Deplorable misogyny

Sogyal Lakar. The quote is from Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche

KuenselOnline is an online anglophone version of the national Bhutanese newspaper Kuensel. One of its former journalists, Kencho Wangdi (Bonz), published a review and defense of Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentsé Norbu, DJKN’s “Poison is Medecine” under the title “The Vajrayana’s Cure” (11/11/2021).

In spite of DJKN’s 23 page public letter (“Guru and Student in the Vajrayāna”) the situation around Vajrayāna’s “Guru and Student” relationship was clearly not properly clarified, and no subsequent attempts by DJKN seemed to have brought some sense to Western Vajrayāna students. On the contrary, it somehow led to more confusion and disagreement, until a point where

 “Western intellectuals had begun chipping at the cornices of the Vajrayana’s edifice and now they were swinging at the foundation stones with a pickaxe.” -Bonz

 DJKN’s latest book is yet another attempt “to clear the dark clouds of “misunderstandings and misapprehensions” in the aftermath of the Vajrayana guru-related scandals. According to Kencho Wangdi (Bonz), one of the main points that DJKN tries to bring home is  “(“I can’t stress this strongly enough!”) to employ their judgment and critical thinking to tell the good gurus from the bad, authentic from the fake, the qualified from the unqualified.”

“Guru-student relationship should never be entered into lightly, but it often is. And when things go wrong, the root of the problem—the misunderstanding, error or mistake that was made—can usually be traced back to the moment the student stepped onto the Vajrayana path and first entered into a relationship with a guru.” -DJKN 

According to DJKN and the Kuensel review the misunderstandings, and the problems that may follow from it, are almost entirely on the side of Western students, who seem to keep picking the wrong Teachers. Apparently every Eastern Vajrayāna student knows there are good and bad Teachers, and that it is extremely important to pick a right Teacher, i.e. one who doesn’t abuse his power. If a Teacher does abuse their power, then the student made the wrong choice, because of their lack of “judgment and critical thinking”. This is a classical Vajrayāna disclaimer.

Pick your Guru...
Sogyal Lakar et DJKN au UK en septembre 2016.

Yet, some part of the “dark clouds of misunderstandings and misapprehensions” seem to be due to “the excesses of the Tibetan culture that [...] were invented by humans for a different time and circumstances, but that today have obscured the Vajrayana and led to the lama cult, that led to other problems”. How does a Western student then distinguish between what is an excess of Tibetan culture and Vajrayāna, and between authentic guruvāda and a “lama cult”? More to the point, why do they seem so difficult to distinguish one from another? Do good and bad teachers perhaps mix with each other? Can they be seen in the same circles? Can they be good friends? How does one know a good teacher from a bad one? Do doctors and charlatans mix? 

“Part of the problem is that not all of today’s Tibetan teachers have received a thorough Dharma education and a surprising number don’t know how to teach. For them, repeating the quintessential Buddhist teachings on shunyata (emptiness), dependent arising, and so on, over and over again, is difficult and tedious, so instead, they teach Tibetan cultural habits dressed up as Buddhadharma (such as how to fold a white scarf or make a torma).” -DJKN

Note that those Tibetan “bad” teachers, “obsessed with who gets the highest throne and by how many inches”, “the privileges a lama’s family members expect”, “the disturbing tulku materialism”, “ the deplorable misogyny”, “the lame and inadequate Dharma bootcamp that today’s Tibetan lamas go through”, are still referred to as “teachers”. In the forests of high thrones, it must be hard for a Western student, to pick the proper one, on which his authentic Guru is seated. As for female students, what is to be considered as “deplorable misogyny” and what as skillful means on the student’s path of Obedience to the Guru?

