  A -> "The Buddha's Not Smiling," by Erik D. Curren |
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Tara Carreon
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 Posted: Mon Feb 28, 2011 2:50 pm Post subject: "The Buddha's Not Smiling," by Erik D. Curren |
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You can find the book here: http://www.american-buddha.com/cult.buddhanosmiling.toc.htm I'll be putting it up all day.
I will be critiquing most of Erik's words. I will be inviting him over to defend himself. |
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Tara Carreon
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| Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2011 1:04 pm Post subject: |
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| First of all, it's just flat on it's face none of the Dalai Lama's goddamned business who is the Karmapa. His interference is proof enough that he is a total piece of shit. His alliance with the third-ranking Tai Situ against the second ranking Shamarpa is proof enough that he doesn't give a shit about hierarchy.And that he sees himself as the boss of all Tibetans. Yeah, that's "boss" in the way all Americans understand the word. "Boss" as in "mafia" boss. Him and his goddamned hoodlums and club-wielding, murderous henchmen! |
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Tara Carreon
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| Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2011 2:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Second, everything you see happening here with the Karmapas, happened after the Buddha died. His so-called "legacy" is nothing but the result of warfare between competing parties. Men! Spit the word out! |
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Tara Carreon
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| Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2011 2:56 pm Post subject: |
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I've invited Erik Curren over, and hopefully he won't take refuge in silence as a way of guttlessly avoiding the issue.
Erik starts his book with a typical misogynistic female sacrifice. All you ladies out there who've been sexually abused by lamas, that is so old news! And besides, clergy in every religion does it! So who cares! Abusing women isn't important! In fact, it's not even abuse, it's "romance." What's way more juicy and exciting is the old-news politics of who will be the successor when a famous lama dies. Now THAT'S the stuff of drama! For guys, that is. Who continue to spread their age-old disrespect of women, the "old news" that never dies.
| Erik Curren, The Buddha's Not Smiling wrote: | This book is about corruption in Tibetan Buddhism, but not about sex scandals. We have already. seen discussions about Buddhist teachers, particularly well known Zen masters and Tibetan lamas, having romantic affairs with their students, especially those from Western countries. [1] This is nothing new, and it afflicts Buddhism as it does all other major religions. Here, I do not touch on this topic.
Instead, I explore a type of corruption that I believe is much more insidious, and whose exposure can be of much greater benefit to people seeking to find meaning in their lives through a spiritual path, or just trying to understand the massive phenomenon that Tibetan Buddhism has become in the past thirty years. This book is a history of a dispute among the highest lamas with roots centuries in the past and a present of deep shame. It is a dispute over the identity of a lama called the Karmapa. |
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Tara Carreon
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| Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2011 3:09 pm Post subject: |
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Here's just one example of the "romance" women experience with Tibetan lamas, and clergy from every other religion, too! Who cares?!
| AmLearning wrote: | January 3, 2004
Dear Ambu and others,
Hello.
I was the person who helped file the lawsuit against Sogyal in 1993/4. Mary Finnigan interviewed me for the BBC in which I spoke up about Sogyal's sexual exploitation of me.
I never really got to fully speak my mind about how rotten a person I thought Sogyal was at the time I got to know him, how grossly narcissistic, deceitful, slothful, sadistic, immoral and basically stupid I think he really was. I'd like to say that now.
A number of women contacted me around the time of the lawsuit by phone and letter, who had also been abused by Sogyal but who were afraid or ashamed to speak out openly, including a woman who had been a head of his organisation, saying how staggeringly corrupt his sick relationship with his devotees truly is, with them basically creating some kind of pimping service for him, called Lama Care. He was conning people and really hurting them! Not just some little dalliances but really USING and ABUSING women, some violently, especially those who had just lost a loved one, for example whose father had just died. He used people who were bereft and grieving for his sexual gratification! How SICK is that!!!
And he did NOT write his book on death and dying, Andrew Harvey did. I learned that Sogyal couldn't even answer the questions about his book on radio interviews and Andrew had to script them for him.
When I was 21, I went to India for about half a year, returned to America for 6 months in 1976, and then went back to India that year and stayed there for a decade, studying Buddhism with various lamas for 6 of those years.
