MeTooGuru:Tibetan Buddhism Enters the 21st Century: Trouble in Shangri-la(1)

Tibetan Buddhism Enters the 21st Century: Trouble in Shangri-la

Written by Stuart Lachs

1 hours

What convinces masses are not facts,

not even invented facts,

but only the consistency of the illusion.1

This long-read makes use of numeric footnotes that open on hover and take you to the footnote at the bottom of the page on click. Clicking the blue thumbnail at the end of the listed footnotes takes you back to where it was inserted into the text.

Buddhism in the 21st century is fairly well established, both in the United States of America and in Europe. This is true for the surviving branches of Buddhism: Theravada, Zen or Chan, and Vajrayana or Tibetan Buddhism. Recently both Zen and Tibetan Buddhist groups in the West have been rocked by scandals involving prominent, well established teachers with titles such as Zen master, Roshi, Rinpoche, Lama, Sakyong, and so on—who are understood by their followers and even by non-followers, to be enlightened beings. Importantly, it is the institutions—that is, the leading authorities representing these traditions—who present these leaders as enlightened beings, and this is also how they have presented themselves to a believing public.

In Zen Buddhism, the “enlightened teacher” has enormous control over the student.2 The teacher in the Zen tradition is certified as enlightened by his or her enlightened teacher, in an unbroken lineage reaching back to the historical Buddha.

This idea of an unbroken lineage of enlightened teachers is a well-constructed myth.3 Yet at the same time Zen practice, which can have great benefits, depends on the student’s unquestioning confidence and trust in the teacher. The dark side to imputing attainment to people who do not really have it has resulted in the steady stream of abuse cases in Zen Buddhist communities, sometimes around extravagant garnering of wealth, but almost always involving sexual abuse.

Stuart Lachs (b. 1940) is an independent scholar ....... This article is Lachs’ first excursion outside Ch’an/Zen and into Tibetan Buddhism.

For followers of Tibetan Buddhism in the West at least, the day-to-day results have been the same as that of the Zen sect of Buddhism. In the Tibetan case, students’ absolute submission to the teacher has led to some teachers amassing extravagant wealth, and almost always to wild sexual abuse, arguably even more extreme than in Zen Buddhist communities.

Throughout this paper some people will be identified as a tulku(Wyl., sprul sku).5 Tulkus are persons who have been identified as the emanation or reincarnation of a highly respected deceased master. No matter whether the lineages reach back many centuries or are very recent, this tulku system is an important means by which the teachings of various schools of Tibetan Buddhism continue.6 The present day Dalai Lama is the fourteenth Dalai Lama of a lineage that began in 1391. It should be noted that lama (Wyl., bla ma, the Tibetan equivalent of the Sanskrit guru) is a title for a Tibetan teacher of the Dharma that is different from that of a tulku. Not all lamas are tulkus but most tulkus are lamas. Similarly, not all monks are lamas.7 When a master dies he leaves some clues on where or how to find his reincarnation. Finding the reincarnated master or tulku can be an elaborate affair, especially in the case of an important master. Usually a group of respected lamas come together to look for clues for finding the young reincarnated master.

The Karmapa, the head of the Kagyü school, is especially known for recognizing tulkus and even masters from other lineages approach the Karmapa requesting him to discover tulkus. For instance, the fifteenth Karmapa who lived into the twentieth century, recognized about 1,000 tulkus during his life.8 In December 5-8, 1989, the fourth Tulku Conference was held in India. This event was attended by over 350 tulkus from the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism and from the Bön religion, and this conference was hardly attended by all tulkus.9 These numbers show that a tulku is not an extremely rare being.10

This paper will look at some of the recent scandals in the Tibetan traditions and examine how they mirror each other through institutional self-definitions, imputed attainments, and institutional guarantees of authority and orthodoxy. Unquestioned authority is at the core of all these scandals. I will discuss five representatives of these sanctified lineages, mentioning also a number of other high lamas as they relate to these teachers. We will see how the authenticating process along with the samaya—in Tibetan damtsik (Wyl., dam tshig)—vows pledged by their disciples empowers these teachers as enlightened beings, who are viewed almost as superhuman by their followers, and how this process prevents virtually any critical thought about the teacher’s actions.11 This paper will thereby show how hierarchy, vows, secrecy and face-saving strategies indulged abuse.

