Rev. Bridin Rusins

First topic message reminder :

From Shasta Abbey's news section , posted 12 October 2013:

"We are sorry to say that Rev. Bridin departed from the Abbey on October 9th, to take up to a year’s leave of absence, both for medical reasons and to clarify her spiritual purpose. She left on good terms, and we support her in this decision and hope she will return. We are grateful for her 16 years of training with us, and wish her well."

I hope her health improves -

polly wrote:

There must have been something sick about your relationship to make her end it

Yes clearly there was but not from your end I think.

It gladdened my heart to here from you, and  my old friend maisie, that OBC Connect has helped you start to get over the OBC and see their actions in a clearer light. I must say that you have all done the same for me too, so my deep and abiding gratitude to all. Let us hope OBCC can help others out of confusion and on the road to clarity too, particularly Sophia who has bravely done so much to clarify a number issues.

Now we have to stand on our own feet and find our own way, with the help of our friends of course, and lessons from fellow travelers past and present. But without being trapped and subjugated to ideologies and ideologues.

There are arid regions on the road but there should also be great joy, love and support from, and for, fellow travelers, and a deep satisfaction.

Mark, i loved your last posting , Thank you .
   And more thanks to the rest of you .
i'd like to say more , there must be more , but for the moment not !

Mark, I'm with Nicky. Your post made my day.

i must also tell you Mark of a friend of mine you would have met at Throssel he moved to Cornwall when I did and has sat well for 40 odd years .
I have just visited him just now,he has within the last few months has been diagnosed as having motor neurone disease.
He now can has lost the use of 2 arms and 1 legs the remaining leg is very weak, my friend was in marvellous spirit,and I draw strength from him and gained great encouragement he still sits zazen twice a day,how wonderful is that

Alright, Michael, please look up Dr. Terry Wahls (an MD at the Iowa City Veterans Med. Ctr), who restored her health from wheelchair-bound MS.  Her book: Minding My Mitochondria -- regarding a diet and exercise approach that can possibly help your friend, as it clearly helped her.  www.terrywahls.com

Next, I don't belong here, as usual, but Mark, is it? Your quote of Augustine I had been thinking all along was Paul...but I googled around and it seems you are correct.  I appreciate having that bit of my understanding improved.  I used that phrase as a rationalization for my own misbehavior in younger years, and regret every minute of it.  It's what brought me to Zen, my own malaise.  And Augustine was not exactly a shining star of moral excellence, or was he?  According to Peter Brown's book Augustine of Hippo, he spent the last 10 days of his life, bedridden and weeping, and on the shelves his 80 books of which we have just the few surviving down the years.  I think you're a saint if you can weep 10 days for your sins or indiscretions, or duplicities, or vagaries...Question Mark and the Mysterians cut the song "96 Tears."  I've got all that, and a bag of thrips. If you've gotta weep as you leave this world, to free your soul, or cleanse your karma...I wanna do it, and be done.

Back to all you geniuses who made a whole-body commitment to Shasta--for those who feel duped, I know I must be the dupe of dupes, for not having been fully duped, because I could never buy in all the way to the Two Abbotts or the monastic life...so I stayed a distance, and they were great to me!  I was looking for the "path that certain is, no matter how far distant you may walk" because in my life, I was stuck in those arcade electric bumper cars and still am...enough to make you strew your cotton candy and circus peanuts...wham, bam, spin, wham, fizzle, snap, spark, whiplash. 

Is it possible...there is a phenomenon (may we call it) Pin The Tail On The Donkey.  I did this, before I heard of the First Noble Truth, and I don't know the better way to parse it, just: "Suffering exists" or "Existence itself is suffering."  When feeling suffering, I cast about for someone to blame.  How convenient if they were close to hand.  How wrong when the background music to my mistaken projections was Spike Jones' "You Always Hurt The One You Love."

What I learned to do--when someone did to me what I had been doing--was stop.  I had started a yoga class with a former disciple of Yogananda's, Sri Nerode, so I could quit smoking cigarettes, and day 1 he ended the yoga lesson with a brief meditation: "I breath in peace, I breathe out peace; I slowly breathe in peace, I slowly breathe out peace."  How helpful it was...to be able to just sit and take it, for once, without dishing it out.  Somewhere in there was Jung's "Neurosis is the refusal to suffer."

That suffering can be -- what's the word in chemistry, sublimation...suffering can sublimate my own stupidities, phase change to vapor...look at Ikkyu's death poem...that's fine with me.  If it can't, I'm stuck with the ball and chain of myself, please pardon my scraping and thunking as I pass.

If you are free to venture into the Bible, we find Jeremiah 31: 31-35..."The New Covenant" which Bill Clinton had the nerve to make the theme of his second presidential campaign but? maybe that's genius, not nerve...like I said to a friend who was spittin' mad about Bill--if political life means never making a mistake, we'd have only saints, or stodges, for president. Alright, Jeremiah: A New Covenant I will make, says the Lord, I will write my Law in people's hearts, and there will be no need to ask a neighbor: "What is the Law?" for you will know it: It will be written in your heart." (words to that effect)

Is it possible to have a complaint of misconduct against another if The Law were not written in your heart?  That's the benchmark.  I remember hearing "Remember Thou must go alone..."  If Rev. Komei's luggage went out on the road, why couldn't I have too, and sat with it waiting for the gentle heart she seemed to me to be? (as a case in point).  that's going alone...but to meet a brave heart in a brave way.

That's all -- you deuterium control rods? When you walk, the mass goes critical.  But in any case, you were brave enough to go and do and up and leave.  I'm not gonna say any more about it. 

