Rape and Sexual Harrasment Claims Filed Against Yoga "Guru" Bikram

A few years ago, I wrote a post about the greed of the Bikram yoga empire. In it, I also spoke about the guy's blatant sexism and sexualized teaching, both of which you'd think would be big enough red flags for folks. The response to the post was mixed, which has been the case for many stories I've seen about Bikram and his yoga program.

Now he's got a power abuse scandal on his hands. Students accusing him of rape, sexual coercion, and all sorts of rotten shit.

Some of the Bikram branded studios are breaking away from his corporation, which is a start. Perhaps this will also be the wake up call some of his devoted followers seem to desperately need.

But the thornier issues of guru/teacher worship, power dynamics in classes, creating an identity based solely around your spiritual practice, and turning spiritual/religious practices into capitalist products remain.

Bikram is just the latest in a long line of mostly male power abusing spiritual and religious leaders. It's a tired, old story that we humans just seem prone to repeating, despite all our best efforts to not do so.

Why the Genpo Roshi Controversy Just Won't Go Away

I was going to write about something else today, but when I opened the blog today, I had a comment waiting on a postfrom over two years ago. The infamous Genpo Roshi article during the height of his implosion back in 2011. This post is, by far, the most read piece ever published on DH. Almost 10,000 views and 67 comments to date, a crazily high amount given that most of my posts get a few hundred views and a handful of comments, and then essentially stay quiet in the archives.

Something about Genpo's story keeps people hooked. There have been plenty of other Zen teacher scandals in recent years. Several have broke open since Genpo. I've written about more than one of them here, and while those posts gained a lot of attention as well, none have had the lasting power of the Genpo post.

Sure, there's kind of a flies attracted to garbage thing around these scandals in general. Gawking at the downfall of folks with some elevated level of wisdom is a popular pastime these days. Maybe it always has been. And certainly these stories always give the opportunity for dissecting delusion, and offering warnings and insights into how to practice - especially with teacher figures.

But for some reason, the Genpo post in particular lingers on. If you type in "Genpo Roshi controversy" into Google, the post comes up #6 on the list, so that's probably part of it. I tend to think that the big money making of "Big Mind" also plays a role in continued interest. Power scandals that involve lots of money are always major attention grabbers. Along those lines, the most recent commenter said this:

It interesting to me that as soon as someone, particularly someone who is teaching something in the spiritual sphere, makes money from what they do then it's a scam.

Good on Dennis Merzel for having the courage to share his work and charge what it's worth, the world is a better place because of it.

This linkage between making money and what's being offered being considered a scam is worth investigating. Living in a capitalist society creates a lot of challenge for spiritual lay teachers, writers, and others on similar paths. The safety net of support from a community, or even societal norms that monastics traditionally have experienced, just isn't really there for most lay folks. Even monastic sanghas in countries like the U.S. are finding it difficult at times to support the needs of its individual members, and also offer teachings and/or practice opportunities to the broader community without cost (or at low cost.)

In capitalist societies, those teachers, spiritual writers, and similar others who are able to give freely most of time are often in economically privileged places. They aren't dependent upon students or interested folks giving them money for the time and energy they give teaching. And the expectation that this be the case - that they not be dependent for material needs on their students and interested others - is a really curious warping if you think about it. Instead of figuring out ways to develop communities of giving and receiving that encourage a general flow of material support to those teaching, writing about the dharma, etc., we've mostly imposed a capitalist framework that turns offerings of the dharma into products for purchase. So, either teacher X accepts the commodified exchange, or they have to get their material needs met elsewhere. Usually in the form of a job or career of some sort.

So, in one way, what someone like Genpo does is really just an exaggerated form of compliance to the capitalist framework imposed upon the dharma. Charging piles of money for the teachings he is "giving" ensures that he'll be able to keep functioning for a long, long time as a teacher within the framework. Most others charge much less and either barely get by, work somewhere else for pay, or are privileged. But in all cases, what's reinforced is the notion that an individual "I" is fully responsible for covering his/hers material needs at all times. A notion that really runs counter both to the teachings of interdependence, as well as the ways in which sangha and "enlightened" societies are supposed to run.

