Abuse in Rigpa

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Jack, modified 5 Years ago at 11/12/18 2:57 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 11/12/18 2:57 AM

Abuse in Rigpa

Posts: 8 Join Date: 8/16/18 Recent Posts
Dear all. 

I have had the opportunity to work with some people on the problem of student abuse in Rigpa. So I have opted to focus on that for the upcoming conference, rather than on women in pragmatic dharma. Thanks to everyone for your stories, I'm really grateful. I'll return to them and to you at a later point. 

It's really important to be having the conversation about student abuse at the moment, and we've had our paper proposal "Personal reflections from women involved in Rigpa and the aftershocks of the fall of Sogyal Rinpoche" accepted for the conference, so we are working on that. It's obviously quite full on for the people involved. 

If you've any comments to make on this subject, please do. Many thanks, I hope everyone is doing well. Jack.

(If you want to email personally, my email is iamjackwicks at gmail dot com)
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Jack, modified 5 Years ago at 11/12/18 3:12 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 11/12/18 3:07 AM

RE: Abuse in Rigpa

Posts: 8 Join Date: 8/16/18 Recent Posts
This is the abstract for it.... the authors are myself and two other women. 

In July 2017 eight senior students of well-known Tibetan Buddhist teacher Sogyal Rinpoche, founder of Rigpa and author of the best-selling Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, wrote their teacher a letter which soon went viral and sent shockwaves through the Buddhist community worldwide. The detailed 12 page letter outlined years of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse of students and the use of donations to support an extravagant and gluttonous lifestyle. In the wake of the public scandal, including the response from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Sogyal Rinpoche stood aside from his position.

Yet the Rigpa community remains deeply divided, with many students within the organisation choosing to remain loyal to their former Guru and eager to justify his behaviour in terms of Vajrayana teachings on Guru devotion. A number of Tibetan lamas have expressed similar support for the former head of Rigpa.

We present personal reflections from women involved in Rigpa as they attempt to heal their personal and practice lives after the devastating loss of faith in their teacher. A common theme is the harm that his actions, and his manipulative use of Buddhist teachings to justify them, wrought upon the lives of so many sincere practitioners. They reject the notion that his violent and abusive behaviour has any place within Vajrayana Buddhism or within any ethical framework based on the teachings of the Buddha.