Wednesday, October 16, 2019

A Buddhist monk (Dalai lama) hugging an American nun.


image
His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Venerable Thubten Chodron
“His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Ven. Thubten Chodron continue to give generously to the Buddhist community, and in particular to the community of Western Buddhist practitioners. This fourth volume in the magnificent Library of Wisdom and Compassion maintains the high standards set in the first three: it is comprehensive without sacrificing relevant detail, it is precise without sacrificing accessibility, and it is of enormous value to practitioners and teachers but still of great interest to scholars of Buddhism.”
—Jay L. Garfield, Doris Silbert Professor in the Humanities, Smith College and the Harvard Divinity School

The Library of Wisdom and Compassion is a special multivolume series in which His Holiness the Dalai Lama shares the Buddha’s teachings on the complete path to full awakening that he himself has practiced his entire life. The topics are arranged especially for people seeking practical spiritual advice and are peppered with the Dalai Lama’s own unique outlook. Assisted by his long-term disciple, the American nun Thubten Chodron, the Dalai Lama sets the context for practicing the Buddha’s teachings in modern times and then unveils the path of wisdom and compassion that leads to a meaningful life and sense of personal fulfillment. This series is an important bridge from introductory to profound topics for those seeking an in-depth explanation from a contemporary perspective.
If you’re a member of the Wisdom Experience you can read many of the volumes in The Library of Wisdom and Compassion now in the Reading Room, and we’re working on getting the rest added. 

Re: B.sujato translates 'metta' as 'love'. That's horrible, and it's wrong.

Post by frank k » Wed Oct 16, 2019 6:10 am
Nicolas wrote: 
Mon Jul 22, 2019 3:08 am
What about “universal love”?
As a translation for 'metta', 'universal love' is better than 'loving kindness', but still problematic.
B. Sujato's translation of 'metta' as 'love' is beyond problematic and wrong, it's horrible.
Here's an example of why.

Buddhist monk (Dalai lama) hugging an American nun.
https://notesonthedhamma.blogspot.com/2 ... ging.html

Lots of skin to skin contact here as far as I can tell from the picture.
Too much 'loving-kindness' here (Dalai lama's usual translation for 'metta').


Re: A Buddhist monk (Dalai lama) hugging an American nun.

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala » Mon Oct 21, 2019 9:31 pm
  1. It is an offence of formal meeting to touch a woman with lustful intent.
  2. It is an offence of wrong-doing to touch a woman with affection. The behaviour of the Dalai Lama seems to be an offence under this rule, but not knowing his mind with my mind, I am not qualified to say that he has affection in his mind. Perhaps he is just following the social convention and has only mettā. One could liken it to shaking hands with a woman in the West to avoid making them feel uncomfortable. I don't usually shake hands with women, but try to explain the right way to greet a monk.
  3. There is no offence to touch a woman to rescue her from danger.† Catching an elderly woman to prevent her falling or pulling a woman out of a river to prevent her drowning is not usually done with any unwholesome mental states, though the mind can change quickly.
  4. Again, if a woman grabs a monk with lustful intent or for some other reason, there is no offence for the monk unless he prolongs the contact to enjoy it with lustful or affectionate intent.
Buddhist Monastic Code wrote:The Vibhaṅga does not discuss the issue of bhikkhus who intentionally make active contact with women for purposes other than lust or affection — e.g., helping a woman who has fallen into a raging river — but the Commentary does. It introduces the concept of anāmasa, things carrying a Dukkaṭa penalty when touched; women and clothing belonging to a woman top the list. It then goes into great detail to tell how one should behave when one’s mother falls into a raging river. Under no circumstances, it says, should one grab hold of her, although one may extend a rope, a board, etc., in her direction. If she happens to grab hold of her son the bhikkhu, he should not shake her off, but should simply let her hold on as he swims back to shore.
Where the Commentary gets the concepts of anāmasa is hard to say. Perhaps it came from the practices of the Brahmin caste, who are very careful not to touch certain things and people of certain lower castes. At any rate, there is no direct basis for it in the Canon. Although the concept has received universal acceptance in Theravādin Communities, many highly‑respected Vinaya experts have made an exception right here, saying that there is nothing wrong in touching a woman when one’s action is based not on lust, but on a desire to save her from danger.†


