Randy Sogyal Rinpoche, Best-Selling Lecher

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Petition Launched / Dharma Teachers: Retract Your Homages to Sogyal
by Charles Carreon
8/31/19



Sign the Petition at Change.org

To: Mindrolling Jetsün Khandro Rinpoche, Khenchen Namdrol Rinpoche, Khenchen Pema Sherab Rinpoche, Ling Rinpoche, Khenpo Tashi Tseten, Chagdud Khadro, Shechen Rabjam Rinpoche, Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche, Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, Khandro Tseringma, Ringu Tulku Rinpoche, H.E. Khamtrul Rinpoche

Dear Dharma Teachers:

It was with shock and dismay that we, the undersigned Dharma students, read your homages to Sogyal Lakha published at https://sogyalrinpoche.org/paying-homage-to-sogyal-rinpoche. Several of you describe his death as a "Parinirvana." You advise us that "his enlightened mind never wavers from constantly seeing all sentient beings," that his death provides "the most pithy instructions," that "his transcendent sacred intention will become clearer," and "the time has come for all his students to renew their faith in him."

We have considered you to be especially perceptive human beings, compassionate teachers of kindness, thoughtful men and women who work for the benefit of others. Thus, we are shocked when we read your eulogies of Sogyal, because your words ignore the sufferings of the many people who suffered physical and sexual assaults, financial exploitation, and emotional anguish at the hands of Sogyal Lakhar.

We are surprised that you seem unaware that Sogyal suffered from personality faults that made him unsuitable to be venerated as a spiritual teacher, a vajra guru. Eight close former students and assistants of Sogyal's revealed his "lavish, gluttonous and sybaritic lifestyle," in a detailed 12-page letter. The letter documented how his physical abuse had left "students with bloody injuries and permanent scars," and how he had used his Dharma authority to "gain access to young women, and to coerce, intimidate and manipulate them into giving [him] sexual favors." Rigpa hired a law firm to investigate the charges against Sogyal, and their report concluded that "students of Sogyal Lakar (who were part of the ‘inner circle’, as described later in this report) have been subjected to serious physical, sexual and emotional abuse by him." There have been several articles in international news outlets with titles like "Sexual assaults and violent rages ... Inside the dark world of Buddhist teacher Sogyal Rinpoche." A book has been published entitled "Sex and Violence in Tibetan Buddhism: The Rise and Fall of Sogyal Rinpoche."

With all this information available, it is disturbing that you are advising us to imagine Sogyal as our guru, sending comforting blessings to us from the bardo. Some of you project that we are suffering in his absence, but this is not what we are thinking about. Our minds are on his victims, who deserve compassion and respect. You wrote eulogies that implicitly assume that Sogyal had no victims. Your words made them disappear.

The UK Charity Commission took action to protect Rigpa students from Sogyal on April 12, 2019, by disqualifying Patrick Gaffney "with immediate effect," from serving as a Rigpa trustee, "for failing in his duty to protect those who came in contact with the charity." The Charity Commission explained, "the public expects charities to be safe places, where people are free from harm." The Charity Commission disqualified Gaffney because, "where we find charities that are failing in this essential duty, we will take action to remove those responsible." For the same reason -- because students expect Dharma centers to be safe places, where "teachers" will not prey upon them, you should not be rendering homage to Sogyal Lakhar, who injured his Dharma students under the guise of providing them with spiritual guidance.

If you affirm Sogyal Lakhar's conduct, you justify the injuries he caused, and show little respect for those he injured. Because we cannot believe this was your intention, we respectfully request that you retract your homages to Sogyal Lakhar. Your retraction will benefit his victims and the Dharma.

