Hi,

could someone please briefly explain to me what is the nature of "controversy" with Christoher, and maybe link me to some articles about it? 

Daniel briefly mentions it in a footnote in MCTB2 ("Yes, I am aware of the controversy regarding Christopher Titmuss.", MCTB2, CH48. footnote 1)

And to not blow this foot note out of proportion, Daniel has nothing but praise for this, by so many accounts, amazing teacher.

("...Christopher Titmuss himself, for whom I have profound gratitude. His embodiment of awakening as a living truth was palpable, open, and inspiring. His cultivation of awakened teachers around him who were from not only various strains of Buddhism, but also from traditions outside Buddhism, embodied a spirit of pragmatism and non-dogmatism regarding awakening as a human right rather than the property of some religion—that was a rare example of what is possible in terms of dharma cooperation. His message of engagement with life in all its rich and complex tragicomic glory, delivered from a place of awakening and encompassing a full range of powerfully articulated emotional reactions to a wide range of real-world topics, modeled lessons that it would take me years to assimilate.")

Alright, yes, legit question, deserves a legit answer.

First, I should say that I really, really, really appreciate Christopher Titmuss, got stream entry sitting with Christopher Titmuss, did four retreats with Christopher Titmuss and crew back in the day, one of which was my first retreat ever, and spent two months at Gaia House back when he was one of the directors/cofounders. He helped me tremendously on the path, being among my first serious meditation teachers along with Sharda and the rest of his crew. My gratitude for him and those other teachers is profound.

That said, when I stayed at Gaia House and after discussions with some other people who were there back in the day, the rumor was that he was unusually friendly to and attention-giving to younger pretty female meditators. He apparently defended himself saying it was all benign, that there was nothing wrong at all with his giving people attention as teacher, and apparently couldn't see what they were talking about. Those I personally spoke with then, who were also dharma teachers at Gaia House and who were intimately involved in these discussions, said he seemed to have some obvious blind spot around this.

I personally never witnessed this sort of thing occur during the whole time I sat with him, but I am not and never was a young pretty female. I very much do not wish to in any way discount the points of view of those who felt something in his interactions with young, pretty females was inappropriate. Whether or not it ever went farther than simply giving more attention to them, I do not know.

I do know that some on the inside of the world of insight meditation teaching told me that Gaia House booted him out of his role prominent at Gaia House due to this issue, but that was decades ago, and its relevance to the 20 or so year older version of Christopher Titmuss, I also don't know. Again, this is all second-hand, so I must be careful. Still, you asked, and the rumors are out there, and this is their origin, so far as I know, and this is an era when such topics are getting a lot of weight and importance, and rightly so, but I am hesitant to be sure I know how significant those issues from the past are to the living man himself today. Helpful?

Does Christopher have a number children? With how many women? Has he ever been married? While I am not directly pointing at Christopher, my impression is the Western Vipassana Mafia scene was/is a "swinging" scene. I recall living in a Thai monastery where a certain Western monk disrobed & went to live in IMS (USA) as a "teacher" and suddenly he was hooked up with a female IMS teacher who was once a student at the same Thai monastery. As a young Buddhist, I found it rather strange. But as a became older, I got the impression the Western Vipasana Mafia is a "swinging" scene. Jack Kornfield, self-admittedly, was once a womanizer as a teacher; a certain American Mahasi student teacher who I won't name had a reputation as a womanizer. Noah Levine is certainly from this Vipassana Mafia Lineage. Since I don't follow the scene, that is the only "gossip" I am aware of. 

I appreciate the honesty and balance of that answer.

I know nothing about any "swinging scene" in the Western Vipassana teacher community from that far back in the day, and, while not a true insider, am prone to hearing rumors about that sort of thing when it occurs, and have heard nothing. That doesn't mean it hasn't occurred, but, if it has, I know nothing about it.

Yes, Noah has gotten a reputation, true, but, again, I believe that investigation is ongoing?, and all my knowledge of him is superficial and only based on what speculation and accusation is available easily in the public domain. I personally know no rumors regarding Jack and womanizing.