The greed that I see in folks like Genpo streams forth from this collective place. When you are indoctrinated from a very young age to believe that "a good citizen" is someone who always produces, always has enough money, always takes care of their needs on their own or within their own immediate family, it's terribly likely that you'll feel compelled to take more than you need when you can. That you'll horde and justify hording. That you'll exploit others in small ways or great ways. Because in the back of your mind, you don't want to be viewed as "a failure." You don't want to be at the mercy of something like a faceless government bureaucracy, unforgiving family members, or random strangers on the street. It doesn't matter how much you pile up, there's that nagging feeling of lack hanging around which never seems to let up. Not only fears about lack of material goods and/or money, but a lack of self worth as well.

None of this justifies charging $50,000 for a Zen retreat, for example. Nor any of Genpo's power abuse, sexual greed and exploitation of his students either. However, I think that one of the reasons why stories like Genpo's remain "hot" long after they have cooled in a certain sense is that they provoke all the unexamined and unsettled narratives each of us have around need and lack, especially those of us born and raised in capitalist dominant economies like the United States. Where self worth and value is intimately tied up in money making, continuous production and consumption, and "personal" responsibility. And where power is mostly linked with control over the general consensus means of gaining that self-worth (i.e. the jobs, money, and material goods.

Greed is certainly a universal, human predicament. But it's that much harder to face and overcome when you live in a society that essentially is built upon rewarding and upholding acts of greed. And has as a central narrative the rejection of all those "in need," whether temporary or ongoing. We won't get anywhere with issues like power hungry, greed ridden spiritual teachers as long as the communities we built around them fail to address the broader issues of need and lack head on. As a regular, ongoing focus of practice.

*If you're interested in going more in depth on these issues, I highly recommend Scott Edelstein's excellent book.

The Yoga of Non-Greed

Here are some notes I made for the presentation I gave last night at yoga teacher training on aparigraha, or non-greed and non-grasping. At the end are some questions you can contemplate and offer answers to - if you're so inclined - in the comments section. Enjoy!

Yoga Sutra II.39

aparigrahasthairye janmakathamta sambodhah

Translation adapted from T.K.V. Desikachar:

“One who is not greedy is secure. He has time to think deeply. Her understanding of herself is complete.”

There are two basic ways greed manifests.
1. Desire for that which you don’t have, or perceive you don’t have
2. Stinginess with what you do have, hording

Wants vs. Needs: This yama really zeros in on our muddy thinking around needs and wants. We frequently mistake want for need, and these mistakes are reinforced by our possession-addicted culture. What is it that you really need in life? And what do you actually own anyway?

Greed and the Material: Those of use that have a lot of “stuff” in our homes and apartments often struggle around taking care of it all. Having more might offer convenience and comfort in the short term, but in the long term, having too much often ends up draining your time and energy.

Greed and the Non-Material: The same can happen to those who don’t have a lot of material possessions, but who lust after ideas, knowledge, or experiences.
Excess time and energy might be spent on, for example, learning every possible variation of trikonasana and the history behind each variation, and then more time and energy spent on defending what you have learned. (Notice the first half of the example demonstrates desire for more, while the second demonstrates a form of stinginess.)

“The final yama in Patanjali's list is aparigraha, or nongreed. This is a very difficult one to practice, surrounded as we are with advertisements that attempt to whip up our desire for more. In some ways our society's economic system is based on greed … Greed is not just confined to material goods. We may hunger after enlightenment, difficult asanas, spiritual powers, or perfect bliss. One way to sidestep the trap of greed is to follow the advice of the sages: Be happy with what you have. This spirit of true renunciation will diminish the power of aparigraha.”

Article by Judith Lasater

Greed and Your Identity: One of the very tricky places where greed manifests is around identity. Think of all the effort you put into building yourself in certain ways, presenting yourself in certain ways, and also in trying to get rid of that which you don’t like or want about yourself. Now, certainly some of this effort is quite necessary for living a healthy, fully engaged life, but some of it is also based in greed. Holding on to certain accomplishments, skills, or personal qualities in order to impress others, fit in with a certain group, or demonstrate your worthiness is one way this happens. Another is in all the attempts to hide disliked or maladapted qualities, lack of skills or lack of accomplishments.

