico. A monastic band strikes up. Monks in their red and yellow robes and ceremonial hats play shawms – oboe-like instruments that wail like the wind in a Himalayan storm. They lead the proceedings that set in motion the inauguration of the largest, most grandiose Tibetan temple in the developed world. Sheltered by the portico, Carla Sarkozy stands apart from the crowd – tall and elegant in a dark couture dress. She too holds a khata. Another figure sidles up beside her. He is short, balding, obese and clothed in a floor-length mustard yellow robe – a chuba — lay rather than monastic Tibetan attire. His manner is obsequious, he is bowed in deference but his face tells the phalanx of TV cameras, forest of microphones and those present in person that this is his finest hour. Here he is, Sogyal Lakar from a remote region of Tibet, introducing the Dalai Lama to the First Lady of France.
Sogyal is recognised as a tulku (re-incarnate lama) and is known as Rinpoche, which means precious one in Tibetan. He is the second best known lama on the Tibetan landscape and he too is idolised by thousands of followers who belong to Rigpa, his organisation active in France with six centres and six study groups and in 24 countries around the world. Carla Sarkozy appears somewhat awe-struck. With a shy smile she offers her khata to the Dalai Lama. His big smile broadens even further as, according to Tibetan custom, he accepts the scarf and then returns it to the donor — draping it tastefully around Carla’s neck. A day of elaborate ritual follows, with the Dalai Lama tasting salt, tossing flower petals and cutting multi coloured ribbons draped across the temple doors, before entering to perform the consecration ceremony. Once inside, more celebrities step out to meet the world’s A list holy man – French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, Rama Yade, Secretary of State for Human Rights and former Prime Minister Alain Juppe. As the Dalai Lama moves inside the enormous building decorated with extreme oriental flamboyance, other public figures are on tenterhooks for their brief moment of eye contact with His Holiness. A famous actress here, an author there, more politicians – and a cluster of clerics, including Claude Azema, the auxilliary Bishop of Montpelier. The name of the place is Lerab Ling, which means Sanctuary of Enlightened Action. Sogyal Rinpoche chose this name in honour of Lerab Lingpa, a 19th century Tibetan Buddhist master Sogyal claims as his predecessor. So how did a 63 year old man in poor health, who left his native Tibet when he was a young child, and had only a basic education in India, come to be the head of a multi-national organisation with tentacles in five continents? How did he manage to raise 10 million Euros to build a huge temple in southern France? And then persuade the wife of the President to provide the media focus for the opening day?
Charisma, luck, chutzpah and a lawsuit
If you ask a selection of Sogyal’s many admirers about the qualities as a Buddhist teacher that have contributed to his success, two answers stand out: his charisma and his humour. Sogyal is an accomplished public performer– that is one factor. Another is that he is credited as the author of the all-time best selling Buddhist book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, which has sold a million copies and been translated into 24 languages. More astringent observers of Sogyal’s trajectory into guru super stardom point in other directions: to his lucky streak, his timing, his chutzpah and his astute exploitation of zeitgeist. For example, thousands of people in the developed world were ready to embrace the exotic path to enlightenment offered by exiled Tibetan lamas and ready to address the taboos surrounding death and dying. But beneath the surface of Sogyal’s success story there are darker strands. His status as a Buddhist lama requires him to be an exemplar of two fundamental articles of faith: wisdom and compassion. Yet in 1994 an American woman known as Janice Doe sued Sogyal for sexual assault and battery. Ever since then, allegations around his private life, financial affairs and credentials as a lama have surfaced from disillusioned former disciples – to the extent that they cast serious doubt on his status as a pre-eminent Buddhist teacher. Those in the know about the history of Rigpa make one firm assertion: that Sogyal could not have scaled the giddy heights without the help of his long-term right-hand man Patrick Gaffney. Some former insiders, like the journalist Mary Finnigan, go further: “Patrick is the real brains behind Rigpa,” she says, “Sogyal is merely the public persona.” Patrick played an equal role with Sogyal during the Lerab Ling temple ceremony – highlighting his dominant position in the Rigpa hierarchy.
