Good morning. We are continuing our series on "Working with Emotions" and today it's my turn. Because it's the most painful emotion in my experience right now, I've chosen to discuss "Betrayal". I am going to read this instead of speaking off the cuff both because it's a difficult story to tell and because I want to get the words out clearly.
Four years ago some very brave women came forward to share that they had been sexually abused by the head of the meditation lineage that I had spent almost 30 years deeply involved with. The organization is called Shambhala. The report is called "Project Sunshine" and the teacher is named "Mipham Rinpoche".
I knew Mipham pretty well. I had served him countless times as kind of a butler, valet, driver and security guard. I had been on many retreats with him, been to many parties with him, had him over to my house for dinner. When my wife and I were trying to have a baby, he gave us a special meditation practice to help us. I wouldn't call us "friends" but he was very much my meditation teacher. He was someone I thought was going to show me the truth about awareness and compassion.
I was also very close friends with at least one of the women who Mipham abused. As a valet for Mipham, I had been privy to his relationships with women, although I had never personally witnessed the level of abuse that these women described.
But it wasn't hard for me to believe them. I knew Mipham drank too much. I knew he was emotionally needy and manipulative when he was drunk. And I had had friends who had been close to him and then had left the organization.
Instead of asking them why they left and hearing their stories, I looked obliquely at them - enough to see their faces, but not deeply enough to see what they had been through.
When the Project Sunshine report was published, it smacked me in the face. I had been serving a man and an organization that claimed to have all these incredible values and goals - we actually said we were "Creating Enlightened Society". But actually we were systematically abusing people. I had given so much of my time and so much of my heart to an organization that was rife with abuse.
Having the blinders torn off like that was a painful experience. But that wasn't the betrayal that I'm talking about. The betrayal came after the report was published.
Instead of owning up to the abuse, Mipham dodged it. Many of the men around him, some of whom also used their power to abuse others, enabled the dodge. They are still dodging it four years later.
I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. An organization is led by people who want to see that organization survive. The leaders have benefited from the status they've gained. Unless they are actually adults with some shred of integrity and enough confidence to take responsibility for their mistakes, they react defensively when their status is threatened. Plus, some of them could have gone to jail. Actually, Mipham fled the country and one of the senior teachers IS in jail.
So the three things I had learned in Shambhala were completely undermined. The first thing I had learned was that all this stuff, these thoughts, these emotions, certainly money and power and status were empty - without inherent meaning. The second thing I learned was that bravery did not mean being without fear, but being willing to face fear, experience fear, and see it change on its own. And finally I learned that we all exist in connection with each other - so causing suffering to one person hurts everyone. So don't do it! And if you do hurt another person, learn from the feedback you get so you can stop repeating the behavior that's causing the harm.
Instead of living those lessons, Mipham, many of the Shambhala teachers and much of the organization stonewalled. By doing so, they exposed themselves as hypocrites. They weren't living up to their vows. They certainly weren't "Creating Enlightened Society". My friends, people I thought were smart and caring, were complicit in covering up the abuse. Even when an internal investigation found that Mipham had abused his power as a spiritual leader to harm women, people stuck by him.
Now, four years later, I'm still living with this betrayal. The anger I felt has faded somewhat. So has the guilt brought on by all the enabling that I did while in Shambhala. But these emotions are still very much alive in my experience.
I'm sharing this with all of you because the feelings I'm naming - anger, disappointment, guilt, betrayal, the embarrassment of having my ignorance and naivety exposed, are all human feelings. They are all emotions that make up our lives. So let's sit with them. Let's face them. Or let's sit with whatever your experience is now, and experience it fully. Let's not hide. Let's take this precious opportunity to see clearly what our life is actually made of.
The only way to make sure we are not being lied to is to keep looking, keep trying to understand, to train, to learn, to grow, and thereby see more clearly.