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RANDY SOGYAL, BEST-SELLING LECHER -- THE WRITINGS OF AMLEARNING

January 9, 2004, No. 1

Hello dear Tara,

Yes, your kind and brave efforts to express your anger here got me here.

I want to say that I think you made the right decision to come forward with the secrets of those who wrote to you privately, which has been and is protecting the abuses, many of them criminal, being perpetrated by various Tibetan lamas. In life there are situations in which discretion and honoring privacy is the right, moral, and honorable thing to do, and also circumstances where keeping the secrets is enabling the abuse to go on.

Legally, enabling a crime, such as hiding it or keeping it secret from others who could otherwise prevent themselves from being victimised, is called aiding and abetting. It has been over two decades since I removed myself from the Tibetan scene in India. In that time, I tried to expose the truth of what was going on, but all the victims I spoke to were afraid to come forward. And all those who saw the victims being abused and exploited did nothing, said nothing directly to the abusers. When I helped Jane Doe file her suit against Sogyal, it took me two years of my life to help her organise and support her case. I got $300 for all that help, not enough to remotely pay for all the telephone calls I made, speaking to Sogyals' victims.

At the same time, I understand they were shamed into not telling, or feared Vajra Hell ... ooooh. They were and are cultically paralysed into silence. Maybe this conversation can inspire others to not be afraid of telling the truth openly. I'm alright after all this time! You will be alright too!

Last night I ruminated about what had happened to me, the old memories and the news about the Tibetan Buddhist scene with Gyaltrul and Sangye.

The overriding thought was about how many sad sides to this ugly, messy betrayal there are.

There is an excellent book I'd like to recommend to anybody who has or is feeling betrayed by their involvement with Tibetan Buddhism. It's by Patrick Carnes called, "The Betrayal Bond - Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships."

When the lamas' lack of integrity started creeping into my consciousness, I made so many excuses for it. Like my old friend, Chloe, who said that lamas' and disciples' immoral and corrupt behavior was HIGHER morality. Yeah, right, the lamas' grandiosity, their feeling entitled to be above the law, and sexually abuse their students at will, their racist and sexist comments, including their contempt for Indian people and Indian culture, in spite of the Indians offering the Tibetans generous refuge, that was such excellent morality. There were routine little experiences of Tibetan ill-will via the lamas that I tolerated for so many years, excusing it, glossing it over because I WANTED to believe that I was connected with something Meaningful - a Higher Good.

For example, I lived for a while near Hardwar, a holy city for many Hindus, on the bank of the Ganges. Tibetans would arrogantly carry bloody slabs of water buffalo beef onto a bus packed with strictly vegetarian Indian pilgrims. When the blood got on a pilgrim's clothing or dripped onto the floor and a pilgrim complained, the Tibetans would be so arrogant about it. A lama hearing this also was so arrogant about it. Indians were grossly ridiculed by Tibetans as a matter of course.

One lama, a head of Mindroling Monastery, Zona Rinpoche I think his name was, said he could not take tea in his community for fear he would be poisoned. I wonder why? Smuggling gold was a routine that lamas did to get money, and they got Western students involved in this as well. I took it for granted that when lamas did criminal activities that it was skillful activity!!!

When Geshe Ngawang Dargye asked me to lift my shirt up to look at my breasts, he said it was to blow on my heart to help me feel less agitated. I trusted him as a teacher more than anyone I’d ever trusted in my life, and in many ways as if he were a parent. If he punched me hard in the face I would have felt less pain than I did by his 'trivial' betrayal. When I told another student what Geshela had asked me to do, she said I must be a dakini, special. I wanted to buy into this malarkey because I wanted to believe, to trust my refuge guru, that he had my best intentions at heart, that he was a Superior Being.

Not only did Geshela betray me, my dharma sister also betrayed me by helping me lie to myself about the truth.

And she covered for the abuser too.

She betrayed herself.

I betrayed her too by not snapping out of the cultic mindset and saying, Elizabeth, this monk who we all prostrate to and take refuge in as the example of Truth and Enlightenment, just asked to look at my breasts! That is TOTALLY unacceptable, and I want to discuss this with the proper authorities, like the Dalai Lama, who put Geshela in charge of teaching foreigners only to sexually act out on them over the years. AND so did his dufus of a side kick assistant, Khedrup, who regularly felt me up, especially if by bad luck I was doing korwa around the library, and he came up behind me to grab my ass.

The betrayal was 3-dimensional. It was a full-circle lie. We were bound to each other in our betrayal bond, a mandala of deception and betrayal.

Variations on this theme occurred over the years in all the Tibetan communities I stayed in. I feel partly responsible for the death of my old friend who committed suicide because I was part of the lies that went on at the Library for the 1-1/2 years I was there. If I had only spoken up maybe she would not have bought into such insanity and taken her life.

