Reflections

What kind of lunatic would come back here once he'd escaped?  There were now so many pink and yellow specks in my vision, it was as if I were inside a snow globe. ~ Tara Westover; Educated We are empathic to survivors of trauma we can see; to war vets who have witnessed the slaying of comrades, policemen who have found strewn corpses in a murder scene, survivors of acts of terrorism on the ground or in the sky. We feel for them and understand how the pain of regurgitated memories can prick and ruin the surface of ordinary life. But it is harder to feel for those whose trauma is inscribed in the folds of the unconscious or in the collective body of previous generations.  We fail to understand how sexual abuse (no matter how "small") can permanently move the boundary between self and other, or how African Americans, Native Americans, women and Jews can still be impacted by the horror visited upon their ancestors.  Violations of the soul lead to blind spots where a...

What is the difference between anger, aggression, attacks and abuse?   Anger is an emotion , the feel of an experience, a state of mind. It is neither good nor bad, but usually has negative effects on the person feeling it, and is associated with the colour red (love with pink, jealousy with green).  It can be expressed safely to others using an I-statement: “I am angry that you said that”.   As long as the separateness of another person is respected, as long as anger is expressed TO and not AT another person, anger can be shared without hurting someone else. Aggression is anger expressed AT another person.   Aggression hurts others.   Overt aggression is conveyed in ways that are usually obvious, whether verbally or physically, as jabs or punches.   Covertly it is usually expressed by acts of omission, silence or other forms of passive aggression .   Though aggression may hurt others, it is not necessarily aimed at or intended to hurt...

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...