Re: Shambhala Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche -- problems

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In other words: the route to M?dhyamika enlightenment depends upon the ability to assert the dream-like quality of ephemeral phenomenon. In this world, laws, lawyers, judges and even decisions about things are the enemies of limitless possibility. Chödrön can’t say that Trungpa’s alcoholism is okay, but she also can’t say it’s not okay. The first refusal allows her to leave open the possibility of criticizing him, but the second refusal makes the question irrelevant. As such, Chödrön’s position here, built on a M?dhyamika framework, cannot speak to the material impacts of structured power and harm. It actually makes a virtue of not doing so. In response to the hidden question “Was there harm?” Chödrön’s system seeks to transcend the question.


In the Vajrayana practices into which Chödrön has been initiated, the M?dhyamika view is applied to all experiences and phenomena, but most importantly to the nature of the teacher. After initiation, the teacher’s actions cannot be pinned down, named, identified, assessed, or even understood. “Relative questions” about them must remain a mystery. As Norbu commented in his very M?dhyamika-dependent defence of Sogyal Lakar’s abuses: “It’s a big mistake to speculate about the possibility of continuing to analyze and criticize the guru after having received a major initiation—actually it’s totally wrong. ”

In other words, not only is “I don’t know” is the only viable response to a teacher’s actions that appear abusive, it is mandated.

Chödrön’s “I don’t know” carries a further charge. Arguably, a large part of her popularity comes from her ability to poetically mobilize the language that values personal vulnerability (recently made more popular by Brené Brown and others) to reinforce a doctrinal belief not just in the unknowability of “relative” answers, but in their irrelevance.

For those who try to engage it — I speak from some personal experience — the impact of M?dhyamika contemplation can be startling to the point of ecstasy. The feeling of “groundlessness” to which the Shambhala literature continually refers reflects the sudden epiphanies of deconstructive logic. I was used to this austere pleasure from my university studies, where it was applied to pull apart the mechanisms of social and linguistic power. To think that this could also be used internally, soulfully even, to pull apart internalized power structures was thrilling. It’s a hook, for sure.

But groundlessness and “spaciousness” as responses to not just life in general, but particular instances of harm in organizations like Shambhala, should now be looked at in a different light. Trauma studies have made the reasons for dissociative responses in relation to abuse part of popular discourse. We know that abuse victims can enact disembodiment reflexes in order to avoid further abuse or pain, or to recover from past abuse. Those to whom dissociation occurs describe sensations of floating above, or vacating the body, or shrinking down to imperceptible size, or inflating to an ungraspable immensity. (These are all, in fact key features of Vajrayana visualizations.)