Oh, and the games the old timers, like Alex Berzin and Priya, used to play with their not openly giving advice about the teachings. The secrecy-power games they and other old timers played were truly crazy-making. And that shit came down from the lamas too, who also got off on secrecy power trips.

My own morality began to crumble over the years too.. There were a couple of sexaholic men there at the Library, Glenn Mullin and Brian Beresford, who died recently of a heroin overdose I believe, or complications from his drug addiction. Geshela, a monk who was extremely strict about his impeccable following of the rules and regulations when in public, KNEW these men were sexual predators, cruising the new women students who arrived doe-eyed to study with a ‘genuine’ lama at the Library. He did nothing, and numerous children were adulterously and recklessly sired by these men who thought they were sooo cool with their Tibetan rigamarole and substance/alcohol addiction.

This all may sound like just so much Peyton Place bullshit but in real life, actual kids came into the world because of these rogue creeps, and their mothers really suffered not having a father who behaved like an adult to these kids but instead had some cheating dog who was goofing on the pseudo-yogi role. God knows how the dozen or so kids are doing! I can't imagine their LIVES have been comfortable being basically fatherless ... and all this under the guise of being Buddhist? What a crock!!!

I slept with one of these dogs, Brian. When, getting off the train in Old Delhi, he asked if he could share the hotel room Jenny and I were staying in. He was married, I knew his wife, and didn’t think anything of it. He took the middle bed in the room and in the middle of the night came into my bed. I deeply regret sleeping with him. I felt badly. Jenny scolded me badly, but then went off and married a Tibetan monk herself. Although I eased my guilt by saying I wasn't the only one who’d cheated with Brian, because over the years I met a few other Western women who had slept with him. I betrayed Brian's wife, who I did apologize to 4 years ago. I betrayed myself, my own principles about not liking to commit adultery. I betrayed Brian's daughter by doing that with her father.

The lack of morality was seeping slowly into my own life and I didn't like who I was becoming as a person, using Buddhism as part of some camouflage, and not being well connected with my true self. I saw what this betrayal cover-up was doing to ALL my Western Buddhist friends. It took me six long years to break away and decide to keep a complete distance from the entire Western Buddhist scene, in India and America. By the time one of Trungpa's Kalapa Court Mafiosi came to New Delhi due to the fact that Karmapa was dying of stomach cancer, I had seen so much Tibetan corruption, lama corruption, vicious gossip, kids being born out of adultery, Western Buddhist corruption, everybody screwing everybody, lying, smuggling, the assassination of the head of Clement Town, monks molesting little boys, monks having a prostitution camp outside Rumtek, the various Kargyu heads of the various sects all in political war with each other, death threats ...

The whole, ugly mess was so rotten!!!

Then came the news about Osel Tenzin and his thinking he was above AIDS, that his penis was magic, so magic it killed people. Then news of Trungpa's death, his obesity, the drunken stripping of people in public, violating them publicly, then Kalu Rinpoche's using June for all those years with his nephew in on this insanity, all while pretending to be His Holiness monk, who looked like a male Mother Theresa, and actually being scum.

Yes, it's a whole, ugly, rotten mess, and the betrayal by the lamas was just the beginning. The lack of principles, clarity, honesty, morality trickled down. Ugh.

I remember now that Sangye also told me in 1980 that Gyaltrul saved her from an abusive marriage. It sounds like her ex, this Hawaiian DJ was/is a psychopath. It sounds like Sangye may also have a personality disorder if she is a pathological liar, cold and socially exploitative. She may be a Narcissist or an Inverted Narcissist and need some kind of celebrity or 'unusual' person to subjugate herself to? It certainly sounds like she is unhealed from the abuse she survived with the psychopath DJ. It would be logical from that alone and the fact she went into this bizarre and unhealthy servile relationship with Gyaltrul, that she had been sexually abused as a child.

Holding her arms out and making kissy faces to Gyaltrul Rinpoche would be as culturally acceptable a display of affection to a Tibetan male as if she did a striptease act. Traditional Tibetans NEVER hold hands, and public display of affection is unthinkable to them. Saliva is considered to be a greater contaminant than urine, and less attractive. Kissing is done to babies and on cheeks, dry and privately. Sex is something that takes place in about 5 seconds. I sincerely doubt that many Tibetan women have any idea of what an orgasm is or would know what it feels like, nor would a Tibetan man have any idea that a woman could have one! Sakya Trinzin, for all his education, being married, father of two children and world traveling, thought oral sex could get a woman pregnant. Almost all Tibetans I met knew almost nothing about the birds and the bees or the most basic science, and still think the world is actually flat.

