Flawed Gurus

Recently, and as usual quite belatedly, a tiny thought has emerged: that maybe Zen masters and Buddhist (and other religious) leaders/teachers are probably also human beings, flawed and finite like the rest of us. Some evidence for that hypothesis: the scandals — especially serial sexual predation against female students — described in Shoes Outside the Door (a history of the San Francisco Zen Center, reviewed here a few years ago), the alcoholisms and seductions revealed in obituaries of various roshis, and last week a fascinating (2010) interview-discussion with Stuart Lachs [1], sociologist-analyst of religion and institutions.

In brief, there seems to be:

• much delusion and confusion of altered mental states and/or disrupted brain chemistry with "enlightenment" — and much clinging to the notion of "advancing" to "higher" planes (How likely is it that rearrangements of outer-shell electrons and sloshing around of atoms in a blob of meat — a brain — will put one in touch with deeper levels of "reality"? Not very likely, to a hard-headed physicist anyway ...)
• much hierarchy and organizational-self-preservation, perhaps due to selection-effects (How likely is a group to survive and grow? Much more likely if it proselytizes and promotes itself, and spreads the story that members can achieve extraordinary feats by staying loyal and recruiting others ...)
• much individual abuse of authority, including seizing and clinging to money and power (How likely is a person who has the chance to take control, over resources and other people, to refrain? Not very, in many cases ...)

Not to deny that there may be much good in these twisted people and groups ... but there may be more good in those who are less-visible. More on that in the person of Charlotte Joko Beck, perhaps some day soon ...

^z - 2014-08-11