women in pragmatic dharma

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Jack, modified 5 Years ago at 8/16/18 12:42 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 8/16/18 12:39 AM

women in pragmatic dharma

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

I'm looking at writing a conference paper on women involved in 'pragmatic dharma'.  

I'd love to get in touch with any woman who has been involved. I am, by the way, also a woman although my name is Jack! 

Please email iamjackwicks at gmail dot com.

Whether your involvement with pragmatic dharma has been for a short or long time, on again and off again, or combined with other flavors of dharma or any other (loosely defined) spiritual practices, I'd love to hear from you.

I'd really like to gauge what drew you to it and what benefits or down-sides you think it has over other more conventional modes of practice. What you feel that you have gained from it? I'm also interested in getting a general picture of your practice: what you've tried, how long you've been practicing, and what stage you think you might be at.  

I'd like to talk to women no matter the extent of their involvement or the stage they believe themselves to be at. 

I'm also very interested in your view of practicing via online communities such as the Dharma Overground, or via long distance student-teacher relationships. 
 
Thank you so much and I'd be really glad to hear from you. Jack. 
Keshin lu, modified 5 Years ago at 8/16/18 2:35 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 8/16/18 2:35 AM

RE: women in pragmatic dharma

Posts: 34 Join Date: 7/31/18 Recent Posts
Hi sister

I have my own fb group....living Dhamma, where I’m now sharing my journey.  

Please come, and share

keshin 
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Jack, modified 5 Years ago at 8/16/18 3:12 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 8/16/18 3:12 AM

RE: women in pragmatic dharma

Posts: 8 Join Date: 8/16/18 Recent Posts
van lu:
Hi sister

I have my own fb group....living Dhamma, where I’m now sharing my journey.  

Please come, and share

keshin 


thank you keshin, it's beautiful. 
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Laurel Carrington, modified 5 Years ago at 8/16/18 8:19 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 8/16/18 8:18 AM

RE: women in pragmatic dharma

Posts: 439 Join Date: 4/7/14 Recent Posts
Hey Jack, it’s me! Great to see you here. You know me pretty well, but I can also answer your questions.

First of all, I know it’s been said that pragmatic dharma and sites like this one are off-putting or even hostile for women. That may have been true a few years ago, but I don’t see it happening now. FWIW, I never felt alienated, but I did feel somewhat intimidated at first and fearful that I’d say something dumb and get jumped on without mercy. Then I started quarreling ferociously with people during The Troubles (details entirely unnecessary). Both extremes are counterproductive. 

I was attracted to this practice in the first place after reading MCTB. I had reached the end of my rope with chronic anxiety and phobias and decided to jump in with both feet. What attracted me was the promise of real transformation, as opposed to one more fruitless effort at stress reduction. It bore fruit beyond my wildest imaginings. I posted a practice thread on Kenneth Folk Dharma, checked in on here from time to time, and went at it. Now I am both here and on Awakenet Network, where I maintain a thread. I have a blog, and post updates here and on AN, as well as FB and Twitter. The blog is at the point of my beginning my practice. It is due a new post in the next few days. 

I think there was some critique in the past to the effect that the emphasis on technique, the gung-ho “let’s get this done” approach, and some of the old graphics were hyper-masculinist, as well as some of the language in MCTB. Personally, I never had a problem participating in predominantly male communities in my early academic career, so I was not bothered. Now there are a lot more women both here and in academia, and times have changed. Nothing is permanent, we must all remember! Let me know what kinds of details you’d like. 
Alice S, modified 5 Years ago at 8/16/18 12:51 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 8/16/18 12:51 PM

RE: women in pragmatic dharma

Posts: 34 Join Date: 9/27/17 Recent Posts
Hi Jack!

I’ll be in touch via your email addy. There are specifics I’d like to share that I don’t want to share on the forum- teacher names, retreat centers etc.  Most are good, but as I currently remain directly involved with them, I’d like to keep my anonymity to some degree! 

I hope we get to get to read the paper.  I’m intrigued! 
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Jack, modified 5 Years ago at 8/16/18 10:12 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 8/16/18 10:12 PM

RE: women in pragmatic dharma

Posts: 8 Join Date: 8/16/18 Recent Posts
Alice S:
Hi Jack!

I’ll be in touch via your email addy. There are specifics I’d like to share that I don’t want to share on the forum- teacher names, retreat centers etc.  Most are good, but as I currently remain directly involved with them, I’d like to keep my anonymity to some degree! 

I hope we get to get to read the paper.  I’m intrigued! 

That's brilliant Alice, thank you.  It is intriguing isn't it. I'm so interested in the stories of people's journey into dharma. All the trials and tribulations, challenges, and 'unusual' experiences. How it affected people's lives outside of practice, such as work and family roles. And absolutely yes, you would get to read it. Ultimately I would hope for it to be available in some form or another for anyone to read. My favoured approach would be to present case-studies of particular women and their experiences. These can be anonymized to the extent that participants prefer. Participants may share as little or as much information about themselves as they feel comfortable doing. Anything shared with me is entirely confidential and nothing would be included in any paper etc except what participants give me permission to share with others. Each case study would be presented under a pseudonym or if participants prefer, under their real first name. 

I would appreciate something written first off and then to gain greater insight via, for example, skype.

