[Buddha-l] Another One Bites the Dust

[Margaret Gouin]

> On 04 March 2013 08:11 Richard Hayes wrote:

>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?

This would appear to be a garbled reference to something Stephen Batchelor mentioned in a November post on Sweeping Zen (see point 3): 
http://sweepingzen.com/buddhism-and-sex-the-bigger-picture/

Batchelor gives no reference for the stories he mentions; perhaps someone more familiar with the Pali Canon than I, would be able to locate them.

I must say I found Batchelor's article very disappointing; he seems to be saying that there have been sexual scandals since the time of the Buddha so why are we getting so upset now? He wrote the article in the midst of the disclosure of inappropriate behaviour by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Ken McLeod, much of which had been discussed on Sweeping Zen.

Margaret

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Margaret Gouin, PhD (Bristol)
Honorary Research Fellow
School of Theology, Religious Studies and Islamic Studies
University of Wales Trinity Saint David
http://tsd.academia.edu/MargaretGouin
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415566360/