It was during my 6 months back in America that I had the misfortune to meet Sogyal. After sexually assaulting me, which I convinced myself was, as other lamas had told me, some kind of "blessing", he conned me into using my mother's telephone credit card, which I said he could use in case of an emergency because he plead poverty, and he raked up a huge bill, basically stealing. He asked me to stay at Marilee and Joel Shefflin's house in Berkeley. I assumed I would be in a separate bedroom but he insisted I stay in his bedroom, telling me later that he had a girlfriend in London.
When I went for 3 days to visit my father, who was dying of cancer, I came back to the Shefflins hearing that Sogyal had slept with 2 other women. Between feeling disgusted by my having been duped by this bastard con artist, I was also sickened by his focus on getting weight loss drugs, speed for himself and Shenphen Dawa.
He told me that he wanted the sex, like a rock star, that Trungpa had out in Boulder, with girls lining up outside the hallway. When he saw Trungpa's set up, he was determined to be just like that and he told me that, called me from Boulder to New York City, bragging about the girls he was going to get.
In Berkeley at the gathering for Dudjom Rinpoche's teaching there in the summer 1976, the big joke at the dining room table was that in Tibet monks wore robes on the outside, were compassionate inside, but secretly practiced tantra. In the West, the lamas said, people were sexually wild on the outside, compassionate inside, but secretly wanted to be monks and nuns. However witty that seemed at the time, I felt it was a denigration of any Westerner wanting to practice morality or discipline of any kind.
In 1984, an old dharma friend of mine had committed suicide in a meditation retreat, making herself into a living butter lamp. This was shortly after it was exposed that the Geshe at the Tibetan Library, our refuge guru, had been having sexual relations with a south American woman he had ordained as a nun.
By then I had heard, seen and experienced so many sexual abuses of Western women by Tibetan lamas, my heart was basically broken and my faith was shattered.
And it was NOT to be discussed openly. It was 'shameful' and to be kept secret, hushed up, and this was the cover-up that kept it all going for decades.
Just as one example of how this exploitation didn't just damage a person's faith but had long-lasting repercussions, one very dear friend, who I had just advised to remove her intrauterine contraceptive device, because they caused infertility, went to visit Khamtrul Rinpoche in Tashijong. En route, she stopped to visit one of the renowned Tibetan ngakpas there, whose wife she also knew. The Ngakpa requested my friend for yab yum with him and promised he would retain his tigle. When my friend got pregnant, he made her promise not to tell his wife or anybody in his circle.
Unlike the ngakpa, my friend kept HER promise to keep the breach of trust secret, and she went back to her family in Australia where she was reviled for having a bastard half-breed, whose father she wouldn't publicly reveal. The son grew up with this shame on his head in the merciless Tibetan gossip-community in India, and he's now a heroin addict after a childhood spent growing up in a monastery.
Another old dharma friend was the Danish wife of Lama Topgyal, who had not only no compunctions about cheating on his wife with every woman who could be conned into his bed under the delusion that he was giving "jinlab" (blessing), but he convinced his Danish wife that it was part of her damstig (sacred spiritual bond with him as her teacher) to work as a prostitute in Old Delhi, to make enough money to buy him arak, hard alcohol. When I last saw her in 1984, she was in the middle of a nervous breakdown, destitute, sick and emotionally crushed.
I was asked by Lama Topgyal to help be the midwife to his Danish wife's first child, even though I had no knowledge about this. I was staying with them for a few weeks before she gave birth to their son, and for a few days when their son was several months old. Not only did lama Togyal hit and yell at his infant child, he bullied his wife into letting the cold, wet child scream itself to sleep, because to nurture the baby was, according to lama Topgyal, to spoil him.
When I met his wife years later, after she had worked as a prostitute, she said she had to send their child away as early as possible because lama Topgyal beat the child so badly and wouldn't buy food but only wanted liquor for himself.
For about half a year in 1980, I went to live in Rajpur, across the street from Sakya Trinzin. I asked him for teachings on my meditation practice and he convinced me he had a vision of him and me yab yum and that it was important for him to act on it with me. Not only was it the most pathetic sex act of my entire life, it was such a total farce. It was about as enlightening as a mosquito bite, less even, if that's possible. And when it seemed impossible that he could get beyond his Ganesh sized belly to have sex, I offered him oral gratification. He was worried that would get me pregnant.
