Former teacher at Boulder's Shambhala accused of sexually as

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The Little-Known Downsides of Mindfulness Practice: Some potentially serious pitfalls
by Utpal Dholakia Ph.D.
Apr 27, 2016

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banho de chuva by Gustavo Perez Flickr Licensed Under CC BY 2.0
Source: banho de chuva by Gustavo Perez Flickr Licensed Under CC BY 2.0

As I pointed out recently, mindfulness practice has entered the mainstream of western culture to such an extent that 2014 was proclaimed as “The Year of Mindfulness” by the New Republic, and futurists see “mindful living” as a top trend that will influence consumers in the years to come.

Most readers may know this already, but here’s a quick refresher. Mindfulness practice refers to a set of activities and exercises that concentrate an individual’s mind on experiencing the present moment and excluding the stream of diverse thoughts and mind-wandering that happens normally. Mindfulness practice usually involves some form of meditation, with or without a spiritual locus. Its goal is to create and maintain a nonjudgmental and nonreactive state of awareness.

To capture and keep one’s concentration in the present, the practitioner continuously focuses on a single concept for a period of time ranging from a few minutes to hours. During the practice, he may pay attention to his own breathing, counting breaths, monitoring and regulating each cycle of inhalation and exhalation. Alternatively, she may listen to a soothing, mellifluous sound or recite a chant, over and over, maintaining complete attention on the chosen stimulus, and bringing it back each time it drifts.

Research about the benefits of mindfulness practice has grown in tandem with its popularity in the mainstream culture. Thousands of studies, most of them conducted over the past decade, have associated the practice of mindfulness with a variety of substantial health benefits. Through this research, mindfulness practice is credited with numerous forms of psychological and physiological benefits, including long-term reductions in anxiety and depression, pain reduction, anger management, curbing addictions, and emotional well-being.

But as I pointed out in my recent blog post, these benefits don’t seem to have translated into society-level benefits. On the contrary, data about various social phenomena consistently indicate that on the whole, we are behaving more mindlessly (and often with serious negative consequences) than we used to.

I want to continue critiquing the unalloyed positive spin employed in most discussions of mindfulness practice. In this blog post, I want to focus on emerging academic research that points to potentially negative consequences of practicing mindfulness. I want to mention one important caveat first: I personally value and occasionally try to practice mindfulness myself. Nevertheless, I do feel that the scholarly and popular media discussions of mindfulness tend to be far too unbalanced. Negative findings in research studies and potential detriments of mindfulness are often swept under the rug.

So let’s shine the spotlight on these findings here, so as to have a balanced understanding of the pros and cons of practicing mindfulness.

Forming False Memories

In one recent study published in Psychological Science, the author team led by psychologist Brent Wilson found that after just one 15-minute mindfulness induction involving a guided breathing exercise, participants were more likely to form false memories compared to control participants who engaged in mind-wandering. The authors concluded that:

“When meditators embrace judgment-free awareness and acceptance, their reality-monitoring accuracy may be impaired, increasing their susceptibility to false memories.”

They called the formation of fake memories “a potential unintended consequence of mindfulness meditation in which memories become less reliable.” While the studies in the journal article were limited to rather innocuous tasks, we can only imagine the grim possibility of regular mindfulness practitioners forming entirely fictitious realities (and even past histories) for themselves which they then carry into the future, doing god knows what harm to themselves and others.

Discarding Positive Thoughts

Many variations of mindfulness practice involve putting down mental baggage by separating ourselves from our thoughts, and then discarding thoughts that are seen as negative or harmful. But what if the same thing is done for positive thoughts? In another Psychological Science paper, an author team led by Pablo Briñol found that when participants physically discarded a representation of their thoughts such as by writing them down on a piece of paper and then tossing it in the trash, they tended to use them less in their decision making afterwards, mentally discarding them as well. Relevant to us, the authors found that positive thoughts also seemed to be discarded mentally just like negative ones. In their paper, the authors cautioned:

“This finding suggests that techniques involved in some mindfulness treatments can backfire—at least for some people and for some situations, particularly those in which positive thoughts are present.”

Much as we would like to see the world and our thoughts and memories in black-and-white terms and selectively discard negative thoughts whilst keeping positive ones, such a thing is very hard to do. As we try to cull our negative baggage and get rid of it with mindfulness practice, we may find we have left behind some precious and strengthening baggage with it.

Avoiding Difficult Thinking Activities

By its definition and based on its Buddhist and Vedantic origins, the practice of mindfulness encourages detachment. A core aspect of practicing mindfulness is to attempt a withdrawal from the streams of thought that have to do with current challenges of every form, whether they have to do with difficulties with a particular relationship or the tasks that one has to perform on that day. Unfortunately, such a withdrawal supports our natural, hard-wired tendency to be “cognitive misers” leading mindfulness practitioners to use the practice as a means of escape from having to think about difficult problems and arrive at reasonable solutions. Psychiatrist David Brendel summarizes this danger of mindfulness practice as follows:

“Some people use mindfulness strategies to avoid critical thinking tasks. I’ve worked with clients who, instead of rationally thinking through a career challenge or ethical dilemma, prefer to disconnect from their challenges and retreat into a meditative mindset.”

Adverse Side Effects

In a 2009 paper in Advances in Mind-Body medicine, the author team led by psychologist Kathleen Lustyk provided an in-depth (and to me, astonishing) review of mindfulness practice studies that reported adverse side effects to participants. There is a whole laundry list of psychological and physical effects in the paper.

These included reports of depersonalization (feeling detached from one’s mental processes or body), psychosis (loss of contact with reality) with delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized speech, feelings of anxiety, an increased risk of seizures, loss of appetite, and insomnia. The authors especially cautioned vulnerable people such as those with PTSD to be particularly careful when undertaking mindfulness practice. Their main point was that participants should be screened carefully for their suitability before undertaking this practice, and its teachers should be properly trained and supervised.

-- Mindfulness Meditation Research: Issues of Participant Screening, Safety Procedures, and Researcher Training, by M. Kathleen B. Lustyk, PhD; Neharika Chawla, MS; Roger S. Nolan, MA; G. Alan Marlatt, PhD

While the paper focused on best practices in conducting mindfulness research, I feel that their advice applies to any of us wanting to practice mindfulness regularly. As psychologists Miguel Farias and Catherine Wilkolm point out:

“Buddhist meditation was designed not to make us happier, but to radically change our sense of self and perception of the world. Given this, it is perhaps not surprising that some will experience negative effects such as dissociation, anxiety and depression. However, like the small print on medication, these “side-effects” in some individuals are not what the creators of this pill are concerned with promoting.” Other experts have come to similar conclusions.

Does all of this mean I am going to abandon my own interest in mindfulness? Of course not! But it does mean that I am going to adopt a more skeptical stance and pay attention to both positive and negative outcomes of mindfulness practice.

I teach marketing and pricing to MBA students at Rice University. You can find more information about me on my website or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter @ud.

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Unity of opposites
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/11/19

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The unity of opposites is the central category of dialectics, said to be related to the notion of non-duality in a deep sense.[1] It defines a situation in which the existence or identity of a thing (or situation) depends on the co-existence of at least two conditions which are opposite to each other, yet dependent on each other and presupposing each other, within a field of tension.

Ancient philosophy

First suggested by Heraclitus (c. 535 – c. 475 BC), a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, philosophers had for some time been contemplating the notion of opposites. Anaximander posited that every element was an opposite, or connected to an opposite (water is cold, fire is hot). Thus, the material world was composed by some indefinite, boundless apeiron from which arose the elements (earth, air, fire, water) and pairs of opposites (hot/cold, wet/dry). There was, according to Anaximander, a continual war of opposites.

Anaximenes of Miletus, a student and successor of Anaximander, replaced this indefinite, boundless arche with air, a known element with neutral properties. According to Anaximenes, there was not so much a war of opposites, as a continuum of change.

Heraclitus, however, did not accept the milesian monism and replaced their underlying material arche with a single, divine law of the universe, which he called Logos. The universe of Heraclitus is in constant change, but also remaining the same. That is to say, an object moves from point A to point B, thus creating a change, but the underlying law remains the same. Thus, a unity of opposites is present in the universe as difference and sameness. This is a rather broad example though. For a more detailed example we may turn to an aphorism of Heraclitus:

The road up and the road down are the same thing. (Hippolytus, Refutations 9.10.3)

This is an example of a compresent unity of opposites. For, at the same time, this slanted road has the opposite qualities of ascent and descent. According to Heraclitus, everything is in constant flux, and every changing object co-instantiates at least one pair of opposites (though not necessarily simultaneously) and every pair of opposites is co-instantiated in at least one object.

Heraclitus also uses the succession of opposites as a base for change:

Cold things grow hot, a hot thing cold, a moist thing withers, a parched thing is wetted. (DK B126)

As a single object persists through opposite properties, this object undergoes change.

Modern philosophy

Dialecticians claim that unity or identity of opposites can exist in reality or in thought. If the opposites were completely balanced, the result would be stasis, but often it is implied that one of the pairs of opposites is larger, stronger or more powerful than the other, such that over time, one of the opposed conditions prevails over the other. Yet rather than 'stasis' the identity of opposites, there being unity within their duality, is taken to be the instance of their very manifestation, the unity between them being the essential principle of making any particular opposite in question extant as either opposing force. For example 'upward' cannot exist unless there is a 'downward', they are opposites but they co-substantiate one another, their unity is that either one exists because the opposite is necessary for the existence of the other, one manifests immediately with the other. Hot would not be hot without cold, due to there being no contrast by which to define it as 'hot' relative to any other condition, it would not and could not have identity whatsoever if not for its very opposite that makes the necessary prerequisite existence for the opposing condition to be. This is the oneness, unity, principle to the very existence of any opposite. Either one's identity is the contra-posing principle itself, necessitating the other. The criteria for what is opposite is therefore something a priori.

In his criticism of Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel who tried to systematise dialectical understandings thus wrote:

The principles of the metaphysical philosophy gave rise to the belief that, when cognition lapsed into contradictions, it was a mere accidental aberration, due to some subjective mistake in argument and inference. According to Kant, however, thought has a natural tendency to issue in contradictions or antinomies, whenever it seeks to apprehend the infinite. We have in the latter part of the above paragraph referred to the philosophical importance of the antinomies of reason, and shown how the recognition of their existence helped largely to get rid of the rigid dogmatism of the metaphysic of understanding, and to direct attention to the Dialectical movement of thought. But here too Kant, as we must add, never got beyond the negative result that the thing-in-itself is unknowable, and never penetrated to the discovery of what the antinomies really and positively mean. That true and positive meaning of the antinomies is this: that every actual thing involves a coexistence of opposed elements. Consequently to know, or, in other words, to comprehend an object is equivalent to being conscious of it as a concrete unity of opposed determinations. The old metaphysic, as we have already seen, when it studied the objects of which it sought a metaphysical knowledge, went to work by applying categories abstractly and to the exclusion of their opposites.[2]

In his philosophy, Hegel ventured to describe quite a few cases of "unity of opposites", including the concepts of Finite and Infinite, Force and Matter, Identity and Difference, Positive and Negative, Form and Content, Chance and Necessity, Cause and effect, Freedom and Necessity, Subjectivity and Objectivity, Means and Ends, Subject and Object, and Abstract and Concrete. It is also considered to be integral to Marxist philosophy of nature and is discussed in Friedrich Engels' Dialectics of Nature.

Coincidentia oppositorum

Coincidentia oppositorum is a Latin phrase meaning coincidence of opposites. It is a neoplatonic term attributed to 15th century German polymath Nicholas of Cusa in his essay, De Docta Ignorantia (1440). Mircea Eliade, a 20th-century historian of religion, used the term extensively in his essays about myth and ritual, describing the coincidentia oppositorum as "the mythical pattern". Psychiatrist Carl Jung, the philosopher and Islamic Studies professor Henry Corbin as well as Jewish philosophers Gershom Scholem and Abraham Joshua Heschel also used the term. In alchemy, coincidentia oppositorum is a synonym for coniunctio. For example, Michael Maier stresses that the union of opposites is the aim of the alchemical work. Or, according to Paracelsus' pupil, Gerhard Dorn, the highest grade of the alchemical coniunctio consisted in the union of the total man with the unus mundus ("one world").

The term is also used in describing a revelation of the oneness of things previously believed to be different. Such insight into the unity of things is a kind of transcendence, and is found in various mystical traditions. The idea occurs in the traditions of Tantric Hinduism and Buddhism, in German mysticism, Taoism, Zen and Sufism, among others.

References

1. "The Unity of Opposites: A Dialectical Principle (PDF)", V.T.JMcGill and W.T. Parry, Science & Society, vol. 12 no. 4 (Fall 1948), pp.418-444]
2. Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830) Part One IV. Second Attitude of Thought to Objectivity TWO. THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY §48

External links

S.M. Cohen, "Heraclitus on Change and Unity of Opposites"

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Can You Resign from the Board of a Troubled Company?
by David A. Katz and Laura A. McIntosh
http://clsbluesky.law.columbia.edu/2013 ... d-company/
May 23, 2013

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The following post comes to us from David A. Katz, a partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and Laura A. McIntosh, a consulting attorney for the firm. The views expressed are the authors’ and do not necessarily represent the views of the partners of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz or the firm as a whole. This article is also being published today in the New York Law Journal.

Two recent Delaware cases involving independent directors of corporations with foreign operations provide a powerful reminder that resigning from the board of directors of a troubled company may not be a simple matter. In both cases, Delaware chancery court judges denied the director defendants’ motions to dismiss; if the allegations—primarily, that the directors of each company breached their duty of oversight—are proven at trial, the directors potentially could face personal liability. While nothing about these recent cases indicates a radical change in Delaware law, and while the standards for proving such a claim remain very high, both decisions offer important observations about the Delaware courts’ expectations of directors.

These cases provide an opportunity for directors to consider how they might react if they discovered corporate malfeasance and how they might handle fundamental, irresolvable concerns or disagreements (whether with management or other directors) that may arise while serving as a director. Ideally, a director should think through these and related issues prior to accepting a director position in a public or private corporation. Once a member of the board, a director must consider how to address such unfortunate circumstances if they do arise, including whether to resign as a director and, if so, how. These are not easy matters, and the answers largely will be determined by the individual facts and circumstances of the particular situation. Though the recent Delaware cases involve foreign corporations and allege rather egregious corporate misconduct, they are a useful starting point to consider directors’ legal and ethical duties in this context.

The Delaware Cases

The cases, In re Puda Coal Stockholders’ Litigation[1] and Rich v. Chong,[2] involve allegations that the independent directors of Puda Coal and Fuqi International, respectively, breached their fiduciary duty of loyalty—in particular, the duty of Delaware directors to exercise reasonable oversight over the corporation and its activities.[3] The standard for breach of this duty was established by the landmark 1996 Delaware Chancery Court decision in Caremark International Inc. Derivative Litigation, which held that only “sustained or systematic failure of the board to exercise oversight—such as an utter failure to attempt to assure a reasonable information and reporting system exists—will establish the lack of good faith that is a necessary condition to liability.”[4] Caremark sets a very high standard for plaintiffs who allege and hope to prove that director inattention resulted in economic loss or other corporate liability. For purposes of surviving a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, however, a complaint need only state a claim upon which relief can be granted, assuming all the facts in the pleadings to be true. In both Puda Coal and Rich v. Chong, the courts found that the plaintiffs did meet this lower standard to survive the motion to dismiss.[5]

The facts in these two cases are colorful and extreme. Puda Coal is a Delaware company created through a reverse merger with a Chinese company that had its primary assets and operations in China. The plaintiffs alleged that the company’s chief executive officer, who was also the chairman of the board, stole the assets of the company through a series of unauthorized transfers. The theft went unnoticed by the independent directors for 18 months until it was called to their attention by a third party. The independent directors, who constituted a majority of the board, attempted to pursue a lawsuit, but after being “stonewalled” in their investigation resigned from the board. Chancellor Leo E. Strine Jr., in his bench denial of the independent directors’ motion to dismiss, was particularly critical of the independent directors for resigning at that point, effectively leaving Puda Coal “under the sole dominion of a person [the CEO/chairman] they believe has pervasively breached his fiduciary duty of loyalty,” rather than causing the company to join the plaintiffs’ lawsuit.[6] Chancellor Strine opined that it might well be a breach of fiduciary duty on the part of the directors to simply resign upon discovering a flagrant crime by a corporate insider.[7]

Fuqi International, the company at issue in Rich v. Chong, is a Delaware company whose sole asset is stock of a Chinese jewelry company. Fuqi completed a U.S. public offering in 2009, but the next year it revealed problems with its 2009 financial statements, and in 2011 auditors uncovered the transfer—apparently unbeknownst to the board—of $130 million in cash out of the company during 2009 and 2010 to third parties located in China.[8] A stockholder suit in 2010 prompted the audit committee of the board to investigate, but the investigation was abandoned in 2012 due to management’s failure to pay the fees incurred by the audit company’s advisors. Fuqi also failed to hold annual stockholder meetings for several years, despite a 2012 court order to do so upon petition from a stockholder. Subsequently, the independent directors of the company resigned. Vice Chancellor Glasscock suggested that, if the facts alleged in the complaint were true, the directors had ignored numerous red flags indicating seriously inadequate internal controls, and moreover, that the resignation of the independent directors may have constituted an abdication of their duties.[9] He pointed out that in such case the protections of the business judgment rule do not apply.[10] Vice Chancellor Sam Glasscock III emphasized that “the conscious failure to act, in the face of a known duty, is a breach of the duty of loyalty.”[11]

In Puda Coal, Chancellor Strine expressed concern that Delaware appears to have been used as a place to incorporate shell entities with ineffective directors acting as enablers of corporate malfeasance.[12] Though it remains to be seen how these cases will ultimately play out as litigation continues, the dicta thus far should make independent directors of public companies think hard about whether they are fulfilling their fiduciary duties in an active, engaged manner and how they would handle situations involving corporate mismanagement, a fractured board or other fundamental crises of oversight and governance.

Duty to be Active

Chancellor Strine emphasized in Puda Coal that Delaware requires active, engaged directorship. Recognizing that directors of companies with foreign operations may have a difficult task, he outlined at length some basic obligations, many of which could apply to all directors of public companies.

[I]f you’re going to have a company domiciled for purposes of its relations with its investors in Delaware and the assets and operations of that company are situated in China … in order for you to meet your obligation of good faith, you better have your physical body in China an awful lot. You better have in place a system of controls to make sure that you know that you actually own the assets. You better have the language skills to navigate the environment in which the company is operating. You better have retained accountants and lawyers who are fit to the task of maintaining a system of controls over a public company…. Independent directors who step into these situations involving essentially the fiduciary oversight of assets in other parts of the world have a duty not to be dummy directors…. [Y]ou’re not going to be able to sit in your home in the U.S. and do a conference call four times a year and discharge your duty of loyalty. That won’t cut it…. You have a duty to think.[13]

Chancellor Strine cautioned against accepting a board seat at a company in an industry or having operations, a language or a culture that a potential director may not fully understand.[14] Potentially, this creates a high bar for individuals who are considering becoming directors of offshore entities.

In order to avoid the kind of failure of directorship described in the alleged facts of Puda Coal and Rich v. Chong, potential directors should think carefully before they accept a board nomination. Appropriate due diligence by the potential director is paramount. The potential director should feel confident that he or she has a reasonable understanding of the company’s business and operations, how it generates revenue, how its industry operates, and the legal and ethical environments in which it conducts business. Furthermore, as highlighted by these cases, potential directors would be wise to consider as well whether there are any signs of trouble in the company’s recent past or potential problems in the near future. They should review the background of the company’s management and, if they exist, control shareholders. Potential directors can review press and analyst reports on the company, company financial statements, organizational documents, and directors’ and officers’ insurance policies. Potential directors may wish to speak with current or former directors to get a sense for whether the board is functioning in an effective, collegial fashion and how management responds to concerns raised by the board. A potential independent director should meet with the independent chairman and/or lead director and be confident that he or she leads the board with professionalism and integrity. The potential director should also meet with the audit committee chair and the independent auditor to discuss the company’s financial statements and the company’s approach to its financial reporting obligations. If any directors have unexpectedly left the board in recent years, potential director candidates should inquire as to the circumstances prompting their resignations. In the two cases discussed above, management was unresponsive to directors’ concerns when the alleged malfeasance finally came to light; their inability to effectively investigate or obtain answers from top executives led the independent directors ultimately to resign.