"Love then do what you will" I found out meant: doubt your love, because it's not divine, there likely is an ulterior motive...so don't do what you will...just restart the mantra..."Love...then...love...then...love...I'm sorry for those who had trouble.  Actually? I'm sorry I got trouble.  As the hippies I tried to join used to say: "What a drag..." But if we don't pick up our trouble, and try to move it, it stays right there, oppressing the spirit, and so we stay burdened.

You all were part of something great, or it couldda been great, or it shouldda been great...if it was not, you made your escape, and now what? 
but I loved dropping in, because I could get away again, almost airborne.  "This alone have I taught: Sorrow, and the release from sorrow."  That's the something great I felt when someone ended their words with "In gassho..."

wow. that was so....erudite. in other words, buck up boys and girls?

Thanks for the advice Pete
You sure gotta lot to say there, you have a different way of saying i would just step right up and spill the beans

pete x. berkeley wrote:

You all were part of something great, or it couldda been great, or it shouldda been great...if it was not, you made your escape, and now what? 
but I loved dropping in, because I could get away again, almost airborne.  "This alone have I taught: Sorrow, and the release from sorrow."  That's the something great I felt when someone ended their words with "In gassho..."

.
Pete, you've expressed a lot of interesting stuff there.  I read it more like poetry than prose and I come away from it more with a feeling than an understanding.  I feel like you're looking back at your experience with a sort of "auld lang syne" perspective.  There's nothing wrong with that and if the OBC were out of business maybe we'd all be standing around with a "cup of kindness".  Unfortunately all these years later it's largely business as usual with them.  People are here for different reasons.  For me it's important to occasionally speak my mind about the OBC and to support others who are only now coming out of the organization.  For them it's as real and raw as it was for me almost thirty years ago.  They haven't had time to for the whole thing to mellow into fine wine and it seems to help for them to see other people speaking openly about things they were forbidden to talk about.  But maybe I'm misunderstanding you Pete and if that's the case have another go at it.

Polly: Yes!
Michael: Yes!
Isan: Yes!

I'm one of those dumbos Lise warns about p.1.  I gotta just find my feather, somewhere around here, and tuck into securely into my trunk.
You guys are the boss, and Lise's the Ringmaster...
it is auld lang syne for me...and also wee sleekit mousie something something oh what a pounding's in thy breastie...meanwhile I'll take me Scottish brogue to London and see how far it carries me...talking about a mouse I plowed up, and suckin down the suds through my vigorous mustache.

is there any chance, any chance, any chance this is just the widening gyre?  spreading the Dharma out and out and out...in other words...invidious judgments are the basis of comparison...but we don't got to show you no stinkin invidious judgments...we'se Buddhists, approx. you more n me.  I think you're fine.  I thought they were fine.  If they weren't roller derbyists buck them up and use the occasional judicious elbow, that's what we do for teammates, all perambulating rolleristically in the same direction.  Timothy's on my hat...hope you like it, and we're up near the top of the tent...I'm jumpin'! YAHOOOOooooOOO

Pete, I don't think I could warn anyone about you, because I can't follow most of what you write. It reads like a deliberate attempt to be enigmatic, when perhaps plain speaking would do as well?

I don't see any good in giving teammates the elbow, myself. Plenty better ways to play nice and help each other get on, without doing harm.

Lise -- you're a genius.  When Shasta was outing Rev. Master Eko, I wrote them suggesting if this was the new improved Buddhist Improvement System, could I please have some?  I then listed my sins (just a few) that approximated the ex-abbot's, and gave them permission to publish them.  I really do want out from under the wreckage of the house of ego.  If public shaming is the collyrium, ulp, (quaveringly) "Bring it on!  Me second!"

In order to give myself permission to join in the merry piñata smack-down, of our fellow trainees or if we've gagged out on Buddhist terms, friends and/or associates, I recall Jesus's "the measure that you measure will be measured back to you."  so I listed just a little of my shortcomings in my ostensible book review of The Buddha and the Sahibs, which website Admin kindly peeled off from where I splatted it on someone else's review...so there it is, for all to see and comment on...I take my place on the dunk tank hinged seat, and people can bring the heat, if that is gonna wash me in the river of redemption.

An enigma, wrapped in a mystery, doused in the midnight sweat Gerard Manley Hopkins mentions in "No Worst, There Is None..."  I found that one of the Five Laws of the Universe, as promulgated by Rev. Master Jiyu is true:  "the law of Karma is inevitable and inexorable."  Those who haven't screwed up: God bless 'em.  If you don't like the term God?  How can we bless you?  I'm hearing Bob Dylan's "his clothes are dirty, but his hands are clean, and you're the best thing, that he's ever seen..."

I wanna be in love like that, and I can't when my heart is crippled and compromised by recriminations and recollections and reconsiderations.  When I had to chuck my sins into the cauldron of fire during Sange ceremony I said to myself...this little slip of paper is way too small.  way too small.  "I know confess everything wholeheartedly."  And my wish for those who have done better is to let your little light shine --not on those of us shamefacedly skulking in the shadows, but on the Way, and the way back, and please open ranks so we can slip in...please don't lock elbows and knock us stragglers off the roller rink into the cheap seats.  Amen.

pete x. berkeley wrote:

In order to give myself permission to join in the merry piñata smack-down, of our fellow trainees or if we've gagged out on Buddhist terms, friends and/or associates, I recall Jesus's "the measure that you measure will be measured back to you."  so I listed just a little of my shortcomings in my ostensible book review of The Buddha and the Sahibs, which website Admin kindly peeled off from where I splatted it on someone else's review...so there it is, for all to see and comment on...I take my place on the dunk tank hinged seat, and people can bring the heat, if that is gonna wash me in the river of redemption.

