Surya Das’ response is, Gleig and Langenberg say, “in clear tension with these new ethics,” insofar as he did not make a public apology in 2008 and has since claimed to not remember another well-detailed incident. Once abuse is made transparent, it is essential for teachers and enabling community members to take full responsibility and be held accountable.” As a counter to such secrecy, what we call ‘an emerging ethic of transparency’ is being enacted on multiple levels from exposing offenders to developing healing community rituals. Secrecy is a core element in sexual misconduct and has widespread corrosive effects on both the victims and wider community members. They continued: “Two factors in particular are essential: transparency and accountability. Amy Langenberg, who are working on a collaborative book project, under contract with Yale University Press, on sexual misconduct and abuse in American Buddhist communities, told Buddhistdoor Global in a statement that through their research it had become clear “that the response to sexual misconduct and abuse plays a foundational role in community healing.” The Dzogchen Center, for its part, has posted a code of ethics and a policy against harassment and discrimination on its website.ĭr. She did not follow through with Das’ suggestion and later reported the encounter with her husband and another student of Das, both of whom corroborated her account.ĭas has continued to teach online and at centers across the country. In interviews this year with Eaton, Laura Howell detailed an encounter during a 2005 retreat in which Surya Das suggested that it would benefit her spiritual progress if she meditated while sitting naked in his lap. Nonetheless, Merchasin’s report led to interviews with several students and teachers affiliated with the Dzogchen Center, including one student who was willing to publicly accuse Das of misconduct in 2005. I apologized for my poor judgement and indicated that this would not happen again-and it didn’t.” (Religion News Service) The allegations were not made public at the time, but led to confrontations between Surya Das and other teachers, as well as the turnover of most of the Dzogchen Center’s board of directors. Surya Das said that at the time, “In September at our Texas 100-day retreat I told the sangha what happened, that I had had an intimate relationship with this person. According to the Religion News Service report, the first allegations regarding Das came about in 2008, when a student told another Buddhist teacher at the Dzogchen Center that she and Surya Das had engaged in an affair in the 1990s. Surya Das, 69, born Jeffrey Miller, has become one of the best-known teachers of Tibetan Buddhism in America. “We were met with a distinct lack of interest in that.” (Religion News Service) ![]() “We asked for them to do an investigation,” Merchasin said. Merchasin presented the confidential accounts from the five women to Surya Das’ Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Dzogchen Center. Her work was part of a widespread effort to investigate allegations of abuse of power and sexual misconduct within Buddhist communities, including collaborating with Project Sunshine, which exposed patterns of abuse in Shambhala International. Most recently, in 2019, retired employment lawyer Carol Merchasin collected accounts from five women who reported instances of abuse by Surya Das. Writing for the Religious News Service, Eaton chronicled allegations of student-teacher sexual relationships that dated from the 1990s and 2000s.* In interviews this year, Surya Das admitted to some of the relationships and claimed no memory of other allegations. ![]() Last week, investigative journalist Joshua Eaton offered an extensive account of alleged cases of abuse of power and sexual misconduct by the well known American Dharma teacher Lama Surya Das.
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