trauma Archives - Beyond the Temple

August 28, 2018

SOGYAL RINPOCHE & THE JIMMY SAVILLE PROBLEM

This week we have another guest post by Jo Green. The two key questions are ones that I’ve heard asked many times by people unwilling to accept that Sogyal did actually abuse his students. This post shows just how possible it is for evil to lurk below an apparently benefical exterior.
TWO KEY QUESTIONS
“He brought so much benefit to so many people – how could he be a bad person?”
“If the allegations are true, how come nothing been proved in court?”
I have seen these two questions and variations upon them asked almost daily since last year’s revelations exposed the extent of abuse by Sogyal Rinpoche. They are asked by those who seek to protect his reputation at all costs, but they are also asked by a large number of people who are sincerely trying to make sense of the dissonance between their personal experiences and the accounts they’ve heard.
That’s why I thought it would be useful to tell the story of another person who certainly brought benefit to many people and whose reputation was never challenged in court, yet – if justice had been done – should probably have spent most of his life in jail. I think it may shed a lot of light on those two questions.

THE GREAT PHILANTHROPIST
Although he’s not much known outside the UK, there probably isn’t an adult in Britain who doesn’t know who Jimmy Savile was. Whether you thought he was great or he drove you crazy, everybody was familiar with his tracksuits, bling, cigars, Tarzan impressions and catchphrases. He said that he played the clown in public so that he felt accessible to everybody, but he was highly intelligent.
At the time of his death in October 2011 at the age of 84, he had long been SIR Jimmy Savile and the newspaper obituaries spoke with one voice: “Disc jockey, television presenter and tireless fundraiser for charity”, “Flamboyant disc jockey with a flair for good works”, “Exuberant disc jockey and TV personality who harnessed his cigar-chomping public persona to raise millions of pounds for charity” and so on. It was estimated he had raised up to £40m for good causes, as well as giving away a considerable slice of his personal income.
From a humble background, he went on to present the very first edition of the legendary Top of the Pops on the BBC in 1964 and would be there to present the last in 2006, with endless appearances in between, plus regular slots on Radio 1. At Saturday tea times, his show Jim’ll Fix It was the nation’s family viewing. In this programme, viewers wrote in – usually children – and asked him to help their dreams come true: be it meeting their sporting hero or eating lunch on a rollercoaster. This he did, across hundreds of editions over 18 years.
But Savile chose to do something truly remarkable with his fame and fortune: he used it as leverage to generate money and attention for a variety of charitable causes, working ceaselessly to fundraise for them. During the war he was sent down the mines, where he sustained a spinal injury, requiring a long period of recuperation. In recognition of this, he dedicated special effort to supporting the spinal injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, bringing many millions to them over the years, helping to turn it into a world-class institution. But he also did epic charity bike rides and ran marathons in aid of many charities.
He volunteered at Leeds General Hospital and at Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital. Such was the frequency of his visits to both institutions that he had his own room to stay in. He was eventually made a junior health minister under Margaret Thatcher, appointed to head a task force to oversee the management of Broadmoor hospital after its board was suspended.
He was a friend of Prince Charles. Margaret Thatcher got him knighted by the Queen in 1990 and that same year, as a lifelong Catholic, he was given a Papal Knighthood by Pope John Paul II. These last two events were widely regarded as closing the book on the rumours there had been about him, since people are thoroughly vetted before receiving such honours. But rumours there were.