I wanna be in love like that, and I can't when my heart is crippled and compromised by recriminations and recollections and reconsiderations.  When I had to chuck my sins into the cauldron of fire during Sange ceremony I said to myself...this little slip of paper is way too small.  way too small.  "I know confess everything wholeheartedly."  And my wish for those who have done better is to let your little light shine --not on those of us shamefacedly skulking in the shadows, but on the Way, and the way back, and please open ranks so we can slip in...please don't lock elbows and knock us stragglers off the roller rink into the cheap seats.  Amen.

.
Your right Pete.  When I voice criticism of Jiyu Kennett and the OBC I don't imagine myself to be better than they are.  I colluded along with everyone else when I was there, and I still feel shame for it.  If nothing else I kept my mouth shut when I knew better.  It was Jiyu Kennett's true teaching that Sange was the entry point of Buddhist practice.  Becoming aware of one's mistakes and shortcomings, being willing to acknowledge and make amends, and promising to do better - that's the whole ball of wax!  So what went wrong along the way that has resulted in the OBC leadership being unwilling to acknowledge and apologize for mistakes?

You sir, a genius too.  You had the courage to go whole hog, and as a consequence, half-hog, quarter-hog, eighth-hog, 1/28th hog people like me got to sneak in and train because tall guys like you were holding the roof beams up!  I appreciate it! 

I tried bashing around in what Rev. Master Jiyu called "The Monastery of the World" and have had a hard time having fun, and certainly have done a poor job of it, including 20 years of equivocal performance evaluations at my clerk-typist job in medical transcription, which is now going away with the inception of voice-recognition software.  At crisis moments, I squeak, the piezo-ceramic effect, where you deform a piece of mica, and it squirts out electrons in analog mode (equal to the rising and falling of the force) which is how the first cheap phonographs worked...the needle was glued to a piece of mica, which electrical output went to the wires on the coil around the little loudspeaker, all contained in the record player arm and headpiece.  Where were we?

What went wrong...danged if I know.  Dhammapada chapter 18, verse 252.  I'm the cunning gambler.
What went wrong with that Zen Master who caught his monks arguing over who got to keep the stray cat in their wing of the temple, and he chopped the poor thing in two?  http://www.101zenstories.org/nansen-cuts-the-cat-in-two/

Nothing went wrong...it's not too late.  Quick, snag that beautiful lotus flower in your ID pic. above, and put those sandals on your head, and walk away, even if in sorrow.  The sorrow of the fool is greater than yours. 

Isan, I can't be right!  I know I'm an [banned term], and the species is obvious to you too: a babbling [banned term].
I can barely see through the tears of my own stupidity.  If there isn't any mercy in Zen Buddhism, why did we have to import it from the East?  We already had Puritanism right here in the U.S. of A. where you get to duck and drown, get to hang, get to burn, get to give the nod of approval as Cotton Mather did when he chanced upon a flash-mob hanging of supposed witches in Salem.  His father, Increase Mather, was one of the founders of Harvard!  Great traditions start small.

Nothing's gone wrong, we still got a chance to get it right. I went to Zen Buddhism, condemned in my own religion (Catholicism).  I figured if I got enlightened, that'd excuse my impecunious, pusillanimous, panpicklelicious perfidy...I could get on a gold suit, and hit the stage all brand new, and girls'd throw hankies and whatnot with their phone nos. scrawled in lipstick...instead, I sat in meditation and sweated brown goo.  Never got enlightened, and consequently I've said everything I possibly could about the race to being first to the Gateless Gate, twice, three times.  Never got to the infield, never got on track.  You guys were motoring around and around and around like to tear the house down.

So now, as we bid a fond adieu, and not a moment too soon as I karaoke my way offstage, inching away from the hook, what is the next step?  The buzzing in my head was so loud the little bit of time I sat at Shasta, I never heard the background noise, but had I lived there long enough to learn what Lise's talking about p. 1 of this topic...I'd have never stood for nonsense.  Why? If you lean away from people who are keeling over, how can you help them straighten up?  If you don't wanna help people, gee, that's fair.  What were the Buddha's dying words?  The Puritans said they were helping people.  My buddies, the Catholics, claimed they were helping people, in the Inquisition--yeah they were: right out of life. 

The hippies I tried to join claimed they were helping people by dripping LSD onto the backstage food or in your open drink, at the Grateful Dead concerts, the roadies putting it in Murine bottles and dropping it in your eye as you clamber up for your free pass being on the guest list...that's the price you pay for joining the circus.  William Burroughs visited Tim Leary where he was squatting at someone's mansion in New York, and they tried to "turn him on." He described it as "love, love, love in slop buckets."

But there has to be a way...otherwise we're right back where we started...benighted muckers toiling in obscurity and blah blah blah ball's in your court. Amen. Allelieia. Homage to the Body of Truth which is Truth Itself and a Stupa for the World...shantih, shantih, shantih.

I think the best way to examine the effectiveness of ones practice is through ones weakest moments in that practice.

If a practice has one forget, ignore or divert attention away from those weaknesses, then we remain deluded fools.
My wish for the OBC is no different than my hope for myself. That only in fully facing how those weaknesses continue to truly manifest in this present nano second, can a practice be more than ego camouflage.

Some think that the Shasta rot goes to it's core / that empathy, sympathy, tenderness, compassion & love are reservable for some but not all / and that they as OBCC posters are somehow clear of the afflictions that they accuse the OBC of.

Jiyu could only have changed the OBC Dharma by manifesting that change in herself.

I wonder if she and her disciples were no more able to face that mirror than we seem to.