Potential directors should also consider the options that will be available in a crisis situation.[15] For example, they should be aware of anything unusual in the company’s policies and procedures regarding director resignations, including any limitations in the company charter and/or bylaws. Director candidates may wish to inquire as to whether they are entitled to consult independent legal counsel or other advisors at the company’s expense, including for advice as to resignation and director’s duties, obligations and responsibilities. Moreover, director candidates should consider whether they are or could become dependent on the income from the directorship, to the point that the directors’ fees potentially could compromise their independence in decision-making.

Considering Resignation

When an independent director begins to feel that there is a fundamental divide, either between the director and the rest of the board, or between the nonexecutive directors and management, he or she must think carefully about what his or her duties as a director require. If there is no reason to believe that anything illegal or unethical is happening, but rather that the differences stem from an essential disagreement on the strategy or future of the company, the director should consider whether he or she can be an effective voice on the board or if he or she no longer is serving the interests of shareholders by being a dissenting board member. While healthy dissent and discussion are essential to the functioning of an effective board, fundamental and consistent disagreement may be only frustrating and disruptive to all parties.[16] If—perhaps with the advice of counsel—the director in such circumstances concludes that it is in the company’s best interests for him to resign, it is likely that the director can and should do so amicably. Even in this context though, the director should obtain independent advice as to whether he or she has any obligation to make public disclosure of the circumstances involving his or her departure from the board.[17]

Once an independent director suspects or becomes aware of corporate malfeasance, the director’s duties, obligations and responsibilities may change. As an initial step, the director should attempt to take reasonable steps to stop any ongoing legal or ethical violations. The director should consider engaging the board in discussions with attorneys and accountants to uncover the apparent violations and figure out the steps that need to be taken by the company and the board. Many of these decisions involve legal judgments, and the directors should be able to rely on the expertise of independent counsel in making any such determinations. The directors should also take steps to provide that the board’s discoveries and actions are accurately and appropriately recorded in the board minutes.[18] If possible without exacerbating controversy, the director should try to have his or her concerns recorded consistently as the matter unfolds, to avoid any appearance or perception that the individual director, the independent directors, or the board as a whole, as applicable, might have acted inappropriately once the issue was discovered.

When a director’s attempts to investigate an apparent problem are met with stonewalling by management or other directors, or when a director’s efforts to cause the board to take action are met with intractable resistance, the director is likely to consider resignation as he or she likely will believe that his or her ability to effect change has been compromised. In such circumstances, the director should seek independent counsel experienced with board and governance matters and the applicable legal requirements; after all, as one commentator put it, “the danger of being perceived by regulators, the SEC, or a jury as one who has been drawn into wrongdoing can escalate very quickly.”[19] This is particularly true not only because a director bears responsibility for his or her own actions and those of the board until his or her resignation takes effect, but also because “it will be unusual for a resigning director not to have accrued a degree of potential culpability for the issues(s) that eventually led to resignation since these types of matters often have a long fuse but tend to start in an anodyne way.”[20] A resigning director should submit a written statement to the chairman of the board for circulation to the board and possibly to shareholders as well. When a director resigns in protest, any resignation letter to the company is required to be filed as an exhibit to the company’s Form 8-K announcing the resignation.[21]

A director faced with intractable corporate malfeasance must consider whether a noisy resignation will harm the company more than it helps. Resigning noisily is a way of calling public attention to the company’s problems—which may indeed be an effective way to bring the malfeasors to account for their actions—but also can harm the company and its various constituencies in the short- and long-term. Moreover, having resigned, the director no longer has any power to determine whether the illegal or unethical activity has in fact ceased, or to help the company recover from the effects of the purported malfeasance. The loss of a strong voice can weaken the remaining independent directors and even undermine the board’s efforts to investigate and remedy the wrongdoing. Unfortunately (from the director’s perspective), under certain circumstances, the director may have a duty to stay on the board for his or her full term if doing so may help minimize harm to the company and attendant losses to shareholders.

In both of the cases discussed above, the Delaware Chancery Court was critical of the independent directors’ decision to resign. Chancellor Strine observed: “[T]here are some circumstances in which running away does not immunize you. It in fact involves breach of duty…. If these directors are going to eventually testify that at the time that they quit they believed that the chief executive officer of the company had stolen the assets out from under the company, and they did not cause the company to … do anything, but they simply quit, I’m not sure that that’s a decision that itself is not a breach of fiduciary duty.”[22] Similarly, Vice Chancellor Glasscock commented in a footnote in Rich v. Chong, “It may be that some of the former independent directors … attempted to fulfill their duties in good faith…. Nonetheless, even though [two of them] purported to resign in protest against mismanagement, those directors could still conceivably be liable to the stockholders for breach of fiduciary duty…. I do not prejudge the independent directors before evidence has been presented, but neither are those directors automatically exonerated because of their resignations.”[23] Both decisions found it “troubling that independent directors would abandon a troubled company to the sole control of those who have harmed the company.”[24]

In the wake of Puda Coal and Rich v. Chong, it has been suggested that a director who discovers corporate malfeasance and cannot get management to respond has a duty to sue the company on behalf of the shareholders.[25] However, a suit by a director against management or other board members of a rogue company is guaranteed to be expensive and unpleasant and is likely not covered by directors’ and officers’ insurance.[26] Another option proposed by one commentator is that a director in that situation may support legal action taken by a plaintiffs’ law firm.[27] Indeed, Chancellor Strine suggested near the end of his bench ruling that the stockholder plaintiffs and former-director defendants might actually have a commonality of interest as against the other defendants in the case and justice might be better served by joining together to bring the true malfeasors to account.[28]

In our view, it is unlikely that a litigation-related option will be the best choice for most directors, even those faced with corporate misconduct and intractable management. That said, directors in that unfortunate situation will have to consider carefully the individual circumstances and available options. Directors who have conscientiously fulfilled their duties at all times of their directorship—including with respect to the circumstances of their resignation, if they do resign—will have the benefit of the protections of the business judgment rule. Directors who prioritize their fiduciary duties to the stockholders and their personal integrity will, with the assistance of experienced legal counsel, find a path through any corporate crisis. In addition, sufficient diligence prior to accepting a directorship may permit a director to avoid the problem in its entirety.[29]

_______________

Notes:

[1] C.A. No. 6476-CS (Del. Ch. Feb. 6, 2013) (bench ruling) available at http://www.davispolk.com/files/uploads/ ... Ruling.pdf.

[2] C.A. No. 7616-VCG (Del. Ch. April 25, 2013) available at courts.delaware.gov/opinions/download.aspx?ID=188510.

[3] That the duty of oversight falls under the rubric of the duty of loyalty was clarified in Stone v. Ritter, 911 A.2d 362 (Del. 2006).

[4] In re Caremark Int’l Inc. Deriv. Litig., 698 A.2d at 959, 971 (Del. Ch. 1996).

[5] Rich v. Chong, C.A. No. 7616-VCG at 3; Puda Coal, C.A. No. 6476-CS at 22 (transcript).

[6] Puda Coal, C.A. No. 6476-CS at 16 (transcript).

[7] Id. at 23 (transcript).

[8] The facts are summarized at pages 2-3 and 38-40 of the Rich opinion.

[9] Rich v. Chong, C.A. No. 7616-VCG at 38, 29-30.

[10] The court noted that “the business judgment rule ‘has no role where directors have either abdicated their functions, or absent a conscious decision, failed to act.’” Rich v. Chong, C.A. No. 7616-VCG at 29 (citing Aronson v. Lewis, 472 A.2d 805 (Del. 1984) at 811-13).

[11] Rich v. Chong, C.A. No. 7616-VCG at 40.

[12] Puda Coal, C.A. No. 6476-CS at 20 (transcript) (“[T]his is a troubling thing for Delaware, and this court has taken very seriously this – the use of Delaware entities…. I take very seriously our integrity.”).

[13] Id. at 17-18, 21-22 (transcript).

[14] Id. at 22 (transcript).

[15] See ACCA, “Discussion Paper: Resigning From a Board: Guidance for Directors,” Dec. 2008 (“ACCA Discussion Paper”), available at http://www.accaglobal.com/content/dam/a ... tp_rfb.pdf. It is a useful resource despite being written for U.K. company directors.

[16] ACCA Discussion Paper, supra note 15, at 14.

[17] Form 8-K has specific requirements for reporting director resignations and disagreements. For a useful monograph on these requirements, see Broc Romanek, “TheCorporateCounsel.net’s Director Resignation & Retirement Disclosure Handbook, (2012) available at http://www.thecorporatecounsel.net/Grea ... nation.pdf (subscription required).

[18] See, e.g., Financial Reporting Council (U.K.), “U.K. Corporate Governance Code,” Provision A.4.3 (Sept. 2012).

[19] ACCA Discussion Paper, supra note 15, at 11 (citing Stephen J. Friedman, “Resigning From the Board,” in Directors & Boards 20/2: 30 (1996)).

[20] ACCA Discussion Paper, supra note 15, at 11.

[21] See Item 5.02(a)(2) of Form 8-K (“If the director has furnished the registrant with any written correspondence concerning the circumstances surrounding his or her resignation, refusal or removal, the registrant shall file a copy of the document as an exhibit to the report on Form 8-K”).

[22] Puda Coal, C.A. No. 6476-CS at 23 (transcript).

[23] Rich v. Chong, C.A. No. 7616-VCG at 31 n.138 (emphasis in original).

[24] Id. at 31 n.138.

[25] See Edward M. McNally, “Should Directors Sue Their Company for its Misdeeds?” Delaware Business Litigation Report, May 8, 2013, available at http://www.delawarebusinesslitigation.com.

[26] See id.

[27] See id.

[28] Puda Coal, C.A. No. 6476-CS at 26 (transcript).

[29] “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Martin Luther King Jr.

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The Kalapa Council of Shambhala Steps Down
by The Kalapa Council of Shambhala
July 6, 2018

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

THE KALAPA COUNCIL OF SHAMBHALA

Dear Shambhalians,

In the interest of beginning a healing process for our community, the Kalapa Councillors will step down from our posts.

In this time of groundlessness, there is a wish for more clarity and answers, but the truth is that much is unknown. We recognize that parts of our system are broken, and need to dissolve in order to make room for real change.

It is our desire to exit responsibly. There will be a phased departure so that there is a board in place to uphold the legal and financial responsibilities of the organization. Advisors in transitioning leadership groups are assisting Shambhala in planning how to structure and communicate this progression. We are also reading and listening to all of the feedback that you are sharing. We will share more details soon as we integrate advice and learn more.

Additionally, we want to formally announce several developments that have been confirmed in the last few days.

• The agreement with An Olive Branch has been signed. They will bring their expertise to serve as a neutral party for receiving stories of harm, survivor advocacy and consulting on our policies going forward. An Olive Branch will also personally introduce themselves to you, the Shambhala community, shortly.

• We have engaged Wickwire Holm, a law firm based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to act as the third-party investigator to look into stories of abuse or misconduct involving any teacher or leader in the Shambhala community.

We will offer more details on both of these processes very soon. We are committed to communicating regularly and transparently with the community as new information or updates develop.

Despite this groundless situation, we believe that this community has a path forward from which Shambhala can emerge as a healthier, more supportive, and more inclusive sangha.

Sending heartfelt appreciation to the noble sangha,

The Kalapa Council

Josh Silberstein, Chair
Jane Arthur
David Brown
Wendy Friedman
Jesse Grimes
Mitchell Levy
Adam Lobel
Robert Reichner
Christoph Schönherr

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Brahmajala Sutra (Mahayana)
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/22/19

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For the Theravada text of the same name, see Brahmajala Sutta (Theravada).

The Brahmajāla Sūtra (traditional Chinese: 梵網經; ; pinyin: Fànwǎng jīng; Japanese pronunciation: Bonmōkyō), also called the Brahma's Net Sutra, is a Mahayana Buddhist Vinaya Sutra. The Chinese translation can be found in the Taishō Tripiṭaka.[1] The Tibetan translation can be found in Peking (Beijing) Kangyur 256.[2] From the Tibetan it was also translated into Mongolian and the Manchu languages. It is known alternatively as the Brahmajāla Bodhisattva Śīla Sūtra (traditional Chinese: 梵網菩薩戒經; ; pinyin: Fàn Wǎng Púsà Jiè Jīng).

The Brahmajāla Sūtra is related to the important Huayan metaphor of Indra's net.

It is not related to the Brahmajala Sutta of the Pāli Canon of Theravada Buddhism.

History

The sutra is traditionally regarded as having been recorded in Sanskrit and then translated into Chinese by Kumārajīva in 406. Several scholars assume that it was composed in East Asia by unknown authors in the mid-5th century, and is apocryphal.[3][4][5][6] The sutra itself claims that it is part of a much longer Sanskrit text, but such a text has never been found.[3] [7] Qu Dacheng (pinyin transliteration) or Wut Tai Shing (Cantonese transliteration)[8] suggests that because the contents of the longer Brahmajala Sutra very much resembled the Avataṃsaka Sutra that was already translated, the translators of the Brahmajala Sutra only translated the key differences.[9] Many scholars and most Mahayana monastics believe the sutra is not apocryphal.[10] Amoghavajra, one of the patriarchs of Shingon Buddhism who was fluent in both Sanskrit and Chinese, stated that the Brahmajala Sutra is a part of the Vajrasekhara Sutra that was not translated into Chinese.[11] Ven. Taixu on his study of the Brahmajala Sutra and the Mahayana Yoga of the Adamantine Sea Mañjuśrī Thousand Arms Thousand Bowls Great King of Tantra noted many similarities between the two and therefore the Brahmajala Sutra must have been translated from Sanskrit.[12] Qu Dacheng states that the Brahmajala Sutra whilst not translated by Kumārajīva is unlikely to be apocryphal. Of special interest, Qu notes some of the Brahmajala Sutra's Ten Bodhisattva Bhūmi matches the Mahāvastu, an early Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Mahayana text never translated into Chinese.[13]

Content

This sutra introduces Vairocana and his relationship to Gautama Buddha. It also states ten major precepts for Bodhisattvas (Chinese: 十重戒) and the 48 minor precepts to follow to advance along the bodhisattva path.

The bodhisattva precepts of the Brahmajala Sutra came to be treated in China as a higher ethic a monastic would adopt after ordination in addition to the prātimokṣa vows. In Japan, the ten precepts came to displace monastic rules almost completely starting with Saichō and the rise of the Tendai.[14]

The name of the sutra derives from the vast net that the god Brahma hangs in his palace and how each jewel in the net reflects the light of every other jewel:

At that time, he [Shakyamuni Buddha] contemplated the wonderful Jewel Net hung in Lord Brahma's palace and preached the Brahmajala Sutta for the Great Assembly. He said: "The innumerable worlds in the cosmos are like the eyes of the net. Each and every world is different, its variety infinite. So too are the Dharma Doors (methods of cultivation) taught by the Buddhas.[15]

The sutra is also noteworthy for describing who Vairocana is as personification of the dharma or Dharmakāya:[15]

Now, I, Vairocana Buddha, am sitting atop a lotus pedestal; on a thousand flowers surrounding me are a thousand Sakyamuni Buddhas. Each flower supports a hundred million worlds; in each world a Sakyamuni Buddha appears. All are seated beneath a Bodhi-tree, all simultaneously attain Buddhahood. All these innumerable Buddhas have Vairocana as their original body.[15]

Bodhisattva Precepts

The Brahmajala Sutra has a list of ten major and forty-eight minor rules known as the Bodhisattva Precepts.[16] The Bodhisattva Precepts may be often called the "Brahma Net Precepts" (Chinese: 梵網戒; pinyin: Fànwǎng Jiè), particularly in Buddhist scholarship, although other sets of bodhisattva precepts may be found in other texts as well. Typically, in East Asian Mahayana traditions, only the 10 Major Precepts are considered the Bodhisattva Precepts. According to the sutra, the 10 Major Bodhisattva Precepts are in summary:[17]

1. Not to kill or encourage others to kill.
2. Not to steal or encourage others to steal.
3. Not to engage in licentious acts or encourage others to do so. A monk is expected to abstain from sexual conduct entirely.
4. Not to use false words and speech, or encourage others to do so.
5. Not to trade or sell alcoholic beverages or encourage others to do so.
6. Not to broadcast the misdeeds or faults of the Buddhist assembly, nor encourage others to do so.
7. Not to praise oneself and speak ill of others, or encourage others to do so.
8. Not to be stingy, or encourage others to do so.
9. Not to harbor anger or encourage others to be angry.
10. Not to speak ill of the Buddha, the Dharma or the Sangha (lit. the Triple Jewel) or encourage others to do so.
Breaking any of these precepts is described as a prarajika (Skt. Unforgivable) offence.[18]

References

1. Taisho 1484 is found in Volume 24 of the Taisho Tripitaka."Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō" 大正新脩大藏經 [Taishō Shinshū Tripitaka]. CBETA 漢文大藏經 (in Chinese). This is an index to the Taisho Tripitaka - nb Volume 24 is listed as the last volume in the 律部 or Vinaya Section. Taisho 1484 or the Brahmajala Sutra is located here.
2. 東京帝國大學法文學部編財團法人齋藤報恩會補助. 西藏大藏經總目錄索引-A Catalogue-Index of The Tibetan Buddhist Canons (Bkah-hgyur and Bstan-bgyur). p. 10,102. on page 10: Chos-kyi rgya-mo, sans-rgyas rnam-par-snan-mdsad-kyis byan-chub-sems-dpahi sems-kyi gnas bsad-pa lehu bcu-pa [Peking (Beijing) Kangyur No.] 256; on page 102: [Peking (Beijing) Kangyur No.] 256 [Taisho] 1484
3. Cho, Eunsu. Fanwang jing in Macmillan Encyclopedia of Buddhism, 2004, Volume One
4. Buswell, Robert Jr. (1990). Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-1253-9., page 8
5. Muller, Charles, Digital Dictionary of Buddhism: 梵網經
6. Swanson, Paul (1998). Apocryphal Texts in Chinese Buddhism. T'ien-t'ai Chih-i's Use of Apocryphal Scriptures" in: Debeek, Arie van; Toorn, Karel van der (1998). Canonization and Decanonization. BRILL. ISBN 90-04-11246-4., page 248
7. Bhikṣuṇī Vinītā (Tseng Vinita) (2010). A Unique Collection of Twenty Sutras in a Sanskrit Manuscript from the Potala Volume I,I. China Tibetology Publishing House and Austrian Academy of Sciences Press. p. xix. "It preserves twelve codices unici, the only extant Sanskrit texts so far; these are sutras no. 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 20. Two sutras among them, no. 4 and 10, have neither Tibetan nor Chinese translations, nor, to the best of my knowledge, any reliable historical record." Although Bhikṣuṇī Vinītā is not talking directly about the Brahmajala Sutra, she makes clear that the surviving extant Buddhist Sanskrit textual record (including surviving extant commentarial references existing in Sanskrit and translated languages) are hardly complete.
8. "List of Academic Staff". 副教授 is translated as Associate Professor
9. Wut Tai Shing or Qu Dacheng(屈大成) (May 2007). 從古文本論《梵網經》之真偽 [Using Ancient Texts to Determine the Authenticity or Apocryphalness of the Brahmajala Sutra] (PDF). 普門學報 (trans. to English: Universal Gate Buddhist Journal) (in Chinese) (39): 18. Retrieved 2018-01-02. 此外，大本《梵網經》的內容架構，跟《華嚴經》十分接近。或是《華嚴經》既已譯出，無必要再大花力氣傳譯一相類似的長篇經典... (trans. to Eng:Moreover, the structure (arrangement) of contents of the unabriged Brahmajala Sutra and the Avataṃsaka Sūtra are very alike. In other words, since the Avataṃsaka Sūtra was already translated, (the translator(s)) felt there was no need to commit huge efforts to translate a long sutra with similar contents.)
10. Shi Yinguang. 印光法師文鈔 [Ven. Shi Yinguang's Works] (PDF) (in Chinese). p. 69. translated summary The Brahmajala Sutra is Buddhavacana
11. Wut Tai Shing or Qu Dacheng(屈大成) (May 2007). 從古文本論《梵網經》之真偽 [Using Ancient Texts to Determine the Authenticity or Apocryphalness of the Brahmajala Sutra] (PDF). 普門學報 (trans. to English: Universal Gate Buddhist Journal) (in Chinese) (39): 18. Retrieved 2018-01-02. 還值得一提的，是不空（七○五－七七四）《金剛頂經大瑜伽祕密心地法門義訣》提到廣本《金剛頂經》沒有傳入中土時，指中土《梵網經》乃撮取廣本中較淺易的修行內容，如是不空認為《梵網經》乃密典《金剛頂經》的一部分...(trans. to English : It is also worth noting that Amoghavajra (705-774) in “Instructions on the Gate to the Teaching of the Secret Heart of Great Yoga of the Adamantine Pinnacle Sutra“ stated at the time when the unabridged version of the Vajrasekhara Sutra was not transmitted to China, the Chinese [translation] of the Brahmajala Sutra absorbed the comparatively simpler [Buddhist] cultivation practices found in the unabridged version [of the Vajrasekhara Sutra] and therefore Amoghavajra supposed the Brahmajala Sutra is one part of the tantric text of the Vajrasekhara Sutra…)
12. Shi Taixu (太虛大師) (2014-11-10). 梵网经与千钵经抉隐 [Revealing [the Connection Between] the Brahmajala Sutra and the Mahayana Yoga of the Adamantine Sea Mañjuśrī Thousand Arms Thousand Bowls Great King of Tantra] (in Chinese). Retrieved 2018-01-02.
13. Wut Tai Shing or Qu Dacheng(屈大成) (May 2007). 從古文本論《梵網經》之真偽 [Using Ancient Texts to Determine the Authenticity or Apocryphalness of the Brahmajala Sutra] (PDF). 普門學報 (trans. to English: Universal Gate Buddhist Journal) (in Chinese) (39): 5,18. Retrieved 2018-01-02. p 5:此外，《梵網經》的十地說有取於《大事》，而《大事》從無漢譯本，也反證《梵網經》非漢人偽作。(trans. to English: Moreover, some of the Ten Bodhisattva Bhūmi found in the Brahmajala Sutra came from the Mahāvastu and the Mahāvastu never had a Chinese translation and proves the Brahmajala Sutra was not an apocryphal sutra composed by a Chinese person.) and p 18:《梵網經》多次用到佛性一詞...這詞的出現，已足證明《梵網經》非羅什所譯，但這不代表《梵網經》是偽經。...又經文所提到的新的說法、法數、譯語等，不見於早期譯典，無從抄襲。因此，《梵網經》乃偽作的可能性甚低。 (trans. to English: The Brahmajala Sutra uses the phrase “Buddha-nature” on multiple occasions…this [usage] is enough to certify that it was not translated by Kumārajīva, but this certainly does not mean The Brahmajala Sutra is apocrypha…Also the contents of the sutra mentions new explications, new numerical discourses, new translation usages, etc., these can't be found in earlier translations and as such there is nowhere to compile from. Therefore the possibility for the Brahmajala Sutra to be an apocryphal sutra is very low.)
14. Keown, Damien (2008). "Fang wang ching", in A Dictionary of Buddhism, Oxford University Press, 3rd ed. ISBN 0192800620, p. 93
15. Sutra Translation Committee of the US and Canada (2000). The Brahma Net Sutra, New York
16. Buswell, Robert Jr; Lopez, Donald S. Jr., eds. (2013). Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (bodhisattvaśīla). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. p. 137. ISBN 9780691157863.
17. Thanh, Minh (2000). "The Brahma Net Sutra". New York: Sutra Translation Committee of the United States and Canada. Archived from the original on June 11, 2011. Retrieved 10 December 2012.
18. "Brahma Net Sutra:Moral Code of the Bodhisattva". Young Men Buddhist Association of America. Translated by Thanh, Minh; Leigh, P.D. Retrieved 2018-07-15.