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble.

Its what you know for sure that just ain’t so.12

What Are We Talking About?

Three “scandals” involving sex, alcohol, drugs, money and some combination of these elements, have rocked the world of Tibetan Buddhism in the West over the past three years, though these scandals had their origins as long as forty years ago. The teachers, involved with titles that translate as “Earth Protector,”—in Tibetan Sakyong (Wyl., sa skyong)— “Emperor,” “Moon of Dharma,” “Excellent Intellect,” “Radiant Holder of the Teachings, (Ösel Tendzin (Wyl., ‘od gsal bstan ‘dzin) in Tibetan),” and so on, were chosen and sustained by esteemed Tibetan Buddhist leaders. This paper examines in substantial but not exhaustive detail scandals involving Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche—Rinpoche (Wyl., rin po che) means “Precious One”—the head of the Shambhala International organization, Lama Norlha Rinpoche, the main representative on the eastern half of America of the famous meditation master Kalu Rinpoche, and finally Sogyal Rinpoche, the author of the well known book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.13

However, to better understand the Sakyong Mipham case, it is important to understand his position in the context of the Shambhala organization founded by his father, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. This is important because abusive patterns that were born under Trungpa’s leadership of Shambhala continued through a succession of their lineage leaders and senior students. To this day these patterns of abuse have continued to affect their satellite centers around the world. Hence this paper will look at five scandals: the three already mentioned, but first the scandals of Chögyam Trungpa and then of his immediate heir, the American Thomas Rich, better known as Ösel Tendzin. While looking at these five teachers we will naturally look at other highly regarded Tibetan Buddhist leaders as they relate to these five.

Chögyam Trungpa

Chögyam Trungpa (b. 1939 d. 1987) was eleventh in the line of Trungpa tulkus, important figures in the Kagyü lineage, one of the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Among his main teachers was Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, as well as other respected Tibetan teachers. He was deeply trained in the Kagyu tradition and received his khenpo (Wyl. mkhan po) degree, a high degree of Buddhist scholarship in Tibetan monasteries. Trungpa was also trained in the Nyingma tradition, the oldest of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism. In 1958 Trungpa fled his home monastery and went into hiding after it was occupied by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. Trungpa began an arduous escape from Tibet in April, 1959 arriving in India in January, 1960. Trungpa was head of the Surmang group of monasteries at the time he left. In a word, Trungpa was an important tulku and had highly respected orthodox teachers of Tibetan Buddhism; by the rules of Tibetan Buddhism, he was the real thing.

In 1963 he studied comparative religion at Oxford University. In 1967 along with Akong Rinpoche, also a tulku, they took over a meditation center in Scotland that became Samye Ling, the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Europe.14 Shortly after the move to Scotland, while drunk and speeding, Trungpa had a car accident that left him partially paralyzed on the left side. This along with other experiences led Trungpa to give up his monastic vows and to continue teaching as a layman. He smoked, drank heavily and openly slept with his female students. He was also known for keeping students waiting for hours for a teaching often arriving with drink in hand. In 1970 he married Diana J. Mukpo, a wealthy 16-year-old English student. He had a break with Akong Rinpoche disagreeing over the way to teach Tibetan Buddhism. Akong favoring a more ordered approach as opposed to Trungpa’s so called “Crazy Wisdom” wilder way. Trungpa left Scotland and in 1970 moved to the USA.