Howard...you sound strong to me...and I sound weak to me, so I'm for sure gonna put a lid on it henceforth and forever.  I am grateful for the opportunity to listen in, and share and receive, but when Isan said "what's the next step?" and I say "I dunno..." that's just the 90-lb weakling talking.  I really shouldn't give myself a pass.  what the heck?

I typed on an anorexic girl in the hospital today who told  the doctor "I wanted to pull the tube today, and not give myself GI feeds, because I'm feeling fat and I hate myself.  But--I was able to overcome those thoughts, and give myself the tube feeds."

Yay!  and for me?  Having complained about 6.5 decades of my 65.75-year-old life about everything, it dawns on me the next step is two steps: One, be grateful for those who helped, even if and as they are yet-to-be-perfected, and two, clean your house.  Gee, what kind of credibility would I have if the All-Seeing Eyes of the Thus-Gone see my house, stacked high with inaccessible stuff.

I'm not gonna try to undo your experience, or spray paint a tag over your commentary.  You know what you went through.  It was a grunt going to Shasta, but I like those people.  And now? I'm gonna clean my house, if I have to hold my breath driving home, to hold that last thought-utterance resolute.  It is a 45-minute drive, so I might cheat on the breath a little bit. 

Wasn't it Dogen who said: "A kind word spoken in a person's absence can have a revolutionary effect upon the mind of man." ?

I want to speak a kind word about my teachers, and spiritual trainees senior to me, or else I vilify my own time on this earth.

Wasn't it in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, a Master reads from a little prayer card every morning: 
"Make yourself as good as you tell others to be!"

Hey pete.
What,.... my pomposity not worth tagging over?

I like the Monks I know, inside the OBC and out. I deliberately drank the Jiyu kool aide as deeply as I could and thought that was part of my practice. Only the eventual disparity between my meditation and the OBC manifestation of that practice, forced me to part ways.
I wonder at how much easier that must of been for myself, an independent layman over a Monk with the associated career loss.

My practice has been largely my effort to stop empowering my own identity.
The toughest part of that is not replacing it with anything else.
Part of my last post is just me saying to the poor captive suckers here that
replacing ones sense of identity with a Jiyu godhead is just as limiting as the dogged vilification of that godhead.
After a while, we all must sound here like a broken record. My peace in criticizing the attachments of any practice is founded on my own ongoing struggles with the same issues. The meditative observation of just how ethereal the boundaries are that separate seniors & juniors/ OBCC & OBC/ self & other are what I hope keeps my criticism from becoming an adversarial position.

Howard, in my opinion, one of your most (of many) insightfully distilled posts to date.

Howard,

I second Kozan`s `insightfully distilled post` to you.

Mike,

I loved your "religious form is no nearer the truth than clocking in at work ".
So true...just had to laugh.   Religion...as opposed to `spirituality` involves Belief. and
what is belief ?   Just unexamined opinion.

Pete,

Just loved your posts !

People of the Star Dust! We salute you! (however many personalities there are here in this skin bag, as Empty Cloud called himself)

I remember when Rev. Kozan had the wheelhouse at the BBP, and I had my first teaching job, at Sacred Heart High School For Boys...and was taking a pummeling like (St.) Isaac Jogues trying to chum up to the Hurons...He said: "You're doing your best, aren't you?" when I mentioned my stress level..."Oh yes," I replied, "only? My best is none too good." (Enigmatic smile from Rev. Kozan, his specialty. 

However, as an English teacher I sought to inflate my status, imagining I was working in the blueprints of the universe, not the killing floor, no, nor down there in the sweatshop, where the sausage is made.  I pronounced pleasure in finding in the Dhammapada the Buddha's praise for the adept "He knows the meaning of words, and the use of words..." which Rev. Kozan promptly finished the sentence for me -- "Which is, not much."  "Huh?" I replied, dewaxing one ear with a wobble-finger..."Words are not much use!" came the clincher.

So, they aren't.  But Isan's few words yesterday started a landslide in my unstable brain -- He asked "What went wrong?" and I dodged out with "dunno."  Well, that means YOU gotta do the work, and I get to watch TV.  nunh uh...that can't be right.  The Flakey Foont meets Mr. Natural job is taken.  The job that goes begging is the hard slog, with limited resources, take out the trash kind of work (which I started last night, at home, at long last).

So Part 1 of Isan's challenge is to scratch around and find a response.  Dimly from the past, here's Carl Jung, with a possible response:  If a person were to Google up Jung (space dash space) psychic inflation (that's Jung - psychic inflation) up jump the websites.

Those times were full of airborne psyches.  I recall a young hippie with his loving "old lady" (about 19) on his arm, with their beads, and fringed vests and bright eyes telling me he'd seen a paid psychic..."She told me I'm a reincarnated King Arthur!" "First king to ever work in a hardware store," was my unfortunate balloon-popper, "part-time." I muttered.  Course then I used to tell people I was a reincarnated weasel. 

Shasta used to warn about fame and gain...(back to Jung)...but I do not recall them warning about shame and loss, which it dawned yesterday is the flip side of the coin.  That coin is a token to get you out of work!  Especially unremunerated work, which is so dreary.  I was refusing the Isan Challenge because of a decades-old position of the shame/blame and loss category: I am inadequate to the task.  Even if I am, the task still needs hefting...how in good conscience can I withhold that hefting.

That's what I heard in the echo of "Words aren't much use."  You got to move.  And so now, as a hod-carrier to the stars, may we offer some help to the fame and gainers?  It may have seemed there was no danger if the work was spiritual/religious work...only materialists need be wary/be aware/beware, and doubt themselves.  Obviously not.  The stories here say obviously not.

So? If someone were to offer that they are the reincarnated Jesus.  What a golden moment!
"Really? I've always wondered what the H. stood for..."

