Is There a Problem with Buddhism?
Below is my response to Brad Warner who posed the above question in a recent blog post he published on his website, Hardcore Zen : Brad, Thank you for clarifying your position in response to Adam Fisher. Of course the onus for abuse lies on the teacher and not on the student. You say, “I don’t blame the victim” while you claim that “blind obedience” is the culprit. But who obeys? It still sounds like you are pointing to the student. Moreover, in all these cases of abuse, even when itcomes to Sasaki or Shimano, nobody ever issued an “order” to which anybody ever “obeyed”. Brad, are you sure that the student’s (pathological) obedience to the teacher is the issue, as opposed to the teacher’s abuse of the student’s (healthy) trust? Even your well-meaning piece of advice “Be careful out there,” while probably intended to empower students, makes it look like you think that the abuse of authority is due to s...