Ultimately, manifestations of greed are really demonstrations of a lack of faith in yourself, and in the divine of the universe. Fearing you won’t be provided for, or won’t be able to get what you do need in the present or future, you take excess or withhold too much.

“By the observance of aparigraha, the yogi makes his life as simple as possible and trains his mind not to feel the loss or the lack of anything. Then everything he really needs will come to him by itself at the proper time.” B.K.S. Iyengar in Light on Yoga

Questions:

What do you really need?

What are some things (objects or ideas/experiences) that you think you need, but actually don’t need?

Where in your yoga practice have you been letting something external define your happiness? Where in the rest of your life?

What can you do differently to practice aparigraha in these situations?

Nuclear Power: My Comment Round Up

I have been writing various responses related to nuclear power on blogs and on Facebook. So, instead of writing a detailed post trying to reconcile all of that, I'll just share what I have already written.

Claudia over at her Ashtanga Yoga blog offered a post questioning the level of panic being sparked by major media outlets about the reactors in Japan. Even though it's a very dangerous, unstable situation, I agree with her about the panic issue. Here's what I wrote:

The problem with much of this is that producing panic in the short term is just adding to the suffering already occurring. It does nothing to address the issues at hand.

It may be that what ends up happening in the next week or two isn't as terrible as the media is reporting. But with radiation, it's what happens in the next 20, 30, 40 years that really matters. People who have great financial interest in nuclear have routinely downplayed and even denied the causal links between chronic illness and death spikes that occur years after these kind of disasters.

And I for one think the truth on those issues must be put front and center. Furthermore, the truth of the completely out of whack consumption patterns of those of us in industrial/post industrial nations that leads to heavy investment in dangerous energy sources also should be front and center.

So yes, the short term panic isn't helpful, and certainly keeps people buying papers and consuming media. But I'm greatly concerned that too few of us will connect the dots between our greed driven, excessive lifestyles and the "need" for heavy reliance on destructive energy sources.

Over on Facebook, I shared a link to an article about nuclear power by the writer Norman Solomon. A friend of mine, who is in a Materials Science & Engineering grad program responded to the article with this:

Many of the problems with the current nuclear power infrastructure are not intrinsic to nuclear energy. While I agree that the current defense of nuclear energy by our leaders in response to japan's tragedy is reflexive, it is equally refl...exive to rail against the "split atom" and any attempt to harness its potential. Issues of meltdown are artifacts of a 50 year old technology that needs to be moved away from. Current technologies incorporate high temperature power limiting, which slows the reaction as temperature increases, eliminating the possibility of meltdown, which Japan is struggling to stave off. Issues of nuclear waste are bound up in States Rights and the NNPT. Right now we could very easily reduce volume of waste in the US by 90% through purification/separation and recycle nearly all purified remainder eliminating need for further mining. No system is perfect, there will always be disasters, spills, etc and harm to life is now and always will be repulsive. However, while immediately more shocking, that damage pales to the lasting damage of burning every carbonaceous scrap on this earth. We are 6 billion people on 1 planet and we need energy. We desperately need better conservation, but even then we need more energy than can be made renewably (solar, bio, wind, hydro, geothermal ...). I will take a state of the art nuclear power plant over a coal burner any day.

This issue of either nuclear or more coal/oil is a troubling one, and certainly something that needs to be considered. However, there are other, perhaps bigger issues to consider. I wrote:

I figured you'd disagree on this. I understand there are other issues involved, and that things can be done to make the whole process safer. In fact, I don't doubt that there are modern technologies being created that better facilitate the ...issues being experienced in these older reactors.

I'm also convinced the coal burner issues won't go away. Even if more nuclear ends up being available for use, people will find ways to justify continued coal use and mining. This is an issue of human greed in my opinion, maybe more so than safety.