Hi everyone,

I’ve been reading a book called Eat Sleep Sit written by Kaoru Nonomura, who left a design job in Tokyo to spend a year at Eiheji in 1989.  He was 30 years old. It’s an interesting book in that it shows what life is like at Eiheji. 

I thought I might quote a paragraph toward the end of the book that is pertinent to this part of OBC connect that is talking about Rev Brigin and RM Daishin Morgan leaving monastic life. I found it interesting.

      “Every spring, a monk is assigned to ask each trainee whether he intends to stay or go.  Most do in fact leave after a single year.”
   
    “After completing their second-year service in the Dharma Hall and the Founder’s Hall, trainees who stay for a third year are assigned to the bell-ringers’ quarters - the final and most prestigious destination for monks-in-training at Eiheiji-where they acquire authority over the first- and second-year trainees.  A very few remain on after that for yet another year.”
   
Sophia

I also found these two paragraphs interesting, from the same book. 

     “The longer a person has been at Eiheiji, the more things he is permitted to do.  After a while he can skip morning cleaning, and attendance at the various services and ceremonies, too, ceases to be mandatory.  He can leave the monastery grounds, coming and going as he pleases, and is assured much more private time.”

    “Who knows-perhaps real Zen discipline begins only when all restrictions have been taken away.  Then the trainee faces a clear choice: whether to stretch out comfortably in his new found freedom and idle around, or brace his spirits and stay committed to his initial purpose.  How each one responds is up to him, and the nature of his response changes the meaning of the remainder of his stay.”

When RM Jiyu was alive, I have heard, senior monks were no longer required to attend morning meditation, etc as the novices were.  They were free to train in a way that suited them.

Sophia

Pete is stands for Harold

Sophie
Who knows-perhaps real Zen discipline begins only when all restrictions have been taken away.

if it is not like this people are just giving out and taking orders......remind you of anywhere?

Michael: Har! (although I had to Google it up) Har!  You're the only one so far...

You are obliviously not dain-bramaged from your time at Shasta. 

(The Committee should be advised to review revoking your Griping License hitherto and henceforth)
and moving right along...

Sophie:  As Sophie II, are you the one who was a political consultant down Sacramento Way, back in the day? 

In any case, I looked up that retired Military get to keep their rank and title, and at some rank are never deactivated, and are subject to recall.  You said in your Intro entries you have been back to Shasta, were treated well, and hope to go again.  The Ex-Rev. on his shuffle off to Buffalo, or wherever he's gone, said in his farewell 1, or 2, that he would hope to return.  Imagine if you meet? Are not you still The Chaplain? 

What is a Chaplain?  You feel he compromised your trust.  Imagine if you meet, and you have kept intact the confidence he placed in you? 

I remember Rev. Master Jiyu saying they had done a funeral for a suicide.  The church I was a member of had the ignominious track record of refusing burial in their "sanctified" cemeteries for suicides.  As she said "Who needs it most?"  Who needs spiritual and human consolation most but people who have been through awful things.

I thought when you become a monk, it would a Buddhist monk...not an Eko and the Echoettes.
Yo-da-leedle-lady-who?

Hi Everyone, this is not meant to get in the way of conversations, but I am planning to split this thread later today, around 4 pm PT.  Several good off-shoots have arisen but they have nothing to do with the original topic. Please feel free to continue posting in the meantime, and try not to be mad at me during the 4 pm time-frame when posts are being moved.

Cheers,
Lise

I've tried several times to group the derailing posts into some coherent scheme, but I'm not confident of a good result in moving them; they're too intertwined, so I'll leave it be for now. May try tomorrow.

Hello Pete X,

Not from Sacramento, but bingo.  I think Ekoette is a good description.  I probably wouldn't have become a monk in the first place if it hadn't been for him, so not much of a surprise that I left.  I can't blame my leaving on him. I don't have a very good track record for lasting vocations or relationships.

Excellent point.

Sophia

Quote :

On March 16-19, 1993, a meeting was held in Dharamsala, India, between His Holiness The Fourteenth Dalai Lama and a group of twenty-two Western dharma teachers from the major Buddhist traditions in Europe and America. Also present were the Tibetan lamas Drikung Chetsang Rinpoche, Pachen Otrul Rinpoche, and Amchok Rinpoche. The aim of the meeting was to discuss openly a wide range of issues concerning the transmission of Budhadharma to Western lands.

The following statement ensued from the meeting:
“Each student must be encouraged to take responsible measures to confront teachers with unethical aspects of their conduct. If the teacher shows no sign of reform, students should not hesitate to publicize any unethical behavior of which there is irrefutable evidence. This should be done irrespective of other beneficial aspects of his or her work and of one's spiritual commitment to that teacher. It should also be made clear in any publicity that such conduct is not in conformity with Buddhist teachings. No matter what level of spiritual attainment a teacher has, or claims to have, reached, no person can stand above the norms of ethical conduct.”
Signed:
Fred von Allmen, Brendan Lee Kennedy, Ven. Ajahn Amaro, Bodhin Kjolhede Sensei, Jack Kornfield, Martine Batchelor, Dharmachari Kulananda, Stephen Batchelor, Jakusho Bill Kwong Roshi, Alex Berzin, Lama Namgyal (Daniel Boschero), Ven. Thubten Chodron (Cherry Greene), Ven. Tenzin Palmo, Lama Drupgyu Crony Chapman), Ven. Thubten Pende (James Dougherty), Lopon Claude aEsnee, Lama Surya Das (Jeffrey Miller), Edie Irwin, Robert Thurman, Junpo Sensei (Denis Kelly), Sylvia Wetzel.