RUMOURS BECOME FACT
When a well-respected journalist, Lynn Barber, dared to tell Savile that “What people say is that you like little girls,” even after his knighthood, she was widely criticised. Savile answered the claim expertly and it rested there. A decade later, Louis Theroux – an interviewer specialising in difficult subjects, who made My Scientology Movie – spent a long time filming with Savile and brought up the same questions, but found no evidence of wrongdoing. He continued to meet with Savile over the years and later acknowledged to Savile’s victims how completely he had been hoodwinked. Because victims there were. Many.
A year after Savile’s death, ITV broadcast “The Other Side of Jimmy Savile” which, for the first time, aired accounts from women who said they had been abused by him. A police investigation started the very next day. Ten weeks later they revealed the extent of the allegations they had received:
450 victims had contacted them. They had identified 199 crimes in 17 police force areas, including 31 allegations of rape. 82% of those to come forward were female, 80% had been children or young people at the time of the incidents. Staff at Broadmoor claimed he had engaged in necrophiliac acts with corpses in the mortuary.
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary later concluded that 214 of these complaints would have been criminal offences, had they been reported at the time. Sixteen victims reported being raped by Savile when under the age of consent, another ten when over 16. Four of these victims had been under the age of ten at the time. It’s thought his oldest abuse victim was 75.
There had already been reports to the police over the years and there had been many issues raised by people who worked alongside him in hospitals or in the media. All the signs had been there, with alarm bells having been rung at various significant moments, right back to the 1960s. An independent report for the BBC listed five significant times they had missed opportunities to identify and stop the abuse. But none of these individually had seemed a strong enough basis on which to take any action. Then there was the high esteem Savile was held in publicly – what is referred to as the “halo” effect. And then there was the potential loss of income to charities if accusations came out – the “benefit” Savile brought.

THE VALUE OF “BENEFIT”
People talk a lot about “the benefit Sogyal Rinpoche has brought to sentient beings”. Some might point to the fact that he introduced people to meditation and the nature of mind, whereas Savile was just an entertainer. But imagine for a moment you had lost the use of your legs in an accident and were in Stoke Mandeville Hospital. Would you be happier to hear the doctor tell you:
“We’re able to give you a treatment to help you walk again.”
Or “Sogyal Rinpoche is coming to visit you to introduce you to the nature of mind.”?
The benefit Sogyal Rinpoche has brought to the Dharma is highly debatable. Whatever he may have done to get people interested in Buddhism is now being radically undone because of his behaviour. I have recently spoken to many people who have been completely put off Buddhism by hearing these things and concluding that in the end it seems as abusive as any other religion.
Neither Sogyal nor Rigpa have shown much interest in helping any cause outside of the world of Tibetan Buddhism. True, they make some donations for the lives of animals to be spared. Then Sogyal orders another steak. So, in the practical or financial sense, there’s not much benefit to the world at large.
By contrast, the benefit Jimmy Savile brought is quantifiable: thousands of people helped in many practical ways, down the years – people healed, lives saved. By contrast, Sogyal founded his fame on talking about dealing with illness and death but was far more reluctant to set foot in a hospital. Of course, had Jimmy Savile been arrested and imprisoned for his abusive behaviour back in the 1960s, those institutions might not have received that benefit. So, are we to conclude that it was a good thing he went to his grave without ever being caught?
I don’t believe there is a charity or hospital out there that would consider child abuse or rape an acceptable price to pay for some extra funds. Most of the recipients of Savile’s help could surely have found financial support through other means, just as most Rigpa students could have been introduced to Buddhist ideas by a teacher that did not abuse a significant minority of his students. One could argue that without Savile, Stoke Mandeville would not be what it is today, just as without Sogyal Rinpoche there would be no beautiful Buddhist temple at Lerab Ling. So, are these structures worth a lifetime of suffering for the victims of abuse? Does that somehow make it OK? I hope nobody reading this thinks so.

THE HALO EFFECT
Jimmy Savile was a popular public figure and had dealings with thousands of people. To most, he was a comical, eccentric celebrity. Those he abused were just a very small percentage. Far more people got some kind of benefit by being associated with him. Most people attending teachings from Sogyal in that temple or at Rigpa centres would come to no harm whatsoever and might well come away feeling they had learnt something important. But many of those who found themselves alone with the teacher or the celebrity were having an entirely different experience – experiences that would leave them traumatised.
If the Queen or the Pope or the Dalai Lama or Richard Gere appears to endorse you, then it can be very, very hard for victims to be believed when they speak up and recount experiences that don’t fit with the public image at all. And if nobody joins all the dots between a multitude of acts occurring at different times in different places, then a skilful perpetrator can appear completely untouchable.