Further reading

• de Groot, Jan Jakob Maria (1893). Le code du Mahâyâna en Chine; son influence sur la vie monacale et sur le monde laique, Amsterdam: Müller
• Muller, Charles (2012). Exposition of the Sutra of Brahma´s Net, Sŏul-si (Seul): Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism. ISBN 9788994117171
• Muller, Charles; Tanaka, Kenneth K., trans. (2017). The Brahma’s Net Sutra, Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai Amerika
• Sutra Translation Committee of the United States and Canada (2000). [1]
• Wut Tai Shing (Cantonese transliteration) or Qu Dacheng (Pinyin transliteration) or 屈大成 (Chinese) (May 2007). [2] 從古文本論《梵網經》之真偽 (in Chinese) (Eng. Trans. of title:Using Ancient Texts to Determine the Authenticity or Apocryphalness of the Brahmajala Sutra), Kaohsiung.
• Wut Tai Shing (Cantonese transliteration) or Qu Dacheng (Pinyin transliteration) or 屈大成 (Chinese) (March 2007). [3] 從古文獻記載論《梵網經》之真偽 (in Chinese) (Eng. Trans. of title:Using Ancient Accounts to Determine the Authenticity or Aprocryphalness of the Brahmajala Sutra), Kaohsiung.

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The Life and Death of Chogyam Trungpa's Child Sex Slave: Ciel Turzanski [Drukmo Nyima]
by Leslie Hays [Drukmo Dashen]

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Chogyam Trungpa often worked with large groups of participants. Quite early on he realized that it would not always be possible to provide everyone with the tools and the education to do ikebana in all of the dharma art seminars he presented. Moreover, he was trying to work with principles that could apply to many artistic enterprises, not just flower arrangement. So Chogyam Trungpa, together with Ludwig Turzanski, an art professor from the University of Colorado who was instrumental in the development of dharma art, came up with the idea of object arrangements: arranging various ordinary objects as an exercise for students attending his seminars on art and dharma. In this practice, someone chooses an object and places it on a tapletop or piece of paper. This is the heaven element, which represents the vastness of the primary manifestation and gives the arrangement its tone.

-- Chogyam Trungpa: His Life and Vision, by Fabrice Midal

Over the years, Rinpoche was invited to do a number of ikebana or flower-arranging exhibitions. Later, the exhibits evolved into Dharma Art "installations" in which Rinpoche placed extraordinary flower arrangements in rooms that he and his students designed and created. At the end of 1980, he and a group of students had done a major Dharma Art installation at the LAICA (Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art) Gallery. In September, 1981, Rinpoche went to San Francisco for several weeks to give a Dharma Art seminar and to do an installation there.

As with so many other areas, his artistic endeavors drew a large group of students to him, some of them professional artists but many not. A group called the Explorers of the Phenomenal World was formed to explore the principles of Dharma Art and to work on the exhibits and installations. One of the directors of this work, Ludwig Turzanski, was a professor of art at the University of Colorado when we arrived in Boulder. Ludwig and his wife Basia were our close friends from the earliest days in Boulder.

-- Dragon Thunder: My Life with Chogyam Trungpa, by Diana J. Mukpo with Carolyn Rose Gimian

I first met Ciel when she was 16-years old. I didn’t know her well and I viewed her as a bit of a rival. Ciel was the sort of girl who would steal your boyfriend. I didn’t really get to know her well until the summer of 1985, when she was 17 and I was 24, at what was then called rocky mountain dharma center.

In 1984, after his retreat in Mill Village, which John Perks wrote about in his book, Chogyam Trungpa (CT) decided to marry some more women. To his devotees, this decision came directly from the Rigdens, who were these supposed ‘heavenly beings’ who sat around in the clouds above outer Mongolia and directed the actions of the self-proclaimed universal monarch. Apparently they had nothing better to do than watch the sangha and tell his majesty what strategic moves he should make in his efforts to take over the world. At first, the Rigdens said he should take three more wives, so in order of weddings that would have been Karen Lavin, Cynde Greives [Grieve], and Wendy Friedman.

But as time passed they upped the number to five. That’s when I met him. I was number five and I was groomed to be attractive to him by the father of the children I nannied for. During the summer of 1985, after our wedding, CT apparently fell in love with Ciel, and she became number 6. Agnes Au followed about four or five months later, I think, bringing the total number of wives to 7. But just to be on the safe side, they had 250 copies of the marriage licenses made.

I need to say here that Ciel first slept with CT when she was very young, 13 or 14 years old. Of course people will deny this but it is the truth. She told me herself. I doubt anyone out there has the guts to back me up on this, however. Most still want to believe he was omniscient and powerful and not some pervy, rapey asshole who preyed on children. If your daughter was sleeping with the king of the universe at that age, would that be OK? The universal monarch who is in touch with heavenly beings daily decided that he loved Ciel, and it did appear that he loved her very much. He and the rest of them loved her to death.

In fact he made her the “Sangyum Wangmo” meaning the head of the Sangyum. Then she became the Sakyong Wangmo 2. This meant she sat in front of all of us. Previously, we sat in order of weddings, with Karen closest to CT. We occupied the front row of the court section at talks. And CT’s special attention further isolated Ciel from the rest of us. While she might have been able to share with her sister wives certain things, the pressure to be number one in all actions must have been intense. The secrets she held were way too much, in my opinion, for an 18 year old who was handed over to the king of the universe and groomed since birth to marry him. CT was not the only powerful man to reach out to Ciel -- her love affair with Mitchell Levy began when she was 16. WE ALL KNEW -- JESUS CHRIST WE ALL KNEW. Mitchell’s still in charge of a large part of the cult and he’s actively advocating for teaching positions in Europe and beyond, where perhaps he hopes no one knows the truth about his character. All narcissists hate to be ignored.

Ciel married CT on her 18th birthday. I was at the wedding, as were the other wives, and I remember her parents brought Polish caviar and vodka, or maybe it was champagne. Her father made a toast, saying he gave his daughter to CT completely, that he trusted him with all of his heart and soul, and that he was honoured to become part of the family, or something similar. CT toasted him back as his father in law and thanked him for his kindness or generosity or something. (Folks can you imagine?) The wedding was a very big deal that summer. Of course, only people who had attended Assembly were invited to this event. Seating was as always, highly regulated. The Sangyum sat in the front row of the court section, ladies on one side and men on the other. Assembly was the program where he talked about taking over the city of Halifax and the province of Nova Scotia by force, but there would be only limited bloodshed. So it was about the “Kingdom of Shambhala” taking over the world. And don’t forget it was all backed up by the Rigdens.

I think this was a lot of pressure for Ciel, who was the youngest sangyum. She took her seat bravely. Everyone talked about how beautiful she was, and how much CT loved her. Oh, she was elegant and sophisticated and breathtakingly beautiful. Always, when Ciel was mentioned, her beauty was touted, as if she had very little value outside of that.

After Seminary, Ciel and I were sent to Karme Choling to finish our ngondro. CT gave a talk that year, on Shambhala Day, about jumping the gun. His “talk” consisted of very few words, something to the effect of: “You know what you have to do, so do it! Jump the gun.” this was in February or march of 1986. This was a very celebratory day at KCL and of course plenty of sake was served. There were a number of us young people there -- Liz, Kier, Ciel, myself and others -- and after we got properly inebriated, we put on our skates and headed to the small pond in front of KCL for some skating. We enjoyed doing crack the whip, where we all held hands in a line and spun the person on the end out by spinning in a tight circle. But when Ciel was on the end, we whipped her too fast, and she badly broke her leg. This was the year and the very day CT told us we knew what we had to do, so just do it, jump the gun. Ciel suffered with the impacts of that badly broken leg for the rest of her life. Apparently, the doctors in St. Johnsbury Vermont didn’t set it properly, and years later she had to have it rebroken, which didn’t really fix the problem at all and made it worse. Both of these surgeries required strong narcotics, for an extended amount of time.

As you read this, please try to remember that all of this happened over 30 years ago, and my memory isn’t perfect, especially with the exact time line and order of these events. My brain seems to capture and remember events more than timelines. But I think that after Ciel broke her leg she went back to Boulder to be with her parents to heal. When CT died on April 4th, 1987, all the sangyum flew to Halifax. I flew in from Vermont two days before he expired. I remember seeing CT curled up in a fetal position in his hospital bed at the Infirmary in Halifax. I remember crying a lot with the other sangyum. I remember seeing Diana at his bedside. I had written her a letter saying I felt like I fucked up on a cosmic level, because CT had not really wanted to see me towards the end of his life. Diana took me aside and told me she didn’t think I should be so hard on myself. He’d married me, after all. I cried tears of gratitude. CT died around the time Ciel’s plane touched down at the Halifax airport.

Then the funeral was planned. The body was broken and cut and forced into a seated position and put on display in the front sitting room of the court in Halifax. People were scheduled to do mediation shifts with the body, and it was always packed with worshippers. I will never forget the stench of strong Tibetan incense and decay. It was chokingly overwhelming. Mitchell said his heart center stayed warm for three days, but I wasn’t allowed to get close enough to see if this was true.

The funeral would take place at Karme Choling, St. Johnsbury (KCL) and it would be a grand display, with visits from many senior Tibetan teachers arranged by Karl Springer. We chartered a plane and CT’s body occupied first class. Seats were removed to bring him in. The plane ride is a blur. Some people bought seats who lived in Halifax, but the Sangyum flew for free.

Everyone who was anyone was there at KCL when the body was brought back from the airport. The seven of us sangyum stayed in a rented bed and breakfast fairly close to KCL with a very nice gay couple who hosted us. Tom Rich and his followers rented a large house and named it Shangri-la. Shibata Sensei and Marcia and crew stayed in a smaller rented house. The hotel which later became known as Ashoka Bhavan (or some such) in Vermont was rented and filled to capacity with monks. Diana and her crew stayed at Bhumi Pali Bahvana which was a farm house with a barn that was purchased for her. After CT died, Tagi lived there for a short while. I don’t remember where the current sock yarn stayed, which means I probably wasn’t invited to any parties there. And its possible they bought the hotel for the visit. Eventually it became part of KCL. Dilgo Khentse took over the top floor of Karme Choling, which had previously been the shambhala shrine room. Many of the other rooms on the second floor of KCL were double or triple occupied by his monks. Lot’s of people stayed in tents on the way up to where the body would be burned in the purkhong the second field. Flags were put up, a round the clock sewing crew was established and set up in the KCL barn as all of the banners and flags and skirts that covered the shrines needed to be created. Reams of fabric were purchased. A purkong in which to cremate the remains was built. Every square inch was filled to capacity and beyond. The body was closely guarded in the main shrine room -- salts were changed once or twice daily but they couldn’t mask the stench of decay.

After the funeral, Ciel moved in with the Mukpos in the court in Halifax, under the same roof as Mitchell and Diana. Ciel and Mitchell carried on with their sexual affair there and Ciel and I lost touch for a while. Mitchell was also having sex with a number of other women and girls at the same time. Basically, sex was everywhere, and Ciel was a much prized commodity. But she wasn’t really valued for who she really was, in my opinion. She used to be a runner, and she would regularly run up Flagstaff mountain. She once met a famous runner there, but I can’t remember which one. She was pretty healthy, I thought. But after she broke her leg, running was too painful -- another loss suffered from being part of the cult.

So Ciel moved with Mitchell and Diana to Hawaii, after they embezzled a couple hundred thousand dollars from the sangha to buy a new court in Halifax. In fact they took the money, didn’t buy a new court in Halifax, sold the old one, and moved to Hawaii in the middle of the night. (Maybe the old one was too stinky for them.) Mitchell, Diana, Ashoka and David moved with Ciel and her BFF at the time to Hawaii. They left Gesar homeless in Halifax. Some claim Diana knew about the affair with Mitchell all along, and some claim when she learned of their long “love affair,” which was really molestation as it began when Ciel was 16, she was shocked and appalled and kicked Ciel out of the court.

Eventually, after Mitchell and Di and the rest moved to providence, RI, Ciel fell in love with a normal man about her same age and social status named Craig. She got a job at Victoria Secret. Like Wendy and other girls in the community, college didn’t hold their interest as much as creating enlightened society. She got a brief breath of the air outside of Shambhala. They married and lived in Maine together, eventually moving to Halifax to live in the basement of her parent’s house. And for a brief moment in time she was happy. Then Craig died of a brain tumor, and she began to unravel. Her doctor prescribed many drugs for her (probably too many) to help with her grief. She began self medicating, drinking too much, and she crept into herself deeper and deeper.

Ciel eventually moved back to Boulder (her parents as well) and we attempted to restart our friendship. She began seeing Fleet Maull. She liked to take her top off and dance in her bra at parties. Fleet and her broke up, and she began seeing Leonard Hortick who had three small girls and was divorced from his first wife due to her substance abuse issues. Eventually, they broke up as well after Ciel went into a neighbor's house and began raging at them, claiming it was her house, or something like that. Whatever happened, it was clear she was losing her grip on reality. The neighbors called the police.

In the final sad chapter, she ended up dating Don Milani, one of Tom Rich’s straight boys. Something happened between them that was related to domestic violence, but I am not sure exactly what. Ciel claimed Don pushed her down the stairs and pulled a knife on her. Don claimed she got to his house and downed an entire bottle of sake and he called 911 on her. Ciel claimed she called 911.

She continued to get lost in her addictions, and called the detective on the case extremely wasted at 2 am one morning. I think at that point the detectives gave up working on the case. And Ciel was outraged. She began calling Don at all hours of the night and day and threatening suicide. Once Don called me, sincerely worried that she was going to follow through with the act. He asked me to phone her parents and have them check on her. So about six weeks or so before Ciel died I phoned Ludwig and told him about the call from Don.

Ludwig was at first pretty pissed off at me for speaking to Don at all, but a few days later he phoned me to tell me I had done the right thing in phoning him. I stressed that it might be important to hospitalize Ciel and help her with her addictions. I got the impression that Ciel was too sacred for this path to possible treatment. And six weeks later she was dead due to an overdose of pills and alcohol.

I was shocked, we all were, and it was a deeply sad time for so many of us. Word quickly spread that Ciel had left a note and that I was in it, along with Denise (Don’s ex wife) Don, and a few others. My understanding was she somehow blamed me for her death. I got a call from Mark Thorpe who told me the family didn’t want me to attend the funeral. I took it in stride and said, “whatever they need to get through this horrible time is ok with me. If it’s too painful for them to see me, of course I won’t attend.”

When her parents discovered her body, she was dressed in the silk pajamas CT gave her. They then phoned Jesse Grimes, who was a paramedic working for Boulder Valley. Jesse responded to the call. Jesse saw the note, Jesse saw the pills, Jesse saw the empty bottle of vodka, Jesse saw the grieving family. And as usual, Jesse kept his mouth shut about it all in favor of whitewashing the real history of this cult for public consumption.

Jesse saw Osel Mukpo treat Ciel like a piece of meat. There was brief talk Osel and Ciel would marry, this was why CT had put her on that huge unattainable pedestal, this was why he had made her Sakyong Wangmo II. Many, including Ciel, believed strongly they would marry, as he wrote poems to her and and acted loving and caring towards her. Then he dumped her like a hot potato. He had his staff refuse her calls (Mark Thorpe and others, you KNOW this, where’s your spine?). Osel refused to see her, he refused to talk with her, and he callously and unceremoniously broke her already repeatedly broken heart.

So look around in this sham of a community. There are people who worship Osel regardless, in spite of, or perhaps BECAUSE OF the way he treats women. But I truly believe it’s not just women he mistreats. If you are a man and you think you’re important to him, fuck off, because like everyone else you are completely disposable and really not worthy of a second thought. This is what happens when you make malignant narcissists cult leaders and give them absolute control and ownership over vulnerable people through brainwashing techniques. This is what happens when you believe some made up (or pilfered from other traditions) visualizations or practices with a sociopath at the center.

I miss Ciel, Kier, and Bill [*] I truly believe if they had gotten help outside of this toxic soup, Bill and Ciel might still be alive today. Hopefully they would find that the air out here is fresher. The stench of decay isn’t so strong, and the people are much, much kinder. They know better than to ask survivors to heal a community or forgive their abusers for the sake of the organization which victimized them in the first place. They aren’t impressed with titles and pomp and circumstance. They’re just real people who don’t believe in fairy tales, generally.

I write this with love, to anyone who is struggling with these issues, seek therapy outside of sham.

_______________

Notes:

*Bill Sheffel, who recently took his own life in Boulder

[admin]

Requiem For a Cover-Up
by Carol Merchasin
February 5, 2019

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

This seems like a good day to share my gratitude, regrets, clarifications, and disappointments with the Wickwire Holms Report.

Gratitude

• I am grateful that the Wickwire Holms report is out and that it has in large part confirmed what seemed all too apparent, that Claimant #1 was sexually assaulted by the Sakyong and also that Claimant #3 was a victim of clergy sexual misconduct and an abuse of power.
• I am grateful that Ms. Bath was able to talk to enough people to see the patterns of misconduct, including alcohol abuse, abuse of power, financial mismanagement, shunning, silencing and shaming. I am also grateful that she identified the possibilities of collusion among those whose loyalty to the Sakyong might sway them to be untruthful.
• I am grateful to Ms. Bath. This is not easy work, this was not an easy project. I have had no doubt about her neutrality from the beginning to the end.
• I am grateful for the opportunity to work with BPS. I came in with a lot of experience in doing investigations but little understanding of working with survivors of sexual trauma. I am grateful for all of those people who taught me what I needed to learn. I have tried to help them validate their claims.