I seem to remember the sexaholic, adulterous Achi, (Karmapa’s translator) saying that Tarthang Tulku had coerced a number of Tibetan people into near slavery, and had tried to do that to his American wife too, the one Achi had the affair with. I cannot imagine that dozens of Tibetans have been in this bonded labor situation without other Westerners or Tibetans knowing about it. This is an example to me of an abuse support network that happens in the presence of a malignant Narcissist. It is a strange collusion of the victims in their own abuse and of the abuse of other victims. This has happened throughout history, for example, in Germany, under Hitler. It is a crazy-making enmeshment that is common in cults. It can be common also in corporate Narcissism, like at Enron.

I am ashamed of my own bad behavior in all this mess and corruption. I regret that it took me six years to get out of the cultic enmeshment. I was deeply invested in the Tibetan Buddhist scene. I convinced myself I was part of something that was a Higher Good, while not allowing myself to be fully conscious of the bad I saw around me. I would like to publicly apologize to all those I have hurt with my own lack of morality on the occasions I did not follow my better judgment, and in not having taken clear-thinking action to stop the abuses I saw or knew about, and also because I also participated in the cover-up with my silence. Previously, I justified my passivity by saying I was a victim. Yes, I was, but I also helped in the secrecy. I said and did nothing for 6 years to speak up against what I knew in my heart was wrong. I deeply regret that.

I hope my sharing of my tale of betrayal will help others who are or have been traumatized into secrecy or into not honoring what feels right, to get out of their betrayal bondage and to share their story here.

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RANDY SOGYAL, BEST-SELLING LECHER -- THE WRITINGS OF AMLEARNING

January 10, 2004

To the people who wrote me privately:

To you both,

Although you deleted your emails to me, I copied them and have them ready to post tomorrow, unless you come to this forum and speak up for yourselves, find the words to speak your mind. How much more abuse is going to go on?

When will the perfect moment be for the truth to be spoken? It has been DECADES of abuse going on!!! HOW MUCH MORE ABUSE HAS TO GO ON BEFORE YOU SPEAK UP?????

Miranda Shaw and I sat next to each other on a plane ride from Germany to America in 1990. I told her about Sogyal's abuses 3 YEARS before she took any action. Hundreds more women were abused in that time. One woman was institutionalised that I know about as a direct result of Sogyal's abuse of her. Miranda was the one who referred Jane Doe to me, so that I could comfort this poor woman who had been sexually connived and beaten by Sogyal JUST AFTER HER FATHER HAD DIED. It was a miracle Jane Doe's husband didn't divorce her for sleeping with Sogyal, that her entire life didn't shatter and fall apart in a total mental/emotional breakdown.

What kind of a man seduces women who have just lost a loved one, who are GRIEVING and lost, in need of spiritual comfort? This is some kind of emotional necrophilia to be such a predator! This is monstrous! When are you, who posted me, who know what has been going on, going to speak up????!!!!

Miranda was VERY focused on her success. She wanted to write about women and sex practices in Buddhist history. It's an exciting subject, one that the author and a publisher COULD MAKE MONEY ON. I don't think the practices she wrote about have EVER happened with Tibetan lamas, or maybe anybody. I'm not convinced that she thought that either. She did technical, scholarly research based on religious texts. People write about dragons and Loch Ness monsters, but do those things really EXIST? Religious texts can say ANYTHING, and they often do. Are cult texts to be believed? I don't think so!

Anybody can write about or publish anything. I've published a couple of books myself. One was written when I was 19, it was commissioned. I wrote the book in a single month, researching it while taking school exams. I did the best I could at the time, but I was instructed by my editor to write information to fit the images they had bought for the book. Words to match the pictures. It was a comparative history book on religion. A commissioned coffee-table book. It was intended to make money, that was all. It was published on 2 continents, and by a reputable, internationally renowned publisher. I made a considerable sum of money for a 19 year old's first effort at writing. The contents of the book were never questioned for a second. I was commissioned, I wrote, it was published as fact.

I wrote all kinds of errors in that book, some I knew about because my writing had to fit the pictures, as I was hired and paid to do, and some by accident. That book is now quoted all the time on the web, as correct, as fact. None of what I wrote was checked up on as being fact. So I KNOW that editors don't find out whether something is true before they publish something. The publishing industry is just that, an industry, they sell PRODUCTS, books, not truth.

My writing for that book was based on other books that were published with the wrong information. Just because something is published doesn't mean in any way that it is true. Just because a person has a degree does not mean that person knows what they are talking about, or that they are necessarily a person of integrity, telling the truth they know, or that they even know the truth about anything.

What I'm trying to say is that I think that the tantric sex thing is not true. I don't think that women or men get enlightened doing tantric sex, or that it gives anybody anything, except the simple sex act. I don't think it cuts through any dualistic tendencies AT ALL!!! Ever. I think that is some kind of way to jazz up the plain old sex act into being something it's not.