Career launch in London
Sogyal left India in the early 1970s. The official biography claims he studied comparative religion at Cambridge University, but when Mary Finnigan met him shortly after he first arrived in England, she recalls that he was resident at a sanatorium in Cambridge: “He was accompanying a member of the Sikkimese royal family while both of them were recovering from tuberculosis.” Sogyal’s Lakar family were well-connected, but impoverished since their flight into exile. According to several former members of Rigpa, Sogyal’s mother sent her elder son to the west with specific instructions to make money. In the winter of 1973 Sogyal turned up in London, announcing that he wanted to set up a centre where teachings could be given by some of the great Tibetan meditating yogis. Around this time he met Patrick Gaffney and another faithful acolyte, Dominique Side. The latter was introduced to him by Mary Finnigan and a group of squatters occupying a house in the Kentish Town district of north London. In the early 1970s hippies were settling down back home after their oriental adventures and experiments with psychedelic drugs. Most of them acknowledged their interest in altered states of consciousness, but realised it was time to stop using powerful chemicals. They had encountered exiled Tibetan lamas in India and Nepal and were eager to pursue their fascination with Tibet’s Tantric Buddhism known as the Vajrayana – a contemplative schema that offers the promise of authentic spiritual experience, leading to profound insights and even enlightenment in one lifetime. At the time there was only one Tibetan lama, Chime Youngdon Rinpoche, giving teachings in London. Apart from the dauntingly orthodox Buddhist Society, there was no place anywhere in London where an ambitious young lama could set up his stall, in order to meet the demand for Tibetan Buddhism. That is until the squatters heard about a large empty house in Chatsworth Road, Kilburn, owned by The London Borough of Brent. Mary Finnigan was a member of a group of about 10 squatters who broke into the house and claimed it in the name of the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. According to Mary Finnigan, Sogyal already had a reputation as a playboy with a penchant for pretty girls when he arrived in London. It soon became clear to his core group of squatters, hippies and young professional people that their new-found guru had a voracious sexual appetite. Mary recalls that he lived for a while with Dominique Side – “she was devastated when she found out he was not monogamous” – but soon moved into his own room in Chatsworth Road. “At this point” says Mary, “he switched into top gear and persuaded several senior lamas to perform ceremonies and give teachings in what they probably did not know was an illegally occupied building.” The response exceeded all expectations, with crowds turning up to events that were publicised at short notice by word of mouth. During the early days in London, Sogyal acted mostly as a translator for the older generation of yogi-lamas who fled from Tibet following the Chinese takeover in 1959. These included the head of the Nyingma order, the late Dudjom Rinpoche – a lama of legendary repute held in the highest regard by Tibetans and westerners alike. Sogyal dedicated his new centre to Dudjom, who named it Orgyen Choling.
Trungpa Rinpoche and the rock star lifestyle
The squat lasted only a few months. At first Sogyal was “one of the boys”, but took off for a while to visit Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who pioneered Tibetan Buddhism in the USA. Trungpa was a formidably intelligent iconoclast who acquired a nationwide following, with a formula that shook Buddhist America to the core and generated enthusiasm wherever he alighted. In contrast to the more familiar austerities of Zen Buddhism, Trungpa offered authentic Tibetan theory and practice in tandem with a sybaritic lifestyle. An early American seeker, Victoria Barlow, recalls meeting Sogyal in Boulder, Colorado in 1976: “Sogyal was enthralled by Trungpa’s sexual conquests,” she says, “he told me outright that he wanted what Trungpa had and aimed to achieve a rock star lifestyle.” Sogyal returned to London in a radically altered state of mind – berating his students for their lack of worldly ambition and demanding to be treated like a “precious one”. Around this time Sogyal met up with Ngakpa Chogyam, a Englishman who later became a Buddhist teacher. “At first he was quite friendly”, says Chogyam, “but later he let me know that he was a distinctly superior being and that I was no longer to address him as Sogyal.” Around this time Sogyal launched into his habit of publicly humiliating his close followers – berating for them for even minor errors in front of a roomful of people. Patrick Gaffney is the only one to be spared these ordeals. He was still doing it in 2011. A woman (Lalatee) who attended a retreat at Dzogchen Beara, the Rigpa centre in Ireland, was profoundly shocked by Sogyal’s behaviour: “I experienced what at best could be termed disrespect, at worst abuse of his colleagues and disciples. He was regularly late and often over-ran the sessions by several hours. He was insulting to the Irish people, about his assistants and to individual course participants. The last straw for me was when he called a senior assistant to come to the dais. She’s a respected professional in her 60s doing amazing work with the bereaved and the dying. She was forced to kneel beside Sogyal, while he embraced her closely and put his hand on her chest. I could see that she was embarrassed and uncomfortable. Sogyal proceeded to stroke her face, looking deeply into her eyes. When she pulled back slightly, he turned to the 250 people present and said ‘this is none of your business, turn away’. So 250 people twisted round in their seats and looked away. If that is not crowd manipulation and abuse, I don’t know what is. At the very least it shows complete disregard for western social mores and ethical behaviour.”