Christopher has one grown daughter, I believe. I do not know the specifics of his relationship to her mother beyond that, in the mid 90's when I was hanging out with him, they were no longer together. He used to talk about his daughter when giving dharma talks, specifically mentioning the numerous lessons parenthood gives in letting go, patience, etc. He also mentioned negative impressions of marriage in some dharma talks.

Although I'm open to the reality that there can be womanizers amongst vipassana teachers, I fail to see "womanizing" in the examples you give. Being hooked with a female teacher from the same monastery at a meditation center sounds more like either a match-making situation or they just met and got together. What's wrong with that? And to my knowledge, Jack Kornfield fell in love with one female student and they got together quite officially, with no hidden agenda or dual relationship. Again, nothing wrong with that. I think he's always made his romantic involvements clear and ethical, for all we know.

IMS has an ethics code regarding sexuality that says it's ok for a teacher to develop a romantic relationship with a student, provided certain ethical criterias are respected, such as making the relationship clear and official and ending the official teacher-student relationship.

I think it's quite ok for a single vipassana yogi to look for... well, someone that has common values and practices, and therefore, another vipassana yogi.

And may I know why you call it the Western Vipassana Mafia? I have my own critique of the movement but I wonder why you would call it a "mafia"?

Thanks, Daniel. Certainly helpful.

That footnote left a nagging question in my subconsciousness, so i needed some information on that as i am planning to go on a retreat with Christopeher : )

And now that I understand better the nature of this "controversy", it's easier for me to make a decision.

With all due respect to disgusting and harmful behavior and mentality that women face from men even within buddhist environments (like you wrote, Lust for Enlightenment by John Stevens is a good book on the topic), there seems to be very little information to go by here, and the only ones who know what happened (and whether or not anything bad/unwise actually happened) is Christopher, and those lady retreatants.

On the other hand, there is a surplus of information from people who are very thankful for his guidance.

While I agree that it is mostly men that sexually exploit their students and positions of power in this particular way, women do this also occasionally.

Case in point, some people I know who are in a cult (and happy about it) did recently mention that the female leader of this cult did end up in a relationship with one of her students when the dogma in this cult was that such things weren't supposed to happen, and of course the cult leader rationalized it all in spiritual mumbo jumbo terms. I am sure it is more complicated than that, as these things often are, but the point about the possible abuse of power and sex not being so perfectly confined to males remains.

I came across this thread and even though it’s old, I thought I’d post.

I practiced with Christopher regularly for 32 years (1976 - 2008). I found him ahead of his time as teacher in a number of respects and for years I found him inspiring. In the years he was first suspended from Gaia House and then invited back and then later no longer invited to teach, I was organising visits to Australia for him and organising and managing retreats for him. This was the late 1990s and early 2000s.

One of the senior teachers here (Australia) and myself were very aware what was happening in overseas centres with Christopher (Gaia House, IMS, Spirit Rock) and we looked closely at what had happened and questioned whether we should go ahead with bringing him out.

The biggest of the issues with women that led to Christopher’s first suspension from Gaia House was that he started a sexual relationship with a student during a retreat. That retreat was held in noble silence and under the five precepts. The woman made a complaint to Gaia House. The complaint was quite some time after the event. Christopher said that he had travelled on a train with the woman and she had been a friend as well as a student.

There were a series of other complaints about Christopher made to Gaia House by women.

In the earlier years, 1980s and early 1990s, Christopher, at least in Australia, would invite  attractive women students out for walks with him during a retreat. When asked about it, he would say that particular student had considerable potential on the dharma path and so it was fitting that the student got more attention. Many of us just smiled and rolled our eyes at this.

To put Christopher’s behavior in context, the power issues in teacher student relationships were less discussed and seen as less of an issue in the 1980s and early 90s than in later years.
It was well before the me too movement.

Christopher was also a very dedicated teacher and it was pre-internet. So it wouldn’t have been so easy to meet a suitable partner outside of dharma events where he was in a teacher role.

To his credit, Christopher did have a session on each retreat for a year after he was suspended where he talked about the suspension and the reason. He was open to a degree. In that session in Australia, he talked about how he was described as being in denial about the issues, but he also questioned the whole idea of denial.