Regrets

• I regret that more of the women who were harmed did not come forward. But Shambhala’s long history of betrayal, silencing and shunning made it very difficult for survivors to want to devote any time and energy to this. I have learned in this past year that these survivors owe us nothing and they will participate when they feel safe enough to do so.
• I regret that the leadership of Shambhala and their lawyers did not understand that to be effective, an investigation has to be neutral and independent in perception as well as reality. I called for an independent monitor for this reason; instead 1) the Sakyong’s lawyer announced that the Sakyong had never assaulted anybody, 2) Shambhala revealed that the WH report would go to Alex Halpern, a longtime supporter and the Sakyong’s lawyer, and 3) the Kalapa Council’s lawyer advised survivors to ‘just believe’ that despite years of abuse all could be trusted because he said so. In the end, the community suffers – it does not get the benefit of hearing from all of the people who had allegations and from whom we could learn, and as a result, the investigation is incomplete.

Clarifications

• The report finds that the Sakyong engaged in “sexual misconduct” with Claimant #1. What does that mean? Sexual misconduct is a broad term that includes “sexual assault” as well as a number of other types of misconduct that are sexual in nature. The conduct that Ms. Bath validated is in general sexual misconduct but in specific terms, it is a sexual assault. So, let’s call it what it is – a sexual assault, which is a criminal offense with no statute of limitations in Nova Scotia where it took place.
• The IB has stated in their prologue to the WH Report (Reports Related to Sexual Misconduct and Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche) that there were ten individuals (including Claims No. 1 and No. 3) who conveyed issues of misconduct but that “[n]o one reported criminal behavior.” That is not accurate. Claimant #1’s allegations of sexual assault were substantiated, and sexual assault is most definitely criminal conduct.

Disappointments

• I am disappointed that the scope of the investigation did not include an investigation into who, among Shambhala officers, administrators, teachers and the Sakyong’s personal staff, knew about and were complicit in covering up the Sakyong’s misconduct. Making change is hard and I understand that the IB is working diligently to do that. But you cannot change the organization without a full understanding of what went wrong. Part of what went wrong lies with the Sakyong; but another large part is with a leadership that enabled and covered up his behavior. Without knowing the full extent of that, a lot of activity, committees, and group discussion will feel like movement, but perhaps not in the direction of lasting change. Without a full diagnosis of all the dysfunction, it is unreasonable to expect a cure and healing.
• I am beyond disappointed that the Chilean woman’s claim from the July BPS Memorandum was not considered. In fact, as late as December 2018, I believed that her claim was being investigated. It is true that the Chilean woman did not wish to come forward because she did not perceive the investigation as independent or neutral. Ms. Bath had all the information to reach out to corroborating witnesses. In addition, she investigated Claimant #1’s allegation without talking with her (Claimant #1 did come forward later in January). It is a “best practice” that all complaints, even anonymous ones, must be investigated to the fullest extent of the information available, particularly a claim as serious and with as much corroboration as this one.

I believe that the IB should authorize Ms. Bath to do just that – to investigate and make a finding.I can tell you what the finding will be – that it is more likely than not that the Sakyong locked the Chilean woman in a bathroom and tried to assault her. There are reliable witnesses and plenty of evidence of what happened immediately before and after and in the ensuing days, not to mention a flurry of activity when the Chilean woman moved to NYC. There is also independent corroborating evidence that a cover-up was begun immediately.

• I am disappointed in the Sakyong’s letter/apology. Here is a checklist of what should be in an apology:

• Expression of regret
• Explanation of what went wrong
• Acknowledgment of responsibility
• Declaration of repentance
• Offer of repair
• Request for forgiveness

Here is another rule: Don’t let someone else, especially your criminal lawyer, write it for you. His job is to keep you out of jail. His job is not to help you understand that if you had actually done the six steps above, you probably wouldn’t be in this situation.

• I am disappointed that no one in a position of authority in Shambhala, certainly not the Sakyong, has ever made an official public apology to the people who were harmed and who had the courage to raise these issues to the community. Remaking the organization can’t happen unless there is a complete reckoning with the past. Apologies are hard work, but it is work that must be done. It cannot be outsourced.

So, in the absence of anyone else doing the hard work of an apology, here is what should be said to every single one of the men and women that have been harmed. I especially include Andrea Winn along with the many others who have been working for years to shine a light on this dark part of Shambhala. You cannot heal if you cannot honor the whistleblowers.

Here is my dream Shambhala apology which (in my dreams) would be signed by every single leader of Shambhala, past and present:

“We are beyond regret that you have experienced trauma at the hands of your spiritual teacher and the organization you trusted and relied on. All of us as leaders of this community have betrayed your trust; we have been complicit not only in seeing and allowing this aggressive behavior to continue, but we also inflicted more pain on you by not listening, by seeking to minimize the harm, by denying this happened, by demeaning you, by labeling you as ‘needy,’ ‘troubled,’ or ‘too ambitious.’ We understand that all of these actions were wrong – not only wrong but done in an attempt to protect ourselves and not you. For all of this we stand before you in breathtaking remorse for the harm we have allowed. In addition to making the changes that must be made to the organization, we intend immediately to begin a program of restitution and repair for each and every one of you who has experienced pain due to our action and lack of action.”

I am not holding my breath on this, but still, what would be the harm in sending this aspiration to survivors on this Shambhala Day?

I wish all of you a good new year with much healing ahead.

Regards,

Carol Merchasin

[admin]

Buddhist teacher quit Shambhala in ‘protest’ before his own sexual misconduct allegation went public. He's promoting a book called Love Hurts.
by Joshua Eaton
JUL 23, 2018, 8:00 AM
UPDATED: JUL 23, 2018, 6:24 PM

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Meditation teacher and author Lodro P. Rinzler announced that he was leaving the Buddhist group Shambhala International on July 1 after several women came forward to accuse its leader, Sakyong Mipham, of sexual assault. He failed to mention that he had been accused of sexual misconduct himself.

“I am feeling a lot of pain around what is happening in the Shambhala community,” Rinzler wrote on his private Facebook page at the time. “I personally have clarity that it is time for me to officially leave Shambhala as an organization and no longer teach there.”

It was one of the most high-profile departures in an organization that’s been in tailspin since the sexual assault allegations against its leader.

But Rinzler was already facing fallout from Shambhala over an allegation against him. A woman told the organization he had pressured her into sex in 2013 even after she said multiple times that she did not want to sleep with him. After Shambhala opened an internal investigation into that allegation last month, it asked local meditation centers not to host Rinzler’s upcoming book tour. Within two days, he announced he was leaving the group, according to interviews and documents obtained by ThinkProgress.

ThinkProgress is not aware of any other allegations of sexual misconduct by Rinzler. In a statement, Rinzler denied any sexual misconduct and said his decision to leave Shambhala had nothing to do with the allegation against him.

“I was deeply troubled by the allegations against the leadership of Shambhala and after learning of them stepped away from any involvement with Shambhala’s programs entirely of my own accord,” Rinzler said. “There is no truth to the allegation that Shambhala fired me. Nor have I ever been involved in any inappropriate sexual behavior or interactions with any individual.”

A source close to the Shambhala community confirmed that it’s investigating Rinzler for alleged sexual misconduct and defended how senior Shambhala officials Judith Simmer-Brown and Adam Lobel have handled the allegation since the woman first raised it in 2013.

“Lobel, Simmer-Brown and supporters within the Shambhala community feel confident that they took all appropriate measures, offering ongoing support and follow ups for over 5 years,” the source said by email.

“Let’s just relax and see what happens”

Rinzler, 35, ran Shambhala’s local center in Boston, Mass., before co-founding MNDFL, a for-profit meditation studio with three locations in New York City where he’s currently chief spiritual officer. He’s the author of six books on Buddhism and mediation, and his work has been featured in The New York Times. (Disclosure: This reporter pet- and apartment-sat for Rinzler for a week in 2015, when they were acquainted through Buddhist writer circles on social media.)

The woman, “Amy,” who requested we withhold her real name for privacy reasons, described her interactions with Rinzler in an interview with ThinkProgress. They first met when she coordinated his visit to Portland, Ore., to promote his book Walk like a Buddha in October 2013. Amy had been active in Shambhala most of her adult life and was interested in teaching meditation, so she was looking forward to working with a young teacher she looked up to.

After they talked at Powell’s bookstore, Amy said Rinzler invited her out for a drink and later up to the apartment where he was staying for a nightcap. She found the invitation flattering at first. But when he moved in for a kiss, she said she clearly told him that she wasn’t interested.

“I remember literally putting my hand out and pushing him away,” Amy said. “Like, ‘No, I don’t want to kiss you.’ He said, ‘Well no, I’m just curious. Let’s just relax and see what happens.'”

By that point in the evening, she was too buzzed to drive herself home. Rinzler suggested she stay there and promised not to touch her, even offering to build a pillow “wall” between them.

But once they were in the bed, Amy said, Rinzler continued his unwanted advances and began trying to kiss and touch her yet again.

“I think some part of me was flattered,” she said. “But I was also just really not into it. [I was] just going along with it.”

In a last-ditch effort to get through to Rinzler, she told him again that she didn’t want to have sex, and when he asked why, she revealed that she’d been sexually abused in the past. Instead of offering understanding and empathy, Amy said, Rinzler suggested that sleeping with him could help her break through the trust issues from her past trauma.

Then he began to touch her again, and she froze. She felt paralyzed, she said in an interview — as if she wasn’t in control of her own body. Tired, drunk, and dissociated, she said that she performed oral sex on Rinzler in the hope it would make him stop.

“I thought, ‘OK, I’m doing this to get him off of me without having to have sex with him and just survive,'” she said.

“[J]ust survive”

Amy told two people about what happened over the next two weeks — a local Shambhala teacher and a teacher at another Shambhala center. Both corroborated her account to ThinkProgress.

The next day, after an unsatisfying apology from Rinzler, Amy told the first official, based at the local center, about what happened the night before. That official sent an email, obtained by ThinkProgress, to senior Shambhala officials Simmer-Brown and Lobel with a brief description of what allegedly happened and an offer to put them in touch with Amy for more details.

Simmer-Brown responded to the local official five days later to say she’d read the email to Rinzler — without asking Amy first or obtaining her permission.

Rinzler was “heartbroken” over the “real mistakes” he made with Amy, Simmer-Brown wrote. But her email portrayed those mistakes primarily as a violation of the student-teacher relationship — not as an issue of consent.

“[Rinzler] is only now realizing the ramifications of pressing his affections while in the role of a teacher of Shambhala,” she wrote. “He was not defensive, and was very honest with me about what happened. He is also deeply sorry for any harm he has caused.”

Other things that Lobel and Simmer-Brown said gave Amy pause, she said. In one conversation, for example, Simmer-Brown talked about how she’d known Rinzler since he was a kid, making Amy wonder whether she would be impartial. And after Amy told Lobel what happened, she said he responded with, “Wow, that sounds really confusing.”

“It made it clear he had doubts about what I was saying,” Amy told ThinkProgress.

Lobel and Simmer-Brown offered two options for moving forward — mediation between Amy and Rinzler, or Shambhala’s internal investigation process, called “Care and Conduct.” But after a back-and-forth with both teachers, Amy decided to let it drop.

“At that point, I honestly just wanted to forget about it and not keep getting thrown around these different people,” she said.

Lobel checked in with Amy in 2015, according to a source close to the Shambhala community. She didn’t pursue more support from Shambhala then. But Lobel reached out again this year, after a report in February by the advocacy group Buddhist Project Sunshine detailed anonymous accounts of sexual abuse within the Shambhala community.

“I’ve been thinking of you in the midst of the painful and massive learning about gender and power that we are going through in Shambhala,” Lobel wrote in an email obtained by ThinkProgress. “I am wondering how you are and how this is all feeling to you? If you would like to check in, I would appreciate it.”

After a second report by Buddhist Project Sunshine publicized several allegations of sexual assault and sexual misconduct against Shambhala’s head, Sakyong Mipham, Amy decided to finally move forward with a Care and Conduct investigation. On June 29, she sent Lobel a written account that detailed the incident and her subsequent conversations with Shambhala officials. It matches her account to ThinkProgress.

In separate statements to ThinkProgress, Lobel and Simmer-Brown said they’re glad Amy decided to pursue Shambhala’ formal complaint process.

“After what has now been a few years of offering support, suggesting opportunities for further assistance, and access to resources through Shambhala’s Care and Conduct process, I am pleased that the complainant has decided to take the formal steps she feels are necessary,” Lobel said in his statement. “I stand behind her decision and remain completely supportive of her journey through this process.”

“I have been concerned for [Amy’s] welfare, and hope she will find the healing she seeks,” Simmer-Brown’s statement said.

On July 1, two days after Amy sent Lobel her written account, he wrote back to say a center director had heard about the allegation of sexual misconduct and confronted Rinzler about it. That triggered questions from other centers about whether they should host Rinzler as he toured to promote his new book of Buddhist relationship advice, Love Hurts.

Shambhala asked the centers not to invite Rinzler for book talks while the investigation was pending, Lobel wrote. But Lobel speculated that the question from the center director may have tipped Rinzler off. Rinzler announced he was leaving Shambhala that same day in a post on his private Facebook page, screenshots of which were obtained by ThinkProgress.

In that post, Rinzler also offered his support for anyone who wanted to talk about their experience with sexual misconduct in Shambhala.

“I will hold space and listen and share my heart if you would like me to,” he wrote. “I am truly available to you.”

Do you have information about sexual misconduct in Shambhala or elsewhere? Contact reporter Joshua Eaton by email at jeaton@thinkprogress.org or by Signal at 202–684–1030.

CORRECTION: This article previously stated that Judith Simmer-Brown spoke with Lodro Rinzler before speaking with “Amy.” Simmer-Brown and Amy did speak before she spoke with Rinzler, but she did not ask Amy’s permission first.

UPDATE (7/24/2018, 9:37 a.m. ET): The statement from Adam Lobel has been updated.

[admin]

Part 1 of 10

Inside the Tiny Pathetic World of Sakyong Mipham
by allthewholeworld
January, 2019

Posted byu/allthewholeworld
27 days ago
I know more than anyone I see here in Reddit about SMR and the Court. If you would like, AMA
I know Mipham Mukpo very well. I know his wife too, I know his intimate daily life . I know his teachings as well or better than anyone currently involved with shambhala. I was one of his most intimate friends during the development of his current teaching career, the Scorpion Seal. Yes I know that sounds arrogant, but it is true. I know everyone on the Kalapa Council (the one that ended last year). I know most of the people who run his world, including his servants and secretaries. I know his patrons. I know that he is a terribly sick man who is a terribly dangerous man. There are seriously misinformed people in this reddit sub, and it is clear that people do not have access to the hard to hear facts about this man and his world. The Court is hardly a place where people iron napkins. Very few get behind the gates in Mukpo's life to witness first hand his mental illness and confusion, desperation, and very real sociopathy. I most certainly did, and I am definitely trying to help others get out of shambhala. That is my only intention here. I wish you the best, and will check in now and then to see if anyone has asked a question. If your questions seem sincere, I will respond.

level 1
allthewholeworld
25 days ago
Hello

I got home from work a couple hours ago and opened up reddit and well, this will take me time to work through. As I said, I will respond to questions one by one, and if someone seems to be asking for a private conversation, I will reach out through private message. Otherwise I will post publicly.

I will go through them carefully, and prioritize the messages that seem most urgent. And really, this is an honor for me to offer friendship to those who request it.

I know that some people are trying to out me. Don't worry, I will out myself soon enough, but that is on my timeline. The point is not who I am, the point is who you are, who you want to be, and is your life right now delivering you in that direction. Or in some other direction. We all are directing our lives to one end or another. Which direction are you driving? Whoops, there I went, addressing the acharyas again.

Because you have asked this again and again, I will repeat. Yes, I am still a dharma practitioner. I love the dharma more today than I even did when I first learned to meditate. Getting away from Shambhala helped this, but I still practiced even when I was "in". I think there are many, not just a few, excellent reliable guides in the various traditions of dharma practice, and although I choose to pursue mahamudra and dzogchen (it is what I learned first), I think that Theravada and Zen approaches have a lot to offer us.

In many ways I left Shambhala because I wanted a rich practice life, sort of like I had in the Vajradhatu days. Mipham killed that, it was dharmacide.

I am full of emotion at reading your replies, and I also laugh out loud with your hilarious wisecracks. Like I have said to some of you in PMs, I am interested in making sure the dharma takes root in the modern age, in a manner relevant to our capacity, and that we understand that dharma was taught so that we could attain enlightenment, and any form of enlightenment, be it from a Nikaya, Mahayana, Tantric, Sahajayana, or even modern mindfulness approach is worth pursuing and celebrating. And any stage of enlightenment in those traditions is one more stage than I have attained, so I gotta keep on practicing. But that is the joy of my life, and I have many, many companions who seem to feel the same. There is life after Shambhala, after Rigpa.

By the way, dharma practice is not particularly the practice of listening to a lama teach from a throne. Dharma practice is almost entirely about sitting quietly and entering meditative equipoise. Get the teachings, and then fold your mind into samadhi. That is where the real dharma will be found. Sorry, I am mostly a practitioner rather than a teacher, but it sounds like some of us have lost our connection to the simple transmission that Buddha gave to us.

level 2
Arupajhana7
25 days ago
Thank you so much OP, you've helped me find my lungta again. It makes me so happy that you intend to go public eventually with this. I was beginning to become depressed that the truth wouldn't come out and that people would continue to be deluded and tricked into joining this cult.

You are helping restore my confidence in the Dharma.

For what it's worth I know one acharya who indicated to me that he wasn't very close to the court and the center of that part of the mandala... But nonetheless he hasn't stepped down or spoken out against Mukpo which is very disappointing.

level 3
cedaro0o
25 days ago
Not surprising as Acharyas were specifically selected for loyalty, not merit, as is corroborated here and in Ethan Nichtern's stepping down statement, "We have our titles primarily because of the perception that we are loyal to Sakyong Mipham," https://www.ethannichtern.com/stepping- ... community/

level 4
Arupajhana7
25 days ago
I am Grateful that Ethan Nichtern talked openly about this. Disappointed that he seems to be the only major teacher to not sugar coat it.

level 5
allthewholeworld
24 days ago
Yeah, Ethan wrote well. He lost a lot of income in stepping down, and that probably slowed him in his response, having to have a plan b, and there is nothing wrong with that. People gotta live, and I think he has a baby now. I am glad for him, even though I don't know much about the NYC situation. Ethan is young and intelligent, and who knows how his ideas will transform as he explores the issues from a new perspective.

level 6
10drel
24 days ago
I hope that he will explore issues from a new perspective and not just seek to continue what he's gotten through Shambhala. He just started teaching a yearlong online course in Buddhism, broken into five modules, of which the last one is Warrior in the World. I fear he and others will find a way to freshen up the Shambhala brand without addressing the core problems.

level 7
allthewholeworld
24 days ago
Ethan Will wrestle with this, but I am going to predict that he will do something good. Might not please every single person, but none among us can accomplish such general popular opinion. If he seems to go astray post helpful remarks on his blog. He is not deaf, really. Help him.

level 7
fucking_giraffes
24 days ago
I share the same concerns. I’m in this course and have already requested Ethan hold a separate discussion around Shambhala. From the little that he has said so far in reference to Shambhala, he is not sugar-coating anything. Are you participating in it?

level 8
allthewholeworld
24 days ago
no, i gotta lot on my plate. glad it is good though.

level 8
Arupajhana7
23 days ago
I am not.

level 4
Jinpasertso
23 days ago
First, Ethan has NOT separated himself from Shambhala. He will be teaching with Rupa Acharya Suzann Duquette at KCL in March as part of their annual Shambhala retreat. He has stepped down as a Shastri for what that's worth. He was a big part of the NYC Shambhala Center along with Acharya Eric Spiegel and I imagine that he doesn't want to burn any bridges and dharma is his livelihood. And therein lies the rub.

level 5
cedaro0o
23 days ago
What rub? That one selected for loyalty stays loyal? Rather underlines the point.

level 5
Arupajhana7
23 days ago
Interesting combo... She is fiercely devoted to SMR. Her first reaction after the news broke was to minimize what happened and compared him to Milarepa (whose murders took place Before he started dharma) and tried to frame it as a teaching.

I hope he doesn't hold back in her presence.

level 6
Jinpasertso
8 days ago
I don't think he would ever change anything he says in her presence, and I don't think that she would expect him to. They have a pretty great dynamic. Acharya Duquette was fiercely devoted to VCTR and I am sure she will stand by the Sakyong as VCTR's dharma heir. Ethan is the next generation and they are all finding their way...so it is interesting times for the lineage. Dzigar Kongtrul is going to teach at the Boulder Shambhala Center so maybe things will open up...

level 7
Arupajhana7
7 days ago
I hope you are right that he won't censor himself while next to her. I agree she is fiercely devoted to SMR.