Also in 2011 another woman (Myra) attended a Rigpa retreat at Myall Lakes in Australia. “Sogyal seemed arrogant and uncaring. He was habitually an hour or more late and after he turned up would spend another hour and half criticising his older students. Meanwhile, several hundred people who had already waited a long time had to witness this, not understanding what was going on. Many of them were new to Rigpa. Sogyal then gave his senior students orders about how he wanted the presentation to be prepared for the next day. I know they sometimes stayed up all night working on a new version, but next day when Sogyal arrived everything would be all wrong again and there would be another diatribe.” Myra asked older students about Sogyal’s behaviour: “One explanation given to justify it was that he aims to shock people out of their habitual thinking – that he’s a Vajra Master and doesn’t conform to the same samsaric standards as we do. I couldn’t help thinking that if he’s really a Vajra Master why does he need to follow a precise order of events? Why are the prepared readings and video excerpts so important? I really think there’s something else going on.” Back in the 1970s, the man who now insisted on being called Rinpoche exhorted his flock to focus their attention on attracting money and on improving the style, content and comfort levels of the Chatsworth Road house. “He was a slave driver”, says one squatter, Jack, “he had us working flat out, restoring the house, building a shrine, putting up shelves and so on – while he sat around directing operations.” People like businessman Jean Lanoe involved in the construction of the Lerab Ling temple would affirm that in this respect also, Sogyal has not changed.
Sogyal Rinpoche was born in 1947 into the Lakar family of what the Tibetans called the Trehor region of Kham, Tibet.[9] According to his mother, the patron of his courtesan aunt and de facto stepfather, Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö, recognized him as the incarnation of Tertön Sogyal and supervised his education at Dzongsar Monastery.[10] However this claim appears to have no other source. He claims to have studied traditional subjects with several tutors, including Khenpo Appey, who was appointed as his tutor by Dzongsar Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö.[10][11]
Sogyal Rinpoche attended a Catholic school in Kalimpong, India and then studied at Delhi University in India's capital before coming to the West.
-- Sogyal Rinpoche, by Wikipedia
Sex conquests and doubts
Neither it seems, has his insatiable appetite for sexual conquests. From Chatsworth Road, Orgyen Choling moved into short life premises in Princess Road, Kilburn. Sogyal occupied the top floor, members of his band of wannabe Buddhist yogis lived in other rooms, while the ground floor was transformed into a shrine room. One resident recalled the steady stream of young women summoned to the guru’s abode for “private teachings.” “Some of them would stay for a while and leave quietly, but others would flounce out shouting loud protests and slamming doors.”
People who have now left Sogyal’s entourage speak about a “sense of pollution” — how the succession of females in and out of the guru’s bedroom made them feel ill at ease. No-one at this time identified Sogyal’s behaviour as a personality disorder, but more recently health professionals have stated that he is a sex addict – an obsession as powerful as drugs, alcohol and gambling. There was also a dawning awareness within Sogyal’s community that he was not up to scratch as a Buddhist teacher. A very reticent Englishman was an early Buddhist scholar who visited the Himalayan regions in the 1950s, searching for texts on an arcane aspect of Tibetan teachings known as Dzogchen. Sogyal proclaims himself as a Dzogchen master – but his followers noticed he played “carrot and donkey” with them – holding out the promise of genuine instructions, but never actually delivering. The reticent Englishman confirmed their suspicions:
“Apart from some stuff he picked up from his uncle Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro, he knows very little and what he does know is not Dzogchen.” Ngakpa Chogyam also became aware of gaps in Sogyal’s knowledge: “He asked me a lot of questions about Dzogchen”, he says, “and I was surprised by the way he’d enquire – almost, I thought at the time, as if he didn’t know the answers. I ended up talking a lot when we were alone together – but it occurred to me later that he never asked questions like this when anyone else was around.” Later in his career, when Sogyal was an established lama, he was sitting with several Rinpoches listening to teachings by the Dalai Lama. One of the Rinpoches wrote a note in Tibetan and passed it round the group. According to a Tibetan Buddhist scholar who heard about this from one of the lamas involved “It was obvious to all of them that Sogyal could not read it.” In 1979 the Dzogchen master Choegyal Namkhai Norbu taught for the first time in London and members of Sogyal’s group who attended realised they were experiencing the genuine article. There was a mass exodus from Orgyen Choling, but within weeks the defectors were replaced by a new intake. The devotees who remained faithful include Patrick Gaffney and Dominique Side.
