{"id":86109,"date":"2012-04-07T17:23:28","date_gmt":"2012-04-07T21:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/86109\/buddistbishopbaptist-bum\/"},"modified":"2012-04-07T17:23:28","modified_gmt":"2012-04-07T21:23:28","slug":"buddistbishopbaptist-bum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/86109\/buddistbishopbaptist-bum\/","title":{"rendered":"BUDDIST,BISHOP,BAPTIST OR BUM !!!!!"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>
\nSex Scandal Has U.S. Buddhists Looking Within
\nBy MARK OPPENHEIMER
\nPublished: August 20, 2010<\/p>\n

Sooner or later, every traditional faith has to confront sexual impropriety by its spiritual leaders: extramarital sex, or<\/p>\n

sex with the wrong people (members of the congregation, minors) or, for supposedly celibate clergy, any sex at all.
\nEnlarge This Image
\nSuzanne DeChillo\/The New York Times<\/p>\n

The Zen Studies Society monastery. The society\u2019s abbot was linked to a series of affairs.<\/p>\n

But there are great differences in how religions handle these transgressions. For Jews and many Protestants, it is the local<\/p>\n

congregation that decides what sins are too great to countenance, and what kind of discipline is needed. For Roman Catholics,<\/p>\n

a worldwide hierarchy decides, depending on reports from local representatives. And for Buddhists \u2014 well, the answer is not<\/p>\n

so clear.<\/p>\n

The root of the problem, some experts say, is that the teacher\/student relationship in Buddhism has no obvious Western<\/p>\n

analogy. Priests and rabbis know the boundaries, even if some do not always respect them. Doctors, too, have ethical canons<\/p>\n

they are supposed to honor. A spiritual figure like a priest, an authority figure like a teacher, a therapeutic figure like<\/p>\n

an analyst \u2014 the Buddhist teacher may be all of those, but is not really like any one of them. Even sanghas, or Buddhist<\/p>\n

communities, that discourage such relationships often have no process for enforcing a ban, and as one Zen society in New York<\/p>\n

is learning, that can lead to problems.<\/p>\n

Since 1965, Eido Shimano, now 77, has been the abbot, or head spiritual teacher, of the Zen Studies Society, a Japanese<\/p>\n

Buddhist community with headquarters on East 67th Street in Manhattan and a 1,400-acre monastery in the Catskills. For much<\/p>\n

of that time, there have been rumors about the married abbot\u2019s sexual liaisons, with his students and with other women. Such<\/p>\n

rumors could no longer be ignored when, in 2008, the University of Hawaii at Manoa unsealed some papers donated by Robert<\/p>\n

Aitken, a leading American Buddhist and founder of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship.<\/p>\n

The papers included files about Mr. Shimano that Mr. Aitken kept from 1964 to 2003. Mr. Aitken, who died Aug. 5, met Mr.<\/p>\n

Shimano when both men worked in Hawaii in the 1960s, and for more than 40 years he kept notes on his colleague\u2019s liaisons,<\/p>\n

based on conversations with women who had confided in him.<\/p>\n

In a 1995 letter to the president of the Zen Studies Society\u2019s board, Mr. Aitken wrote: \u201cOver the past three decades, we have<\/p>\n

interviewed many former students of Shimano Roshi. Their stories are consistent: trust placed in an apparently wise and<\/p>\n

compassionate teacher, only to have that trust manipulated in the form of his sexual misconduct and abuse.\u201d (\u201cRoshi,\u201d or<\/p>\n

teacher, is a Japanese honorific that goes after the name.)<\/p>\n

The Aitken papers were soon circulating on the Internet. On June 15, Mr. Shimano\u2019s board of directors, which exercises<\/p>\n

ultimate authority in the society, met to discuss the allegations. Mr. Shimano, who was then on the board, was not present,<\/p>\n

but most board members concurred that the charges most likely had some validity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought the sources were varied enough\u201d to seem valid, said one board member, who asked not to be named. \u201cI certainly<\/p>\n

didn\u2019t think it was all a fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n

At that meeting, the board members began writing a new set of ethical guidelines for the society. In the text, they included<\/p>\n

an acknowledgment of past indiscretions by Mr. Shimano. Chris Phelan, another board member, said that Mr. Shimano saw the<\/p>\n

text of the statement and approved of it. \u201cHe didn\u2019t step forward and say he was being libeled,\u201d Mr. Phelan said.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, several board members told The New York Times that they believed that Mr. Shimano\u2019s relations with students had<\/p>\n

ended long ago, and they saw no reason that Mr. Shimano could not continue teaching.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs far as I knew, there had been a hiatus of 15 years,\u201d said Joe Marinello, a board member who is the abbot of the Seattle<\/p>\n