It appeared a big deal when Christopher was suspended from Gaia House. He was one of the founders of Gaia House and had put enormous effort into raising funds to buy the large building that is currently Gaia House. My understanding is that suspending one of the founding teachers was not a decision that Gaia House took lightly.

IMS followed Gaia House and dis-invited Christopher from teaching. Spirit Rock kept Christopher as a teacher for a while but with someone they (or at least one of the founding Spirit Rock teachers)  described as a chaperone.

Christopher was invited back to Gaia House on the condition that their complaints committee didn’t have to deal with any more complaints from women about him. It was not a matter of whether the complaint was seen to be justified, but simply whether there was another complaint. There was another complaint, from a woman student Christopher had gone walking with before a retreat. Some of us in Australia looked at this complaint carefully, and listened to what Christopher said about it. It was made by a woman for whom English wasn’t her first language. It’s possible it was a misunderstanding but hard to know just from the words that were said. It was after that we decided to go ahead with our program with Christopher but put in place a clear complaints procedure and ways of monitoring what was happening in the program. I got some flak from people who thought I shouldn’t have gone ahead.

It’s a long time ago, but maybe some of the themes are still worth looking at years later.

Here’s a couple of themes.

1. In his autobiography - from what I hear - Christopher talks about not being concerned with the eight worldly winds. Two of them are praise and blame. A question that has been asked here - in relation to Christopher - is whether being unconcerned by blame led him to being less likely to take criticism seriously.

2. What is appropriate right speech in a situation like this? I went through all the Gaia House newsletters from the period once and I couldn’t see anything that talked about Christopher being suspended or the reason for the suspension. Maybe talking about it was - and is - seen as gossip. As far as I know there is nothing about this aspect of Christopher’s life on the web, apart from this thread.
Is there a risk that right speech can lead to a white-wash of sorts?

Also, in terms of patterns of behavior, it’s sometimes the case if someone has a pattern of using their power in one area in ways that are not appropriate, they use their power in other ways that are not appropriate. I think it’s worth keeping an eye out for this.                      

And, in closing, Christopher has inspired many people I know.

Thanks Victor for taking the time to write that. 

This seems wild to me. It's not trying to fix what could be seen as problematic behavior, its making sure you don't hear about it. I don't get why they just didn't tell him not to do 1-1 walks with girls? (or any activity outside the retreat structure)

This seems super suspect to me. Like it seems very clear that you wouldnt want to publish that you're suspending one of the founding members because it would be very damaging to the reputation of the organization. It seems like they are trying to sweep under the rug that 1. they had such a big problem 2. that they weren't really equipped enough to deal with the problem

As someone whose lineage includes a number of the most controversial teachers of the last century and a number of teachers who have taught sexual yoga for decades without a single complaint, I feel I must say two wildly different things...

First off, if a grown person enters into a structural agreement, for example the rules of a retreat or the rules of an organisation, they must honor those rules, if they don't then they are not fit to be participating in that kind of structure and they should not be advertising themselves as someone who is available to work within that kind of structure. This is non-negotiable and obvious. 

I agree with Ben above that like minded people have every right to look for each other, but, Christopher, being an enterprising and influential person in the scene surely could have found much more suitable events, occassions, etc to do so. 

Secondly, Adi Da often said, for those who were hungriest, for those who were really going to get after it, "you have to suffer the guru", meaning, not that you should put up with bad behavior but that no guru is perfect, they come with imperfections baked in (not to mention varying levels of attainment) and frankly the amount of people you will have the good fortune to come into contact with, who really have it, who can really teach it, are quite few.

I feel blessed to have found the pragmatic dharma community. Here I have found great camraderie and instruction and nobody seems to be a degenerate lunatic but, that being said, there are plenty times in my life I have willingly suffered a little lunacy in search of good dharma. I can be grateful for teachers and their influence on my life, I can be comfortable reading, practicing and sharing their quality dharma and still openly communicate their degenerate lunacy. One does not have to preclude the other.  

Andrew Callaghan seems to have done some fairly coercive stuff yet I still think he might be one of the best investigative journalists of our time. It's odd but somehow these things can coexist. People can be bad and good at the same time. Isn't that strange.