Breaking the bond and the birth of Rigpa
Around this time Sogyal made his first sortie into France – a move which set in motion a chain of events that led to the establishment of Rigpa as a multi-national organisation. Disciples of the late Dudjom Rinpoche had coalesced into a small group in Paris. Sogyal pitched up there and was invited to teach. However, it transpired that the Dudjom people were considerably less tolerant of his playboy lifestyle than his followers in London. Before long they asked Sogyal to leave, but by the time they did this he had acquired a taste for the pleasures of life in France. It must have been tedious for him to return to hippiedom in a dilapidated house in an unfashionable area of London, after spending time with the Parisian bourgeoisie. It seems likely that reports on Sogyal’s womanising and expensive eating habits reached Dudjom Rinpoche’s ears from France – because shortly after he was kicked out of the Paris centre, Dudjom wrote to Sogyal requesting him to stop teaching for a while and return to India “to ripen his practice”. Residents at Orgyen Choling recall little hesitation on the part of their teacher: “He refused point blank to obey the head of his order”, says one of them (Mark) “ quite the opposite in fact. He removed his group from the Dudjom mandala and changed its name to Rigpa, with him in charge and accountable to no-one.” The surge of enthusiasm for Tibetan Buddhism continued to accelerate, but in the late 1970s and early 80s there were still very few lamas actively at work in the big cities of the western world. News of Sogyal’s activities — and that he attracted some of the legendary elders like Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche — spread like wildfire. It soon became apparent that the room at Princess Road was too small to accommodate the ever increasing numbers turning up for teachings. A cash donation from a famous actor enabled Rigpa to obtain a lease on premises in Camden Town. They stayed there for several years until they outgrew this space too. Their final move in London was to their present home on Caledonian Road, in Islington. This is an extensive property with a very large, if somewhat claustrophobic basement shrine room.
Conquering America
The 1980s was a period of phenomenal expansion in the number of people seeking instruction in Tibetan Buddhism – especially in America. As news of the lush lifestyles enjoyed by lamas in the developed world spread to the austere monastic institutions in India and Nepal, more and more of them packed their bags and flew off to fulfil the demand. It soon became clear that not only would they live in luxury, but also that teaching Vajrayana Buddhism represented a major source of income for the Tibetan diaspora. Sogyal set his sights on California.
Victoria Barlow encountered Sogyal on his first visit to the West Coast. According to Victoria, he aired views which are diametrically opposed to his present role as a champion of the Dalai Lama, who belongs to the monastic Gelug school. Sogyal is a Nyingmapa– an older, largely non-celibate tradition. “Sogyal loathed the Gelugpas and the DL,“ she says, “ I heard him in Berkeley being a staggering sectarian hater — he expressed real rage to all who would listen, trashing the Dalai Lama.” Despite his politically incorrect outbursts, Sogyal’s style went down well with Californian audiences. This probably had something to do with the fact that Tibetan Buddhism was virgin territory for most Americans, so the lack of substance in his teachings was not immediately apparent.
His appeal lay in the Shangri-la myths and legends surrounding all things Tibetan. Sogyal’s American audiences had few points of reference to give focus to their enthusiasm, and like many people in many countries, they were hungry for what seemed to them to be authentic access to an ancient esoteric tradition. One of the Californians impressed by Sogyal was Christine Longaker, who at that time was director of the Hospice of Santa Cruz County in the San Francisco Bay area. This smart woman made a connection between Tibetan texts dealing with death and the after-death state – and her work in palliative care for the dying. She shared her insights with Sogyal – who swiftly realised that this could turn out to be his passport to fame and fortune. He was right. From the mid 1980s onwards Sogyal set his acolytes the task of researching information on western attitudes to death and dying – and linking these with The Tibetan Book of the Dead. This text is attributed to Padmasambhava, an 8th century yogi credited as the founding father of Buddhism in Tibet. Originally translated into English in 1927, it was essential reading for hippies and well-thumbed copies were passed around the traveller communities in India. Some found their way into San Francisco bookshops.