THE CHALLENGE OF JUSTICE
Most people who have been abused have little or no motivation to be retraumatised by the process of police interrogation and being publicly exposed in a courtroom. It takes a very brave person to do that, and the minimum they need is a sense they will be believed and that others will rally around them. When each victim feels isolated and disbelieved they also feel powerless to go up against figures who stand as tall as a Sogyal Rinpoche or a Jimmy Savile. So, it is entirely possible for there to exist hundreds of victims and crimes, and yet there not be a single court challenge.
Of course, I am not for one moment suggesting that Sogyal Rinpoche did the same things as Jimmy Savile, but it must be stressed that we currently do not know the full extent of what Sogyal did. In the Savile case we see that rumours swirling for decades and occasional instances of people raising concerns or reporting incidents proved indicative of an almost unimaginably large catalogue of crimes. We do not know if this may prove to be the case with Sogyal Rinpoche as well.
Those people who worked closely with Savile for long periods of time seemed to simply refuse to believe what they heard or, sometimes, the evidence of their own eyes. There seem to be a number in the Rigpa leadership who are still doing the same. In a few days’ time, if the report of the investigation by Lewis Silkin paints an honest picture, then one of the things it is likely to conclude is that what we know so far is only scratching the surface and there is much more yet to be revealed.

Private discussion on this and other related topics can be had on our What Now Facebook Group. It is only for current and previous students of Rigpa, however, and we do moderate it closely. If you’re interested in joining, please contact us via the contact page and ask for an invite.
People from other sanghas can join the Beyond the Temple Facebook Group . It’s a support group for anyone who has left their Buddhist sangha after hearing revelations of abuse by their teacher or after experiencing such abuse. It’s for people who see ethical behaviour, love, compassion and introspection as the core of their spiritual path. The focus is not on the abuses, but on ourselves and our spiritual life as we recover from our experience of spiritual abuse and look to the future. Click here and request to join.
The What Now? Reference Material page has links to a wealth of articles in the topics related to abuse in Buddhist communities. For links to places to assist in healing from abuse see the sangha care resources page.
Those of you who are interested in ‘keeping Buddhism clean’ could ‘Like’ the Dharma Protectors Facebook page, which posts links to related articles as they come to hand.

June 11, 2018

What it's like to be in the line of Sogyal's fire: a personal testimony.

Later on in this post I share a video interview I did with ex-monk Sangye Nawang in which he tells us just what it was like to be in the firing line of Sogyal Rinpoche’s temper, but first some introduction to help explain why students entered into a close relationship with their guru.

The fire analogy

One of the teachings that I remember on a student’s relationship to a lama is the fire analogy. It goes something like this: If you’re too far from the lama you won’t feel the heat; it you’re too close, you’ll get burned. I presumed that the aim of this teaching was to make the the student aware that they needed to find a distance that was neither too close nor too far away from the lama, but it was also a warning that if you did dedicate yourself to working closely with a lama, you might get burned, or maybe even will get burned.
Being burned, however, meant that your ego got burned, and that was seen as a good thing. Once again we see a word being used that means harm. If we’re burned, we’re harmed. The bit being harmed is supposed to be your ego (grasping at a false sense of self), but these ideas of burning, attacking, crushing, and destroying ego are problematic in a world where students may be lacking in a basic healthy self-esteem, and that problem is compounded one-hundred fold if the lama has narcissistic personality disorder. In these cases, as I’ve seen with Rigpa inner circle survivors, an aggressive approach is more likely to cause harm than benefit. Instead of having their ego dissolved, they tend to end up having physical and/or mental breakdowns, and their basic sense of self is crushed, so that they see themselves as worthless and useless, and so on. This is in fact strengthening ego, because now the student associates him or herself with negative attributes.

Why put yourself in the line of fire?