I hope she will make a public statement explaining this letter she wrote to KCL staff over the summer:

http://matthewremski.com/wordpress/shri ... annotated/

level 5
ketomike218
13 days ago
I find Ethan troubling. Not only because he is always pushing politics, but if you scroll back far enough on his Instagram, he used to gush about his guru and even repeatedly hashtagged those posts with #handsomeguru. Why a grown and supposedly wise man would point out handsomeness and attach it to guruhood seems very ridiculous to me.

Furthermore just because he admits shastris were chosen only for loyalty and not for merit doesn’t excuse the fact that he took the title willingly and knowingly. A person with more integrity and wisdom would have turned it down.

It reminds me of the scene in Quiz Show when Charlie is admitting he was given all the answers in advance and all the senators start applauding him for his honesty. Then one senator basically calls him out to say as a grown man he should have acted better. “You shouldn’t be congratulated for simply and at long last telling the truth.”

I’ve had some dealings with Ethan on Instagram and he seems to get very angry when people disagree with him. He strikes me as a very privileged and entitled person (go see how much tuition cost at his grade school and high school) who passive aggressively says “all the best” to people who dare to challenge his wisdom.

level 2
thebasketofeggs
19 days ago
If it isn’t too late to ask... You weren’t a spy all those years, so this perspective is new. How long did it take for you to see things this way? And what was the process? I’ve picked up bits of the answer from what you’ve posted, but if you could describe the process of breaking away, that could be helpful to many. It might also help people see you are not being vindictive. I don’t think you are. To me, it sounds like you are in a stage of separating. Maybe eventually it won’t feel so stark. Though of course, who knows. It may always... Anyway, I am grateful.

level 3
allthewholeworld
19 days ago
edited 19 days ago
not too late at all. I am preparing my "story" just as many of my friends are, so I will certainly tell this stuff to assist others with putting their lives together.

I am not vindictive, I am acting from moral outrage at both the abuses of mipham but also the utter failure of the acharyas and other leaders to do a damn thing in line with their obligation to protect the sangha and to uphold a noble human tradition that has taken the efforts of 2600 years to get to us. They treat it like it is just a meal ticket to protect. Buddhist Moral Outrage. I have friends who are spending their time and money seeking therapy to help repair years of abuse at the hands of Mipham, and I can't stand the weakness and cowardice of the Acharyas and others who just exhibit all the signs of cowardice and denial. These are people who describe themselves as warriors. They are nothing of the sort, and as you can see in my first post, I know them well. Cowards, which is why they are acharyas. Put a group of complicit cowards in charge, dirty them with misconduct so that they are complicit, and they cannot leave you.

I was kept out of anything that MjM didn't want me to see. He put on a good show for me, inviting me to civilized dinners and stuff. I was not an administrator, I was a practitioner and later an advisor to his vajrayana teaching activities (which I was given, but which I did not practice much past a certain point). He handled me so that I would see him in the best light. Probably a lot of people like me throughout the years. So I was fooled, thinking "he's not a bad guy at all. maybe not a buddha, but a reasonable teacher."

I went through stages of grief as all will, and now am probably toward the end of the stage of depression and into acceptance.

I spent years in denial. years. I just couldn't fathom that the whole thing was a fraud. As you may have seen from my other posts, I didn't enter shambhala for either Mipham or Trungpa, I entered it at a time when all the great Kagyu Nyingma lamas were the main teachers, because Trungpa had been dead for almost 10 years, and Mipham was getting "trained". So my primary teachers were Khenpo Tsultrim and Thrangu Rinpoche and others. To me, Mipham was just the person who was holding the amazing venue together. Shambhala was a container for authentic buddhist teachings: that was the only reality I knew. It all changed in 2004.

My denial began to dissolve when I realized how compromised the acharyas were, and how compromised the dorje kasung were. I began to believe that Mipham was a good guy surrounded by incompetence, and so when I was invited by him to "help" I mostly looked around to see where the problem was. I didn't look at him. I was so blind, and I know that is how many still are. It can, of course, be repaired. Even the most cowardly of the acharyas (who I call out again and again as traitors to human welfare) can find their hearts and be courageous, but it won't be easy.

Denial began to dissolve and I had a long period that mixed anger and bargaining. that continued for a decade perhaps.

this is when my process of bargaining was in full swing. When you look at the posts and threads of all the people here and on FB, usually you see people in bargaining mode. this is where people want to say "well I really like the teachings, I don't think I need to get caught up in all the drama." or as Remski puts it, "I got mine-ism". That probably isn't bargaining, but it is also not exactly denial because there is a sense that things are rotten and a person uses a logical maneuver on themselves to avoid action. For me, bargaining lasted years, and my manifestation of it was "well at least we have the buddhadharma." I was holding on to the perceived purity of buddhadharma despite the fact that even it had been used by Mipham and others to terrify people into superstitious silence. Buddhadharma has nothing to do with what happened in shambhala, in my opinion. So, denial went on a long time.

But then, I saw what I saw, up close and personal, and it was so overwhelming to me that I left, after warning the Kalapa Council and a few others, and rebuilt my life. This was a three year period of depression, but it was more like a thawing into spring. This has been an emergence out from depression to acceptance, if we are going to follow the traditional model (which I have found helpful).

So denial began around 2004 with the appointment of Adam Lobel who was as unfit for his role as mipham was unfit for his. I tuned out and just increased my solitary retreat in both number and length. Bargaining began around 2007 when I was able to meet Mingyur Rinpoche at the Boulder center and began to feel that "maybe there is still a chance if teachers like Mingyur are still welcome". I informed adam lobel that I was now studying with Mingyur, and he replied, as far as SMR was concerned I was free to study with anyone I wanted. so I stayed. But that message of openness seems to have been given to a mere few, and to many a very different message was given. At this time of bargaining, anger came in alongside, at seeing the defilement of the acharya system, which should have been the shining light of shambhala but was every bit as bad as Trump's administration.

my life is very good now. I am out, I have many other things going on, and every painful step of the way out of the mukpo maze was rewarded by the life I now have. For others, especially those deep in, with 20-40 years of activity, I think it can be quick and slow at the same time. People can emerge quickly, like having a moment of clarity that impels them to leave, but the lost years will need even more years of processing. Time spent in a cult can be like time spent as an alcoholic. You miss your life and don't grow. Thanks for your question.

level 4
thebasketofeggs
17 days ago
Thank you so much. May I share this away from Reddit. I can’t imagine you’d say no but thought it would be good to ask. Again, so many thanks.

level 5
allthewholeworld
17 days ago
all these posts are public in my mind, thank you thebasketofeggs

level 2
wabashcannonball108
24 days ago
I apologize for trying to “out” you. I respect your desire for anonymity but am so tired of all the sneaking around. I don’t agree with some of your opinions, but I think you have to be heard. Whether someone is adamantly defending SMR on one side, or seeking to utterly destroy on the other, is not the main thing. I am in the middle (I never got hooked and I just tolerated the zealots I encountered). The main thing is that neither side is really interacting. The keeners dismiss social media and therefore can’t listen, and the critics think the keeners are evil. I’m not a keener and each time in the last 23 years I’ve felt the impulse to be zealous it felt like a betrayal of my better sense, so I didn’t go there. I have written scathing letters to the KC and SMR in the past 8 months. I have openly derided the money and admin function for years. I do have the notion that this situation can somehow be healed through deep contrition on SMR’s part AND people not just bugging out. There is value in sticking together and working through it. When you left, I was sad and wondered what it would have looked like if people like you stuck around and simply spoke your mind- FROM WITHIN. I do it all the time and have never been marginalized or treated any worse than a curmudgeon. I think anonymity weaponizes the discussion. Maybe this process is part of your process to eventually write an open letter articulating all your experiences and opinions.

level 3
allthewholeworld
24 days ago
I should also say, with respect, that trying to out someone from anonymity while doing so from an anonymous handle is not the best you can do.

level 3
cedaro0o
24 days ago
Speaking out from within does nothing to warn away newcomers. I was sold on shambhala being a safe place for secular mindfulness meditation practice. I was sold a myth of mipham being a stand up straight arrow family guy. Only via project sunshine, survivors, and allies sharing stories OUTSIDE was I made aware of what lay in wait deeper in.

Look at most center websites and social media groups. None of this dark reality is warned. The propaganda remains the same. The myth building persists and what little is shared is either denied or minimized. Superficial changes are begrudgingly being glacially examined.

Monarch retreats are offered to spend a $1000 week under the gaze of the image of mipham. Opportunities to become $1000 a year Jewel Patrons are pushed. All this before the independent (not really) report is due back on him.

People have been struggling to work FROM WITHIN for decades with no success. Whistle blowing is the only ethical option at this point.

level 4
allthewholeworld
24 days ago
I must agree with cedar0o.

cults do not change into non cults. do they?

no evidence of that. where has an organization that ticks so many boxes of cult behavior ever cleaned up its act?

L Ron Hubbard has been dead for years, but his cult is as strong as ever.

Not saying it hasn't happened, but I study this stuff and have no such evidence.

level 3
allthewholeworld
24 days ago
hi wabash. i didn't know you tried to out me. i understand that, so no worries. I also appreciate your respect for the attempt to let the anonymity remain even though it rubs you wrong. it serves a purpose, at least for a while. anonymity creates the frenzy that cleans out people ears. causes people to read and reread, and in the process, they have to read information that doesn't accord with their view and sometimes it gets in. i am getting a lot of positive feedback about that particular thing: how important it is to do this anonymously, at least at first.

i wanted to change things from within, and in fact that is what I did for several years. but toward the end I was brutally silenced by a few acharyas who removed any part of the path forward for me. rather than stay inside and be silenced, I stepped away, caught my breath, and now its sort of a hello world situation.

do you like country music?

level 4
wabashcannonball108
24 days ago
I keep deleting my comments because I suck at computers. I do enjoy the odd ditty now that you mention. I still do not enjoy Karate Suits though. I’m an anonymity hypocrite no doubt. I just don’t want to see Shambhala less self critical, because it has suffered from being provincial for too long. How can an Acharya “silence” someone? I don’t listen to all the stuff they say. And I know you didn’t care about the title. A lot of people do programs with other teachers and nobody kicks them out of feasts. I still don’t get the “leaving” strategy.

level 5
allthewholeworld
24 days ago
how can an acharya silence someone? through intimidation: removal of access, public humiliation, threatening position, reforming consensus among powerholders to shame you. and of course, accusing one of disloyalty and working against the dharma.

I think you should spend about 20 hours genuinely reading moderns studies on cult behavior and organizational coercion. You have said a number of things which reveal that some things are just new ideas to you. I was there once, which is how I didn't see what was happening.

level 6
wabashcannonball108
24 days ago
If it’s a cult it’s a lame one because nobody tells me what to say or think, nobody guilts or manipulated me into giving money. Nobody has humiliated me or shunned me. You need to write up the instances of the kind of treatment you received and the individuals involved so they don’t do that anymore. Send me the write up and I would actually like to call them up and hear what the hell they were thinking. But “leaving” and making nonspecific allegations is not helping stop it. Maybe I need to get a Karate suit and wear it to understand. And? Does 20 hours of cult podcasts count?

level 7
allthewholeworld
24 days ago
I need to do what makes me feel like I am doing the best to encourage the conversation I set out to support. Your ideas aren't as persuasive to me as you want them to be. But i hope you keep posting and I will keep reading.

level 8
wabashcannonball108
23 days ago
Totally support you and hope we can just be regular friends. No need to agree on this. I was sitting down with someone who is a very longtime Shambhala person yesterday. I asked “howyadoing”. He said “well, considering it’s Don season pretty good, you?” I said “frankly how I’m doing has nothing to do with Don season cuz I don’t believe in that.” His eyes lit and he said, “you know neither do I”. We laughed. Take care.

level 9
allthewholeworld
21 days ago
i like friendship, it is actually one of the best things I have experienced. suggestion accepted. we'll just find time later to work out the details and have ourselves a beverage, a daytime one if you don't mind.

level 10
wabashcannonball108
20 days ago
Yeah daytime. If you get to the People's Republic let me know, or I will reach out if I'm in your neck.

CheredeDarievea
23 days ago
If it’s a cult it’s a lame one because nobody tells me what to say or think, nobody guilts or manipulated me into giving money.

I wish there were a better word than "cult" because that word conjures up images of Heaven's Gate or Scientology. In fact the term "cult dynamics" encompasses a whole range of often very subtle behavior manipulation techniques that aren't limited to religious groups, but can involve something as small as a family unit or as mundane as a workplace.

I totally hear what you mean by "If it's a cult then it's a lame one". That's something I myself could have said up until very recently. I had my Shambhala experience compartmentalized into "Well, I was a big boy and I knew what I was doing, and I could have left any time I wanted, but I didn't, and sure the whole thing was fucked up, but oh well." I won't try to explain why Shambhala qualifies as a bona fide cult here; that would be a big undertaking. I'd just like to re-iterate ATWW's advice that the matter deserves a second look.

Also, consider this: you might be Toydarian! i.e. you are immune from mind tricks. Seriously, you might have the kind of mind that cult dynamics don't work on. But that doesn't mean other vulnerable people around you were not experiencing them.

level 8
cedaro0o
22 days ago
Matthew Remski proposes the term, "high demand group" here instead of cult.

http://matthewremski.com/wordpress/talk ... #more-7823

level 9
CheredeDarievea
22 days ago
Matthew Remski's work is excellent.

level 8
wabashcannonball108
22 days ago
Toydarian! I need to look that one up. I think if an individual believes they have been "indoctrinated", then that view is completely valid and that person should receive support to heal. But when it gets weird for me is when that same person does THE EXACT SAME THING that is the worst part of Shambhala: telling people whose experience is different that there is something wrong with them or they are uninformed. Please! This is a root issue here, this craving for monolithic truth and total consensus. THAT feels more cultish to me than some Acharya bloviating about how perfect and precious the whole thing is. I watched the Reggie SMR thing explode first hand-- both sides were just CERTAIN the other was the enemy. That part was pathetic and insulting to me, but I stuck around because I like learning about Buddhism.

level 9
CheredeDarievea
22 days ago
telling people whose experience is different that there is something wrong with them or they are uninformed.

This is key. Tone policing and gaslighting are important techniques cults use to enforce conformity (maybe "high demand group" is better but I'm still getting used to saying that). And it's subtle. There are no conformity police walking around with sticks to beat you if you don't think the right way, but it's done verbally and socially exactly as you describe: your point of view is diminished or discarded, you are chided or patronized, told you don't have the whole teachings yet, you haven't attained the right levels, haven't been around Rinpoche enough, etc. Eventually you give up: you turn into Cool Hand Luke and get your mind right. Or, if you really think you are in the right and you persist and persist, then you turn into Reggie and you find yourself in the ejection seat.

I can remember being told we were all lineage holders. That we were all Mukpos. That we were all vajracharyas. Heck, every month at feast we exhorted ourselves to go out and gather disciples and teach. Who can blame Reggie [Reginald A. Ray], who reportedly had great talent as a teacher (never met him myself), for thinking he could function as a vajracharya in his own right but within the shadow of his own teacher's umbrella? It certainly has lots of precedent in the Tibetan system, and Reggie knew all about that system. Reggie Ray, for all his skill and wisdom, probably didn't know he was in a cult either, until too late. Surprise!

As for Toydarian, here you go. No, I'm not really that nerdy.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Toydarian

level 10
wabashcannonball108
20 days ago
Toydarian update: I'll accept the label but would prefer a more glamorous look. I know Reggie fairly well and studied Hin/Maha with him for several years when he was a newly minted Acharya. I really liked him and learned some things. He idealized CTR (whom I never met) to an extent that made me uncomfortable, but hey each to his own. Reggie had a messiah complex a little and knew how to push people's buttons. I have not spoken to him in years but I sense that he's a much happier person than he was back then. He tried to warn me that the Sakyong had problems with alcohol but I just thought he was throwing rocks. He used to drive a black jeep around SMC and some smartass I knew started calling him "Dr Death" because he liked to scare us about what happens if you don't practice. The Jeep would pull up and someone would say "look busy, here comes Dr. Death." He's a good guy.

level 5
wabashcannonball108
24 days ago
Also, worldguy, I watched another wall go up between Reggie and SMR and to you it seemed like an excellent at the time. Can we do it without that part?

level 4
wabashcannonball108
10 days ago
Sorry thefullnameof I can't be of help on that at this point.


level 1
Jinpasertso
23 days ago
edited 23 days ago
What I remember from my own seminary is how one particular kusung would act like a pimp and scout out potential partners for the SMR. It was like he'd sit up on his throne with his chapstick looking over the crowd and then later a kusung would approach a young, beautiful woman and ask her some questions, and the next thing said young woman would be invited to the Court where they would often wait around for hours before being called into to service him. So many of these young women thought that they were engaging in some kind of special tantric relationship with him that it blew my mind. And many of them were hurt when he discarded them like kleenex but chalked it up to it being a "teaching." What I am truly and sincerely confused by is how the Kasung are continuing to line up in their khaki to serve the Makkyi. For my own part I came to Shambhala in the mid-90's with heart full of longing and a life defined by trauma. I threw myself into the situation with every ounce of my soul and was ridiculously naive in my beliefs. That said I am grateful for having met and studied with some amazing teachers in the Kagyu/Nyingma lineages and I hold Khenpo Tsultrime Gyamtso on the top of my head. I was also told that I would never be a "senior teacher" because I was considered to be "disloyal" to the Sakyong when I questioned what I considered to be exploitative behaviors at the upper level of the organization.

level 2
allthewholeworld
22 days ago
that is not an inspiring memory to have, is it. you and I have had similar paths, and no doubt had a meal or two together. KTGR was my main person for years.

Like you, I cannot explain the continued loyalty to a community experience that so very many find unrewarding. People have been fleeing the court, a person in contact with the current court told me today. now they don't know what to do with raising their kids. what do you do if you don't have servants. I am going to ask my butler, maybe he knows.

level 1
allthewholeworld
25 days ago
and this just in: "have I heard about a sangyum who is posting about this?" I have and I think that person is the bravest person since Andrea Winn. maybe more, I don't know. I don't want her to feel dragged into this, but I do know of her and think she is a GIANT of courage. Courage in human form. If she wants to show up, you will see me respect her.

level 2
CheredeDarievea
25 days ago
Word on the street is, she'd like to talk to you too.

level 3
allthewholeworld
25 days ago
and I thought I was street smart. I'll pop my head out the window and look for the golden glow of courage that accompanies her everywhere!

level 2
Chaktsen
25 days ago
Actually,what you say is 100 percent true, the former sangyum you mention is extremely brave and sincere because she tells the truth about her own story and does so with complete honesty. She steps out and is willing to be genuine again and again. She has amazing courage and integrity. Andrea Winn cannot say the same, she uses other's stories to puff her ego and appear genuinely to be on the side of survivors, but has a huge way of taking credit for oh so much that she considers her accomplishments and exposures, which actually demeans the survivor's stories. No one should take credit for the pain and suffering survivors have endured. Beware of a wolf in sheep's clothing. The fact is she has a lot of the same qualities as the Sakyong, including that she uses people up, has serious issues with the truth, and even indulges in sexual harassment. If you check, it is easy to see. Check in with former volunteers of her organization, her financial reports, and survivors that have shared their stories with her only to hear versions of their stories slandered to others. It's sad that she has not yet been publicly exposed and that innocents continue to give money (that she pockets) to BPS.

level 3
allthewholeworld
24 days ago
a little information you could consider: i have a friend who experienced serious suicidal ideation recently, because of abuse by Mipham. An intervention followed, and she may be out of it. Without Andrea Winn's work, she wouldn't have been able to get out, I think. AW accomplished a lot, but may have done her own harm in the process— I didn't know any of that stuff. For people who have been helped, they don't need to know about AW's history. I am so glad my friend is alive, she means a lot to me and another suicide would have done me in.

level 4
Chaktsen
24 days ago
Equally, Andrea has caused tremendous harm to individuals that went to her as a resource. Your friend perhaps had a strength others didn't. Andrea's activity is not just in the past. She continues to slander survivors if they don't conform to her views and methods. She doesn't do so publicly but has no problem doing so in the backroom of BPS discussion groups. Did you know she has 2 backrooms to the BPS discussion groups where she discussed the personal stories of survivors, how volunteers were to respond to people and lots of slander, not to mention encouraging her volunteers to do the same? Most people don't know that and continue to take her at face value. In all honesty, your friends story was probably discussed there. It's sad. Because it means more cover up and dishonesty. Survivors usually have no idea they are being discussed in backroom.

level 5
hazulu
24 days ago
Nevertheless, Andrea Winn is the one who got the ball rolling, she almost single-handedly started a process that may well lead to the meltdown (long overdue) of this Shambhala charade. So give her some credit for that, please. And yes, she is a survivor too.

level 6
Chaktsen
24 days ago
No one does anything "Single handedly"...... Survivor stories shouldn't be her bread and butter. what she does with her own stories is up to her. What she does with other people's stories who trusted her, shouldn't be up to her. There are many factors regarding the Shambhala meltdown, never just one person's credit.

level 5
allthewholeworld
24 days ago
is this a PM? I can't tell. I knew none of what you just shared.

level 6
Chaktsen
24 days ago
It was but I'll leave it up. Sorry for any inconvenience.

level 3
EdmundButler
24 days ago
Perhaps you could cut her some slack given her own experience with sexual abuse in Shambhala? Clearly she, like all of us, is healing. Nobody should expect perfection in anybody else, but when a frightened voice finds its courage those of us who have the liberty to listen can afford to be generous. She has almost single handedly broken open the lid on abuse in Shambhala and inspired others more than can be known, or even admitted in some cases.