Once he had his research data, Sogyal started lecturing on Spiritual Care for the Dying — challenging deeply entrenched taboos and attracting large audiences, including many people experiencing various stages of terminal illness and grieving. It is beyond doubt that within a western cultural context, Sogyal was delivering a seismic shift. It was pioneered by the psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler Ross, but the addition of Sogyal’s Tibetan Buddhist perspective was a radical new formula – which suggested that rather than a source of fear, death can be treated as source of inspiration.
The book that made a million
The theories and practices expounded in Sogyal’s lectures were collated into his version of the Padmasambhava treatise, but with a contemporary twist – living in tandem with dying – highlighting the two states as mirror images of each other. When The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying was published in 1992, it ticked every box on Sogyal’s wish list. Almost overnight he became an international celebrity and to top it all, accepted an invitation from Bernardo Bertolucci to star in his movie Little Buddha. Some time later, worldwide sales turned him into a personal millionaire. But there are questions around the authorship of the TBOLD. Rumours that Sogyal did not write the book have been circulating on the internet for years. When approached for comment, the author, academic and mystic Andrew Harvey gave an inconclusive response: “Sogyal participated totally in every level of the creation of the book and as the representative of his tradition was the indispensable transmitter of its wisdom. The process was a totally mutual collaboration in which Sogyal gave everything and had the final word on every word. It is a very hard process to describe. Any suggestion that Sogyal did not write this book is -I think, absurd and dishonouring of his genius and passion. Both Patrick and I worked tirelessly and I hope, selflessly to honour Sogyal’s brilliance and the wisdom of the tradition. And the book could not exist without the transcripts of Sogyal’s talks that were it’s foundation.” The ubiquitous Patrick Gaffney and Andrew Harvey are credited as editors – but Harvey’s words do not confirm Sogyal as the author. Grant, a former Rigpa member, recalls spending time with Harvey “when he was writing the book”. Grant adds: “Could anyone who knows Sogyal imagine him being able to quote the German mystical poet Rainer Maria Rilke? Or the Sufi sage Jalaluddin Rumi? He simply doesn’t have that level of education.” Andrew Harvey does – and comparisons between The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying and Harvey’s own books reveal striking similarities in tone, structure and language. According to a well known American Buddhist teacher: “Andrew Harvey was very upset at not being credited as co-author.” The journalist Mary Finnigan is also sceptical: “When Sogyal was living in London it became obvious that he is barely literate,” she says, “he never read anything except comic books, never wrote letters and spent most of his free time watching television.”
Buddhist teacher Ngakpa Chogyam also has doubts:
“The book was cobbled together from more than a decade of Sogyal’s teachings,” he says, “I worked for a while on transcribing the tapes. There were a fair few mistakes which I corrected as I went along – particularly about Dzogchen and precise definitions of Buddhist doctrine.”
Enter Dierdre Smith
In June 1993, less than a year after the publication of the TBOLD, a young and beautiful woman in a state of acute distress over the death of her father went to a Rigpa retreat in Connecticut, USA. After one of Sogyal’s lectures she sent him a written question: “How can I help my father now that he’s dead?”
Sogyal’s response was to invite her to his room. The woman, Dierdre Smith, says she was ‘completely vulnerable’.” I might as well have had a notice round my neck saying Abuse Me!” She wept as she recounted the circumstances of her father’s death from a drug overdose. “He asked me to massage him — I was in awe of him as the important guru, so I did as he wished. Then he told me he was my personal teacher and was going to help me. I was very excited about this and called my husband to tell him that everything was going to be OK. “Sogyal asked me to come back the following day, with a picture of myself and of my father. It was all very paternal and he kept saying I should trust him.” “It was about 10.30 at night when I arrived. He took his clothes off and got into bed. I was embarrassed and didn’t know where to look – but he said I should feel safe because we were in a shrine. The room was lit with candles and there were pictures of Buddhas all around.”