June Campbell was used by Kalu Rinpoche for sex. He told her she would be going to Vajra Hell if she didn't do what he wanted, and by the way she had to screw his sleazy nephew too, or else. Some enlightened being there. Not. What an ugly, cruel power game, with a nun, who devoted herself diligently to learning Tibetan, to being his translator, taking vows to live her life chastely, to helping others.

She never spoke about her feelings of anger, or the terrible betrayal she felt, because Tibetan Buddhists, all, are ASHAMED AND HORRIFIED by expression of anger, as if THAT, expressing anger, were immoral, and not the abuses committed! So she wrote her book with calm, not bringing her emotions into the picture at all, but she was reviled anyway by the Tibetan Buddhist community, not for telling the truth, but because people didn't want to be disillusioned from their fairy tale malarky!

She was betrayed, used for sexual purposes in ugly, hurtful ways. It had NOTHING to do with anybody's being enlightened! That is just some Western or Tibetan fantasy that was rigged so lamas could use women sexually and cover it up as something fancy.

The word in Tibetan for female IS INFERIOR BIRTH. For a thousand years nuns were not called nuns, they were called Auntie. Women did not get respect in Tibet, ever. It was a male theocracy. Women were not taught to read or do anything. It was polyandrous, forcing one woman to sleep with a handful of brothers, to keep the land from being legally parceled out to the different brothers. If all the brothers married one woman, they could keep their pitiful piece of land in one piece and not have to divide it up among their separate families. They respected a piece of barely arable farmland more than they respected any woman. Women did not and do not have any power or respect in Tibetan culture, period. That is a fabrication of Western women who want to believe that without ever knowing anything about Tibetan society up close, just reading books by Western authors who idealised Tibet as some kind of Shangri-La.

What kind of man, lama or not, goes around saying his wife likes bigger dicks than his, so she should quietly screw other men? Say wha !???! This was the sacred bond between Gyatrul and Sangye? Neither of them seem to be any more enlightened from their experience. And why should they be? It was always and only, just plain old sex.

Sex is for pleasure and making babies, to be done in appropriate ways with partners who have consented as peers, not as disciple or teacher, child and parent, child and trusted elder, parishioner and priest, patient and therapist, client and lawyer. If 2 peers, friends, want to have "tantric sex", I say go for it, have a folie a deux! Go for the mutual delusion. But when it is a power play, a sadistic one of spiritual betrayal, a cruel game of seduction of people who are vulnerable, very vulnerable to what they are being told, that is NOT okay. In the West is is AGAINST THE LAW. It is against the law, not for frivolous reasons, but because the VICTIMS, yes, the person who gets used this way, is seen as a victim of a crime, of abuse, are deeply DAMAGED by this abuse, this appropriation of power. It is like a child getting screwed by a parent. It is an abuse of power.

If a little child flirts with daddy, it doesn't matter how turned on daddy gets, it's a CRIME to use this vulnerable child in a sexual way for the gratification of the adult. That is how a spiritual "disciple" is seen in the eyes of the law, as a person who is very vulnerable, like a child. Psychiatrically, such a violation by a spiritual teacher is treated as if the sexual abuse were a type of incest.

In my experience with Tibetan people in general, they are not remotely romantic at all. Not in ANY way that a Westerner would consider romantic. There is no literature per se, almost no stories at all, and none that I have ever heard about involving "love". In fact, I have never heard the Tibetan word for love before in the 30 years since studying and knowing how to speak the language. There is "compassion" as in compassion, "nyingje", for all sentient beings. There is the Tibetan expression, "Goe gi do" that passes for "I love you", which is "I want you (sexually)". The colloquial word for sex in Tibetan, "layka' is "work".

Maybe the lack of romantic literature in Tibet, or literature that has anything to do with the relationship between men and women as peers, is because Tibetan men did not have romantic love with women. There was almost no literature at all in Tibetan culture. All writing and the use of the intellect was utterly taken over by the male theocracies of the monasteries. Society was almost 90% illiterate; a lot of the religious texts were just memorised, not read to be understood, basically just a form of brainwashing.

Tibetan men generally do have exceptionally small penises, and it is generally known in conversations I've had with Tibetan women over the decades that Tibetan men cannot perform sexually in any way for more than a few seconds, or that Tibetan women get little or no pleasure out of the sex act with a Tibetan man. This is something joked about frequently by Tibetan women themselves, that sex is nothing to them, a disappointment to be endured for the sake of having children. Maybe this is why all the emphasis on what passes for the expression of love in the Tibetan Buddhist texts always refers to love one would have for a mother?