Brilliant advice, remember we were thwarted by being shunned ostracized and discredited

H Sophia wrote:

"When teachers break the precepts,
behaving in ways that are clearly damaging to themselves and others,
students must face the situation,
even though this can be challenging, criticize openly, that's the only way."
His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Quote :

“Each student must be encouraged to take responsible measures to confront teachers with unethical aspects of their conduct. If the teacher shows no sign of reform, students should not hesitate to publicize any unethical behavior of which there is irrefutable evidence. This should be done irrespective of other beneficial aspects of his or her work and of one's spiritual commitment to that teacher. It should also be made clear in any publicity that such conduct is not in conformity with Buddhist teachings. No matter what level of spiritual attainment a teacher has, or claims to have, reached, no person can stand above the norms of ethical conduct.”

.
Very important that this coming from such a highly respected authority in the Buddhist world.  It should empower quite a few people who otherwise wouldn't feel able to act.

Hi Isan,

There has been so much controversy about the things said on this site, and so much criticism of the ones who post here.  I had some things I wanted to say to any lay person or monk who cared to listen.  It was this quote by the Dalai Lama that made me realize it is not breaking the precepts to tell the truth about what happened.

Sophia

Sophia have we been criticized for lying or for telling the truth

Well, Lise receives irate emails from people about what you are saying.  I'm not sure if those people think you are lying or not.  But I doubt very much that any of you are posting lies on OBC connect. Maybe your perceptions are different from others, but lies, I don't think so.

I would like to clarify what I said about the FTI Report.  It was not rejected that I know of.  The Interim Board was created partly to establish working groups to, I think, assist in the investigation by the FTI. Then I think they were going to make recommendations into changes that would be beneficial to the order based on recommendations made by the FTI.

The Interim board disbanded not too long ago and I haven't heard of any changes they were able to implement. I know there is now an ethics committee. I don't know how much the Interim Board had to do with that.  I know that señor monks at the Abbey thought the report was biased and overly critical of the Abbey. I don't know that the rest of the order had the same opinion.

So I think the FTI Report was basically discredited by the senior Abbey monks and the interest in making changes that was so high during the time right after Eko's abuses of power were discovered faded away due to the inertia of the entire organization and resistance to change.

I think the Interim board was disbanded without ever realizing the changes they had intended to make and the FTI report has been just sort of put on the shelf to collect dust without ever having been openly rejected.

Just my opinion,

Sophia

I think our perceptions were quite accurate,if anyone here got it wromg or on mass we do or did,I dont think we we continue with an incorrect perception. The history of alot of us from the 70s turning up here was sparked by the ko situation. I can not remember accurately now but I did not know this forum existed, I contacted Josh privately and asked him about Eko then someone mentioned this forum,Most of us had left the OBC well behind,I did not even know it was called the OBC.The Eko situation brought many old things to the surface maybe things that had not been dealt with,and it was really a large reminder that things went very wrong and at the time we could take our shunning and discrediting move on but have no voice to speak out,. I spoke about it all briefly when I was in Japan but only because I needed to say who I was,their reaction was not based on right or wrong, or even if I was psychologically scarred,they were more keen to see that my zazen was done in the right way. But was  Eko  an individual going off centre or was it an aspect of wrong teaching and practice, our perception here certainly mine changed when the story came out and it got worse not better. I read a criticism of this forum in a journal of another zen group,who said we were out of order as all Eko did was fall in love. My perception is Eko mirrored a teaching that was never deep, and was stuck in the early stages of dualistic religious practice

I thought you were all out of line, too.  When Eko left, we said our farewells, and I still considered him my greatest teacher.  He apologized for lying to me and I apologized for reading his personal e-mail (that brought his romantic relationship with a lay disciple to light).

It wasn't until later, at the conclave, when his abuse of power came to light, and I realized the harm he had caused some of my good friends that I my attitude toward him changed. Then when nothing really came of the FTI report after all the promises of change my attitude toward the OBC changed. That's when it finally dawned on me that you, on OBC connect,we're speaking the truth.

I'm not surprised people don't believe us on this site.  I was one of the ones that didn't believe you myself. It took hearing it first hand from the victims and seeing the harm even two years later for me to realize how bad it was.

So I guess there are those that experienced it first hand and those who didn't. Those who didn't think we are in a group delusion. OK with me. I won't judge them and hopefully, they won't judge me.

I think that i always felt that for an organization and teacher (Kennett) that as their emphasis was so much about.,training the self, giving up the self,following without question,that there would be no chance of it turning delusory.  Whereas now I feel that deeper meditation happens by not trying to do anything in particular.training the self is just another illusory aspect of self obsession or self denial

It is strange that SA monks are so, so focused on talking about the self; it’s the common theme of most of their Sunday dharma talks, with a few exceptions. It would be interesting to see how many of the monks could get through one talk without a single negative admonition or pronouncement about “the self”.  Is there really nothing else to think about, or talk about to others?

I have not, that I know of, wanted to spread falsehoods about the monks at Shasta Abbey or the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives, but I have no doubt I've been partially or completely mistaken in some things I've written. That was a big risk in posting second-hand information and one reason I try not to do it anymore. If people tell me I have posted something inaccurate, I do a correction. Far better that people find their own voice and post things themselves. 

I understand the anger and hurt that devout followers must feel when they read posts here. During the time when I wanted a group to belong to, I would have felt the same; intense anger that someone was presenting information that disturbed my image of the "wonderful" people and place I had found. Maybe I would have sent hate mail too, I don't know. What I do know is that all of these monks we write about are just people, regardless of the regalia they anoint themselves with or the advanced degrees of Reverend Master-ness they assume.  They are just people, who spout stories they were told by other people, all of which became part of the myths and legends they revere. It is no closer to any truth than that which we can discover on our own.