You say, "If you check, it's easy to see". Well I don't see it the way you do and I'm not a moron, so where does leave your assertion? Flat, I submit. Don't shoot the messenger because the message implies an immense amount of trauma for thousands of people here, as yet still unfolding as this post reveals in my view. There are people having suicide ideation about all of this so before you shoot down Andrea human shortcomings in bravely flagging a serial sex offender posing as a Wizard, put them in your heart maybe? At the very least present evidence to back up your salacious inuendos.

Short History of Buddhist Project Sunshine

February 27, 2017 [Launch date Buddhist Project Sunshine]

Project Sunshine is a one-year project that was launched on Shambhala Day 2017 [February 27, 2017

February 15, 2018 [Phase 1 Report]

I took this 1-year project on as one lone person who cares about the health of the Shambhala community. It was more work than I ever could have imagined! This has been done with my full heart, and I am grateful that I gave myself this gift, and that it will hopefully be received as a gift to the community.

My volunteer position radically scales down today. I will continue giving 5 hours of time a week to follow ups from the project, including fielding questions and contributing to the discussion in the Facebook forum that will be offered soon. If the community gathers energy to take further action needing a project manager, we will need to raise funds for that. But for now, let's just talk!

March 24, 2018 [Go Fund Me Page created]

Buddhist Project Sunshine Go Fund Me page created March 24, 2018
https://www.gofundme.com/project-sunshine-phase-2

June 28, 2018 [Phase 2 Report]

Next steps for Buddhist Project Sunshine

I began working on Project Sunshine in January 2017. It has been over a year and a half of gruelling work. I put my heart out in this way in the hope that genuine healing can happen for the Shambhala community. I am grateful for the healing that has already begun. At the same time I have gone into personal financial debt of $37,500. Therefore, as Buddhist Project Sunshine is coming to the end of the funds raised, I am going on a semi-sabbatical as of Friday June 29th as I begin a small paid job to make money to support myself. I will continue to host the Buddhist Project Sunshine Discussion Forum through July 31st, as promised.

In light of financial uncertainty, and in the hopes that Buddhist Project Sunshine can continue, I am initiating a dialog with a number of people who contributed to Phase 2. We will explore possibilities for group leadership of the project. All decisions about the future or possible closing of the project will be announced on the Buddhist Project Sunshine community email list....

Buddhist Project Sunshine is hosting a thriving moderated discussion group, including healthy discussion threads about Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s abuses and Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche’s abuses. I (Andrea Winn) have specialized in the research and development of distance healing programs for the past 7 years. I have brought the best of what I know to designing a leading edge moderated discussion forum for anyone with a heart connection to Shambhala, so you can receive support for digesting this information and envisioning a bright future for yourself personally, and for the community. Learn more and register at: http://andreamwinn.com/offerings/projec ... ion_group/

July 31, 2018 [Buddhist Project Sunshine Discussion Forum shut down]

I will continue to host the Buddhist Project Sunshine Discussion Forum through July 31st, as promised.
http://andreamwinn.com/offerings/projec ... ion_group/

August 23, 2018 [Phase 3 Report]

Appendix 1: BPS 3-month organizational start up budget



You can donate to Buddhist Project Sunshine at our on-going GoFundMe page: https://www.gofundme.com/project-sunshine-phase-2

***

Buddhist Project Sunshine needs your support

At the end of Phase 2 [Phase 2 Report was dated June 28, 2018], I announced I was retiring because I have been over working to achieve what we've achieved with this project, and I have gone into significant personal financial debt. However, there has been a continued need for the key role I have been playing. As well, there has been an outpouring of donations to Buddhist Project Sunshine. Two hundred and twenty three people have donated $16,564 since early April [Go Fund Me Page was created March 24, 2018], which is astounding! I am so grateful! So I have surrendered to the flow of goodness and continued my work.

I have formed and run this organization through heroic exertion and passionate focus. At this point a shift must happen, however, both for my own health and the health of BPS. We are not able to work at a scale appropriate to the needs of Shambhala's healing process without paid staff.

A member of our core leadership group did research and determined an appropriate 3-person staff structure for BPS running as a non-profit organization, with an Executive Director (myself), an Associate Director, and a Development Officer. We need an Associate Director to interview, support and manage our growing number of volunteers and a Development Officer to focus on getting charitable status and ensure our financial health through continued donations.

Over the past eight months, Shambhala International has chosen not to support Buddhist Project Sunshine in our efforts to support community healing or our investigation. Instead they have chosen to retain a separate, non-transparent investigation through Wickwire Holm and to hire An Olive Branch. It is clear that BPS will require community support outside of SI leadership to keep our work going.

I have prepared a 3-month budget with the intention of it giving us time to establish nonprofit status. The budget includes mid-range salary amounts for the three needed staff positions. I am including this 3-month budget in Appendix 1 with the hope that this work is proving meaningful enough to be supported in a more secure way. Since we must raise $47,000 in additional funds, this plan calls for seed money from major donors. We will gratefully receive emails to explore major donor relationships. I would like to speak with potential major donors personally. Please email: buddhistprojectsunshine@gmail.com .

Everyone can donate to Buddhist Project Sunshine at our on-going GoFundMe page: https://www.gofundme.com/project-sunshine-phase-2

I also feel it is important to share that by some cosmic karmic fluke, my core leadership group is unavailable for service as of this week (one is on family medical leave, another is on vacation, and another has taken a full time job). I will not have anyone answering Buddhist Project Sunshine email for the foreseeable future, so my ability to respond will undoubtedly be slow. Please be patient with our slow response for the next little while. I can assure you we will get to everyone's request as soon as possible.

February 4, 2019 [Buddhist Project Sunshine completed; Go Fund Me page shut down]


$24,722 of $45,487 goal

With Buddhist Project Sunshine's mission complete, Andrea is closing her BPS social justice campaign February 4th, 2019

Without doubt, it can be said that the mission of Buddhist Project Sunshine has been accomplished at this point, and far more. The original mission was to bring healing light to the sexualized violence in Shambhala. That has happened beyond what I could ever have imagined two years ago, as in the last week the first Shambhala leader was arrested for sexually assaulting a minor and police investigations are now in progress with respect to Osel Mukpo and John Weber.

I am leaving the GofundMe campaign open until February 4th for anyone who would like to contribute to help me pay the debt I accumulated as I devoted my time and energy to BPS. My debt is $20,200. I made decisions along the way to continue to focus on BPS rather than shift my focus back to my coaching service because I personally needed the sexualized violence to be brought out into the light. I do not regret this. And now I am turning my attention to my own healing, paying my debt, and moving forward with a good life. I welcome financial help from those who feel they benefitted from my efforts. If you feel moved, you can contribute here.

I am sincerely grateful to every single person who contributed to the life changing positive work of this project.

level 4
Chaktsen
24 days ago
If only that same slack could be given to other survivors that don't ask for money, fame or a name from others suffering. It's not about perfection it is about transparency. Andrea DID NOT single handedly do anything! There were a lot of people that contributed to BPS and to making truths come out and sharing their stories. Do you know about the 2 backrooms of BPS? Ask around..... this is important. How would you feel if you were a survivor and knew that Andrea and her volunteers were discussing you behind your back and trying to decide how to best handle you? I was one of her victims, I don't need to prove anything. The pain I have endured from her negative activity is enough proof. I am not alone, ask other people that were involved in her organization and left. Chew this too: https://www.reddit.com/r/ShambhalaBuddh ... oughts_on/

Posted byu/Tsondru_Nordsin
Ex Mod/Ex Member5 months ago
Shastri Debbie McCubbin Provides Her Thoughts On Andrea Winn & Announces Intention To Step Down
Debbie McCubbin writes on Facebook

To start, I want to say clearly that I am not minimizing or challenging the important testimonies that have been publicized through Project Sunshine, and will most likely continue to surface for a while through various channels.

To the contrary -- as a result of these reports, I've chosen to step down as a Shastri for Mississauga and will be leaving the Shambhala community late this fall. (You see my previous post about stepping down by searching my name -- it's a comment under a post by Kathryn Rile for Julia Sagebien. If someone knows how to provide a link feel free to put that in the comments. ). I am incredibly appreciative and supportive of the brave people who have come forward, and hope that the Shambhala community can transform and heal through this crisis.

As I leave Shambhala, I want to offer some information that I hope will be helpful. Given that Andrea Winn and others have held Andrea up as a potential future leader or facilitator, I want to share a bit about my own experience. I was the Centre Director when Andrea left Toronto in 2002, and she also lived with me part-time for several months (currently I am not involved with Toronto, but another centre in the region, Mississauga). While the work she has done to bring these issues to light has been critical, I do feel that that shouldn't be confused with putting her into a leadership role, formal or informal.

Andrea has repeatedly mischaracterized what happened in Toronto at that time, though it's been hard to see a skillful way to raise that. Our Toronto Shambhala Centre council unanimously removed Andrea from leadership roles in 2002. There is a confidential report that was filed with the international Desung group at the time, about the reasons and the process our council went through. Andrea reporting sexual abuse was not part of that at all.

At the time Andrea did frequently share with others that she was involved in a Care and Conduct process with Shambhala International about sexual abuse when she was 16 (it was alleged to have occurred in Halifax, not Toronto); our issue was not that she shared that, but that she did it as a staff member at a Level V at great length, taking up time that was for participants. When she shared it as a participant or a colleague, there was no issue. She may believe what she is saying, as memory can be tricky; however, my memory about what happened in Toronto is supported by documents and emails from the time, as well as the recollections of other council members from that time.

From the report from that time, it is clear that the reasons for taking her out of leadership roles were her inability to work well with others; though she started out well, eventually most found her divisive, dishonest and manipulative. Some of her co-leaders in the LGBTQ group had appealed to the council to intervene, after many issues arose. In addition, her participation in the centre council as the rep for the LGBTQ group resulted in serious acrimony, after she took actions that were not agreed to by council, and then responded very aggressively when gently questioned about it. For some of these conflicts there is still an email trail preserved.

This situation caused about six months of intense suffering in our centre and many, many special council meetings as we worked through the countless issues that having her in a leadership role had created.

We did not 'kick her out of the centre' -- we took her out of two leadership roles. We eventually had to do it by email as she would not meet with the council to hear our concerns about her leadership style, despite repeated verbal and email invitations to do so. Again, this is well-documented in the report and by email trails.

As a result she chose to leave the Toronto centre. After she did leave, council members were approached by two community members who alleged additional serious and harmful misconduct on her part, that we hadn't previously known about. Neither wanted to file Care and Conduct complaints, as it seemed clear she had chosen to leave the centre; they just wanted us to know and to reinforce our decision to remove her from leadership.

So, while it is very important to support this work of transparency and change, I feel it is also important that members have this background information so that Andrea is not drawn into future Shambhala roles that would lead to more disharmony. I hope you can distinguish between my two intentions -- supporting the reporting of misconduct, while not supporting Andrea as a future leader in Shambhala.

Many of you know me and can guess how hard it is for me to post this. It's not my nature to be negative. I realize I am opening myself to criticism and part of me just wants to leave quietly! However, in my heart it doesn't feel right not to share this information about Andrea, and I feel that I am in a unique position to speak openly about this and help in a small way to create a better Shambhala for the future, even if I'm not part of it.

level 5
EdmundButler
23 days ago
So what is *your* direct experience here?

level 6
Chaktsen
3 points
23 days ago
I was a survivor that shared my story. I became a volunteer for BPS with the hope of helping fellow survivors. As a volunteer I found out about the BPS backrooms and saw that stories of survivors and what they were writing in the front room of BPS were being discussed behind the scenes. Volunteers discussed how they felt about the person, their stories and how to "handle" them this was done in a forum, private messages and in meetings. I also experienced Andrea telling volunteers how to manage people in the frontrooms. Finally, as a volunteer, I was abused directly by Andrea with her demeaning comments and aggressive requests, she even embarrassed me in front of other volunteers by making me sound low because I questioned what was happening. I began to question having a platform (backrooms as she called them) that the people in the "BPS front room" didn't know about. If survivors knew at the time that their stories were being shared on 2 other platforms behind their backs, I don't think as many people would have felt safe to share their experiences. I know I ended up feeling that way and it has caused me a lot of confusion, heartache and triggered me in many ways. There are other people that volunteered for BPS who know exactly what I am talking about. There are a lot of people that left the group because they did not feel that Andrea's method was kind.

level 7
EdmundButler
23 days ago
WOW. I'm so sorry your experience was so traumatic, in a situation where it appears you were seeking to be met with kindness, at the very least. I can only hope that you find the courage to speak your truth as a survivor, somehow, somewhere and in your own time. This last bit is paramount. You may feel, as I do, that others who don't know should be warned. It's so critical however to not attempt to warn before you feel you're ready to voice your heart.

It seems Andrea has not facilitated your voice, although it appears this was her intention. I sincerely hope you find a way to do this this, with or without the direct help of someone else.

level 8
Chaktsen
23 days ago
Thank you. I'm trying, I reached out to BPS because I thought it was a safe place. It's going to be awhile before I can do that again. I had kept my story quiet for a long time and thought finally there were others that communicated what they went through and it was similar to my experience. I am working with a therapist now one on one after the BPS fiasco, and hope that I will be able to communicate openly at some point about the abuses that I experienced while in the community. When I see Leslie Hayes speaking out, telling her truths and again and again standing up for the survivors instead of making them feel like they are something less than human I feel that there is hope for me. Leslie has never asked anyone for any money, she hasn't tried to become famous and she never uses survivor stories as a way to try and legitimize her own experiences. She's there for people. It is not the case with Andrea. I won't keep going on about it but I know that I am not the only survivor that was damaged by her.

level 9
EdmundButler
23 days ago
I think she's a very damaged person who has done a lot of healing, and feels more is required. That's purely my perception. That said, I was glad to meet Carol Merchasin via Andrea and felt they did a good thing together. It seems Carol corroborated the abuse Andrea suspected or knew was happening. That was so valuable in my view, and inspired me to publish my own story, which in turn inspired a friend to publish hers - a tale of abuse at Gampo Abbey.

I think there's so much trauma here that at times we lose sight of the benefit of being open with it - that of warning against. I don't mean to be simplistic - am I being? - and please know that I see you are in therapy and see that in itself, a;one, apart from all else and above all else as the most important thing. This was some crazy shit that went down. Don't doubt it!!

level 9
cedaro0o
23 days ago
As someone who was woken up from survivor stories, you have my deep sincere thanks. My sense was that most people who read the reports focused on Carol Merchasin's presentation of survivor stories and skipped Andrea's fluff.

I participated in the "Slack online chat forum" (Slack is the name of other online discussion tool) and witnessed on the front end the tensions you are speaking about with volunteers mentioning heated talk behind in the scenes. I wanted to share what I witnessed to corroborate your experience for others.

It is the survivor stories that are important. It is tragic that there was more pain through Andrea's process.

I wish you well in your healing. Please feel no obligation to do more than you've already done. I wish you health and happiness for your future!

level 10
Chaktsen
22 days ago
Just to say it somewhere: after my posts I received quite a number of really mean words in PMs about my speaking up about Andrea. It's kind of ironic. It's easy to make heroes and enemies, what's not easy is to be kind. I'm not lying. The BPS slack group 1-3 had a lot of poison and caused harm for people. Especially when people put their trust in the team, including in Andrea and then found out they were writing about them and their stories in closed forums without their knowledge, in the BPS backrooms. And that their private stories were shared with people they may not have wanted them shared with. If you want to make Andrea your heroine that's your choice and it has nothing to do with me. But equally, if I feel sadness and pain because of her actions, that should be ok too. We are all healing in some way and at some point, the survivors stories should become the priority and put in the forefront, not some concept of who started a communication about survivors or one single person's triumphs. Please check, there are other people out there that know exactly what I described about BPS and Andrea. There was a reason for the attrition rate of BPS support. If you want to keep supporting that organization that is your choice, but people have a right to know it is not pure in its activity and then they can decide on their own what they want to do. An organization that is suppose to be for survivors, that lies and manipulates them is probably not the best route for healing. But again, as long as people know how it functions in a transparent way, they can make their choice. I mean isn't that one of the big criticisms of Shambhala? Lack of transparency, using people and abuses? Why is it different in this scenario?

level 10
Chaktsen
23 days ago
Thank you so much. Heart rub.

[admin]

Part 2 of 10

level 1
allthewholeworld
26 days ago
edited 24 days ago
How did I get out? I left. That is all you can do. You have to realize that you will lose all your friends, all the people in Shambhala are going to ghost you forever. If Shambhala were not a cult, your friends would still be there. A company I worked for once but then left still employs many people who were once my friends. They still are! I am welcome to come visit, and I love to see them. Shambhala is not like that. As soon as you are perceived to have become disloyal, you are moved out. With me it was difficult because I had more access to Mipham than 94.3% of the people in Shambhala, and I generally had carte blanche. It was hard to move me out. But I left on my own. I spoke directly to the powers that be and told them I was done, I told them why, I told them what I felt their obligations were given what we all knew about Mipham and the Kalapa Council. And then I left. Mipham was avoiding me at that time. He freezes people out of his life inexplicably. He might spend every day with you for weeks or months, and then six months go by without communication. He did this to Josh and to Jesse and probably to Adam too. And to me here and there. But I was not all in like they were. I still had a life, and most important to this point of how I got out: I had other teachers, or should I say, actual teachers. I had been studying Kagyu-Nyingma dharma for a very long time, and had samaya with some heavyweights who never disgraced themselves or the dharma. I did not need Shambhala, unlike so many people within who know nothing of the larger buddhist world. They do not have anything to measure it by. They are not educated, they are homeschooled by a Mukpo-style system, which is to say a system the glorifies itself, denigrates everyone else, and provides little nourishment.

Also, I knew that Mipham is a poser, not a vajrayana master, and he is simply not capable of binding samaya with anyone. No one has samaya with him, because he is incapable of binding samaya. He doesn't have the qualifications of a vajra master, and that renders his abhishekas inoperative. What qualifications? Well, in particular ​he very very clearly doesn't have even the slightest hint of bodhichitta. Also, he is not realized (edit-I don't know if he is realized. I shouldn't say this. But c'mon, there is nothing to suggest that he is, imo). Samaya is not merely a verbal agreement between two parties. It requires two factors, 1) a qualified master, and 2) a qualified student. There is no qualified master in Shambhala, and very, very few qualified students. Thus, people can relax about their "samayas" because they just went through the motions with a fake. They can leave. No karmic retribution for leaving Mipham Mukpo. He is a performer, an actor, a con man. He is not a lama. He received only the most rudimentary training by lamas who took pity on the situation. He is a turd wrapped in brocade. Really. he has been my friend for twenty something years, but I have to admit, he is the worst person I know. When I left him, it was the first time I felt truly clean in decades. He used samaya to scare people. What a punk he is.

this has been a lot to write, and it is a lot for someone to read. I'll check back later to see if there is more. Hopefully you are getting that I am not a troll or that I am pretending to be something I am not.

level 2
Arupajhana7
26 days ago
What other teachers did you have?

When you left Shambhala, what was that like? How did you cope/manage?

level 3
allthewholeworld
26 days ago
edited 24 days ago
I have studied under many of the Kagyu and Nyingma lamas that other Vajradhatu people studied with, some deceased.

It was really painful to leave, most of all because nobody could fathom why I would leave. Now I know that they were gaslighting me. Gaslighting is a new concept to me, but I have done my research on it, and wow, that is what shambhala is. The acharyas are employed to gaslight. Otherwise they would help people move on, not encourage them to "practice more".