In Rigpa, the idea of being close to the fire meant that you had the guts to commit yourself fully to a relationship with a person that, though most of us didn’t know was abusive, we all knew was highly demanding, but the pay off for being close was a better shot at enlightenment, the opportunity to be fast tracked along the path. The route was dangerous, and it took guts to take it, but the potential benefit was huge – at least that’s what we were told. This romanticised ideal of a spiritual warrior willing to take the blows coupled with a genuine desire to help spread the dharma teachings in the West drew people close to the raging inferno of Sogyal Rinpoche/Lakar.
But being close to the fire meant that you put yourself directly in Sogyal’s firing line.
I doubt that those who entered the inner circle knew the degree of his ‘burn’ before they took up their roles – did they know they would be hit, asked for sexual favours and be always found lacking? – but we all knew that working closely with him would be highly challenging. That was the point. We believed it was a kind of ‘trial by fire’ that if survived would be a great purification, a furnace in which to burn away your obscurations, in reality, however, a large number of people simply got third degree burns.
I sometimes used to wonder how I would handle the intensity of that level of ‘Rigpa work’, and all I knew in that regard was that I never wanted to find out. When I was offered the role of National Director for Rigpa Australia a decade or so ago, I said, “No way, I don’t want to get that close to the fire.” I feel for those who did.

A personal testimony

In August 2017, I interviewed Sangye Nawang, and ex-Rigpa monk and a good friend of mine. We didn’t release the video at the time, feeling that the time wasn’t right. Now, however, we feel it is time for the world to see Sangye tell it as it was, and I challenge those who think this is somehow made up, or some plot or campaign to deny the truth that comes through this interview. This is just someone who has been burned telling us about the fire he fell into through no fault of his own.
May sharing his story, told openly and honestly, be of service to others.

What being in a narcistic relationship does to you

This next video is long, but it’s well worth watching if you want to get an idea of the true cost to those in Rigpa’s inner circle who were or still are close to Sogyal Rinpoche/Lakar. If you were one of those people then you’ll find it immensely helpful to realise that other people experience this kind of thing in domestic and work relationships; it’s not something restricted to the guru/student relationship, and, in fact, it has no place in that environment at all. In this video you’ll hear just how crushing being in a narcissistic relationship is.
Please note that I am not making a diagnosis on Sogyal’s personality, just sharing the experience of people who were in a similar relationship because fits with the results I’ve heard from and seen in Rigpa inner-circle survivors. You’ll see the correlations with Sangye’s experience. As Dana mentions in the video, survivors of cults and abusive relationships will also find it very helpful to find language they can use to describe their experience.
NB: CPTSD is Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

In this video Dana of Narcissist Support says, “In a narcistic relationship it’s all smoke and mirrors. It’s all a lie.”
Which leaves me wondering: was the love I thought I experienced from Sogyal real or just my projection? Dana talks about how her narcissistic boyfriends fed off her need for love that came from a sense of lack of love in her life; how many of us saw in Sogyal what we wanted to see? Did our projections blind us to the red flags that screamed, “Fire. Fire. Danger. Do not enter!”?

Private discussion on this and other related topics can be had on our Secret Facebook Group. It is only for current and previous students of Rigpa, however, and we do moderate it closely. If you’re interested in joining, please contact us via the contact page and ask for an invite.
Ex-Rigpa students and their Rigpa dharma friends who want to move on from the discussion of abuse in Rigpa can stay in touch through the Dharma Companions Facebook Group.
The What Now? Reference Material page has links to a wealth of articles in the topics related to abuse in Buddhist communities. For links to places to assist in healing from abuse see the sangha care resources page.
Those of you who are interested in ‘keeping Buddhism clean’ could ‘Like’ the Dharma Protectors Facebook page.

December 18, 2017

What Those Harmed by Sogyal Rinpoche Experienced & How to Help Them Heal

What those harmed actually experienced from their trusted teacher.

Let’s look at the attestations of abuse in the letter written by 8 people who experienced or witnessed apparently abusive behaviour at the hands of Sogyal Rinpoche. If you did not personally experience these things, imagine how you would feel if you had experienced them, and not just occasionally, but for those in his household, continuously for many years.