Trungpa was extremely charismatic and had a unique way of presenting Tibetan Buddhism that appealed to his Western students. He was bright, witty, and openly hard drinking which originally appealed mostly to the counter culture and artists, writers, and theater people. For example, poet Allen Ginsberg, the Chilean biologist/philosopher Francisco Varela, and poets/activist Diane di Prima and Anne Waldman were students of his.15 Another author/journalist student of Trungpa was John Steinbeck IV and his wife Nancy. Steinbeck was the son of John Steinbeck, the Nobel Prize winner who wrote Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. Unlike many of Trungpa’s followers, John Steinbeck IV and Nancy were able to recognize and face some of the problems generated by Trungpa and his Crazy Wisdom teachings. I will use them as an important source when it comes to Trungpa’s life and teaching in the U.S.A. I refer to them as Steinbeck, and quote their book, The Other Side of Eden in different places in this paper.16

Originally, Trungpa’s meditation centers were known as Dharmadhatus. Now they are known as Shambhala Meditation Centers, including major centers in Colorado, Vermont, and Nova Scotia which hold intensive meditation retreats. In 1974 Trungpa founded Naropa Institute which later became Naropa University, the first accredited Buddhist university in North America. Trungpa had a string of well-known people teaching at Naropa. He was one of the first to introduce the esoteric Vajrayana teaching to western lay students. As with other Vajrayana teachers, Trungpa too warned of terrible consequences for leaving the path or in disclosing secrets of the practice.17 We shall see more examples of this later in the paper.

Trungpa’s original romance with and acceptance by the American poetry world was shattered by two events. In the early 1970’s a poetry reading took place at the University of Colorado featuring Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Robert Bly with Trungpa acting as the master of ceremonies as a benefit to help Trungpa’s Meditation Center. Trungpa was loaded on saki and kept interrupting the poets with loud noises, some imitating the sound of farts, and yodeling and then hitting a loud gong at the end. Trungpa apologized at the end of the evening—not for his behavior but for the poets: ‘I’m sure they didn’t mean what they said.’ Snyder and Bly kept their distance from Shambhala after this event.18

The second event that more deeply soured the poetry community and many others on Trungpa and Shambhala was known as the “Great Naropa Poetry Wars” or the “Merwin Affair.” The well-known poet W.S. Merwin and his girl friend, the Hawaiian poet Dana Naone, were not advanced students of Trungpa. However, they were permitted by Trungpa to attend the 1975 three-month long seminary limited for advanced students. Trungpa organized a Halloween party that in usual Shambhala fashion of the time was quite a drunken affair. Merwin and Naone did not want to take part but on Trungpa’s orders they were physically forced out of their room amid much violence and brought before Trungpa who ordered his Vajra guards to strip them naked, which they did.19

Shambhala under Trungpa’s leadership was known for wild parties, heavy drinking, and promiscuous sex. He also popularized the idea of “Crazy Wisdom,” the idea among others, that unenlightened people often do not understand the words and actions of enlightened people. Being a representative of the “Crazy Wisdom” lineage meant that all his outrageous behavior was presented as teaching.20 Trungpa seemed to have a taste for married women and implied that extramarital affairs were a direct path to enlightenment.21 Trungpa encouraged his students to cultivate detachment toward our children.22 Nancy Steinbeck said that her meditation instructor ‘once accused me of hiding behind my kids when I refused to leave them with baby-sitters and do volunteer work.’23

In spite of his brilliance and creativity which attracted many devotees and no doubt helped many of his students, his involvement with pharmaceuticals soon blossomed into full-fledged addiction that clouded his judgment.24 The Steinbeck’s added that unfortunately, Trungpa presented himself as an authority on areas over which he had no expertise, such as child rearing and family dynamics.25 His students followed his words leading to many mistakes, ‘too many broken hearts, far too much abuse would all trickle down like toxic rain on the heads of those children we so blithely left at home.’26 In this paper unfortunately the reader will see examples of what this means.