H Sophia wrote:

The Interim board disbanded not too long ago and I haven't heard of any changes they were able to implement. I know there is now an ethics committee. I don't know how much the Interim Board had to do with that.  I know that señor monks at the Abbey thought the report was biased and overly critical of the Abbey. I don't know that the rest of the order had the same opinion.

So I think the FTI Report was basically discredited by the senior Abbey monks and the interest in making changes that was so high during the time right after Eko's abuses of power were discovered faded away due to the inertia of the entire organization and resistance to change.

I think the Interim board was disbanded without ever realizing the changes they had intended to make and the FTI report has been just sort of put on the shelf to collect dust without ever having been openly rejected.

Just my opinion,

Sophia

Sophia, I share your perception (from information provided by a number of good friends within the Order) and think that your description is spot-on.

Great post Lise, The basic truth of zen ,we can be pushed and push our selves through great zendo hardships,little sleep,strict discipline, kysusku,blisters everything going, but we can not escape our lives we are blessed with always being human and having the fraililties, and impermanence of humans, however we are capable of simple great things.we are capable of caring for ,feeling compassionate for, and loving other people and things,maybe when we stop the hounding and detesting ourselves we can allow ourselves to be transformed by the natura abundance of love inside us,unfortunately that makes us all equal and creates a desire to at least consider all beings and their feelings

Interesting thread. Until we see something, we don't. That's the nature of our minds. The best we can achieve is to keep our eyes open with a willingness to be honest about what we perceive. Particularly when we are trying to learn something, we are vulnerable to nonsense while we are trying to absorb useful content.

One of the things Zen practice has added to my experience has been a deep willingness (and some increase in capability) to see things as they actually are, and to have confidence in what I'm seeing rather than always casting about to see what others want to tell me about it. I no longer need friendships based on accepting what another sees.

It's both an open mind in a sense of always being willing to explore and see freshly and it's a closed mind in the sense that I no longer listen the din of those adamant voices who insist that I accept their views, even when those conflict with reality.  Fundamentalist Christians who insist on the verbatim creation story are not different from fundamentalist Zennists who insist  that their teacher "knows" what he/she is talking about -- despite  incongruity with reality and experience.

What actually is, probably can't be described with dualistic terms, but it is comedic folly to believe that condemning dualism or "the self" is anything but more dualism. Dualism and the self are very useful ideas, just limited ones, that shouldn't be believed as ultimate descriptions.

Jack,

Yes, Thank you.

Sophia

jack wrote:

Fundamentalist Christians who insist on the verbatim creation story are not different from fundamentalist Zennists who insist  that their teacher "knows" what he/she is talking about -- despite  incongruity with reality and experience.

.
Interesting that you make this comparison as I was just thinking about how fundamentalism applies to the OBC.  It seems to me that the OBC gradually evolved away from Zen Buddhism and became a hybrid of Buddhism and Christianity.  The move was away from an open exploration along the lines of the Buddha's exhortation to "not just believe but make the teachings true for oneself" to the opposite of everyone embracing the same dogma.

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow,
I learn by going where I have to go.
     - Theodore Roetke

love that quote from Roetke.  was thinking how wonder-full dis-enchantment is.  When the story falls apart, when you have the courage to see what is really going on, even when that shatters your illusions, your hopes and wish-full thinking.  Disenchantment can be painful - which many of us know from personal experience, but in the end and in the middle, essential to spiritual adulthood.  In that sense, I can certainly say that I am grateful to Shasta and Kennett even for the last year I was there - when things became increasingly nutty and abusive and confusing, all of that pushed me into disenchantment, made me rely on my own inner guidance, shattered the stories, i learned by going where I had to go.  I did have to rely on my own heart - not that you were really supposed to do that at Shasta - especially when your "heart" was not in sync with Kennett's view or what the "cosmic buddha" was telling her.... so i think the road to spiritual adulthood must necessarily go through disenchantment.  Even the most lovely spiritual story is still a story - gold dust in the eyes - or more accurately fool's gold dust.... and with Shasta, the story became increasingly irrational and dogmatic and based on obedience to one confused person........ and that created a terrific opening to question the narrative, to find my own way back to what was essential and kind and rational - for me - then and now - hardly a path that I navigated perfectly  - but a much truer one

Josh,

" so i think the road to spiritual adulthood must necessarily go through disenchantment. "

Totally agree !  I would say that from first to last, the road involves disenchantment.  The
removal of Ignorance is always painful but the upside is freedom.
The inquiring mind will always, in the end, see through `enchantment`. whether in the
monastery or `the world`.
If reason and questioning is devalued, it`s only a question of time before painful consequences
ensue.

" to find my own way back to what was essential and kind and rational - for me "

I think that`s the true teaching that was learned from the Shasta experience.  Just not in the
way we thought it would be, at the time !

Liked the post...thank you.

Lise:  Thank you for the admin effort and the correcting of my misspelling of a person's name, to my embarrassment.

Sophia:  Please forgive me misspelling your name.  I have tried to beat the system by not fulfilling my glasses prescription, but getting by on magnifying readers.  That's not an excuse, but an explanation.

When I saw Lise's post, this past Friday, I felt the blood rising to my face, and I was surely blushing--an unfamiliar sensation, given all that I really have to blush for.  Apparently I have given myself a pass, and/or "gutted it out" and done the repentance and reform necessary to convert from ignorance in my life, to conformity with the precepts, or commandments, or Wisdom Great...but here I was instantaneously blushing over an "e" I typed, when an "a" is called for.