Gaslighting is a malicious and hidden form of mental and emotional abuse, designed to plant seeds of self-doubt and alter your perception of reality. Like all abuse, it's based on the need for power, control, or concealment. Some people occasionally lie or use denial to avoid taking responsibility. They may forget or remember conversations and events differently than you do, or they may have no recollection — say, due to a blackout if they were drinking. These situations are sometimes called gaslighting, but the term actually refers to a deliberate pattern of manipulation calculated to make the victim trust the perpetrator while doubting his or her own perceptions or sanity, similar to brainwashing. (See “How to Spot Manipulation.”)

The term derives from the play of the same title, and later, the film with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer in which Bergman plays a sensitive, trusting wife struggling to preserve her identity in an abusive marriage to Boyer, who tries to convince her that she’s ill in order to keep her from learning the truth.

Gaslighting Behavior

As in the movie, the perpetrator often acts concerned and kind to dispel suspicions. Someone capable of persistent lying and manipulation is also quite capable of being charming and seductive. Often the relationship begins that way. When the gaslighting starts, you might even feel guilty for doubting a person you’ve come to trust. To further play with your mind, an abuser might offer evidence to show that you’re wrong or question your memory or senses. More justification and explanation, including expressions of love and flattery, are concocted to confuse you and reason away any discrepancies in the liar’s story. You get temporary reassurance, but you increasingly doubt your own senses, ignore your gut, and become more confused.

The person gaslighting you might act hurt and indignant or play the victim when challenged or questioned. Covert manipulation can easily turn into overt abuse, with accusations that you’re distrustful, ungrateful, unkind, overly sensitive, dishonest, stupid, insecure, crazy, or abusive. Abuse might escalate to anger and intimidation with punishment, threats, or bullying if you don’t accept the false version of reality.

Gaslighting can take place in the workplace or in any relationship. Generally, it concerns control, infidelity, or money. A typical scenario is when an intimate partner lies to conceal a relationship with someone else. In other cases, it may be to conceal gambling debts or stock or investment losses. The manipulator is often a narcissist, addict, or a sociopath, particularly if gaslighting is premeditated or used to cover up a crime. In one case, a sociopath was stealing from his girlfriend whose apartment he shared. She gave him money each month to pay the landlord, but he kept it. He hacked into her credit cards and bank accounts, but was so devious that to induce her trust he bought her gifts with her money and pretended to help her find the hacker. It was only when the landlord eventually informed her that she was way behind in the rent that she discovered her boyfriend’s treachery.

When the motive is purely control, a spouse might use shame to undermine his or her partner’s confidence, loyalty, or intelligence. A wife might attack her husband’s manhood and manipulate him by calling him weak or spineless. A husband might undermine his wife’s self-esteem by criticizing her looks or competence professionally or as a mother. To further isolate the victim and gain greater control, a typical tactic is either to claim that friends or relatives agree with the manipulator, or to disparage them so that that they cannot be trusted. A similar strategy is employed to undermine the partner’s relationships with friends and relatives by accusing him or her of disloyalty.

Effects of Gaslighting

Gaslighting can be very insidious the longer it occurs. Initially, you may not realize you’re being affected by it, but gradually you lose trust in your own instincts and perceptions. It can be very damaging, particularly in a relationship built on trust and love. Love and attachment are strong incentives to believe the lies and manipulation. We use denial, because we would rather believe the lie than the truth, which might precipitate a painful breakup.

Gaslighting can damage our self-confidence and self-esteem, our trust in ourselves and reality, and our openness to love again. If it involves verbal abuse, we may believe the truth of the abuser’s criticisms and continue to blame and judge ourselves, even after the relationship is over. Many abusers put down and intimidate their partners to make them dependent, so that they won’t leave. Examples are: “You’ll never find anyone as good as me,” “The grass isn’t greener,” or “No one else would put up with you.”

Recovering from a breakup or divorce can be more difficult when we’ve been in denial about problems in the relationship. Denial often continues even after the truth comes out. In the story described above, the woman got engaged to her boyfriend — even after she found out what he’d done. It takes time for us to reinterpret our experience in light of all the facts, once they become known. It can be quite confusing, because we may love the charmer, but hate the abuser. This is especially true if all the bad behavior was out of sight, and memories of the relationship were mostly positive. We lose not only the relationship and the person we loved and/or shared a life with, but also our trust in ourselves and future relationships. Even if we don’t leave, the relationship is forever changed. In some cases, when both partners are motivated to stay and work together in conjoint therapy, the relationship can be strengthened and the past forgiven.

Recovery From Gaslighting

Learn to identify the perpetrator’s behavior patterns, and realize that they’re due to his or her insecurity and shame, not yours. Then get help: It’s critical that you have a strong support system to validate your reality in order to combat gaslighting. Isolation makes the problem worse and relinquishes your power to the abuser. You could join Codependents Anonymous, along with seeking counseling.

After you acknowledge what’s going on, you’ll be better able to detach and stop believing or reacting to falsehoods, even though you may want to. You’ll also realize that the gaslighting is occurring due to your partner’s serious character problems. It does not reflect on you, nor can you change someone else. For an abuser to change, it takes willingness and effort by both partners. Sometimes when one person changes, the other also does so in response. However, if he or she is an addict or has a personality disorder, change is difficult. (To assess your relationship and effectively confront unwanted behavior, see the book Dealing with a Narcissist: 8 Steps to Raise Self-Esteem and Set Boundaries with Difficult People.)

Once victims come out of denial, it’s common for them to mentally want to redo the past. They’re often self-critical for not having trusted themselves or stood up to the abuse. Don’t do this! Instead of perpetuating self-abuse, learn more about how to stop self-criticism and raise your self-esteem. (For more on how to stop abuse, see the book How to Be Assertive and Set Boundaries.)

-- How to Know If You're a Victim of Gaslighting: Spot the behavior and the side effects, and begin recovery, by Darlene Lancer, JD, LMFT

I lost a hundred friends, and spent many years trusting people who came to reveal themselves as untrustworthy. I also befriended many people who were born into shambhala, and have since suffered greatly in learning about the terrible fate they face if they try to get out. Second-generation cult members face terrible odds.

I have a deep social network, and am connected with many practitioners from other sanghas, so when I let people like that know that I was leaving, people absolutely rallied around me and helped me move on. I was also able to talk to lamas, all of whom were like "you are safe here, move away from there." I was lucky because I was educated in dharma before Mipham and the acharyas perverted the spirit of dharma education into a mechanism of capture: exclusively loyal to Trungpa-Jong Il and Mipham-Jong Un. Many of the acharyas are far too stupefied by their own impoverished existence to recognize what they are doing. I had options. But the sadness and feeling of betrayal was not easy and i really encourage anyone reading this who is looking to leave to secure friendships outside of shambhala for a few months if you can so that you have people who understand what you are about to do. You need human community because you have been exploited and abused, and its going to hurt for a while. but you can get through it. And you don't need to jump into another community right away, or ever. Especially if you have friends. Get counseling. Read good books about leaving cults. Take this seriously.

However, when you have moved beyond, you can turn state's witness, so to speak, and take it down responsibly.

Shambhala is a cult. But it is more important to get out of it than it is to take it down. This is not the same thing as simply a rogue guru who needs to be exposed (as per the Dalai Lama's instruction). This is that, but it is a much deeper thing. It is also a very old (50 years or so) culture that hijacks people's critical thinking and spreads a strong message of denial from day one. Get out, then, a few years on, help others get out. That is at least how I am doing it.

thank you for your question, and good luck to you in your life

level 5
allthewholeworld
26 days ago
you are not deluded, but all that is gone now. and you will probably have to reconsider your ideas of Chogyam Trungpa if you choose to learn about the emerging narrative that was silenced. Same to some extent with Pema.

AHHH: Europe. Yes that changes things. Much more sane community, and always one that was kept out of the scandal by sheer distance. The european sangha is lovely, in my experience. good for you.

Your MI is most likely not aware of anything. Shambhala does not attract or keep people who have penetrating or uncompromising intellect. That is not to say they are not kind and good people. But there are zero matthew remskis in shambhala, for example.

A question you may face now that shambhala is unravelling and the hidden story is emerging is: do you want to stay attached to something that is rotten at the core? that is a hard decision. I am happy to talk privately if you think that would be helpful. but my agenda should be clear: get out.

level 4
Arupajhana7
23 days ago
What are some good books about leaving cults?

level 5
DismalPerformance
18 days ago
The best "book" for leaving something you are very deep into is "It's all over now Baby Blue.. Bob Dylan..

level 2
kweenofkats
23 days ago
This post is enormously heartening to me. To cut through the fear of breaking a vow, to give permission to walk away is so benevolent. I am super grateful and touched by your words. I left in August after an ugly encounter with Kate Raddock and Emily Bower. I saw the cult for what it was then but now seeing that the Sakyong is a fraud, I feel my grief giving way to relief. Thank you so much.

level 1
allthewholeworld
24 days ago
the title of my original post
you all realize that the title of this post, about how I know more than anyone, referred to "anyone on this subreddit, as of yesterday before I posted", right? I was talking to a collection of 30 people or less, who seemed like they could benefit from a little info drop. I used a tone that seems pretty normal for reddit, and it is one of "c'mon, lets get into this". At the time, there were a handful of posts, not often updated, that were hashing out really bad information and I just couldn't take it anymore. Then you all showed up. I didn't expect that. Anyway don't get too offended, I am not like that.

I am no longer more knowledgeable than everyone here. I recognize quite a few people already, and there are some people who have a lot to say, if they so choose.

BTW: coming across as a "know it all" simply gets people to pay attention and then you can show them you are just teasing, just wanting to get a conversation going. people like a challenge, they enjoy it, and they enter into it with a good spirit, as the early posts in this thread show. almost everyone seems to have gotten that, but I fear some others don't know how wry humor works. This is how I excel at parties. I do not see myself as the most knowledgeable person here. but i am not going to shut up, either.

level 1
beaudega1
24 days ago
Bravo, thank you for doing this. I think it will be immensely valuable for this discussion to happen in public and out of the reach of the censors in the Facebook group and elsewhere. Word will get around that this place is open for business and not easily kiboshed.

I have been following the recent public revelations closely and with great interest although I left the community some time ago. I was heavily involved from 2000-2010ish, but was never remotely in the inner circle. Like you, I had a certain amount of experience with other lamas and sanghas before diving into Shambhala fully.

I could see various signs that things were not right fairly early on, but for me it was the way that samaya was handled at my VY seminary that was the first big turn off for me. It was foisted on us in a way that was so antithetical to the values of genuineness and openness that we purported to champion.

The first shoe really dropped for me though when I came back from seminary and read Stephen Butterfield’s memoir. When all is said and done I hope he is recognized (albeit posthumously) as one of the real warriors. His honest, kind, brave, and funny book mirrored my experience back to me and gave me permission to acknowledge it.

Then a Google search led me inadvertently to Nancy Steinbeck’s similarly wonderful book around 2008, which I had never even heard of. After reading those revelations it was clear to me that the community was built on deep and pervasive dishonesty. Another real actual fucking warrior, thank you Mrs. Steinbeck if you see this. After that I was done for good although it took me a while longer to fully disengage. Thank you also to Leslie Hayes, Andrea Winn, and everyone who has come forward and spoken out about the truth of this sorry situation.

Kiki VanDeWeghe!

level 2
TharpaKunga
23 days ago
edited 23 days ago
That’s a good post! I was around and quite involved from about 2004 to 2016. Things fell apart for me at my VY seminary when SMR swept in with his retinue, gave a talk about money and the need for every man jack in the room to give an awful lot more of it to Shambhala, then took off in a fleet of limos to a private residence up the road. First time I’d ever met him. Thing is, this was in 2011 amid austerity Europe when old age pensioners were sleeping rough on the streets of Athens, morphine supplies had run out in the Ukraine and regular folks were very worried that the banks and thus their jobs and savings were about to vapourize. Turning up in the midst of that with butler/chef types plus bling and talking about money struck me as in unusual taste, shall we say. The last time I saw SMR at that seminary he looked waxy and unshaven and I thought “hangover”. I knew there and then that samaya and the guru thing was never, ever going to happen with this one.

I struggled on for a few more years but it was never the same and in the end persistent abuse from a senior teacher did for me. This person always flatly denied stories about VCTR and alcohol, dismissing them as “lies, all lies”. Questioning this would provoke a temper explosion. Denial is so, so powerful.

Really, it’s incredible how Shambhala has been able to get away with it for so long. But it looks as if that karma moment has now arrived. Many good decent people still there at my old centre. It’s far, far away from North America and they deserved so much better. Very fond memories of good times there despite all the confusion. I think of them often and hope they will be OK. Chogyam Trungpa’s dharma is still the dharma I follow for what it’s worth. Perhaps distance makes it clearer.

And, yup, my impression is that the main Facebook group is heavily manipulated.

level 3
beaudega1
20 days ago
edited 20 days ago
Yes, there were many decent, wonderful people I met in the community and I’m sure there still are. Naturally the most irreverent people were always my favorites. It is quite a shame that we were all exploited financially, and of course sexually in the most awful cases.

It gradually became clear to me that Osel Mukpo could not care less about his students. At some point I heard the rumors about him having the kasung cull attractive women from his talks for private sexual encounters. It was evident to me that I was very unwelcome to ask whether it was perhaps inappropriate that he stay at a world famous luxury hotel on one of his few visits over the years to us, one of his largest centers. I’d heard about him making ridiculous grandiose pronouncements about how many tens of thousands of members we were going to have in the near future. I remember him trying to ingratiate himself with Goldman Sachs (right, as it turned out, before the financial crisis in 2007).

Then there were his fickle initiatives like Mipham the Great Day and “Shambhala Yoga,” which were heralded as major developments but which everyone knew would soon be never heard of again. There was that year he supposedly spent in “deep retreat” around 2010 (ATWW-I’d love to hear about what he actually did that year, they couldn’t be bothered to tell us much about it) and a funding campaign was launched demanding the several hundred thousand dollars in salary and expenses he felt entitled to annually regardless of what he was doing. The Karmapa received a little grudging acknowledgement when he was first able to visit the US before even that went out the window soon after and the Kagyu lineage went completely out with the trash. The Pope-Emperor would rather rape, er, rule his world without any outside oversight, thank you. His infant daughters were to be exalted with “Jetsun,” an honorific theretofore limited pretty much to Milarepa. Oh and that other abusive cult leader Penor Rinpoche empowered, "the Buddha from Brooklyn."

I’m just glad I was gone for the last few years when it sounds like all of the practices and chants were revised to be pure Osel Mukpo jerk off.

level 1
allthewholeworld
25 days ago
some have asked if I felt abused. Yes, of course I did, but it was a type that was hard for me to see and basically functioned to shut down my creative spirit and intellect. I was depressed in my time there, and it took a lot of time to realize it was a symptom of being in a bad situation. I am amazed to find myself not depressed. I feel like I did before I entered shambhala. I was slow to get out, and too proud to ask for help. took its toll on me. but i got out!

level 2
CheredeDarievea
25 days ago
too proud to ask for help

I feel that.

level 2
BaronAsh
23 days ago
I get that completely. And now I'm also getting the many levels of meaning the word 'abuse' has, which is relaxing.

level 1
CheredeDarievea
26 days ago
This is wonderful. I'm so glad to have stumbled on your truth-telling, allthewholeworld. My last contact with Mipham was in 2001 and I was never "inner court" (though I served at the pre-court Kalapa Camp whenever I could), so I cannot confirm or deny much of what you say above, but it rings true to me.

I can confirm, though, the difficulty of getting out of the Shambhala cult for some people, and I am thrilled that you are helping others peel away from that freakshow. I was partway through my Chakrasamvara retreat cycle when I lost heart, and I lingered on the fringes for years after that, before finally giving myself permission to throw my so-called samaya on the trash-heap and walk away. It was a huge relief when I did that because you're right, the samaya I held was nothing.

I had to work through all that on my own without any kind of counseling or debrief, and it was hard and sad. So here's a question for you, allthewholeworld: what kind of support are you offering to people who are trying to "get out"? Or if you think that might be too self-identifying, what advice would you suggest for people struggling with the decision to leave?

level 2
allthewholeworld
26 days ago
you are an actual warrior. you own that term. thank you for posting and I look forward to anything more you offer.

I am offering help to people who know to reach out to me directly. I am overwhelmed with that and don't have anything in place to help people from afar who I haven't met. But I can find ways to talk to brothers and sisters in need that help me preserve what little privacy I can. If you need to talk, I need to listen.

level 3
CheredeDarievea
26 days ago
Thank you. I think that most of what I need to say I can say publicly-- so I'll just hang out here and contribute when I can. I'm glad you are extending yourself with the offer of private conversations, though; I'll bet there are people who will welcome that.

level 1
breathing216
24 days ago
edited 24 days ago
Thank you for your replies to my other posts. As some others have also suggested, do you think you will be able to provide more “objective” descriptions of some of the things you saw at the court? Like instances where he treated his students badly, examples where he was manipulated by the people around him, or when he acted in ways which were not in the better interest of his students? (I mean literally telling the story of such cases, like narrating them.)

Having concrete examples of such behavior would be helpful (for me, but I am sure for others as well) because most of us have only seen him in limited and usually very controlled public circumstances. I have not seen the things you saw, and I think deconstructing (even in my own mind) the “mythology” surrounding the Sakyong will take more than general impressions conveyed by others. Facts have more weight than opinions, especially when we feel we can come to our own conclusions based on these facts.

I also think this would lead to asking tougher questions to Shambhala “officials”, when they will try to minimize or ignore what is being discussed here.

Thank you in advance.

level 2
allthewholeworld
24 days ago
got a few scenarios done, just want to check consent of another person before i post.

level 2
allthewholeworld
24 days ago
this. thank you. i needed that request, wouldn't have occurred to me otherwise. I see why that would be helpful. let me catch my breath and get back later

level 1
federvar
26 days ago
I would be very interested on understanding better the rol that the whole of the community there at the court has in all of the enabling, if it has any. To which extent is it possible to be there and not notice? How many of the teachers and people in "high positions" were aware and /or complicit -aprox-? Do you believe that restorative justice and healing -and surviving of the lineage- is possible?

level 2
allthewholeworld
26 days ago
edited 24 days ago
this is a wonderful question, and I agree that understanding this can go a long way to grasping the craziness of the whole thing.

The KC, the court, has gone through many phases, and some phases were more true to the original or popular vision of what it is. In that vision it is a place where subjects of the king go to serve him as a part of the path. To them, it is a practice, a way of giving to the one who has given so much. I have never seen a phase of the court which was even remotely like that, even though there were times when it was an ok place for someone like me to be, to make friends, to meet with mipham, etc. But it was, from day one in Mipham's reign, a place for him to get his needs met. All he wanted to be was famous. That is the single goal Mipham has for his life. And rich, but he has never worked a job, and has been fed the notion that he should live like the king of any nation lives, and so money was something provided to him, not something he needed to manage himself. He is a pauper who begs money from millionaires in an effort to live like a billionaire.

The Acharyas are 100% complicit in every facet of Mipham's abusiveness. they are almost all washed up people with terribly tiny lives and no future options who have degraded themselves again and again and again to become worthy of the most embarrassing pin in all of Shambhala. When they have made it clear that loyalty is their only concern in life, and if they can perform a function for his ever expanding need for praise (such as getting up in front of 300 people and gushing about his inconceivable qualities), he may give them a chance to become an acharya. Most of the acharyas are B-level, or C-level buddhist teachers, if that. There are a few bright minds, but those minds inhabit deeply compromised personalities. Notice how not a single acharya has stepped down? That should tell you everything. Every one of them knew about his sexual predation and financial predation and none of them did a damn thing. They are utter, utter cowards.

The chief among them was Adam Lobel.


Adam Lobel

Not because of his dharmic qualities, but because he seized the power they all so desperately wanted and then he bullied them. Adam is another sick member of the abusive team. He wanted to be number one, but realized that because of the structure, he could only be the guy next to number one. But Adam also (because obviously Adam is highly intelligent and can be skillfully diplomatic) realized that Mipham was way in over his head. Mipham wanted nothing to do with running Shambhala or teaching students, he didn't want to bother over curriculum or training of new people. To Mipham, the students in shambhala are a burden, a hassle. He doesn't want to be hassled with news that someone is dying of heart disease, or that someone's child died yesterday. he would actually yell at people not to pollute his space with such information. (his own students). To him, the members of shambhala are just cows in a large herd he owns. Adam came in, took over almost everything, distributed none of that power, and began to turn the acharya system into one of control. The Acharyas are broken souls, sorry to say. I know almost all of them, and I was their peer. I look at them as the most compromised people in modern buddhism. They are at the bottom of the buddhist world.