Tibetan marriages are arranged. It's a business arrangement between families for the tribal purpose of creating laborers and landowners. One son, if it could be afforded to hand over a potential farmhand, was traditionally, somewhat routinely, given to the monastery when he was a tiny boy, handed over like a sacrificial lamb to a theocratic city of pseudo-monks; run by men, for men. These pseudo-monks didn't work and were totally supported by the poor laborers, the farmers outside the monastery perimeter. Inside the monastery these pseudo-monks brainwashed themselves, and the outside people were treated like inferiors who had to crawl and scrape for the "blessing" of these pseudo-monks (who were in fact, raping each other, when they weren't brainwashing each other, inside the monastery walls).

A number of educated Tibetan people understand that those chosen to be "rinpoches" were because of their relationship to politically powerful families. Or a child was chosen from an area for politically strategic reasons.

What are you, who posted me privately, waiting for? For there to be nothing to be afraid of? For your reputations to be protected? You both think you are spiritual and moral people, but what kind of integrity do you think you have when you can help put an end to the abuse, NOW, but you are not doing it??!!!

Why would you not come to this forum, where I publicly spoke out about what I suffered, and support me here? Either of you could have chosen anonymous names, unrelated to your actual identity, and offered your support, your experience, written about your thoughts and feelings in any way you like, in such a way that nobody knew who you are, but still validating what I said was true, or that you had experienced similar abuses yourselves.

Why write to me privately, wanting my sympathy, my comforting, or to confess your knowledge about abuses to me, when there are people out there, now, being abused, used, assaulted, pimped, whose inner and in some cases outer lives are being destroyed by these abuses?

WHY ARE YOU KEEPING YOUR PART IN THIS SECRET???

Is it because you know that you are still perpetuating this abuse by keeping it secret?

Please, be decent people and come forward and speak up, openly.

As for the person who said they think my intention to post what they said to me in private here is blackmail, the legal definition of blackmail is:
"obtaining or procuring something by illegal means, such as by force or coercion."

You CHOSE to write to me. I did not coerce you. I did not obtain the information you told me illegally, by force or coercion. You didn't know me. There was no trust I earned with you. I posted here publicly to support Tara and Odysseus in their truth telling, by my own truth-telling. My intention in doing that was to HELP END THE ABUSES AND TO TELL THE TRUTH.

When I read your second post to me I felt literally sick for 12 hours. How could you have helped that abuse, so directly to continue and think for a second that you are a therapist! A trained therapist???!!! OMG, I was horrified!

From what you told me you were a co-perpetrator who had been trained to know better! And you had the gall to tell me that it was Tara's ANGER that you feel is sick? Buddy, you are the sick one. Tara has every reason to be angry. That anger she is expressing is sane. NOT expressing anger about these abuses is what is wrong.

So what if she is expressing the anger in ways that are not esthetically pleasing to you? So what if she refers to male genitalia? It was male genitalia that was being used to abuse these female disciples, con them into the sex act. Do I think Tara is going to cut off any male genitalia? No.

I think she has a deep and loving relationship with Odysseus and at the moment is caring for her FATHER, who is dying of cancer. It's not men who are so bad for their having genitalia or sex with men that is bad. It's the ABUSE of power by men who set themselves up to be worshipped as reincarnate lamas, holy teachers of The Truth. It's conning women into sex acts to use them and camouflage it as something that it is not.

Hiding the truth about these ILLEGAL abuses that are going on on a MASS SCALE for DECADES is wrong. Letting it go on by not talking about it is wrong.

Have a look in your heart. Have some cojones to talk about this, openly. Here, now. That is the right thing to do.

Protect your identity if you want to but come here and speak the truth and let it help others. Let this be a place where this sexual abusing of women by Tibetan lamas starts to end.

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RANDY SOGYAL, BEST-SELLING LECHER -- THE WRITINGS OF AMLEARNING

January 12, 2004, No. 1
From: oscar
To: AmLearning
Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2004 1:40 pm
Subject: Sogyal R

Hello " AmLearning",

I have read your account of your horrible experiences with Sogyal Rinpoche and I can confirm many similar events happening during the time (mid 80's to beginning 90's) when I was in a leading position in Rigpa Org in Europe. Because of the obvious abuse of female students, I confronted SR , who called me a friend at that time, several times (he did not even try to justify his behaviour spiritually), then first I resigned from my position and later left Rigpa fellowship. I did not want to give my name anymore as a person of trust to be misused to help to recruit women to Rigpa to eventually be abused by the SR ("lama care").

I am very interested in the information about the lawsuit against SR which I guess took place recently, and which you mention in your comment on the Kazi case.

With best wishes

~oscar~

From: oscar
To: AmLearning
Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2004 1:32 pm
Subject: my story

Dear AmLearning,

Thank you for keeping my privacy and answering in length to my email. I will tell you a bit of my story, and having discovered ambu-bulletin board only one day after you, I will need more time to carefully consider my next steps. I have no interest to join into something which is not yet clear to me what the motivations of some of the people are. I write to you because you appear to me clear, well thought, and responsible. This makes your contributions to me more trustworthy than many of the other posts.