A long seduction followed, that lasted into the small hours. The reluctant, grief-stricken Dierdre protested that she did not want to cheat on her husband — but Sogyal persisted, insisting that having sex with him would benefit her father’s karma: “He ground me down”, she says, “it was the same thing over and over – Do you love me? Do you trust me? It must have gone on for about six hours. Eventually I was exhausted and gave up resisting. The whole thing revolved around surrender to him and I was scared of losing the opportunity to heal my family.” P11. Dierdre was told by Rigpa devotees that if you have negative feelings, you destroy your relationship with the guru. With hindsight, she sees this as a cultist manoeuvre designed to smother dissent, but at the time she did not question this and other injunctions – including one from Sogyal swearing her to secrecy about the seduction. Sogyal insisted that he loved her, wanted to take care of her and that she should see him as her family. He phoned her every day until they met again six months later. Dierdre flew to France at her own expense, expecting to be a normal student. Instead, she was isolated in a separate house and told not to talk to anyone: “I only left the house to go to the teachings, where I saw 500 people prostrating themselves to the lama. The rest of the time I listened to him on tape, saying things like ‘pray to me, see me as the Buddha, love me, trust me, be obedient to me’ “ For several months Dierdre put her everyday life on hold and travelled with Sogyal as his servant, sex partner and arm candy. She recounts how the smile on Sogyal’s face and the unctuous charm of his of his public presentation vanished the moment they were hidden from view: “There must have been about 10 women in his inner circle,” she says, and it was our job to attend to his every need. We bathed him, dressed him, cooked for him, carried his suitcases, ironed his clothes and were available for sex. He was a tyrant. Nothing we did was ever good enough. He went into screaming rages and beat us. If I tried to question the way he treated us, he became angry. The only way to avoid this was to stay silent and submissive.” According to former Rigpa insiders, Sogyal’s team of regular sex partner-attendants were the core group of a sub-sect of Rigpa known as Lama Care. This was set up specifically to make sure that women were available for sex with Sogyal wherever he travelled. In common with other women who have spoken about their experiences with Sogyal, Dierdre recounts how she hardly ever slept, had no time to eat properly and lost 15 pounds during the first two weeks of her time with him. “I looked pretty sickly”, she recalls. Yet despite the brainwashing and the abuse, the women in Sogyal’s harem regarded themselves as highly privileged: “They kept on saying how lucky we were to be close to the guru, how we had special teachings and how much he loved us.” Indoctrination into the inner circle is designed as a life sentence. A young, vulnerable woman is programmed to accept Sogyal’s god-like status and to be compliant with his wishes and whims, slave-like in her willingness to accept a punishing workload and available for sex on demand. She is separated from her family and friends, discouraged from contact with the outside world and persuaded to see Rigpa as her family, with Sogyal (confusingly as father-lover) in absolute power and control. In the majority of cases, it works. By the time these women realise they are being abused and exploited and are deeply embedded in a coercive cult, it is too late for them to extricate themselves. Their investment is total and their chances of making lives for themselves beyond Rigpa have dwindled into non-existence. But in some instances, Sogyal’s choices backfired on him. Back in 1994, it slowly dawned on Dierdre that she was being exploited. “At first”, she says, “I was willing to give up everything for the promise of healing my family, saving the world and being useful, but as these illusions started to melt away I realised I had caused a lot of harm – I’d made myself sick and I’d hurt my husband.” During her last retreat with Sogyal, Dierdre found out about the scandals surrounding Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and his regent Osel Tendzin (Thomas Rich), who infected several people with HIV. “I was terrified I’d given my husband HIV” she says, “so I told Sogyal I wanted to leave.” He was very angry, probably because I knew too much about his promiscuity and his lies. I remember sitting on his bed with him and he shouted at me ‘get these crazy ideas out of your head’ and at the same time he was hitting me hard on the head, one side and then the other.” So what finally drove Dierdre away? “Mostly it was the beatings and because Sogyal kept on telling me I was a burden to him. It was bewildering, because at the same time he tried to persuade me to stay – saying that by serving him I was serving the world. But there he was with all these people attending to everything he demanded and there was my husband who was alone and ill at the time, begging me not to leave him.”
Regardless of Sogyal’s threats (including aeons in the hell realms), protestations and persuasions Dierdre left. But after returning to her long-suffering husband, she discovered that leaving was not as easy as physically walking out. Like many others who detach themselves from abusive relationships and coercive cults, she found herself dealing with a psycho-emotional hangover. By this time a lot less naïve than she was when she first encountered Sogyal, Dierdre sought help from several counsellors, including a strong-minded Californian Zen teacher who had herself been a victim of a sexually abusive guru. “It is harmful to both student and teacher”, the teacher says, “because they end up slipping into a fantasy realm, rather than cultivating awareness of the Buddhist path. Americans are more sophisticated now — we know about the long term damage inherent in relationships where there is a power imbalance.”