Reflections

There was no trace of seeking, desiring, imitating, or striving, only light and peace ~ Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha Don’t just do something, sit there! ~ Sylvia Boorstein, in her book by the same name Many people come into my office feeling despondent for reasons they do not immediately recognize.  Then they uncover a connection to having been bullied by parents, partners or employers, at work, in the school yard, at home or, nowadays, online. Their reaction is usually some combination of feelings of shame, helplessness, anger and despair.  They feel intense frustration and often become rage-filled when recalling how they were stuck in a situation in which they felt hopelessly tormented, diminished and abused. One young man expressed it like this: No matter what I did, the bullying would continue.  Day after day after fucking day, they would pick on me.  They would stop for a while, and that would be a blessed reprieve, but then they would start up again....

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...