Trungpa used the title Vidyadhara Trungpa Rinpoche which indicates that he was someone who constantly abides in the state of pure awareness.27 This also meant that he was beyond the understanding of his students and ordinary mortals. He claimed that because ‘he had Vajra nature [a yogically transformed and stabilized psychophysiology], he was immune to the normal physiological effects of alcohol,’ said one student. The students bought his story. It never occurred to anyone that he was an alcoholic because that was a disease that happened to ordinary mortals.28 Though it was well known that he was addicted to alcohol, much less well known even to today was his $40,000-a-year cocaine habit [that was in mid 1980 dollars] and, ‘the ultimate irony, an addiction to the sleeping pill Seconal. Sleeping pills for the guru who advertised himself as a wake-up call to enlightenment.’29

Steinbeck goes on to describe the effects of Trungpa’s years of excessive alcohol and drug use. ‘In his last year, he’d become so deluded, he would summon his attendants and tell them he wanted to visit the Queen of Bhutan. They would put him in his Mercedes and drive around the block several times. As they led him back to the house, they laughingly asked how his visit went. “Wonderful,” he’d reply. “She was delightful.” And they called that magic. “He’s so powerful,” they’d whisper.”‘30 The Steinbecks referred to Trungpa’s close students serving him as enablers. They claimed that supplying him with drugs and alcohol was a measure of their devotion, while sneering at those of us who objected.31 “Whatever the teacher demands, all that I will give,” was their vow. They believed that to break that samaya (vow), to refuse to administer to the guru the poison that was killing him, would literally send them to hell.32 It should be noted here that Trungpa’s disciples expressing their devotion to him by supplying him with alcohol and presumably cocaine as he desired, was in keeping with the view of samaya, as represented by three well known Rimpoches: Kalu, Dilgo Khyentse, and Dzongsar Khyentse, as we shall see shortly.

The Steinbecks add another disturbing picture to Trungpa’s supposed Vajra nature and his claimed ability to transcend the effects of excessive alcohol and drug consumption: ‘After his death, a Buddhist teenager asked me, “Did you know that some guys used to pimp for Rinpoche? They’d find him new women to sleep with.” (…) While everyone was busy honoring Rinpoche’s courage for being so blatant about his massive indulgences, his henchmen constantly skimmed the various centers for new blood. Women were trained as “consorts.” That meant they knew what to do when he threw up, shit in the bed, snorted coke till dawn, turned his attention to other women, and maybe even got in the mood for a threesome. Our little band of recovering Buddhists began to ask people if they thought this flagrant behavior constituted religious or sexual abuse. The standard answer you get from the male good old boys who buy into the system because it means their coffers will also be full to feed their own addictions, is that they never, in all their pimping, heard any woman complain plain about sleeping with Rinpoche. (I use that term loosely, because for years he was alcoholically impotent and would devise little sexual games using a dildo known as “Mr Happy” or insisting women masturbate in front of him.)’33

He would finally die ‘of the most acute alcoholism and drug addiction I had ever seen’ and I knew, wrote Nancy Steinbeck, ‘because by then I was working in a silk-sheet rehab center in La Jolla, California.34 ‘I saw a picture of him taken a few days before his death. He was bone-thin; his eyes had the haunted look of a madman.’35

Victoria Fitch, a member of Trungpa’s household staff with years of experience as a nursing attendant gives a more detailed description of Trunga’s final decline and death. She also describes how his true condition was kept secret from almost all of Trungpa’s students and that whatever claims he made, Trungpa was dying just like countless other alcoholics. Fitch wrote, ‘When Trungpa Rinpoche lay dying in 1986 at the age of 47, only an inner circle knew the symptoms of his final illness. Few could bear to acknowledge that their beloved and brilliant teacher was dying of terminal alcoholism, even when he lay incontinent in his bedroom, belly distended and skin discolored, hallucinating and suffering from varicose veins, gastritis and esophageal varices, a swelling of veins in the esophagus caused almost exclusively by cirrhosis of the liver.’