“You have punched and kicked us, pulled hair, torn ears, as well as hit us and others with various objects such as your back-scratcher, wooden hangers, phones, cups, and any other objects that happened to be close at hand. … Your physical abuse — which constitutes a crime under the laws of the lands where you have done these acts — have left monks, nuns, and lay students of yours with bloody injuries and permanent scars. This is not second hand information; we have experienced and witnessed your behavior for years. …

“Your shaming and threatening have led some of your closest students and attendants to emotional breakdowns. … it was done in such a way that was harmful to us rather than helpful, a method of control, a blatant means of subjugation and undue influence that removed our liberty. You have threatened us and others saying, if we do not follow you absolutely, we will die “spitting up blood like Ian Maxwell”. … You have told us that our loved ones are at risk of ill-health, or have died, because we displeased you in some way.” At public teachings, you have regularly criticized, manipulated and shamed us and those working to run your retreats. …

“Some of us have been subjected to sexual harassment in the form of being told to strip, to show you our genitals (both men and women), to give you oral sex, being groped, asked to give you photos of our genitals, to have sex in your bed with our partners, and to describe to you our sexual relations with our partners. You’ve ordered your students to photograph your attendants and girlfriends naked, and then forced other students to make photographic collages for you, which you have shown to others. You have offered one of your female attendants to another lama (who is well known in Rigpa) for sex. You have had for decades, and continue to have, sexual relationships with a number of your student attendants, some who are married. You have told us to lie on your behalf, to hide your sexual relationships from your other girlfriends. …

“With impatience, you have made demands for this entertainment and decadent sensory indulgences. When these are not made available at the snap of a finger, or exactly as you wished, we were insulted, humiliated, made to feel worthless, stupid and incompetent, and often hit or slapped. Your behavior did not cultivate our mindfulness or awareness, but rather it made us terrified of making a mistake.”

The kind of effect their experiences may have had on them

Remember that we are talking here about students who have been abused or seen abuse occur regularly, often for more than a decade, so in addition to the injuries they sustained at the time, the trauma created by being in an abusive situation runs deep. Their trust in their teacher is similar in a fashion to the trust a child has for a parent, and the sense of betrayal almost as deep.

“Some common emotional symptoms of trauma include denial, anger, sadness and emotional outbursts. Victim of trauma may redirect the overwhelming emotions they experience toward other sources, such as friends or family members.”

“Physical effects can be such things as: “paleness, lethargy, fatigue, poor concentration and a racing heartbeat. The victim may have anxiety or panic attacks and be unable to cope in certain circumstances.”

“Depression and trauma have high comorbidity rates, and feelings of despair, malaise and sadness can last longer than a few days or even weeks. When a trauma occurs, post-traumatic stress disorder often occurs.”

“The sooner the trauma is addressed, the better chance a victim has of recovering successfully and fully.” https://www.psychguides.com/guides/trauma-symptoms-causes-and-effects/

However, the only attempt at helping anyone who felt harmed not blessed by the behaviour outlined above was by a ‘Rigpa Therapist’ where, as the 8 declare, “our very tangible and clear discernment of seeing you as an abuser was blocked and instead we were blamed and made to feel inadequate.”

The cost

Their trauma has cost them not only pain and suffering but also their faith in their teacher and spiritual path as well as the considerable amounts of money they needed for therapy. Unsurprisingly, few remain Tibetan Buddhists, though some remain Buddhists in other forms, others have given up the spiritual path entirely.

For those of us traumatised simply by the knowledge of the harm our teacher caused in the name of crazy wisdom, consider how much worse it must be for those who were regularly beaten, belittled and generally treated like slaves, while they tried for years to work with the abuse in a positive way, and consider now all those who were treated the same way and yet still defend their teacher’s actions. Are they more deluded than the rest of the Western world, or are they more enlightened? Those who spoke out know how hard it is to escape the delusion. Those harmed but still in denial need our compassion as well, and so does the man who is still unwilling to take responsibility for his actions.

What can Rigpa students do to help those harmed?

Every student can put themselves in the shoes of the students harmed. They can imagine what it was like for them to experience such behaviour from someone they trusted to bring them benefit not to harm. Even if someone doesn’t believe that a punch from Sogyal Rinpoche consitutes harm, a punch still hurts, and they can imagine how it felt for those who could no longer see it as crazy wisdom. Students can open their hearts, actually feel the pain of their fellow students and then act appropriately to alleviate it.

Simply sitting and doing loving kindness or tonglen is not enough when your actions can help relieve someone’s suffering. And if you can’t do anything personally, you can still encourage those who can — your management teams — to step up and walk their talk. To take their bodhicitta vow seriously, to stop thinking about themselves and their own spiritual path and to consider actually helping those harmed by their teacher and organisation.