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Beyond the Temple: "Sadness, yes, but ..."
by beyondthetemple.com
Accessed: 9/1/19

Replies

Oili
AUGUST 31, 2019 AT 6:50 PM
Ah the myth building begins – soon he’ll become a legend, like Trungpa before him.
Keeps the machine greased, keeps people com[ing] – and with it the money.
Don’t for get to donate to his Paarinirvana ! – https://donations.rigpa.org/en/make_a_d ... ighlight/8

Been there
AUGUST 31, 2019 AT 9:19 PM
I just read all the words of praise to S L from various lamas on the Facebook page. Each of them must have been aware of the details of SL’s crimes and abuses, and yet they only had nice things to say. Their apparent indifference to his depravity, and to the very real suffering that he caused, reveals each and every one of them now to be untrustworthy.

Edmund Butler
SEPTEMBER 1, 2019 AT 4:31 AM
The lamas’ eulogies reveal the entrenched nepotism in Tibetan Buddhism which is increasing its impotence. They fantasise about thousands of devoted students the world over, legitimising their religion while ignoring the suffering of the abused from among those students. Clearly it is entirely wrong to expect empathy from these people.

The essence of buddhism for me is to alleviate suffering. What a chronic waste of training that these people are now failing to do that, and instead promote yet deeper immersion into the cultic illusions on which so many of their sanghas rest. These people stand out, alone amongst everyone else who is now commenting on Sogyal’s death as the ONLY bunch who pretend he was not abusive. They should all be collectively called out on their utterly disingenuous hypocrisy, and relentlessly. In one stupid move that have deligitimised whatever authority they may have had as arbiters of ethical behaviour.

Look at one example from among these sycophants – Dzigar Kongtrul. He once told a clearly confused (western) victim of Sogyal’s sexual crimes that she was lucky to be his consort. Now here he is saying, “…You have all shown yourselves to be great examples for others to follow in generations to come”, as if a senior 8 of those people didn’t inspire a mass exodus of students with revelations of intense abuse just the other day. He goes on, “I now pray for Rinpoche to be reunited with his own masters”, ignoring the fact he never had any formal teachers or training.

These people are in fact blind to the suffering they profess to dispel with their flowery, exotic ways and it is ironic in the extreme that Sogyal’s death should now be the catalyst which exposes the rot of this dysfunctional lamaism in on of the clearest such displays in perhaps decades.

Since they cannot self-police in line with their mystical, holier than thou ways from an inaccessible Shangri-La, the Courts will happily oblige in sending all of these people a clear message about the gross injustices which they are perpetuating in the name of the dharma in publishing this despicable messages, once the ongoing investigations wrap up here.

As westerners, however, we must collectively stop worshiping this magical thinking that says anything exotically eastern is better than me and can be my saviour. We must stop expecting the Dalai Lama to fix everything with a statement of reprimand. If we know its due, we should speak it ourselves without waiting for him or any of his friends to say it on our behalf, subservient, cowering and emotionally lesser than. That is wrong view.

Perhaps then the other sycophants such as Dzongsar Khyentse and Osel Mukpo will chime in, once they have gotten over their reluctance to say anything which may be seen as either putting themselves on a pedestal above the law or, in the case of the latter, downright hypocritical.

pete
SEPTEMBER 1, 2019 AT 5:05 AM
I came to the conclusion that the hierarchy of Tibetan Buddhism was institutionally rotten a long time ago, but I’ve never seen it proved with such sickening clarity.

Page after page of glowing sycophantic praise for a mentally disturbed man who sexually abused countless vulnerable women for his own gratification whenever he could, leaving them with enduring trauma; a narcissistic bully who mentally and physically brutalized hundreds of devoted students to assuage his sense of insecurity whenever he felt like it, causing them humiliation and long-lasting emotional distress; a greedy posturing fraud who misused the sincere good will of thousands of decent people to enrich and elevate himself, leaving them bereft and disillusioned.

And where are all his victims amidst this gushing torrent of lofty spiritual praise?……..not even one word among thousands……for these people who call themselves “teachers” it’s not just that the victims are unimportant…..they simply don’t exist.

The unwritten line at the end of each letter is: ” I’ll expect my cash in due course.”

There you have the real face of Tibetan Buddhism.

And his devoted followers, still clinging to the memory of this odious man? Where are all the supposedly life-enhancing experiences he conferred on them now? Where is all that profound insight, where is all the kindness, compassion and moral clarity they say they learnt sitting at his feet for years that makes them who they think they are now?