From that time on, Sakya Trinzin had no interest in teaching me anything, and any conversation I tried to have with him was focused on his adolescent-style lasciviousness, jokes, and obsessing about doing it next, and how wherever I went in the world I had to let him know where I was so he could have sexual access to me.
He also knew that his main Western student was cheating with a married woman and did nothing to stop this breach of ethics, which went on openly for many years.
I wrote the Dalai Lama directly, gave my name and address, said in no uncertain terms did I think that Tibetan lamas were abusing Western women sexually and doing them harm by tricking them into thinking it was part of some tantric or spiritual practice when it wasn't at all.
By then I'd told a number of lamas about Sogyal's exploiting women, and they thought it was just a joke. They ALL knew that Sogyal used his disciples for sex and did nothing. They all knew what lamas were exploiting what women and laughed about it.
Thinley Norbu was infamous for mocking any sense of female virtue, and I sat in a room where he bullied a Tibetan nun into saying the Tibetan words for penis and vulva because, according to him, it would cure her of her attachment to any virtue.
In 1999, when I first learned how to log onto the Internet, my computer was too old to be able to access the forum in which Mary Finnigan was talking about the sexual abuses of Western women by Tibetan lamas. So she posted my posts for me, and Evelyn Ruut, with whom I spoke over the phone a number of times, supported me in my speaking out about these abuses.
The responses I received were a number of emailed death threats, to which I responded that I would contact the FBI if they continued. That is also a warning to anybody else who reads this and thinks they can either harass me or send a death threat. I will take legal action. I am not afraid of any lawsuit, because what I am saying here is the truth.
On the Buddhist discussion board I was ridiculed and slammed for telling the truth, and it hurt not to be able to respond to all the mudslinging, but I realised that with many of the viciously misogynistic fanatics there it would have been exhausting, and it was painful enough to talk about how my deepest faith, most profound trust, had been so callously defiled by the very Tibetan lamas I had been told by other lamas were reincarnate, very holy, living Buddhas, teachers of the truth and compassion.
I didn't feel psychologically strong enough before to talk about this subject openly. I do now and I'm angry at the cowardice of the other people who have been abused and not come forward. I know there are THOUSANDS out there. I've personally met dozens and heard about many more.
When the Karmapa was in Delhi, dying of cancer, he had a married translator, Achi, who had a conveyor belt of sex partners and all the other lamas knew it and did nothing. Women would arrive in a state of abject reverence and were simply easy pickings for this translator, who was notorious for having had an affair with Thartang Tulku's wife.
The depth of sordidness in the Tibetan lama scene was pretty revolting.
Once, when I went to meet Dodrubchen Rinpoche, and held up my mala to show him that he and I had similar beads, he took my hand, with the mala in it, and rubbed it in his crotch to masturbate. I mean YUCK!!!!
It hurts very deeply to be spiritually defiled, to have one's truth path trashed by a so-called teacher of the truth. To have been used, manipulated, scorned. The very word for female in Tibetan is "inferior birth" - kyi-min.
I don't even know where to go with my first-hand experience of how the Tibetan people think Westerners are just to be milked as sponsors. Even Tibetans who are rich want "jindaks" for their kids, as a status symbol.
Having spoken at length with June Campbell, I was disappointed that she no longer thinks of herself as a Buddhist, but I can fully understand why. I do still deeply appreciate many aspects of the Buddhist path, and want to tell my experience about how Tibetan lamas are using some grotesque and cultic version to exploit and parasite off of gullible Westerners. And worse, this exploitation is really hurting a lot of people! |
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Tara Carreon
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| Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2011 3:27 pm Post subject: |
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| Where are the men who fucking care? |
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Tara Carreon
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| Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 8:33 pm Post subject: |
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Someone like me looks at a guy like this Erik Curren who says he has been a "student of Buddhism for a decade" and just laughs. I'm supposed to be impressed, or even listen to someone who is effectively only 10 years old, i.e., still a child, talk about a subject as big as "Buddhism"? When I was ten years old in "Buddhism," I was at the very height of my naivete about the topic. Now I'm smart enough to ask first, "What does that word "Buddhism," mean? "Buddhism" is a million things. Does a word have the right to include so many things? Shouldn't a "thing" be "one" thing? When the category gets too large, does it really mean anything at all?