Some are horrible and have very bad energy themselves. I find the papers on narcissism in the bulletins quite correct. But let me say that also: what “Odysseus” and “Ambu” say in many of their posts is very horrible and unacceptable to me. When Ambu wants to get all men fucked and wants to cut their balls, I can’t see her anymore in any moral position to criticize others. If you want to change something for the better, you must try yourself to live up to the values you want to defend or support as good as you can. I am very hesitant about putting something into the American Buddha bulletin because many of the posts there are of very low ethics and using words and expressions which do not represent my values and the way I want to change something for the better. This kind of complaining and judging and talking reminds me of adolescents who yell at their parents and blame them for everything they do without putting the same high standards on themselves. But we are adult. So I must say very clear: I will not become a member of another sect. I see this danger very clear in this forum, and this will take the power away from the justified and necessary actions to stop people like SR abusing their students and abusing religion, and the trust of many good people. Abuse is always soul murder, and sexual abuse in so called spiritual context is for me the worst. It makes me sick. But some of the posts there are as sickening and disgusting. I can see the damage which has been done to these people, and I can feel the pain behind it, but I think one has to consider one's actions very well and one's words as well, not to go on a similar level as the people criticized. In that way they are working for those they try to fight. They put themselves down with gossip, and I get the feeling they put themselves up. As a therapist, I can see the need for expression of strong feelings, and that those feelings are bitter and not very subtle, but going public it needs another stage in the dealing with the trauma. One must be very aware of one's actions, not to be surprised by what kind of response one might get. There is a great danger that you point to somebody with one finger and don’t see that three fingers are pointing towards you.

So here is a bit more of my story:

In the mid 80's, during my seven years with Rigpa and 4 years as founding director of a national Rigpa branch, I had slowly discovered that Sogyal Rinpoche had sex with very many disciples. Even though I was very close to SR, it took me some time to notice the obvious. Even though I am a professional counselor, it took me quite some time to notice it at all, and then it took me even more time to take action. First, at the same time I was shocked and kind of amused, I felt somehow mixed about it, because in the beginning I saw that some women tried to get him. First I thought, they are mature woman, they know what they are doing, and I simply am too inexperienced in the exotic ways of Tibetan Lamas to be able to judge. It was much later that I heard stories and saw things which were not based on consent, and saw that he was cheating all the time on the women. Also I noticed that he had sex with young students who just had come to Rigpa retreats for the fist time.

There was the harem, and the women seemed to be able and ok with their role in the game. At least I wanted to believe this, still trying to see SR as a holy man. On the other side, I found always obstacles to consider SR as my guru. I considered myself at that time more as a Buddhist manager and some kind of assistant of SR than as a disciple of him. I could see Dilgo Khyentse or the Dalai Lama as true masters, but SR appeared to me always more as a teacher who teaches Buddhism, or many times as a salesman who sells Buddhism. When I was in power at my national Rigpa branch, I always extinguished most of the superlatives in the flyers. I said to SR: either you are true and good and people will find out themselves, or if not they will also find out. So don’t tell them what they should think or how good they should think about you. True quality will speak for itself. With me, he accepted such words, but I heard my successors had to put on the praise line again.

Well back to the abuse subject:

I confronted first jokingly, then half-heartedly Sogyal with my concerns about his behaviour, and I said to him that as a therapist I know about transference phenomena: students see the teacher as kind of a father figure, so sex with the student is psychologically seen as incest. Also, that in the West, the relationship between teacher and student, or priest and the parishioner, must be kept pure, and does not allow intimate relationships or involvement with sex in any way. He was not amused, and tried to avoid the subject, but he first tried to justify his sexual behaviour spiritually. First he said that because he is one of the incarnations of Padmasambhava, and that Padmasambhava had had many "spiritual consorts", he would be somehow entitled to do so. Then he played the cultural card: in Tibetan culture women are seen as Dakinis, and they would happily serve the Lamas for enhancing their spiritual power and so on. I am ashamed, but first I wanted to believe all this. Raised in an over-sanctimonious, hypocritical catholic background, I was somehow trained for bending the truth, and trained to idealize and respect people of position even more than supposedly “holy” men. My spiritual and emotional hunger made be blind to my own values and my professional standards - at least where the standards of a Lama are concerned, not in my own work. For some years I was blind with my own position. I was together with other dear friends establishing a very well-working organisation to benefit many people. I was happy. I was in a very special position. I honestly tried to use my possibilities well. I felt I was chosen, and because of karmic connections with Sogyal, I was finally recognized in my full capacity. What the bitter irony is, because other students saw me as a rather independent, seemingly critical, and reasonable person, and because I am a psychotherapist, some people took me as a guarantee for trusting Sogyal. And I guess some people even envied my special access to SR. By that time I could no longer ignore what was happening. Once Sogyal wanted me to lie on the phone to a woman, who wanted to contact him after having had sex with him another day, because he was in bed with another one, but I refused. He became very angry and yelled at me, but I was not impressed. Basically, he treated me always very good. He seemingly respected me, but now I think he was clever enough to not treat me like some of his other main students. He gave me the feeling that he appreciated my views at least as long I helped him to please the audience and the students. But he never was open to criticism concerning his personal behaviour. Also, he never answered any of my personal spiritual questions. I got more and more the impression that he simply could not answer them. Also, when I attended sessions where he should answer questions by his students, he often gave very stupid answers, and showed that he had not much understanding of what people were really asking. Sometimes he ridiculed people.