Post by frank k » Tue Oct 22, 2019 5:14 am
Thanks Venerable Pesala. I'm also hoping people can contribute links to previously written articles that can help explain that strict rules serve important purposes, and that 'skillful means' and 'crazy wisdom' are usually just rationalizations to commit crimes of passion. I'm sure it's well covered territory and many people in the past have explained it clearly and in detail. It would be good to collect them as a resource for future generations to study.

Dan74 wrote: 
Mon Oct 21, 2019 12:17 pm
frank k,

I think you are drawing a very long bow by linking sex scandals in Tibetan and Mahayana Buddhism to more relaxed rules on hugging. The people involved in sex scandals by and large were not monks, so the Vinaya was irrelevant. But logically I don't find the connection plausible. Rather the causes lie elsewhere.
I think the correlation is very clear and undeniable.
Let's compare two traditions. Ajahn Chah's forest monk lineage, which follows Theravada vinaya rules strictly.
Have there any even been any sex scandals in that lineage?
If monks had difficulty with lust that they couldn't overcome, they always have the option to disrobe, and return to the lay life.
In the early days of the Buddha's dispensation, all or most of the monks were arahants, fully awakened, and there was no vinaya or rules.
The rules are there are the unawakened, they were carefully crafted for specific purposes, and they work well, as long as disciples follow them.

There's no rationalizing 'skillful means' (Mahayana) or 'crazy wisdom' (tibetan buddhism) to justify coarse sensual pleasures of sex, no matter what flavor of Buddhism anyone follows. The prohibition in the Theravada vinaya from hugging and having any physical contact, gives clear cut concrete rules to ensure physical sexual abuse can't happen. Regardless of whether the Tibetan lamas or Mahayana bodhisattva aspirants partially or don't follow the vinaya (where Bodhisattva vows and 'skillful means' can trump the vinaya seemingly whenever it's convenient for them), fundamentally indulgence in sensual pleasures are unskillful qualities, and any kind of physical contact that can encourage it is obviously a potential problem, especially with unenlightened beings.

Just look at some of the samples you can find easily from the Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhist world. Even though some of them are not bound by the vinaya, their behavior is far off any kind of ethical human behavior. Even the non-celibate have ethical standards. Had they been following the vinaya, then at least there would be clear cut rules obvious to everyone whether they were behaving within rules.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ente ... 9859.html

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7319165/c ... -dakinis/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... k-secrets

That's just a tiny sampling of sexual abuse among the non vinaya followers.



Re: A Buddhist monk (Dalai lama) hugging an American nun.

Post by frank k » Sat Oct 26, 2019 6:51 am
Dan74 wrote: 
Fri Oct 25, 2019 2:24 am

Your argument that the behaviour like the Dalai Lama's above leads to sex scandals is patent nonsense. And yes, I will stop wasting my time trying to reason with someone who is wilfully blind.
I was hoping the community could provide more articles that addressed this issues, or ones similar to this, on why basic vinaya rules are so important. I don't want to restate and rehash what has already been eloquently explained many times throughout history.

But until they do, I'll have to spend hopefully not too much time to point out the obvious and spell it out for those of you who don't see the problem with monks hugging women (platonically).

I never argued that hugging leads to sex scandals. I hardly said anything at all in the original blog post, I thought the picture and bare description alone was enough for those who have eyes and basic ability to think and understand ethics could see potential problems.

The Buddha taught for 45 years, and had a vinaya, a code of discipline for monastics, developed and refined over that long period of time. Many of the rules are minor. But the major rules are really important, and they are there exactly as they are, for important reasons.