Zen Temple.<\/p>\n

But then, on July 19, the board announced that Mr. Shimano had resigned from the board after being confronted with<\/p>\n

allegations of \u201cclergy misconduct.\u201d The statement was sent in response to inquiries from Tricycle, a magazine about Buddhism.<\/p>\n

Since that time, the board has said that Mr. Shimano will continue as abbot until 2012, but a vice abbot has been appointed<\/p>\n

and Mr. Shimano will not be taking new students.<\/p>\n

So what had changed?<\/p>\n

A week after beginning work on new ethical guidelines \u2014 which in their final form forbid \u201csexual advances or liaisons\u201d<\/p>\n

between teachers and sangha members \u2014 the board was confronted with a new revelation.<\/p>\n

In interviews over the past two weeks, four board members, including Mr. Marinello, said that on June 21 a woman \u2014 whose name<\/p>\n

he would not reveal \u2014 stood up during dinner at the Catskills monastery and announced that for the past two years she had had<\/p>\n

a consensual affair with Mr. Shimano, who was at the dinner. Several board members have said that Mr. Shimano later admitted<\/p>\n

the affair in conversations with them. On Wednesday, the society issued a statement acknowledging that \u201cin June of this year,<\/p>\n

a woman revealed that there was an inappropriate relationship between herself and Eido Roshi.”<\/p>\n

Mr. Shimano did not return several phone calls.<\/p>\n

In two ways, this small, symbolic statement \u2014 Mr. Shimano\u2019s resigning from his own board \u2014 reflects how American religion has<\/p>\n

changed in the last 15 years.<\/p>\n

E-mail: mark.oppenheimer@nytimes.com; twitter.com\/markopp1<\/p>\n

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:<\/p>\n

Correction: August 24, 2010<\/p>\n

The Beliefs column on Saturday, about Buddhist leaders who addressed a sex scandal, referred incorrectly to a 1990 article by<\/p>\n

Katy Butler, a journalist, titled \u201cEncountering the Shadow in Buddhist America.\u201d Ms. Butler did not describe Richard Baker,<\/p>\n

the abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center during the 1970s and 1980, as an alcoholic. She was comparing patterns of behavior<\/p>\n

by his followers to patterns of enabling behavior of relatives of alcoholics.<\/p>\n

A version of this article appeared in print on August 21, 2010, on page A13 of the New York edition.<\/p>\n

Source Below
\nhttp:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/08\/21\/us\/21beliefs.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&sq=zen&st=cse&scp=2<\/p>\n

*So then my friends what are we to take on all of this child abuse and other sexual improprieties and scandals of varying<\/p>\n

denominations of faith…?
\nTo write about this abuse,or to take a stand against these actions….does it really reflect one’s hatred of any specific<\/p>\n

religion or faith ?<\/p>\n

Or does it more appropriately take a stand against the action of that child abuse ?<\/p>\n

My belief is it matters little who is doing the child abuse to our children….and that we must stand united in all our efforts to do what ever it takes to see that one child never has to go through this kind of physical,sexual,or mental abuse by anyone,and surely not an adult ever again.
\nHonestly the fact that the Roman Catholic Church and other religions such as Buddhists are now being brought to the forefront of the worlds attention should not be the main focus of all our efforts to eliminate these abuse crimes against our children.But rather we should seek to protect all children from child abuse irrespective of who is perpetrating it upon them.<\/p>\n

Thank you my friends.
\nD.Lemur<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sex Scandal Has U.S. Buddhists Looking Within By MARK OPPENHEIMER Published: August 20, 2010 Sooner or later, every traditional faith has to confront sexual impropriety by its spiritual leaders: extramarital sex, or sex with the wrong people (members of the congregation, minors) or, for supposedly celibate clergy, any sex at all. Enlarge This Image Suzanne […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10,2,11,1428,25],"tags":[1380,1583,5012,5013],"class_list":["post-86109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-friendburst","category-life","category-other","category-people","category-politics-2","category-world","tag-baptist","tag-bishop","tag-buddhist","tag-bum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}