I’ve recently been following the letters on
Sweeping Zen about Abbot Eido Shimano’s sexual misconduct over the last 45 years (many people have been silent about this and other cases for a long time). A lot of attention is going to the issue of his misconduct and how his organization, the Zen Studies Society in New York, will be dealing with it.
While many teachers and abbots are rightly concerned about how Shimano is dealt with, and how those harmed by his behaviour can begin the healing process, it seems to me that individual sanghas could take this opportunity to talk about sexual violence, the abuse of the teacher/student relationship, and what it would take to never have this happen again.
I’m not condoning what Shimano did at all, but changing our culture of shame and secrecy would help empower the potential victims of this kind of abuse. If we create a sex-positive environment people might more clearly see when they are in danger of being abused or being abusive.
One of the really useful articles I’ve run into recently on this subject is
‘Real Sex Education’ by Cara Kulwicki (in an anthology Yes Means Yes! Visions of Sexual Power & a World Without Rape). According to Kulwicki the goal of real sex education is to teach people that sex should be “consensual and pleasurable”, and that we need to move from thinking ‘no means no’ to ‘yes means yes’. In other words we need to teach that “sex when someone doesn’t openly and enthusiastically want it is wrong.”
I hope you’ll read the article and then post a response here. What do you think? How does this apply to you and to our sangha if at all? How do you think we should break the silence?
Soshin
