Resources - Greater Boston Zen Center

Our email: resilientsangha@bostonzen.org.

Handbooks

Responding to Spiritual Leader Misconduct: A Handbook was created by the Faith Trust Institute with contributions from several Zen teachers. Unfortunately, Faith Trust Institute is no longer operating.

Consultants/Experts

Shogaku Zen Institute offers trainings about boundary issues between teachers and students and a response network for survivors of Buddhist Clergy abuse.

Buddhist Healthy Boundaries is a new organization, founded in 2022, that runs the online Buddhist-oriented courses formerly run by the Faith Trust Institute, and with many of the same instructors. It “aims to help Buddhist leaders create and maintain safe and healthy communities.” Such a course is currently required of any teacher offering dokusan at GBZC.

Websites

The Center for Institutional Courage promotes values for organizational accountability and “turning toward” that are aligned with our Resilient Sangha Project.

Books

Scott Edelstein, Sex and the Spiritual Teacher: Why It Happens, When It’s a Problem, and What We All Can Do (2011). Edelstein presents insights and advice on sexual misconduct gathered from years of spiritual practice and personal research.

Mariana Caplan, Eyes Wide Open: Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path (2009). Caplan gives advice on choosing a path, practice, and teacher based on her own practice in various mystical traditions and in psychology.

Andrea Celenza, Sexual Boundary Violations: Therapeutic, Supervisory, and Academic Contexts (2007). Celenza describes in detail the findings of academic research about how it is that such violations (often) occur among otherwise trustworthy practitioners, as well as warning signs, possible rehabilitation, and prevention. (Celenza’s article with Glen O. Gabbard, “Analysts Who Commit Sexual Boundary Violations: A Lost Cause?,” is also insightful.)

Marilyn R. Peterson, At Personal Risk: Boundary Violations in Professional-Client Relationships (1992). While not primarily about spiritual teachers, this book usefully describes the harm caused by such violations from a relational standpoint.

Other Projects, Articles, and Letters Bringing Light to Buddhist Misconduct

No Secrets in the Village: An Open Letter on Abuse in Dharma Ocean: a letter by former students of Dharma Ocean and Reggie Ray

A letter to Sogyal Lakar about abuses in the Rigpa Sangha

Buddhist Project Sunshine and the Kusung Letter illuminating abuses in the Shambala context

“The Zen Predator of the Upper East Side”: an article in The Atlantic about Eido Shimano

Open Letter to John Tarrant about his abuses of power (p. 4)

Shoes Outside the Door by Michael Downing, concerning abuses of power at San Francisco Zen Center (and a review in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review)

The Great Failure by Natalie Goldberg, touching upon Dainin Katagiri’s misconduct

Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s Ethics and Reconciliation Council Statement Regarding Noah Levine

White Plum Asangha addresses Taezan Maezumi’s legacy of sexual misconduct

Shorter Articles, Videos, and Podcasts

Why It’s Not an Affair by Rev. Patricia L. Liberty. Explains why boundary violations are not just affairs between “consenting adults.”

Unethical Buddhist Teachers: Were They Ever Really Enlightened? A podcast (with written transcript) by Soto Zen Priest Domyo Burk

The Promise and Peril of Spiritual Authority A recently published interview with three Buddhist teachers on the general issues of abuse of power.

Sexual Abuse in Buddhism A similar published group interview from 2013. “The measure of a community’s vibrancy and beneficence is, I believe, found less in its ability to control or eliminate troubling behavior than in its response—or lack thereof—and whether or not it brings people together.”

Confronting Abuse: Be Proactive A short magazine article on prevention.

Encountering the Shadow in Buddhist America by Katy Butler on sexual abuse in the San Francisco Zen Center

Naming (and Preventing) Psychopompogenic Harm and What is Transmitted in Zen Teaching Transmission? Two blog series by Julie Nelson, in the aftermath of the GBZC crises.

Clergy Sexual Misconduct and the Misuse of Power A 10-page summary of research on clergy abuse of power, with a special focus on Buddhist teachers, from An Olive Branch.

How Sexual Misconduct Shatters Spiritual Communities: Lessons for Buddhists from An Olive Branch. “Once followers split into factions, conflict at the organization level typically erupts and the sangha becomes paralyzed.”

Sample Professional Codes

The Sangha Sutra. An extremely detailed (51 page!) document about ethical behavior authored by the Zen Center of Los Angeles.

Ethics Policy A more typical example of an ethics policy at a Zen community. “The responsibility for maintaining appropriate and clear boundaries always rests with the teacher.”

2014 Code of Ethics Detailed code of ethics for counselors.