Thanks for your interest Alice and I look forward to hearing from you :-) 
Jack.
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Jack, modified 5 Years ago at 8/16/18 10:23 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 8/16/18 10:23 PM

RE: women in pragmatic dharma

Posts: 8 Join Date: 8/16/18 Recent Posts
Laurel Carrington:
Hey Jack, it’s me! Great to see you here. You know me pretty well, but I can also answer your questions.

First of all, I know it’s been said that pragmatic dharma and sites like this one are off-putting or even hostile for women. That may have been true a few years ago, but I don’t see it happening now. FWIW, I never felt alienated, but I did feel somewhat intimidated at first and fearful that I’d say something dumb and get jumped on without mercy. Then I started quarreling ferociously with people during The Troubles (details entirely unnecessary). Both extremes are counterproductive. 

I was attracted to this practice in the first place after reading MCTB. I had reached the end of my rope with chronic anxiety and phobias and decided to jump in with both feet. What attracted me was the promise of real transformation, as opposed to one more fruitless effort at stress reduction. It bore fruit beyond my wildest imaginings. I posted a practice thread on Kenneth Folk Dharma, checked in on here from time to time, and went at it. Now I am both here and on Awakenet Network, where I maintain a thread. I have a blog, and post updates here and on AN, as well as FB and Twitter. The blog is at the point of my beginning my practice. It is due a new post in the next few days. 

I think there was some critique in the past to the effect that the emphasis on technique, the gung-ho “let’s get this done” approach, and some of the old graphics were hyper-masculinist, as well as some of the language in MCTB. Personally, I never had a problem participating in predominantly male communities in my early academic career, so I was not bothered. Now there are a lot more women both here and in academia, and times have changed. Nothing is permanent, we must all remember! Let me know what kinds of details you’d like. 
Hi there you!  Yes I was going to contact you personally and see if you'd be willing to share your story. Thanks for what you've written here. And thanks for reminding me of the idea some have had, and perhaps still have, of it being masculine focused. I'm with you in that not really being a game changer for me personally. I'm interested to find out about Awakenet Network; will check it out. 

Thanks again, will be in touch. Jack.
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Jack, modified 5 Years ago at 8/16/18 10:33 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 8/16/18 10:33 PM

RE: women in pragmatic dharma

Posts: 8 Join Date: 8/16/18 Recent Posts
Jack:
Hi all. 

I'm looking at writing a conference paper on women involved in 'pragmatic dharma'.  

I'd love to get in touch with any woman who has been involved. I am, by the way, also a woman although my name is Jack! 

Please email iamjackwicks at gmail dot com.

Whether your involvement with pragmatic dharma has been for a short or long time, on again and off again, or combined with other flavors of dharma or any other (loosely defined) spiritual practices, I'd love to hear from you.

I'd really like to gauge what drew you to it and what benefits or down-sides you think it has over other more conventional modes of practice. What you feel that you have gained from it? I'm also interested in getting a general picture of your practice: what you've tried, how long you've been practicing, and what stage you think you might be at.  

I'd like to talk to women no matter the extent of their involvement or the stage they believe themselves to be at. 

I'm also very interested in your view of practicing via online communities such as the Dharma Overground, or via long distance student-teacher relationships. 
 
Thank you so much and I'd be really glad to hear from you. Jack. 
I will add that I would be really pleased to also hear from transgender or non-binary gendered people also for this particular study. 

Also, to all the men out there, I do not wish to be sexist: this particular request has a gendered focus simply because it is in the context of a conference for Buddhist women, that is all :-)
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Noah D, modified 5 Years ago at 8/17/18 5:37 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 8/17/18 5:37 PM

RE: women in pragmatic dharma

Posts: 1211 Join Date: 9/1/16 Recent Posts
Hi Jack - If you email me at seattlespuds at gmail dot com, I might be able to help you expand the pool of individuals you could ask.  
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Jun W, modified 5 Years ago at 8/21/18 1:51 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 8/21/18 1:50 AM

RE: women in pragmatic dharma

Posts: 6 Join Date: 8/21/18 Recent Posts
Hi Jack, I'll email you. I lurk on this site for a bit. Made an account just now.
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Jack, modified 5 Years ago at 11/12/18 2:56 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 11/12/18 2:48 AM

Abuse in Rigpa

Posts: 8 Join Date: 8/16/18 Recent Posts
# created new thread for this #

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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JohnM, modified 4 Years ago at 7/3/19 5:29 AM
Created 4 Years ago at 7/3/19 5:29 AM

RE: Abuse in Rigpa

Posts: 87 Join Date: 1/7/18 Recent Posts
Thank you for this thread. I just watched this remarkable video released today by former Sogyal/Rigpa practitioner Tahlia Newland, whose book Fallout: Recovering from Abuse in Tibetan Buddhism drops later this month. Having dealt extensively with the negative impacts of a sociopathic teacher, Tahlia now talks about how her dedication to practice (devotion to the teachings, not the teacher) helped her to come away with a very positive outcome from working with a very negative teacher. Having gone through something very similar myself with similar results but little ability to articulate myself on the topic, Tahlia's mature, balanced view is extremely welcome and healing. Well worth watching in its entirety for anyone who has suffered at the hands of sociopaths posing as spiritual teachers. I hope it helps you as it has helped me. Am benefiting from a wonderful online discussion with Tahlia as of this writing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU6eYtsyrCg

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