‘Rinpoche was certainly not an ordinary Joe, but he sure died like every alcoholic I’ve ever seen who drank uninterruptedly. The denial was bone-deep.’ she continued. ‘I watched his alcoholic dementia explained as his being in the realm of the dakinis [khandroma (Wyl., mkha’ ‘gro ma) in Tibetan], that is as guardians of the teachings, visualized in female form.’36

An example of the level of wishful thinking and of denial of the effects of years of alcohol and drug abuse on Trungpa among his disciples comes from Walter Fordham, the head of Trungpa’s Household, who claimed ‘it was safe to say that his level of awareness in the environment was unaffected by his alcohol.’37

According to Steinbeck, ‘comments from other lamas about Rinpoche [Trungpa] began to seep in. They finally admitted that for years they had feared for his sanity and thought he had been acting irresponsibly, but no one had spoken out.’ 38 The Dalai Lama in 1989 told Steinbeck privately ‘that he would never trust a guru who claimed, as Rinpoche had, that he could turn alcohol into an elixir.’39 It seems, at least in this case, for some lamas and for the Dalai Lama, that protecting the status quo of Tibetan Buddhism was more important than the harm caused to real people.

One has to wonder if the Dalai Lama or other lamas had publicly shared their own concerns about turning alcohol into an elixir, or many other concerns they may have had about Trungpa and Shambhala, if many people including Trungpa himself, would have been spared much suffering? One also has to wonder if these concerns about Trunga and Shambhala had been shared if the abuse that has been passed from the leadership, generation to generation and that seems to have infected many Shambhala centers could have been avoided. But raising concerns about Trungpa’s actions and sanity would have raised questions about the unquestionable authority of the tulku system and of the authority of high lamas endorsing the next generation of orthodox leaders.

Trungpa’s cremation ceremony took place in May of 1987 attended by roughly three thousand people. Looking back in what seems like a sanitized version of Trungpa’s decline and death, but also acting as a smoke screen of things to come, Trungpa Rinpoche’s son Gesar Mukpo, half-brother of the new head of the Shambhala organization, that is, Sakyong Mipham, stated: ‘My dad … was a drinking madman! How much of a madman are you? How brave are you to really do things? He was a warrior. A warrior with the pen. A warrior with the word. A warrior with the drinking. If you don’t like his drinking, he was a fool, he’s dead. If you don’t mind the drinking thing and think he may have had incredible enlightened wisdom, then you are an eligible candidate for his teachings.’40 We see here the holding up of alcohol abuse as the way to practice. Mukpo is daring Trungpa’s followers to be madmen, which he equates with bravery, warriorship, and a chance for attaining enlightened wisdom. At the time, May 2000, it was not widely known that the Sakyong himself, had alcohol and women abuse problems.

Before taking a closer look at the Sakyong, we first need to look at an intermediate step.

Ösel Tendzin

On August 22, 1976, Vidyadhara the Venerable Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche formally empowered Thomas Rich from Passaic, New Jersey—named Ösel Tendzin by Trungpa—as his Vajra Regent, his dharma heir, successor, and lineage holder in the Karma Kagyü and Nyingma traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. Trungpa Rinpoche bestowed upon him the rather ornate string of names “Karma, Moon of Dharma, Excellent Intellect, Radiant Holder of the Teachings, Victorious in All Directions.”41 Thomas Rich was the first Western Dharma student to be a title holder in these lineages. The Sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, the revered head of the Karma Kagyü lineage, during his 1977 visit to the United States, confirmed Trungpa Rinpoche’s appointment of Thomas Rich, that is, the Vajra Regent as a lineage holder. At the time of Trungpa Rinpoche’s death, August, 1987, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, head of the Nyingma lineage, reconfirmed Thomas Rich as Trungpa Rinpoche’s lineage holder and empowered him with the highest Maha Ati Abhisheka, giving him the name “Lord of Yogins, Coemergent Accomplishment Vajra.”42

Almost like magic, by the words of high lamas, the former Thomas Rich from Passaic, New Jersey was transformed into a lineage holder in both the Kagyü and Nyingma lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, became the leader of Shambhala, the largest sect of Tibetan Buddhism in the West, while being sanctified by the most revered teachers of these sects, capped with a string of exalted sounding names indicating his great spiritual attainment. By any measure of judging, he was crowned by highly respected teachers of Tibetan Buddhism. He too in a word, by the rules of Tibetan Buddhism, like his teacher Trungpa, was the real thing!

