The Great Failure

I've been looking for a book that discusses these issues since the breaking in 1997 of Sangharakshita's misconduct, for which he has expressed regret. But to what we can little find on the internet, it seems to have been scrubbed for a lot of the information. I hope it's OK to discuss the impact on my life. Yesh. That is probably why it's so hard to get a book like Goldberg's.

Reading Goldberg’s haiku book I got interested in this book, The Great Failure. Almost 100 pages in she learns her married Zen teacher Katiguri had been sleeping around with the female students. Goldberg spent the previous 100 writing about her relationship with her father. She is smart, she asks what projections she's putting onto Katiguri, who died in 1990. Goldberg's father made her uncomfortable, showing off her armpit hair, bursting into the bathroom when she was in puberty. Making her feel unsafe, I realized, wasn't so much better than touching her. So when 6 years after her death, 3 former students report an affair, and she remember his own beer swilling completing of her beauty. She fended off Kitiguri the way she fended off her father. So what projections can she take back after this revelation? This is the kind of contemplation of a teacher's imperfections I can get behind, beyond the black and white dismiss qualms or cancel binary our times seem to be embracing. What do you do when you see the clay feet of someone you project transcendence upon?

I read Dasho Port's book on Katiguri when it came out in 2008, and didn't really have a context to put it in, so I just added it to the current questions I was asking. 

With the great free offering on the internet, with the faustian bargain of listening to commercials, I can have almost perfect instant gratification. Used to be so hard to get everything, now it's easy, seemily. Goldberg mentions a Paul Simon album that is supposedly evocative of New Mexico. I think she means Hearts and Bones which came out in 1983. The title song has the lyrics, "In the Sangre de Christo/The Blood of Christ Mountains/Of New Mexico". I didn't know that Carrie Fisher had a relationship with Paul Simon, I missed that whole thing, but I read a bit of her side in her manic memoir. I'm still confused if I've got the right album or not, but I listened to some Paul Simon I've never listened to. I read an article about the album. I sort of like these cultural meanderings. There are not that many songs that mention New Mexico.

Anyway, I'm in favor of open information about Katiguri. All I can find is "Today, one could reasonably assert that of the 30 or 40 important Zen centers in the country, at least 10 have employed head teachers who have been accused of groping, propositioning, seducing, or otherwise exploiting students." (New Republic). Things are becoming pretty intense in the #metoo era, what is coming out, and what is being covered up. Perhaps a more healing approach than crushing people would help.

The hope is women are learning to speak up quicker, though I hope even more that men would get clear consent, and not transgress the teacher/student rules that are cropping up to address possible exploitation. The looseness of the 60's has passed.

Links:

Dainin Katagiri (Wikipedia)