The court is a place to groom people for servitude. When Mipham married he was under great pressure to stop manipulating his students into sexual servitude, and most of the people in his court do not have enough money for him to extract, so he used them for narcissistic supply. The worst abuse happens with his kusung, who are his close attendants. They hand him the toilet paper when he shits. They clean up his $3000 array of cosmetics in his bathroom. He is a slob, by the way. nothing elegant about his inside life. I know first hand.

I do not believe that restorative justice is possible because it is based on a fake lineage, it is all lies. There is nothing to save. Do you think Scientology can be rehabilitated? I don't. It is a cult based on sickness of L Ron Hubbard. It is a tumor. Shambhala is just like that. By the time Trungpa was teaching Shambhala, he was experiencing severe dementia. He was cruel, he was violent, he was off the rails with drug and alcohol abuse. He was every bit as narcissistic as Mipham. The brain is a soft tissue organ, not an indestructible vajra, and he damaged his. And as his brain went, he turned into his own shadow. In buddhism this is called rudrahood. That is the story of shambhala. He appointed two successors, one a predatory abuser and severe alcoholic who died in 1990, and his son, whose level of trauma should always factor into any conversation about him. Shambhala is a parasite on the dharma, it is an imposter, a pirate. It is something to feel shame toward, if one was involved. Leaving Shambhala is not that far from leaving a white supremacy movement.

The position of monarch and head of state is inherited, lately through the Windsor family line. The Windsors are white and only their descendants are eligible to be king or queen; only their first-born can be the British head of state....

The system of monarchy is, by default, racist....

Whichever way the defenders of royalty try to spin it, there is no escaping the fact that non-white people are excluded from holding the title of British head of state -– at least for the foreseeable future.

When the Queen dies, her role as head of state will pass to her first-born son, Charles. When he is dead, the head of state title will pass to his first-born son, William, and so on. From white person to white person to white person. No blacks need apply. The all-white Windsor family has the exclusive franchise on the office of head of state....

If Prince William was killed in a helicopter crash, we'd eventually end up with King Harry, notorious for his Nazi fancy dress and "Paki" jibe. And we could not get rid of him, no matter how many more insults he hurled and no matter how badly he did his job.

-- Our system of monarchy is racist, by Peter Tatchell

But you have to penetrate through the secrecy to get what is going on at the center, and that just isn't possible for most people. they will never be invited in. My situation was bizarre, and I still wonder what Mipham was thinking by bringing me so directly into his innermost world where I saw, in relatively short order, that he was a sociopath. I was nauseous for a full year after seeing him in full blown narcissistic and sociopathic (by the way, I do know what those words mean. Mipham is one of the few who are afflicted with both narcissism and sociopath, which is what some people call "malignant narcissism"). I spoke to several of his close people about it, including the three members of the Kalapa Council. Two of them admitted it. None of them have left. They are serving their own needs by keeping their power.

This is not something that I would generally talk about if people were not in harms way. Why bring up a person's mental illness? You do so because they are dangerous to others. Shambhala members are in harms way. Some people have become suicidal around Mipham's abuses, and not a single acharya or kusung or administrator is speaking out about that, and therefore the larger community lives without this knowledge. Why the silence among the acharyas and leaders? Because of warriorship and courage? No, of course not. because of cowardice and fear, the very combo their Shambhala practices are supposed to be overcoming.

People need to move on, but you have to understand that shambhala was a place where thousands of people with untreated trauma came to find a home. It is a collection of very traumatized people, and they don't make good decisions, and don't face facts. They have been abused for their entire career in shambhala, but they don't recognize it. Of the 20 or so women who are my friends and who were sexually abused by Mipham, not a single one of them has spoken out. Actually one of them has. She is case #1 in the last BPS report. She spoke out and continues to do so. Several of them are in therapy, probably more than I know. Yet they are silent. That is the culture of shambhala.

level 3
cedaro0o
26 days ago
I was never near court. I was a secular guide in a small local center. I have known shashtris, I have met acharyas. I have met people who were kasung for trungpa. For the past year I have been listening to insiders and survivors speak their experiences. Your description here is in close alignment with everything corroborated witnesses have shared, and what I have witnessed myself.

level 4
Arupajhana7
26 days ago
edited 25 days ago
This all makes sense to me too.

I wish I had seen the court much earlier... I would have immediately recognized it as a cult. But I didn't see it until a decade of practice in Shambhala.

In hindsight, it doesn't make any sense that someone who was born in a refugee camp, later taken from his adoptive parents to be raised by an alcoholic to become an enlightened guru-king would turn out to be the model moral family man. Of course he turned out to have some serious unexamined issues that would play out as abuse when he was put in a position of extreme unchecked power.

No wonder shambhala had such a huge propaganda machine around him... They really needed it.

And no wonder not too many people get close to him, and those who do are sworn to keep everything about those interactions secret.

level 3
ohmygodhika
26 days ago
Thank you so much for sharing this. This is so disheartening to read, but it gives me so much clarity around the relatively short time I spent in the organization (thru Sacred Path). A lot of brokenhearted folks enter into Shambhala looking for answers or support, and many of us were willing to ignore the aspects of the organization that hinted at trouble at the core. I still have ties to Shambhala teachers who are samaya holders, and these accounts are really leaving me at a loss for how to move forward as a dharma student.

level 4
tashi8888
25 days ago
no samaya with mukpo - he can't hold his side of it - it is nothing...

level 5
ohmygodhika
25 days ago
I agree with you, but I don't think my teacher (who I want to trust) sees it that way. Cue cognitive dissonance.

level 3
markszpak
25 days ago
No acharya that I know of has stepped down recently. However, a while ago Jules Levinson did step down, after a number of years translating for and helping Mipham with his talks and writings. Like the author of this AMA, Jules had extensive background with other Tibetan Buddhist teachers prior to meeting Mipham, and became dis-illusioned. Reggie Ray pretty much got kicked out by Mipham and the other acharyas, and now runs his own Dharma Ocean scene.

level 4
allthewholeworld
24 days ago
I asked Jules' friend why he stepped down, and the friend said "because Mipham was hurting people". That did not come from Jules, but from his friend.

level 4
Arupajhana7
25 days ago
Do you know more about why Reggie Ray was kicked out? A Shastri I was close with strongly discouraged a peer from doing a retreat with him. It was very weird. This Shastri was so open and gentle to most mentions of other traditions but when Reggie was mentioned he acted as if my friend were going to join up with the worst kind of traitor... He didn't say it in those words but he did everything he could to discourage him and slandered Reggie as an inauthentic, lineage-less person who was messing up his students by not following the proper protocols.

level 5
discardedyouth88
25 days ago
Do you know more about why Reggie Ray was kicked out?

Listen to this. I think you'll find it interesting. That is if you haven't already heard it.

level 6
Arupajhana7
25 days ago
This is actually really good so far. 45 min in. What he says about Shambhala teachings resonates much better for my own personal experiences with the parts of the terma I have received than does the way it was taught in Shambhala the organization.

level 7
discardedyouth88
25 days ago
This is actually really good so far

Thought you'd like it.

level 5
markszpak
25 days ago
Reggie Ray was a senior student of and is in the direct lineage of Chögyam Trungpa. When SMR came into power, Reggie was one of the people he designated as an Acharya. Reggie requested permission to use the Nalanda Translation Committee (NTC) translation of the Vajrayogini sadhana with his own students, and was denied that. The other acharyas, Richard John and Jeremy Hayward in particular, as I recall, then got him de-listed as an acharya.

More recently Larry Mermelstein, head of NTC, was canned as an acharya.

level 6
Icy_Peanut
25 days ago
Why was Larry "canned"? i thought he resigned.

level 7
markszpak
25 days ago
He did not resign. He was unceremoniously dumped, fired. His main emphasis was (and continues to be) on translating and transmitting the core texts of CTR and his lineage, but he was never a vocal exponent of SMR, was not doing the Scorpion Seal programs, etc.

Beyond that, last year (mid-summer) he was suddenly told that the Nalanda Translation Committee house in Halifax, which had been donated for use by NTC, with the condition that it not be sold, was going to be sold so as to raise money to help pay off Shambhala/Sakyong Potrang debts. That's been put off, but is still hanging there.

level 8
allthewholeworld
25 days ago
Markszpak tells it the way Larry told it to me.

level 9
BaronAsh
24 days ago
I think Larry was also a bit too open with his cynical attitude about the whole thing.

level 10
allthewholeworld
24 days ago
Larry could say things that would shake people up. He didn't always recognize how his words would land. I think I agree with you. But I appreciate him a lot, and I know he is a PITA to a lot of people.

level 5
Icy_Peanut
25 days ago
I hear Reggie threatens his students with Vajra Hell if they are not completely loyal. Glad I'm not his student, as fear tactics remind me of all the psychopaths I ever have had the pleasure (LOL) of knowing!!

level 6
Arupajhana7
25 days ago
edited 25 days ago
That sounds as bad as Shambhala and Dzongsar.

EDIT: after listening to his talk posted by discarded youth, it seems he may not endorse that kind of samaya? Unless what he says in that talk is inaccurate.

level 6
paul_adams
22 days ago
And.. it’s not true. He does not threaten anyone with Vajra Hell if we are not loyal. I speak from experience. You should not speak at all unless you have something true to say.

level 4
Arupajhana7
25 days ago
So you might be outing OP from anonyimity here. What is your intention in doing so?

OP has chosen to remain anonymous on here for a reason and is still debating whether to become public or not.

level 5
markszpak
25 days ago
Not sure why you think I might be outing OP. I respect what he is doing, and how he is doing it: it seems both not-ignoring and compassionate, and also a bit courageous, maybe even a lot. I'm also OK with OP not being perfect. Are you thinking that I'm suggesting OP is Jules L? I mentioned Jules as someone who did stop being an acharya for some of the same reasons (although not publicized) OP describes, except at least 7 years ago, maybe more like a decade or so.

level 6
rubbishaccount88
25 days ago
Mark, what happened to RFS? Did it stop after Suzanne Duarte died? Or is that just coincident timing? You guys provided some really great material and space over the years.

level 7
markszpak
25 days ago
I think that RFS (Radio Free Shambhala) had more or less run its course in its critique of the directions being taken by SMR in moving away from CTR's vision of a Shambhala without buddhist (or other religious) credentials. However, I did put up a Practice and Study Resources page last year to let people know about where there might be practice resources locally that they can turn to. And perhaps it could be further helpful.

level 3
Lucid_Gem
2 days ago
Hey, thanks very much for these posts. It's really important to talk about, and I really appreciate your candor and courage in talking out loud.

I was pretty active in the Shambhala scene around 2004-2010, and then gradually became more and more disgusted. I lived and worked at SMC, participated in centers in Boulder, Berkeley, and Portland OR. I coordinated programs, served as a Kasung, and did a few court shifts. The few times I had contact with SMR he was consistently aloof, cold, and disdainful. As I had exhausted all the programs leading up to VY, I knew that the next step was to forge a bond with him, and I just couldn't— I had no respect or connection with that person. I supposed I was saved by my own knowing. I have also been lucky enough to have relationships with other Tibetan teachers. While I'm pretty grossed out by dharma stuff right now (the BPS report being the final straw with Shambhala), I figure I might get back into practice someday. In the meantime, I want to thoroughly separate from the situation and disinfect myself.

Your commentary above in another thread, on SMR's samaya vows being trash is very helpful. I was conned into a 'Kasung samaya vow' at the last minute when I took my oath, and I have felt guilty about that. What a fucked up way to treat people.

Like many people, I had spent a long time fascinated and enthralled by the Shambhala Dharma, was very into VCTR's teachings, and was in some sense working out some emotional and personality issues that meditation was very helpful with. However, I was also conning myself into believing things were okay, 'gilding shit' as I like to say is one of the favorite activities in Shambhala. However, this basic disconnect between how things are and how things ought to be, a disjunction between one's feelings and one's ability to conceptualize them, is apparently a common phenomenon among people who participate in cult systems.

A few months ago I read some of Matthew Remski's posts, and followed his suggestion to read Alexandra Stein's great book, "Terror, Love, and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems." I really recommend this book to folks who are sorting through the aftermath of their participation in Shambhala, and to understand how to identify cult activity and build resources for leaving cult situations. Dr Stein herself participated in and escaped a political cult, later did a research study where she interviewed people who have escaped cults, and articulated a theory of how cults and totalitarian leaders induce a disorganized attachment state in followers, who feel simultaneous love and terror in relation to the cult/leader. In brief:

Cult affiliation can happen to anybody. it's not your fault that happened, you have no character weakness-- it's just something that happens

The simultaneous love/belonging and fear/terror experience that cults and cult leaders are so skillful at creating make it hard to think clearly about the situation

The strategies that cult leaders use to create a disorganized attachment state are recognizable and predictable (and Shambhala uses quite a few of them)

The most important things are to have real conversations with people who can cast critical, questioning, and open perspectives on what Shambhala is about

And to cultivate real attachment relationships (close relationship bonds) that have depth and meaning, in which people are valued for their differences and individuality, and that don't create a sense of fear

Just thought I would share about this in case it can benefit other folks. Thanks again for all you're doing by speaking out here.

level 1
lingua42
26 days ago
For a lot of people not in Shambhala, the elephant in the room is Pema Chödrön. What are your thoughts about her -- how much do you think she knew? Did she look the other way, help cover things up, etc.?

level 2
allthewholeworld
26 days ago
just this question makes me sad. but you bring up an important point. I know pema, rather appreciate her. She has been a helpful person for me to discuss my own practice with. But she is just another practitioner to me.

Nevertheless I think she is an apologist who uses deepity and thought stopping cliches to satisfy the unrobust intellects of the people that come to her. She has been used as a revenue stream by shambhala. They depend on her for new students. She is yet another procurer who probably feels bound by her oaths to Chogyam Trungpa. She sends streams of people into Shambhala Centers where they will be groomed for exploitation.

Deepity is a term employed by Daniel Dennett in his 2009 speech to the American Atheists Institution conference, coined by the teenage daughter of one of his friends. The term refers to a statement that is apparently profound but actually asserts a triviality on one level and something meaningless on another. Generally, a deepity has (at least) two meanings: one that is true but trivial, and another that sounds profound, but is essentially false or meaningless and would be "earth-shattering" if true. To the extent that it's true, it doesn't have to matter. To the extent that it has to matter, it isn't true (if it actually means anything). This second meaning has also been called "pseudo-profound bullshit".[1]

The example Dennett uses to illustrate a deepity is the phrase "love is just a word." On one level the statement is perfectly true (i.e., "love" is a word), but the deeper meaning of the phrase is false; love is many things — a feeling, an emotion, a condition — and not simply a word.

-- Deepity, by RationalWiki

My biggest issue is that she has been a lifeline for so many people, yet she has such an unexamined perspective, such a cowardly attitude.

Pema knew everything. Absolutely everything and she turned a convenient blind eye to it all. I am very sorry if this is hard for you to hear. She does love and respect the dharma, but is challenged in some ways, as you might guess.

level 3
SunnyClouds5
25 days ago

Pema was my meditation instructor for many years, 70s-80s. She was good on the specific instruction for practice and what was happening there. She was terrible as a person relating to the human experience.

After I experienced terrible abuse from a person in the sangha, abuse that put me into serious therapy and caused me much loss, I went to her to get help making sense of it. She basically ripped me apart and said I wasn't being compassionate enough toward my abuser, and if I didn't like it I should leave Buddhism. It was beyond harsh at a time where I was still experiencing uncontrollable crying. I wasn't raped, as the woman was who got a letter from her, but the abuse was intense, longterm, and nonetheless considerably traumatizing. I did leave, completely cynical, that very day, and eventually went to study with another tradition altogether. I am still a Kagyu/Shambhala practitioner, however, since those teachings that I received in the 70s and 80s worked for me. It was never a cult for me, or a social club. It was a set of practices with a really arrogant sangha to accompany them.

I have not received an apology from Pema. It is my understanding that Trungpa did not recommend her to people who needed life advice. I wish I'd known that before I sought her out. What she did to me was devastating. It ended any respect I had for her.

I will say this, however. While I righteously regard her as the "celebrity nun," enjoying her fame and fortune but failing inside, she has written books and given teachings that have helped people. I will not dispute someone who felt moved into a new place by her, or brought into practice and the path because of her. Sometimes the dharma comes through in strange ways, this I have seen in many places and many times. I don't send my students to her teachings, but if they want to read her, it's not something I'll get in the way of. I will write her a letter at some point, to get it really off my chest, to give her the full picture of what she did to me. As a dharma practitioner, she should be completely willing to receive that.

level 4
allthewholeworld
25 days ago
edited 24 days ago
I wish I could give you a bundle of flowers right now. Is there something I can do to be helpful? I agree that this is just very, very personal.

level 4
mycatnameddog
15 days ago
Hi -- I’m Pema’s granddaughter. I am so, so, so, so, so sorry. My heart aches for you. That is horrific and disgusting. Of course I cannot apologize on her behalf, but I support you 100%. You deserved so much more -- I wish I could travel back in time and scream at her so you never had to endure that cruel response.

I’m really close with my grandma and always have been (my mother died when I was young and she raised me in a lot of ways) and of course I love her -- but it’s been a hard year of coming to terms with totally cowardly and damaging behavior she’s displayed. I will always take the side of of victims and survivors.

If you ever do want to send her a letter, I am happy to give you my personal email or other contact (I can prove who I am) and I can make sure it gets to her directly, immediately, wherever she is. If there’s anything else at can do for you, period, please let me know.

Once again, I am so sorry.

level 4
Arupajhana7
25 days ago
I am really sorry that happened to you. I imagine it must be really upsetting to see the whole sangha, and people like myself, speak so highly of her. You didn't deserve that at all.

level 3
lingua42
26 days ago
And I think you're right that Ani Pema too often "uses deepity and thought stopping cliches" for what is at best bypassing. That's the impression I've gotten, and I'm glad to hear someone say it.

level 3
Arupajhana7
26 days ago
edited 25 days ago
This is harder for me. I spent a decent amount of time with her and do think she is a serious practitioner. She had very good advice for me in my practice at several points...

But also, she has never been able to make a strong statement acknowledging the harm of her guru or his son, and this is very telling about her samaya.

We also have to think about the effect she had... How many women joined Shambhala because of her books? And how many ended up being abused by the Sakyong?

Ugh.. This is hard. I still respect much of what she has said about meditation and practice... I also think she has a good heart overall, but it seems she is compromised by her interpretation of samaya... I just wish she would say and do the obvious moral thing here and speak out about it.

level 4
Icy_Peanut
25 days ago
I have known Pema for 36 years and staffed a month's program with her at Gampo Abbey, as well as programs at Omega. She was a wonderful teacher, friend and inspired me a lot, especially in the early days. That said, I sensed that there was an iron fist within the velvet glove. Since then I have heard stories of her yelling at nuns in her service and of course, the story of her heartlessly dissing the woman who told her she'd been raped. So I am very sad to see that Pema was complicit with all the sexual abuse, etc. all these years.

level 5
Arupajhana7
25 days ago
I never saw her abuse anyone or act with malicious intentions. But she could be tough and sharp, and sometimes she might not have all the facts, or a misunderstanding, when making a harsh leadership decision.

Never saw her scream at nuns. But she could say something cutting once in a while. But usually I think she was trying to give "tough love" when she did this. I really do think she is good intentioned overall. But definitely had some shortcomings that we all ignored because we loved her so much and put her on a huge pedestal. Particularly her minimizing of abusive behavior from Trungpa. And the interaction she had with the pregnant woman.

I think she does have a good heart though, despite continuing to make some of the wrong calls by not speaking up more. I think she has that unhealthy kind of view of Samaya where one never criticizes their guru no matter what...

level 6
IcyPeanut
25 days ago
I agree that Pema has a good heart. I would say, however, that her "no good, no bad" slogan and "don't know mind", where she refuses to make any calls, confuses the relative and ultimate truths. This can be misinterpreted as "anything goes" and has caused a lot of excusing harmful behavior.

level 7
Arupajhana7
25 days ago
edited 25 days ago
I agree with you there

its a hard time. Hope you are taking care of yourself. Thank you for saying what you have (and to everyone else on here!) it's been super validating.

So glad to see that so many people care about this issue.

level 8
DhammaCura
6 hours ago
She finally has begun to acknowledge the issues in the community and to a limited extent her complicity (I’ll post the link when I locate it) Prayerfully she will come to terms and acknowledge more in a deeper way. That would be her most profound contribution to the unfolding of the dharma

level 9
Arupajhana7
13 minutes ago
So glad to hear this. I hope she makes some statements soon about the recent Kusung letter and is able to use her unique position to help the community move away from its harmful center. So many people are brought into shambhala through her and so many people listen to her. She has a very important voice. I hope she speaks soon.