[Buddha-l] Another One Bites the Dust

[Richard Hayes]

On Mar 3, 2013, at 4:42 PM, Franz Metcalf <franz at mind2mind.net> wrote:

> There is no excuse, in my view, for Sasaki's behavior (or Eido Shimano's or Genpo Merzl's or Taizan Maezumi's or Seung Sahn's or Dainin Katagiri's, etc.).

Unfortunately that's a mighty pregnant "etc." The list of religious authorities who have abused their power over others is almost as long as the list of religious authorities. (The same sentence would be true without the word "religious".)

As an aside, when the world-famous Jémez Thunder (the fortnightly newspaper of Jémez Springs, NM, the village of 250 human denizens where Sasaki-owned Bodhi Manda Zen Center is situated) ran a story on Sasaki-roshi on January 1, 2013, it said that this problem was nothing new in Buddhism. After all, said the story, the Buddha himself reportedly sexually abused his disciples. This was news to me, and I wondered where on earth the writer of the story got that idea. What was written in what book that could be misremembered or misinterpreted in such a way that it became that claim? Any speculations?

Richard