Ten years later, in April 1987, Vajra Regent Ösel Tendzin assumed leadership of the Vajradhatu community, following the death of his well-known teacher, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. The same total deference that Trungpa commanded and was given from his American students was transferred to his Dharma heir, Ösel Tendzin.43 ‘His meals were occasions for frenzies of linen-pressing, silver-polishing, hair¬breadth calibrations in table settings, and exact choreographies of servers,’ said television producer Deborah Mendelsohn, who helped host Tendzin when he gave two meditation retreats in Los Angeles, but has since left the community. ‘When he traveled, a handbook went with him to guide his hosts through the particulars of caring for him, including instructions on how and in what order to offer his towel, underpants and robe after he stepped from the shower.’44

Less than two years later in December 1988, Vajradhatu administrators told their members that the Vajra Regent, Ösel Tendzin had been infected with the AIDS virus for nearly three years. Members of the Vajradhatu board of directors conceded that, except for some months of celibacy, he had neither protected his many sexual partners, many of them students, both male and female, as well as male prostitutes, nor did he tell them the truth about his infection with AIDS. The Regent had a penchant for straight young men.45 One of the Regent’s sexual partners, the twenty-year old son of long-term students, was infected, as was a young woman who had later made love to the young man. The young man would later die from AIDS.46

Two members of the Vajradhatu board of directors had known of his infection for more than two years, yet chose to do nothing. Trungpa Rinpoche had also discussed it with him before his death. The Regent added that he came away from that conversation with Trungpa feeling he could “change the karma.” ‘Thinking that I had some extraordinary means of protection,’ Tendzin reportedly told a stunned community meeting organized in Berkeley in mid-December, ‘I went ahead with my business as if something would take care of it for me.’47 Board members had reluctantly informed the sangha (community of practitioners) only after trying for three months to persuade the Regent to act on his own. When asked why he did not realize he could infect someone else with AIDS, he replied: ‘It happened. I don’t expect anybody to try to conceive of it.’48

In spite of their supposed pure wisdom, beyond the understanding of ordinary people, it seems that both Chögyam Trungpa and his chosen heir, the Regent Ösel Tendzin suffered from a similar denial of human limitation, as well as ignorance of their own addictive behavior. There is an irony here as Trungpa described Shambhala practitioners as “warriors” not afraid to face the world, not afraid to face reality, not afraid to acknowledge that people are basically good. Yet both Trungpa and Tendzin did not face their own physical limitations and their addictions to alcohol, drugs, sex, and power and the affects this would have on their disciples who looked to them as wise and compassionate teachers setting an example of enlightened living. It seemed like these teachers and their devotees did not trust their own eyes and ears, but only their imaginations. It is not unrealistic to say that Trungpa and Ösel Tendzin and many of their followers were living in a self created factory of dreams.

The highest-ranking Buddhist to have spoken publicly on Ösel Tendzin’s issue was Kalu Rinpoche (b. 1905 d. 1989), of the Kagyü lineage, a highly respected meditation master known for his compassion and wisdom. He spoke at a meeting of about 100 Buddhists in Los Angeles on December 22, 1988. According to a tape of the meeting recorded by a church member, Kalu Rinpoche, speaking in Tibetan with an English interpreter, said: ‘As all of you know, the Vajra regent has contracted AIDS. And people worry very much about the fact that he might have passed this on to many, many people.’ Yet he then asked members to show compassion for the regent.49 However, there was no mention of compassion for people the Regent infected or may have infected or were realistically worried about becoming infected because of having had sex with him or one of his partners. Not only no compassion, but also that worries of the students’ questioning Ösel Tendzin’s behavior could be detrimental to themselves because this questioning was breaking their samaya vows.