“Vajrayana is not Tibetan culture and Tibetan culture is not Vajrayana”, writes Bonz. Should Vajrayana Buddhism be updated to fit the modern world ? “Absolutely not” says DJKN. Confusion about what is Tibetan culture and what is Vajrayāna, and about who is a good teacher and a bad teacher is of course bad, but no further intervention seems necessary to clear the confusion about what is Tibetan culture and what is Vajrayāna. Those specific “dark clouds of misunderstandings and misapprehensions” don’t stand in the way of DJKN’s (and others’) project. It’s up to the individual to make the right choices and to take full responsibility for any misunderstanding or unfortunate wrong choice (wrong lama, “lama cult” instead of a proper guru-student relationship, etc).

In order to prevent Vajrayāna from being “updated to fit the modern world”, DJKN and friends are ready to battle like “Talibans of Tibetan Buddhism”[1] against “Western intellectuals “cherry-picking” Buddhism”.

“[DJKN] is, however, open to the idea of employing “innovative, skillful and easier to understand ways of presenting the Dharma to contemporary students”—which he admits is lacking in the Vajrayana arsenal.” -Bonz

To adapt Vajrayāna’s packaging, introduce more commodification of Buddhadharma, develop Iphone apps, organise management seminars for managers/tulkus ? 

DJKN (and his colleagues) did not defend his colleagues involved in the sex abuse, writes Bonz. Has he seen the Homage page to Sogyal Lakar’s “parinirvana” ? This page has by now considerably shrunk since it first appeared in 2017, because many lamas later withdrew their homages under the pressure of their Western students. On top of these homages, several teachers attacked the whistle-blowers, threatened them with karmic suffering to come, and thus pushed doubting students back to good old guruvadic/lama cultish “reason”.

Photo envoyée par DJKN au site Trungpamaniaque "Chronicles"

DJKN doesn’t make it a secret he is a great admirer of Chögyam Trungpa, “the General”, for whom “actually the whole teaching is simply emptiness and meekness[2].” Obedience (faith in action) is the essential quality for a student in the Guru-student relationship. Part of the problem with Westerners, apart from their lack of picking the right teachers, is their lack of obedience, or meekness as Trungpa calls it.

“Obedience is always a challenge for students. Your guru might, for example, ask you to do the entire Ngöndro three times over -- and of course you should. Or he might tell you to take your knickers off. Interestingly, a surprising number of people have no difficulty taking off their knickers, but really struggle to finish the Ngöndro.” DJKN, “Poison is Medicine” 

I wonder what the source of that interesting and surprising information is. Does it come from “good” or “bad” teachers who, within the guru-student relationship, asked their students to take off their knickers? For non-native English readers, I would also like to point out that the word “knickers” refers to “a piece of underwear worn by women and girls covering the area between the waist and the tops of the legs” (Cambridge dictionary). Lack of judgement and critical thinking, resistance to “obedience”, and on the other hand “ease of taking one’s knickers off”, mainly women and girls… Would that qualify as “deplorable misogyny”?

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[1] “They proclaimed, for good measure, that what the Vajrayana Buddhism needed perhaps was an “update”.
To Khyentse Rinpoche, this was unacceptable. A fierce guardian of the Buddha’s teachings and of the Vajrayana (he often calls himself the Taliban of Tibetan Buddhism), he takes extraordinary exception to Western intellectuals “cherry-picking” Buddhism and makes no bones about it. As far as he was concerned, the Western intellectuals had begun chipping at the cornices of the Vajrayana’s edifice and now they were swinging at the foundation stones with a pickaxe.” Bonz.

[2] " [Chogyam Trungpa] said, well, the problem with Merwin — this was several years ago — he said, Merwin’s problem was vanity. He said, I wanted to deal with him by opening myself up to him completely, by putting aside all barriers. “It was a gamble.” he said. So I said, was it a mistake? He said, “Nope.” So then I thought, if it was a gamble that didn’t work, why wasn’t it a mistake? Well, now all the students have to think about it —so it serves as an example, and a terror. But then I said, “What if the outside world hears about this, won’t there be a big scandal?” And Trungpa said, “Well, don’t be amazed to find that actually the whole teaching is simply emptiness and meekness.”

When the Party’s Over, interview avec Allen Ginsberg dans Boulder Monthly, mars 1979.