It's like saying, "I have been a student of a million different ideas for a decade and was inspired by this ancient path's time-tested methods to escape ..." What path? Where's the glue that holds all these ideas together? A path is something real, the ground beaten down by many feet trampling on it through the wilderness. But what's real about ideas? How can an idea be "time-tested"? One idea 1,000 years ago means the completely opposite thing today, and different cultures see ideas differently. If it was time-tested, it would stay the same, like gravity. But everyone knows that would be impossible. Every word of "Buddhism" would need a specific definition that never changed. It would have to be contained. There would need to be a certain number of words, and no more. There could only be one language, since translation would create variation. It could only come from one human source. And even people change their ideas over a lifetime.
No, Erik is simply talking bullshit here. He wasn't impressed by "this ancient path's time-tested methods to escape." Where's the proof? Certainly not in the story he's about to tell. Does anyone know even one Tibetan who has ever "escaped" suffering? What does that mean, "escape suffering"? Does that mean that a Tibetan didn't die? That no one close to them died? That they didn't lose their country to the Chinese? That they never got sick, tired, or hungry? And does Tibetan "Buddhism" define "Buddhism"? Smart people know that Tibetan Buddhism isn't "Buddhism" at all, but lamaism. And no sentient being EVER escapes suffering. Get real.
So after the female sacrifice, Erik starts the book out with a big, fat lie.
Actually, many lies. What "example of compassionate living offered by Tibetan lamas" is he talking about? What's "compassion"? Is that teaching for money? For sex? For housing, food, and entertainment? Is it "compassion" when you receive worldly benefits for whatever you think that word "compassion" means? Where's the scientific test, the double blind study? Are we satisfied with the idea that to many Tibetan lamas, "compassion" is fucking their female students? Okay, then, let's just accept that whatever anyone calls "compassion" IS "compassion" and let the word mean nothing at all. Then, let's do the same thing with all the other "Buddhist" words. Which makes my point that the word "Buddhism" means nothing. Zip. Oh, maybe it means conflict: Me against You. Isn't that the whole point of these types of labels? So that Buddhists can fight against Muslims can fight against Christians can fight against Jews can fight against Pagans?
And since when do Tibetan lamas stand for "love, peace, and nonviolence." This guy is in Shangri-la land, HA HA HA HA HA! What a fool! I never in 25 years of studying with these guys ever heard any of them say the words "love," "peace" and "nonviolence." The word was "compassion" -- something far more distant than "love." "Peace" -- is that when Vajrakilaya emanates rays of razor-sharp mantra light like showers of meteors and forks of wild lightning to sever the aortas of all dualistic forces of harm? And sure, don't kill animals, but do eat them for supper, and use rare animals' body parts in your sacrificial offerings.
Then Erik introduces another huge category: "Tibetan lamas." What, are they not individuals? Are we all Communists? Are we to view them as some sort of collective when we ask the question, "Are Tibetan lamas just hypocrites and charlatans?" What a ridiculous question. Each person would obviously have a unique personality. .And whatever that personality is, nobody will know what it is. Not even the person him or herself. We call it "personality," but is that really a "thing" either? No, because it's "many." And the collective "group" would have no characteristics, since it is also just a concept, and a Communist one at that.
And what does the last sentence in this paragraph mean, "The only way I could remain was to discover the facts for myself"? Is there a cause and effect relationship here? If he had decided not to discover the facts, would he have had to leave "Buddhism"? Is there some logic in the relationship? It's irrational: "Discover the facts, and you won't have to give up Buddhism." Why? Are there any facts that once being discovered, would make us have to give up Buddhism? Or is he just shutting the door to anyone leaving Buddhism for any reason at all? It sounds like that to me. Like saying, "The only way I could continue hanging out with the Nazis was to discover how fucked up the Nazis were." Or "The only way I could make peace with monarchy was to discover how fucked up monarchy is." Like just knowing would be enough, and you wouldn't have to make a value judgment. No action required! This is a strangely disempowering and fascist philosophy Erik is proposing. I suppose he would be clever and call it "nonattachment." Hey, let's all be good "Buddhists" and be non-attached to fascists, killers and monarchists. "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!"