One student asked about repairing their samaya vows broken by the student’s questioning, if even only to herself, the sexual behavior of the Regent.50 These vows are taken very seriously. We already saw Trungpa’s close disciples because of their samaya vows proudly supplying him with alcohol and cocaine as he rushed to early death from abusing his body with just these very substances. So, the samaya vow idea is very complicit in the entire set up of unquestioned hierarchy, abuse, obedience, and secrecy.

Kalu instructed that the Regent Ösel Tendzin was their Lama, that they should follow him, that they in fact needed to repair their “broken vows” to the Regent. He instructed that this can be accomplished by first confessing to him and second by making a promise to themselves and to the Regent that they would not develop this kind of attitude in the future. He added to rely on Ösel Tendzin and to accomplish as much virtue as possible. ‘You should do whatever you can to be helpful to the Vajra Regent Ösel Tendzin to bring him joy. In these ways you can clear away any broken samaya completely.’51

Kalu also forbid any public talk of the Regent’s AIDS problem at his Centers and told Shambhala members not to discuss it as ‘it was neither helping anyone and was only disrupting their meditation and the harmony of the sangha.’52 Kalu also forbade Lama Ken McCleod, a senior student of his, to speak publicly of Ösel Tendzin, which he obeyed.53

Knowing what we now know, it is not surprising that Kalu demanded secrecy. In 1996, June Campbell’s book, Traveler in Space: In Search of Female Identity in Tibetan Buddhism was published. Campbell in her twenties, as a Tibetan studies scholar, spent many years as a student of Kalu Rinpoche and acted as a translator for him. She also wrote that she was a secret consort of his along with at least one other woman, a teenage Tibetan girl. Campbell said Kalu’s sexual life was kept secret aside from one other person though the relationship lasted for years.54 She wrote, ‘it was plainly emphasized that any indiscretion in maintaining silence over our affair might lead to madness, trouble, or even death.’55 Though Kalu lived many years not as a monk after escaping Tibet, according to Campbell, ‘he was afraid of the consequences of revealing his secret life.’56 Several western scholars seemed to be completely ignorant of the hidden life existing within the lama system; in 1993 Kalu was described as a monk. When the biography of this high lama was written there was no mention of Campbell’s name or even references to a metaphorical consort. According to Campbell, ‘the Tibetan system was for all intents and purposes a secret society.’57

However, in terms of keeping secrecy the reincarnated tulku Kalu (b. September 17, 1990) appears to be very different from his former incarnations. During the question and answer period after a talk he gave in 2011 in Vancouver (Canada), the young Kalu was asked about sexual abuse in Tibetan monasteries. Kalu replied that he was sensitive to it because he himself was a victim of sexual abuse. When the interviewer, Joseph Hooper brought up the concept of “inappropriate touching,” the young Kalu laughed edgily. ‘This was hard-core sex, he says, including penetration. Most of the time, they just came alone,’ Kalu said. Kalu continued, ‘They just banged the door harder, and I had to open it. I knew what was going to happen, and after that you become more used to it.’ It wasn’t until Kalu returned to the monastery after his three-year retreat that he realized how wrong this practice was. Kalu said that by then the cycle had begun again on a younger generation of victims. Kalu’s claims of sexual abuse mirror those of Lodoe Senge, an ex-monk and 23-year-old tulku who now lives in Queens, New York.58