One of the worst things I experienced was at a winter retreat in Germany. A long term student of his was in emotional distress and asked in obvious pain and vulnerability and confusion for his help, and he forced her to speak louder and then to come forward to the stage where he put her completely down. In my view, he was totally afraid of her, and could not deal with the situation whatsoever. But instead of putting her into safe hands, he tried to save himself in putting her down and ridiculing her, and then played the strong teacher who can deal with everything. In the same night, we had to rush her to the emergency ward of the next psychiatric hospital with a nervous breakdown and a psychotic seizure.

As a therapist and as a student, I was horrified by his behaviour and his complete lack of compassion and skill. Before I left Rigpa, an American woman told me confidentially and in great distress that she had just lost her husband and had come from US to France to SR to get help, and that SR, during a private audience, had tried to violently force her to have sex with him. Fortunately, she managed not to be raped. She left the retreat in even greater despair and completely shocked. This was the worst incident which I heard from firsthand.

SR did not respect any limits: he had sex with most of the wives of the leading students at Rigpa. I tried to keep myself and my private life out of his. I tried not to mix with his affairs. Sogyal had a classical harem, and he knew all the tricks to make the obvious invisible, or if that did not work, to change the context of the students’ values, giving the whole thing a spiritual excuse, and abuse fears and naivety, or the good belief of his students to get what he wanted. It’s 12 years ago that I quit Rigpa, so I have no more first hand information of SR’s doing now, but I must say I have little doubt that everything is the same today, because I consider him an addict. He is hooked on sex and power.

When I have more time I will write more professionally on the psychology of the guru-student relationship and of abuse. What interests me most is why people “agree” to be abused and what hinders them to see the truth. And how to help others to discover their own truth, and how to stop people like SR from going on.

Please again this is confidential, and I will take action, but I will choose my own way according to my values and my autonomy. It is a painful process for me to look after all these years more deeply into my own behaviour and acts. I need my time so that I can be really of use for others who need help. Just acting without having my personal process at a certain point could do more harm than good.

Thank you for listening, and it's very good that you study the psychological background of what happened to you. You are very courageous. I hope that you can heal and learn from it and help others. Of course it would be easy to identify me quickly -- maybe you have already -- but the story is on trusting, so I trust you.

Best regards

oscar

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http://www.american-buddha.com/am.learn.12.htm


RANDY SOGYAL, BEST-SELLING LECHER -- THE WRITINGS OF AMLEARNING

January 14, 2004
Dear Oscar, Tiger Lily, Tara and Charles,

Wow, all I can think of is wow. What an amazing and freeing conversation this has been for me this last week! hank you all so much for sharing your true selves valiantly.

Tara, I felt very similar feelings about Oscar's posts that you expressed. Really, I felt so enraged by what seemed to be his sanctimonious, finger-wagging, moralising cowardice, when he, a trained therapist, saw what he saw and did nothing, for the 7 years he was in his little official role as part of the abuse support network, then for 12 years after that. And his arrogance for not understanding your expression of anger as natural, sane, appropriate in light of the betrayal of the lamas setting themselves up to be PROSTRATED to as LIVING BUDDHAS teaching THE TRUTH ... I was almost apoplectic with anger at Oscar, physically sickened.

He seemed to be more concerned about appearing like Mr. Pompous Rational Analyzer than he is about seeing that the abuses Sogyal has been perpetrating have DEVASTATING effects on people's lives. The combination of his vanity and cowardice felt really toxic to me. I want to DO something practical to STOP the abuses.

But ... as the week went by and my own feelings came up, it has been a profound experience to remain in the dialogue here. I feel for the first time in many years a deeper peace.

Tiger Lily, thank you for sharing your vulnerability. I think you are a very brave person.

Charles, I feel very comforted by your company here.

Oscar, wow, your last post blew my mind. Congratulations for coming here, sharing your thoughts. That took cojones. If you would stop being so worried about the feeling-ful use of expressions of anger that Tara uses, I think you would see her moral intentions in being here and sharing her painful feelings. What happens when your clients use obscenities in expressing their anger? Is there a censor in your office that says anger should be only expressed in 'nice' ways?