Erik said that, too. But what "baby"? When did men ever have "babies"? Except for their little Frankenstein "babies"! Oh, they love those little "babies" more than they love themselves!
| Eriks Curren's The Buddha's Not Smiling wrote: | | I have been a student of Buddhism for a decade. I was inspired by this ancient path's time-tested methods to escape suffering, and by the example of compassionate living offered by Tibetan lamas. A few years ago, when I first heard how spiritual leaders who stand for love, peace, and nonviolence had behaved in this dispute I was shocked and disillusioned. Were Tibetan lamas just hypocrites and charlatans? If this was so, I would have been ready to give up Buddhism altogether. The only way I could remain was to discover the facts for myself. |
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Tara Carreon
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| Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2011 11:43 am Post subject: |
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Here's a representation of a real "thing," which "Tibetans" both admit and deny: The Life Force, our Identity, the "I" -- but not the "Eye."
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Tara Carreon
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| Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2011 2:29 pm Post subject: |
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Take the word "humanity," for example. According to Merriam Webster, it has a positive connotation:
Definition of HUMANITY
1: the quality or state of being humane
2a : the quality or state of being human b plural : human attributes or qualities <his work has the ripeness of the 18th century, and its rough humanities — Pamela H. Johnson>
3plural : the branches of learning (as philosophy, arts, or languages) that investigate human constructs and concerns as opposed to natural processes (as in physics or chemistry) and social relations (as in anthropology or economics)
4: the human race : the totality of human beings
See humanity defined for English-language learners »
Examples of HUMANITY
We appealed to his sense of humanity.
These discoveries will be of benefit to all humanity.
She was cut off from the rest of humanity.
the college of arts and humanities
He's taking courses in both the sciences and the humanities.
Synonyms: folks, people, humankind, public, species, world
Antonyms: coldheartedness, hard-heartedness, inhumanity, inhumanness, mercilessness, pitilessness
But it wasn't always so, and not so very long ago. Apparently, this positive meaning came into being in the 18th century. In antiquity, for example, St. Augustine defined "humanity" as the process of growth and decrepitude, the fleshly and sinful human condition. Additionally, Catholic categories of "believers" and "non-believers" left no room for the concept of "humanity."
Then, where is the emphasis on "humanity"? On the individuals, or the group? Obviously the latter for Communists. Maybe it's neither individuals nor groups, but nations and states for the fascists.
How about "rationality"? Rationality belongs to faith, not reason.
How about "evolution"? That refers to the evolution of religion, and humanity progressing towards the Apocalypse and the Last Judgment.
How about "natural"? That's what is known without the aid of human reasoning, like God exists and is eternal. Now if you want to understand God's three-part nature, you might have to resort to "reason."
How about "fact"? That's an act of faith.
What's "knowledge"? That's vision, right?
How about "wisdom"? Well, that's Satan to the gnostics.
It's not the word that's important, but the meaning.
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Tara Carreon
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| Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 10:14 am Post subject: |
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It's hard to get into this book. Eric Curren makes so many ridiculous statements at the beginning, it's not like you can just read the book. And if I'm going to have a thread about this book, I don't want to let this shit go by. So this is going to be extremely laborious, and boring.
Here's the fourth paragraph of the preface:
| Eric Curren, the Buddha's not Smiling wrote: | | So that's what I set out to do. In the process, I discovered a dark side to some Tibetan lamas. But I also developed a confidence in the basic teachings of a spiritual tradition that was more mature, based on my own 'investigation, rather than merely on hopeful faith. I believe that this journey did me much good, and helped me grow intellectually and spiritually. I hope the reader will take much the same journey in these pages, and discover some of the same benefit along the way. |
How does "discovering a dark side to some Tibetan lamas" lead to confidence "in the basic teachings" of Buddhism without there remaining the "hopefail faith" that he says has ended? Where did intelligence enter into the situation? This guy is stupid. |
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