Despite waiting patiently and looking carefully, most of us outside Rigpa can detect no sign of any of it……and there never will be, because compassion will never rise from indifference, kindness cannot be produced by cruelty, and understanding will never come out of willful denial.

Of course our emotional reactions can be complicated, but personally I can’t understand why anyone would feel even a moment’s sadness at the death of a man who has wreaked such irreversible destruction on so many lives as Sogyal has.

If my attitude seems uncompromising it’s because I believe that many people, both in or outside of Tibetan Buddhism, especially those on the sidelines, who weren’t so directly affected, still haven’t taken the real measure of what happened, what it says about Tibetan Buddhism and what a dangerous criminal Sogyal was. This is not neutral at all.

They insist he’s “In meditation” when of course he’s just dead…..but this is the start of the sordid process of revising history and re-writing the truth to justify violence and abuse, to make a religious rapist into a saint, and it’ll run and run.

When they enact the primitive goulish ritual of bricking up his embalmed corpse in a stupa with great ceremony and reverence, amidst clouds of incense, tears of regret and mawkish emotion, their collective denial……and anyone else’s faint moral ambiguity, will be creating the ideal conditions for it to happen all over again.

pete
SEPTEMBER 2, 2019 AT 12:19 AM
@ Matilda

Thanks for posting the link to the petition…..this is going to be interesting, although I expect it’ll produce the same telling lack of response as the previous invitation to lamas to comment on the subject.

As to the concluding part: “If you affirm Sogyal Lakhar’s conduct, you justify the injuries he caused, and show little respect for those he injured. Because we cannot believe this was your intention…….”

Well, it’s true but I believe that was exactly their intention and it’s good that as many people as possible become aware of it. Even if it might come as a disappointment, it could save them wasting their time in future.

[admin]

Deification, Damnation & Delusion: The Method in the Madness of Sogyal's Eulogists
by Charles Carreon
September 2, 2019



Many of us asked ourselves, when we read the florid homages to Sogyal Lakhar posted on the Rigpa website, authored by twelve Tibetan lamas* and one American woman with a Vajrayana following, "What were they thinking?" This is an excellent question, and one that can be approached by asking ourselves, "What might they otherwise have done?"

Well, let us see. If Sogyal wasn't a crazy wisdom guru whose every act was sanctified by his attainment of Dharmakaya wisdom in a prior lifetime, compassionately emerging from the pure Sambhogakaya realm, due to auspicious circumstances, for the benefit of sentient beings who otherwise would be lost in the wiles of a degenerate age, what would he be? He would be a man who, lacking any real education in the Dharma, but blessed with the gift of gab and devoid of scruples, seized the opportunity to impersonate a Tibetan guru, and took the world for a ride, milking his followers for sex, money, and adulation. Arrogantly claiming attainments that he lacked, he demanded offerings, and converted them to his pursuit of pleasure and self-aggrandizement. Instead of realizing the pure nature of awareness as the union of emptiness and compassion, as the union of Samantabhadra and Samantabadri, wisdom and skillful means, he engaged in fornication, telling his "consorts" that they were receiving blessings, when in truth they had simply been seduced by a lecherous lama.

Well, according to the Vajrayana teachings, what happens to such a person? Tibetan Dharma students are all familiar with the answer -- such a person has committed the most heinous of sins, the misuse of tantric practices for worldly purposes, and their penalty cannot be remitted or delayed. There will be no stopping-place in the bardo for them, for they will "fly like an arrow into the lowest hell."

