Re: Shambhala Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche -- problems

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Suzanne Newcombe, a research fellow at Inform, an LSE-based charity that monitors new religious movements, said that many Buddhist groups were having discussions about consent and sex and power imbalances in light of the #MeToo movement.

“They are looking at their internal processes on how they deal with allegations of sexual assault or complaints against leaders and unethical behaviour in these groups. This is largely being led by victims and then organisations are determining what procedures to take,” she said.

Newcombe said other groups who were looking into this included the Triratna sect, which has faced controversy .

[www.theguardian.com]

Newcombe said a lot of the calls they received, including reports of abuse, were about Buddhist groups in the UK. “We used to get a lot of requests [to investigate] about Scientology but now the majority are about Buddhist groups because some of them [with problems] have not been outed in the same way and have effective PR. People contact us because they cannot find out much about them online.”

Sarah Harvey, a senior research officer at Inform, said: “The majority ofof our inquiries at the moment concern Buddhist groups. I think that this is due to a number of inter-related factors. Obviously there is a current popular interest in the practice of mindfulness which has Buddhist roots which we receive some inquiries about.

“But also, to generalise horribly, I think there is a popular assumption that Buddhism as a whole is unproblematic

[www.theguardian.com]

and people are surprised when they do encounter controversies or have negative experiences.”