You are right Oscar, I was angry with myself for playing a part in the abuse I survived. But I was 22 to 28 years old, not a professional therapist. Still, I can very much relate to your post today and what you said. And I imagine that Tara, Tiger Lily and Charles also can relate.

My anger is really that you would not come into the OPEN and SHARE with OTHERS here. Now that you are here and sharing your true self, I'm glad and proud of you that you did. I hope you stay and talk about this with us all, not to be part of an anti-sect sect but to genuinely talk about this and think about it and let feelings come up genuinely. I do think this subject needs healing for all of us.

When one is ALONE in feeling these feelings about spiritual betrayal, especially when others want there to be SILENCE and SECRECY, the anger comes up a lot about hiding the truth, feeling invalidated. Yes, it feels to me like being a kid and yelling and nobody believing what I'm saying. It hurts not to be believed about something true and be told to hide the truth.

The truth you told in your post needs to be out there Oscar, not hidden. Like Charles says, people are so scared of telling the truth that people are forced by the use of subpoenas to get them into court to tell the truth. I genuinely felt very badly posting your post without your permission. I apologise to you. I also believe that what you wrote to me was very powerful and WILL help others a LOT. I wanted to share the truth you wrote and I did. In time I believe you will see the good that came from that. Even so, I'm sorry I hurt you by forcing your post into the public. Please forgive me.

Now you are here and we are all here, please stay and talk. I know you will read our posts because this IS an important topic to you, to who you are. And what we have to say here will, I do believe, have a good and healthy impact on others as well as ourselves.

all the best,
AmLearning

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Review of:

Vijay Prashad. The Karma of Brown Folk. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.

Current perceptions regarding South Asians in the United States are dominated by a multitude of stereotypes that collide and rebound against one another. South Asians are viewed as hardworking and potentially "productive" citizens but also as essentially different and distant from "American" life and culture. Although this form of othering may sound benign, it is part of a more complex form of racism that includes a portrait of the South Asian as a possible economic threat, willing to cheat honest Americans out of their livelihood (consider the depiction of Apu in The Simpsons).

Moreover, South Asian difference, though seemingly an innocent gesture of exoticization, can be used to deny civic and economic rights.
In his groundbreaking text, The Karma of Brown Folk, Vijay Prashad effectively unpacks some of these stereotypes, providing an excellent historical contextualization of the many layers that determine the complex lives of South Asians. His book, as he puts it, is about "the feeling, the consciousness of being South Asian, of being desi (those people who claim ancestry of South Asia) in the United States. It is also a set of sutras (aphorisms) of the karma (fate) of desis, who must now imagine ourselves within the U.S. racial formation and seek to mediate between the dream of America and our realities" (viii). Prashad's book, however, is not just an archival resource or a series of community vignettes; it is also a call to action, striving "to address the dilemmas of desi life in the United States." In addition, the book "suggests passages to transform [desis'] current aporias" (ix).

One of the greatest strengths of the book is Prashad's historical overview of desi life in the United States and of desis' unique, evolving place in a white supremacist society. Prashad does an excellent job of tracing the roots of some of the racist notions that persist into contemporary times. An early example of racial othering, for instance, had been constructed by American writers, such as Emerson and Thoreau, who had portrayed the East as essentially spiritual and different. These views were exacerbated by turn of the century "popular orientalism," which "paraded out both the ghastly and beautiful mysteries of India as racial specimens that represented the multiplicity of Indian society, entertained U.S. residents, and validated the U.S. way of life in opposition to that deemed to be general in the East" (30). Some examples of these specimens included idols in personal museum collections, spectacles organized by the Barnum circuses, and the Ethnological Congress, which displayed people of "different and (lower) races" (30). Such spectacles were further sanctioned by the "Godmen of the fin-de-siècle who came from India to the United States" (40).

However, Prashad notes that many of these "godmen," including the most famous one, Swami Vivekananda, were disturbed by the American "tendency to view India as solely spiritual." In their eyes, this perception "obscured the devastation wrought on the subcontinent by capitalism and colonialism" (41). Prashad is particularly effective at demonstrating the continuing pattern of these perceptions by focusing at some length on the most prominent contemporary exponent of Indian "spirituality," Deepak Chopra. Chopra, according to Prashad, is a "sly baba" who "is the complete stereotype willed upon India by U.S. orientalism, for he delivers just what is expected of a seer from the East" (48). Unlike Vivekananda, however, Chopra "fails to mention the structural poverty of his homeland, nor does he offer any of criticism of capitalism" (48).

American Dream wrote:http://aconstantineblacklist.blogspot.com/2008/07/mind-control-course-in-miracles.html

Mind Control: A COURSE IN MIRACLES - A CIA/UNITY CHURCH THOUGHT MANIPULATION DEVICE
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