So let us place ourselves in the position of those who, like the Thirteen Eulogists, know all of this, and realize that, at some point, people are going to start saying that Sogyal is roasting in vajra hell until the end of the aeon. That just sounds awful. Think about it. Sogyal was fond of threatening people with vajra hell himself -- so much so that in the Lewis Silkin report, the author noted:

"Witnesses told me that Sogyal Lakar’s teachings describe a Samaya breaker as being condemned to Vajra Hell; I was told that this is described at length in historic teachings as the worst of the eighteen hells and a place of eternal torture. I heard evidence that breaking Samaya is taught by Sogyal to be the worst thing a student can do; it is said that it will damage their own health, the health of their family and cause harm to the teacher / damage his long life. Many witnesses considered that there was pressure on them to keep their Samaya. *** The fact that many of the witnesses I spoke to considered that they are, or were, bound by Samaya, and felt that they would be said to be breaking that vow by speaking to me, has been a particularly challenging aspect of this investigation. It is also a factor which I have had to take into account when assessing the credibility of the evidence available to me."

So there seems to be a terrible irony inherent in this story. The one who threatens others with hell goes to hell. Of course, when you think about it further, you realize that Sogyal obviously didn't believe in vajra hell, otherwise he wouldn't have been cavorting along the edge of the precipice above the blazing pit. For fake Tibetan lamas like Sogyal, Vajra hell is strictly what we might call an "export product" -- you sell it to others, but you don't consume it yourself. Fraudsters always realize the goods they are selling aren't what they claim. If you keep thinking about it, there is a serious risk that you, yourself, will begin to doubt the entire concept of vajra hell. And once that happens, well, the whole darn house of crazy might just start coming apart.

Looking at the situation from the viewpoint of the Thirteen Eulogists, there was only one thing to do. Roll out the Big Lie. No half-measures would do, because even if you try to excuse Sogyal's failings as those of a man made of flesh, subject to earthly temptations, who nevertheless disseminated a lot of holy ideas, and helped other lamas to get access to his funding sources, which must certainly be virtuous, the fact is -- a strict interpretation of the rules sees him frying in hell at least until the Milky Way collapses into the black hole at its center. And these kinds of contemplations are very dangerous.

The truth is, Sogyal's reckless conduct put the entire ship of Tibetan Dharma at risk. He punched a hole right through the hull, and the ocean of samsara was gushing in. Like money, organized religion is built on mass belief. When belief in a religion dissolves, all its tenets and promises become as useless as a stack of Confederate dollars, and the priests of that religion are bankrupt. Conduct like Sogyal's -- and the Sakyong Miphams, to cite another example -- cause a run on the bank of belief, and that leads to a run on the bank of real dollars, which as we know, is a genuine catastrophe. Rigpa and Shambhala have both been sucking wind for a while. Big donors, after all, do their due diligence, and nobody wants to put their money in an organization with questionable charitable bona fides. And little donors, well they keep up the altars, they provide the Sakyong with clean linen and pleasant environments. Once they depart, things can get pretty shabby pretty quick.

Sure, you say, all of this may be true, but what's it matter to the Thirteen Eulogists? So Rigpa collapses, the faithful lose their faith -- one man gathers what another man spills -- Rigpa's loss could be their gain. Why not just remain silent on the matter? Because they are not going to sit by and watch one of the largest aggregations of faith and donors, of real estate and students, simply collapse upon itself, as if they were disinterested anchorites on retreat in their desert caves. They are going to move on those Rigpa students, comfort them in their bereavement -- Sogyal after all built his empire on seducing the bereaved -- ladle adulation over the dead guru like ghee on a lingham, and make everyone feel all right. They are going to scoop up those Rigpa students, the poor lost little lambs, gather them into the sheepfold and get them all bleating happily together, so safe in their tender Dharma love, just like that nasty old wolf had never been here. And all those people who say Sogyal was the wolf -- well we just won't let them in here -- they were the wolf. Yeah, they were the wolf, those nasty people who said Sogyal was the wolf. That's the plan. Gather those little sheep together, comfort them in their hour of need, and then, just like Sogyal, shear them of their wool.

_______________

Note:

* One of those lamas, Rigdzin Namkha Gyatso Rinpoche, had his eulogy deleted after it was posted. Some have stated that he is under investigation for sexual assault in Switzerland. I haven't confirmed this. A copy of the original RNGR eulogy is preserved at this link.

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