One of those rules, which the Dalai Lama is not following in the photograph, prohibits intentional physical contact such as hugging (accidentally bumping into a woman is not an offense) between monks and any woman, even their mom or sister.

1. Why not even their mom, sister, or grandmother, or daughter?

Because the rest of the world probably doesn't know that woman is their relative.
They don't know whether the hug is platonic or romantic.

2. A timeless principle is that people learn not just from hearing and thinking about teachings, but probably much more from modeling, following living examples of their teachers and fellow students. Even if the teacher is enlightened and can hug anyone platonically without lust, their students are not. Having special rules for different classes of people complicates things, so they're avoided as much as possible. Enlightened teachers observe their own strict rules to set a good example, not because they personally need them.

So if the Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhist teachers followed the Buddha's rule of not having any physical contact between monastics of the opposite sex, then these things would not have happened, or if they did happened, it would be clear to both the perpetrators and the victims that what was going on was illicit and prohibited.

3. Have you forgotten what its like to be in puberty with raging hormones?
If you have forgotten, just look at dogs and animals in the wild when it's mating season. What do you think it's like for monastics who ordain young? Why do muslim women wear hijab to veil their face? As a college muslim (male) friend attending a decadent American university in the springtime when the weather was warm and beautiful once told me,
"I love America. Where I'm from, when you look at young women, there's nothing to see, it's like looking at a tent."
Some real examples:
1. SANGHARAKSHITA raping hetersexual men, some of them underage (age of consent for homosexual sex), all of them believing it was spiritual friendship and a blessing for spiritual empowerment and not a sick rapist preying on innocent kids he lied to. If no hugging and physical contact was even allowed, then how can this happen? It would be obvious to victims what is inappropriate and illicit behavior. Hugging on its own is not the cause of sexual crime, but prohibiting hugging can prevent or deter victims from being lied to.

https://buddhism-controversy-blog.com/2 ... al-abuse/


I could go on for pages and pages. Chogyam Rinpoche. And some of this students like this one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96sel_Tendzin
It was revealed in 1989 that Ösel Tendzin had contracted HIV and for nearly three years knew it, yet continued to have unsafe sex with his students without informing them.[15][16] He transmitted it to a student who later died of AIDS.[17][18][19] Others close to Tendzin, including the board of directors of Vajradhatu, knew for two years that Tendzin was HIV-positive and sexually active but kept silent.[20] As one student reported at the time,

I was very distressed that he and his entourage had lied to us for so long, always saying he did not have AIDS. I was even more distressed over the stories of how the Regent used his position as a dharma teacher to induce "straight" students to have unprotected sex with him, while he claimed he had been tested for AIDS but the result was negative.[11]

Stephen Butterfield, a former student, recounted in a memoir:

Tenzin offered to explain his behavior at a meeting which I attended. Like all of his talks, this was considered a teaching of dharma, and donations were solicited and expected. So I paid him $35.00 to hear his explanation. In response to close questioning by students, he first swore us to secrecy (family secrets again), and then said that Trungpa had requested him to be tested for HIV in the early 1980s and told him to keep quiet about the positive result. Tendzin had asked Trungpa what he should do if students wanted to have sex with him, and Trungpa's reply was that as long as he did his Vajrayana purification practices, it did not matter, because they would not get the disease. Tendzin's answer, in short, was that he had obeyed the guru.[21]
If they followed the Buddha's rules on no hugging, then how can this kind of tragedy happen?

2 comments:

  1. I don't think there's any lustful thinking going on in this picture. Respectfully, I might suggest that any lust you find within is the lust you brought along with you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. And where exactly did I suggest there was lust? There are rules for monks and nuns, and rules are there for many reasons. In Theravada rules, it's forbidden even for monks to hug their moms or sisters. If you take the time to study the issue carefully and think it through, you'll understand why. This is why in Tibetan and Mahayana Buddhism you find so many outrageous sex scandals, too many to list.

    ReplyDelete