22AR27-42

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AR 27:42 - The Buddhist monk tackling abuse by gurus

In this issue:

BUDDHISM - a monk's struggles with what may be "irreconcilable paths"

LEWIS, C.S. - "That Hideous Strength" as a prophecy for our times

QUEER THEORY - "queerness" destabilizes, subverts, and thereby ultimately excludes all other categories

Apologia Report 27:42 (1,595)
December 7, 2022

BUDDHISM
Again Religion Unplugged (Oct 14 '22) has produced something interesting, this time "The Buddhist Monk Blogger Tackling Abuse by Gurus" by Tenzin Tsagong <www.bit.ly/3U7yvU5> -- The personality in the headline is Tenzin Peljor, a 54-year-old German-Buddhist monk and, as of 2019, an exile from the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition <fpmt.org>.

"Peljor runs a popular Buddhist blog, <www.bit.ly/3Y3NbHe> Struggling with Diffi·Cult Issues, to "address complicated issues in the religion, especially regarding abusive spiritual teachers. In May 2019, Peljor published on his website a petition created by a group of senior nuns. The nuns demanded that FPMT investigate allegations of sexual assault against one of its senior teachers, Dagri Rinpoche.

"Shortly after Peljor posted the petition and other reports from FPMT on his blog, rumors spread that Peljor was a spy planted by a rival Buddhist organization.

He's not the only critic in the Tibetan Buddhist community. "There are Buddhist Project Sunshine and Beyond the Temple, two blogs that also share overlooked accounts of physical and sexual abuse in Buddhist communities.

"These websites have become especially relevant after the #MeToo movement, as Peljor and others have cautioned readers about the dangers of Tibetan Buddhism's emphasis on guru devotion. ...

"A monk but also a muckraker, Peljor has to strike a delicate balance: how to speak critically of the misuse of spiritual power, but also advance his own spiritual path. ...

"In 1958, a Kalmyk-Mongolian teacher established the first Tibetan Buddhist center in New Jersey. Over a decade later, Tibetan Buddhism attracted a coterie of countercultural figures and artists, even attracting luminaries like Allen Ginsberg. Today, at least 3 million Americans identify as Tibetan Buddhists, almost 1% of the population.

"Though controversies around sexual and spiritual abuse aren't unique to Tibetan Buddhism - Zen Buddhist groups have dealt with similar scandals for many years - what makes this branch of Buddhism unique is its emphasis on Tantric Buddhism, which promises followers a speedier but more difficult ascent to enlightenment." (Tsagong is silent on the connection <www.bit.ly/3GGOcyM> between sex and tantraism.)

"Born in Berlin as Michael Jackel, Peljor was raised Catholic, but he said he wasn't religious - until he began reading the 'Four Noble Truths' to his ailing father every night. ...

"Peljor realized that becoming a monk was something he had always desired. ...

"Told that only the teachings of NKT's [New Kadampa Tradition] head guru were pure, Peljor threw out any books he had" by rivals, e.g., the Dalai Lama. "In an email, a secretary at NKT wrote that because Peljor was a member of a center in Germany that had separated from the group more than 20 years ago, 'he does not have any basis to comment on the NKT.' ...

"In 2000, Peljor finally left the group. ...

"By 2008, Peljor had more or less healed. He called himself a cult survivor, moved on to a new spiritual teacher and was reordained - this time by the Dalai Lama. With a new name, Peljor experienced a rebirth and eventually joined the Foundation of the Preservation of Mahayana Teachings." Peljor also "launched a blog. One of the first entries Peljor published was a personal account of his five years at NKT. In response, NKT members called him a 'Stasi East German wolf in monk's robe.' ...

"Though Peljor doesn't have an official editorial staff, he often relies on a small crew of five writers to operate the blog. ...

"Having earned a reputation as a trusted voice on Tibetan Buddhism, Peljor rarely has to sleuth for his stories."

Tsagong (Tibetan-American journalist; editorial assistant, Harper's Magazine) speculates: "I wondered if, in denying the politics of his work, Peljor was trying to protect the spiritual integrity of his work - perhaps even dispel the shame he has internalized. He said he can't quite shake the feeling that his work as a blogger goes 'against the intuition of what a monk should or shouldn't do.' It's as though he believes the two are irreconcilable paths."" <www.bit.ly/3U39z0j>

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LEWIS, C.S.