Have I been harboring ego in a small, out-of-the-way place, grammatical usage, (and maybe interpersonal interactions) where I could be "all-right?"  So, caught out in an error, shame boils up.  Uh-oh! I have to live here, but Life takes over from moment to moment.

Let's take it as a working premise that a person's perceptions at Shasta Abbey, and of abbots #1, and #2 are completely accurate, completely correct, completely "right." 

This has happened to me, so may take it as a working premise a mistaken person naturally, at some point, knows their wrongdoing. Now you're in trouble, with this self-knowledge, naked and being shown the door from the idyll of Eden into the world of hardscrabble. 

John Bradshaw noted in Healing The Shame That Binds You...or some one of his books or talks, "re-sentirere," Latin, is to "feel again" -- which when they are negative feelings, sorrow over your own wrongs, it is most wearing.  That's what Bradshaw said the function of forgiveness is--so we may forget!  Forgiveness of self is really difficult; what a balm when another offers it! I know!

So now...back :
A) Assume those who saw and heard and felt what they saw/heard/felt as inappropriate and wrong are 100% right in their perceptions.

B) Assume the dis-ease of the perpetrator drives that person into awareness of their mistakes, and they feel that sickening 100% wrongness.

is there any way to reconciliation?  Reparation?  if the aggrieved party shames you in your being, you're done for.  My ex-wife was kind enough to i.d. my shortcomings as a doing, not a fact of being.  It only took 20 or 25 years for me to understand her point!  She didn't want to wait around for me to fix it, but you -- former monks at Shasta -- may yet meet The Buddha on the road, the monk come to his/her senses.  You may have life left to fix it.  Will that be possible?

How to get to forgiveness?  Bradshaw says if you shame people in their being it's toxic shame -- "You ARE this nasty thing, You AREN'T what you should be." (When the verbs change to past tense, that i.d.s the problem, but present tense states that it's impossible for you to change for the better,  the implication is that in the future you are unsalvageable, because it's something you ARE in your core being). That's a feeling of doom.

Bradshaw says shame in one's doing is healthy shame, it saves us from real stupidities, and can be dealt with through repentance and reform if the stupidity already went down.

So what I wonder is this -- another quote from Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama -- is this possible?

"May I consider living beings more important than Buddha, Dharma and Sangha."

The road to repentence is a hard old road Pete but whilst you are trudging along
 allow me to ask you a question by changing your last line:
Would you consider your ex wife more important than Buddha, Dharma and Sangha?

Michael...Michael...Michael...

Do I look like the kind of dweeb that'd let my w.o.t.t. down? (wife of the time).
Or do dweebs even come in kinds?

That picture's 10 years old even...but I still look blurred 'n bleary.

You know you care--you can't fool us.  You know it could have been better, or you wouldn't be here.  and we know it could not have been better, if it wasn't, so the only way to get to better is today, or tomorrow.

Now then how bout you psychic jiu-jitsu yourself?  I'm pretty sure you can beat yourself up! and come out a winner!

My only thought for dear Ms. X, among the myriad thoughts, was to blow her mind...one day she came to the house where we once lived, and told me something I didn't like, as I was washing my dishes...She stood on the heater, to let it blow up her skirt, a fun thing for her from the olden days, and didn't like my sourpuss.  She started yelling at me...and I finished the dishes...dumped the water, took my gloves off and started barking in reply, to every phrase she said.  It's hard to bark when you're laughing, but there's the secret to my success...argument over.  She wheeled around and left. 

Man if you guys had only learned to bark at Shasta Abbey; we wouldn't be howling at the moon now.

Pete, in a way it's unfortunate I'm not able to share the bulk of four years' correspondence files with you, so you could read for yourself how many people did bark, at Shasta Abbey and Throssel, and other OBC spots, before they left of their own accord, or were tossed out for the barking.

I think a site like OBC Connect would have come about eventually regardless of who said what 30 years ago or 20 or 10, and regardless of the high drama of a scandal like Mike Little.  Exposure/accountability/visibility are gifts (maybe) of the internet age and it's very hard to keep bad things quiet, when enough people see it or experience it. 

I'm interested in your comment above:   "B) Assume the dis-ease of the perpetrator drives that person into awareness of their mistakes, and they feel that sickening 100% wrongness."

Based on your knowledge of Michael Little and his situation, do you feel this assumption applies?  Is he aware of his mistakes? Does he feel he was wrong?

Yes Pete I do care,I can recognize a tough spot. The unfortunate thing about any situation that hits where it hurts is our vuinerability is exposed. whether it is the wott or an ex teacher,we are in new territory,and new territory means we do not know how to handle it or what to do. In fact I believe we create new tools in order to handle it.Some times the new tools dont sit easy,sometimes we meet fire with fire,we do and say things that we are not used to saying,sometimes we act in ways we have been told not to act.fighting through murk is not easy. Not for everyone life is sometimes brutal,a true warrior can put down his sword when it is no longer needed

You make some lovely points, Pete, in the last post and all along the way. I would like to say, nevertheless, that it is profoundly difficult to reconcile and repair a relationship when one side of that relationship refuses to meet the other somewhere along the way. The absolute stance than the senior Zen Master cannot be questioned or criticized, (well, they can, but you will always be wrong if you do) is an impregnable fortress and you have no way of knowing how far some of these folks have gone to try to repair and reconcile quite monstrous damage. Hoping someone else will change is risky business in the closest of relationships. The unique relationship between a master and disciple, spiritual leader and student is so inherently unbalanced that abuse is one of the easiest of mistakes to make and the OBC had abuse built into its core. I would ask you to remember that you do not know everything that those on this forum experienced so it would be wiser, though not near as much fun, not to judge.