After his three year retreat the young Kalu wanted to change his tutor which resulted in an argument with the current tutor: ‘The older monk left in a rage and returned with a foot-long knife. Kalu barricaded himself in his new tutor’s room, but, he says, the enraged monk broke down the door, screaming, “I don’t give a shit about you, your reincarnation. I can kill you right now and we can recognize another boy, another Kalu Rinpoche!” Kalu took refuge in the bathroom, but the tutor broke that door, too. Kalu recalls, “You think, ‘Okay, this is the end, this is it.'” Fortunately, other monks heard the commotion and rushed to restrain the tutor. In the aftermath of the attack, Kalu says, his mother and several of his sisters (Kalu’s father had died when he was a boy) sided with the tutor, making him so distraught that he fled the monastery and embarked on a six-month drug-and-alcohol-fueled bender in Bangkok.’ 59 The reincarnated Kalu was exceedingly brave to expose some of the hidden underbelly of Tibetan Buddhist monastic life while struggling to make sense of his life. Interestingly, here as in other sexual abuse cases, often the family turns away from the victims.

This story related by the young reincarnated Kalu raises a few questions. Was no older monk looking out or watching over and guiding the young Kalu? If there was, was it just accepted practice that young tulkus or monks to be would be sexually abused? On what grounds was his tutor picked who so easily was ready to kill Kalu for rejecting him as his tutor? Was there no consequence for the tutor attempting to kill Kalu which also was known by at least a few older monks? As Kalu mentioned after coming out of his retreat, ‘the cycle had continued on a younger generation of victims,’ so it seems that the sexual abuse of young boys by older monks was quite open and seemingly common and accepted practice. It appears there are some deep problems that are internally well known in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries but hidden from the public.

However, it was not only the older Kalu who instructed secrecy. When the editor Rick Fields of the Vajradhatu Sun, the official paper of the organization, prepared a short article describing the bare bones of the Ösel Tendzin crisis, he was forbidden to print it. ‘There have been ongoing discussions, both within community meetings and among many individuals, about the underlying issues that permitted the current situation to occur,’ read the banned article. ‘Those issues include the abuse of power and the betrayal of trust, the proper relationship between teachers with spiritual authority and students, particularly in the West, and the relationship between devotion and critical intelligence on the spiritual path.’ In March, Fields again attempted to run his article but this time he was fired by the Vajra Regent. When the board of directors refused to support him, he formally resigned.60

With all these major problems in the Shambhala lineage, the Steinbecks had hoped the Dalai Lama or other lineage heads would speak out, but they too maintained silence and offered no consequences to renegade lamas. The Dalai Lama told the Steinbecks, ‘The student has to take the responsibility of examining the behavior of the teacher very carefully, over a long period. You cannot be hasty about these things.’ In a sense, Steinbeck wrote, ‘the Dalai Lama was blaming the student, which so commonly happens in blaming the victim in any abusive situation?’61

Steinbeck continued, ‘by deliberately ignoring the situation, in what appears to be a fearful political ploy, these titular deities, these so-called God Kings are adding to the confusion instead of delineating clear moral guidelines. Their concern about the truth leaking out, which might drain their monastic coffers, flies in the face of all the teachings and vows they give concerning “right action.”‘62

At the suggestion of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Ösel Tendzin went into private retreat in California but, like the older Kalu Rinpoche, he too urged Vajradhatu students to respect the Regent’s authority as their lama.63 On October 17, 1989 Dilgo wrote, ‘Those who are experiencing difficulties following the Regent now should realize that it is necessary to do so…’64 It is necessary, he explained, because Trungpa appointed him and the Karmapa confirmed it. How Ösel Tendzin lived and interacted with people for the previous ten years did not matter at all. At any rate on August 25, 1990 the Vajra Regent Ösel Tendzin passed away.

After the death of Ösel Tendzin, Dilgo Khyentse Rimpoche and the lineage holders of the Kagyü lineage were all in agreement that the Sawang Ösel Rangdröl Mukpo, Chögyam Trungpa’s oldest son, should become the lineage holder of Vajradhatu.65

https://openbuddhism.org/tibetan-buddhism-enters-the-21st-century-trouble-in-shangri-la/