"That Hideous Strength: A Prophecy for Our Times" by Mary Cuff (Crisis Magazine, Sep 17 '22) -- "That Hideous Strength is vital reading to understand the network of connections in the cosmic battle in which we find ourselves." The plot alternates between the protagonists Jane Studdock and her new husband, Mark, on the planet Earth. They "are Adam and Eve as modern man and woman, not aware of how lost they are, yet deeply unhappy."

While in deep turmoil, Jane "finds not only that she, unwilling though she be, is a seer, but that she is a key player in an Arthurian myth that involves Merlin himself come back from the grave to do battle against secular modernism." More specifically, the enemy is "the forces of occultic scientism and a New World Order embodied by the N.I.C.E." (National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments).

The 1945 novel by Lewis "parses out the major issues and strategies in our ongoing war for the soul of the modern era, serving both to orient and console us as we, too, take a stand against the N.I.C.E. in whatever packaging it presents itself to us."

Cuff, who "has published in the Southern Literary Journal, Five Points, Mississippi Quarterly, and Modern Age," concludes that Lewis' readers are "invited to strip off the abstractions, limitations, and assumptions that keep us trapped and vulnerable moderns and embrace, instead, the wider, wilder, more vigorous ways of being that mark the supernatural and mythic world that lives on around us." <www.bit.ly/3Vh8GlU>

Just two days before the above release, N.S. Lyons' substack, The Upheaval, came out with a similar, but much more detailed effort offering further insights on Lewis' Hideous Strength as well: "A Prophecy of Evil: Tolkien, Lewis, and Technocratic Nihilism." Find it at: <www.bit.ly/3VCUNOH>

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QUEER THEORY

"Gay vs. Queer" by Carl R. Trueman (First Things, Oct 27 '22) -- "Not all gay people identify as queer ... and the Q-word's rise to dominance thereby risks downgrading or eliminating them." Trueman explains that gender-critical feminists "see trans ideology as destroying female identity, and therefore as inflicting harm upon women. ...

"The theoretical foundations of the sexual revolution [are] always and unabashedly aimed at dismantling traditional sexual codes and identities. And there is a fundamental incoherence in an alliance that requires affirmation of the gender binary in the L, the G, and the B whilst emphatically denying it in the T and Q.

"The problem is, of course, that despite the rhetoric of inclusion with which queer theory cloaks itself, queerness is not very inclusive. ... It is the category that destabilizes, subverts, and thereby ultimately excludes all other categories. A more imperious, imperialist, and all-corrosive concept is actually difficult to imagine. ...

"Queer theory is about deliberately breaking down normative categories around gender and sex, particularly binary ones like men and women, straight and gay. ...

"In short, queer theory means that you could be saying anything you want about yourself and are therefore communicating nothing stable or meaningful at all."

Trueman has been trying to get out the message that "this is a basic problem with critical theories that assume social construction and discourses of power as the basic elements of transformative cultural analysis. ...

"If I might momentarily play the critical theory card myself, intentional obscurity is itself a discourse of power. ...

"[T]he whole purpose of the words that populate critical theoretical discourse, such as 'queer,' is to confuse - something abundantly clear to anyone not mesmerized by the jargon that is itself part of the polemical project. ...

"As intersectionality and the emerging convergence between theories of race, sexuality, gender, and queerness really make clear, critical theory is a runaway train. One cannot simply ride it only so far as it suits one's own discourse of power, whether of race, sexuality, or gender. ... Whatever the categories of the day are - male, female, straight, gay, bi, cis, white, black - if they are or become remotely stable then they too are ultimately part of a discourse of power that includes some and marginalizes others. And that means that they too are liable to be overthrown as new marginal communities emerge, demanding recognition and using critical theoretical weapons to speak truth to power, as the cliché goes.

"The winners and losers may change, but the game is always the same: to dethrone whatever today's dominant categories might be, whether of heterosexuality, whiteness, or the gender binary. It is categorical stability, not the categories themselves, that is the real enemy. If C. S. Lewis warned eighty years ago of the abolition of man, we today are witnessing the abolition not just of 'man' but of meaning as a whole." <www.bit.ly/3Hmi03V>

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