You can reach out to your friends that have left the community, apologise for not supporting them before and tell them how sorry you are that they experienced what they did. You can listen to their story of pain without judgement, without diminishing it, without trying to make them see it a different way, instead you can not only listen but also hear them, truly hear them and believe them.

And don’t be surprised if it’s too late and they don’t want to talk to you —they may feel that speaking to you will only re-open old wounds — even so, your reaching out will be appreciated so long as you do it out of true concern for them and with no agenda on your part.

The power of apology

“Though receiving an apology is not necessary for a victim to heal from trauma, it helps enormously, and quickens the process of healing. ‘Receiving an apology from their attacker that acknowledges responsibility and remorse for the assault can help to combat the effects of the trauma,’ said Dr. Suvercha Pasricha, lead psychiatrist at the women’s inpatient service at Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. …

“Pasricha also added that there are certain criteria an apology must fit in order to be beneficial. The perpetrator must accept responsibility for the incident, show remorse and validate the victim’s experience.

‘“For (the accused) to take ownership and responsibility for their actions is very powerful for the victim,’ she said.” http://www.victimjusticenetwork.ca/resource/736-sexual-assault-trauma-can-be-combatted-by-receiving-an-apology

Legal implications are often brought up as an excuse for not apologising. While concern in that direction is understandable, we are talking about a ‘spiritual’ organisation here, and regardless of what happens on a worldly level, according to the religion they supposedly practice, those who have caused harm (and to a lesser degree even those who have supported someone who has caused harm) have created negative karma that they will carry until it ripens unless they purify it through confession practice (which includes regret, apology/restitution and a commitment not to repeat the negative actions). Add the bodhisattva vow that all older students and, supposedly, all lamas take that commit them to undertaking activity for the benefit of others and one wonders how not giving an apology could possibly fit with that world view.

The problem is that Sogyal and his devoted students think that, despite clear evidence to the contrary, the behaviour outlined above does not constitute harm, and their clinging to that belief re-traumatises those already traumatised by facing this group denial of their suffering.

A lack of acceptance of responsibility, rather than helping Sogyal and Rigpa to avoid legal action may only bring them closer to such action since those who bring legal action do so because they need closure on traumatic events in order to help alleviate their suffering and help them move on with their lives. Closure comes from knowing that the perpetrator has accepted they’ve done wrong, is genuinely remorseful and willing to make some kind of restitution or compensation. If a perpetrator of a crime does not take responsibility for his or her crimes, the only way to make sure that person sees that what they have done is wrong is to take them to court.

Help alleviate the suffering of victims by accepting responsibility for your role in it, by apologising and giving some compensation, and people have no need of legal action. Our courts recognise the value of this as perpetrators that show no remorse and no understanding that what they have done is wrong get longer sentences than those who show remorse and apologise.

Wouldn’t a fund for reparation for the victims be a better use of the money of a spiritual organisation than spending it on a PR firm and lawyers?

But given the unlikelihood of Sogyal or Rigpa management of taking this kind of bold action, a private apology may avoid legal implications. Management could ask those who have been harmed to contact them, and Sogyal Rinpoche and someone from management could phone them individually and apologise.

Individual students who contributed to the trauma of those harmed could apologise to individuals on the telephone. You don’t need to wait for management, you can assist in the healing of those who are suffering, and you would assist in your own healing as well

If Rigpa management and Sogyal Rinpoche were truly practicing what they preach, they would do that.

But first they have to recognise that some of Sogyal Rinpoche’s actions have actually caused harm.

How hard is it to say sorry?

It can be done, even after all this time. In this video, I show how such an apology might sound.

Current and previous students of Rigpa wanting private support are welcome to join the What Now? Facebook group. Please contact us via the contact page and ask for an invite.
Ex-Rigpa students and their dharma friends can stay in touch through the Dharma Companions Facebook Group.
The What Now? Reference Material page has links to a wealth of articles in the topics related to abuse in Buddhist communities. For links to places to assist in healing from abuse see the sangha care resources page.
Those of you who are interested in ‘keeping Buddhism clean’ could ‘Like’ the Dharma Protectors Facebook page.
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