I have stood against nuclear for my entire adult life. Maybe longer. For some reason, it's been a topic I have had interest in since at least my high school days. No one has ever presented an argument that makes it seem worth doing, and I have seen many - some much more articulate and considerate than others.

The way I see it, we humans need to learn how to live as one of the many members of this planet. We use too much of everything, and expect to be able to maintain lifestyles even our recent ancestors would drop their jaws at. There have been some great changes around issues of recycling, better technologies for vehicles and electronics and the rest, but none of it has addressed the larger issue of humans - especially in industrial/post-industrial nations - living completely out of balance with the natural world. As much as the lack of safety is an issue for me, the larger issue has always been that industrial and post industrial nations are filled with too many entitled people - us included- who have lost touch with the very planet they live on, and were born out of.

It's an issue of perception and way of being, in my view, as it is about any particular form of energy.

This is really where my Zen and yoga practices come in. As I see it, too many of us have really "wrong views" of our relationship with/to the planet that we come from. Too many of us have entirely centralized narratives telling us all the time "You are separate from the planet. It's there for your benefit. You can have anything you want if you just figure out how to use it." This is a grand, collective delusion, and until more of us start facing it together, we will continue to be spinning our wheels between poor choices like coal and nuclear power that, as they are being approached right now, are just the props of our addiction.

My father responded that if my friend wants more nuclear, he can put it in his own backyard. Now, there's plenty of worthy criticism when it comes to NIMBY arguments, but I think they are wonderful tools for talking about energy issues. I've spent lots of time in Western Pennsylvania, which is part of the eastern U.S. "coal region." I don't get the sense many folks out there love living next to coal piles and strip mines that have destroyed the land, and polluted the water supply. And many of the people who do live next to all of this are poor or barely middle class, and either relied on mining or associated industries as a source of income, or couldn't really afford to move away. And when it comes to nuclear power, especially nuclear waste, it's a similar situation, at least here in the U.S.

Finally, in response to a previous post, Petteri commented:

"We have the tech to dispose of nuclear waste, and produce nuclear power in a way that's safe and sustainable. We're not doing it. The reason is the same as why we're not producing more of our electricity from solar or wind power: it costs more."

I do think there are better technologies available now, and that some of the issues of these older nuclear reactors could be dealt with. However, I'm not convinced we are really close to actually being able to work in a fairly "safe" way with nuclear energy. The levels of human hubris are, like the radiation in Japan, too high as far as I'm concerned.

I have heard plenty of people say we have the tech to deal with waste, but I honestly don't believe it. Too much money is tied up in nuclear - it's a huge cash cow. And I'm convinced that greed is driving some of that sustainability talk.

As for solar, wind power, and the rest. Unlike nuclear, coal, oil - all of which have had decades of government financial underwriting in many nations, and corporate focus - wind, solar, and others have really not be financially supported.

I don't think nuclear is a black and white issue. It's possible that someday, it could be harnessed and dealt with in a safe way. But I'm absolutely convinced that worldwide, we still haven't really moved to put the majority of our eggs in the box of things like solar, geothermal, wind power. And until those forms are given the heft that oil, coal, and nuclear currently have, we'll never know if they are truly viable or not.

So, there's a somewhat wide-ranging discussion of all of this. Last night, I realized that I have had an eye on the power and threat of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons ever since I was a kid seeing images of Chernobyl. I was 10 years old when that happened, just old enough to realize how awful what happened there was. And I guess that sparked an interest that, for example, led me to fall in love with the writing of Buddhist and environmental activist Joanna Macy. Her work around issues of nuclear energy has certainly influenced my own views.

I'd like to conclude by saying I honestly don't know what the collective path to a healthier relationship with the planet is. I believe that some shift in consciousness and action in that direction has already begun, despite the continued greed, views of separation, and disasterous mistakes. But what I do know is that it cannot stay at the level of debating energy sources, light bulbs, and recycling tactics. That's all useful to some degree, but without a larger shift in consciousness, it's just moving shells around within the frame of the same old game.

So, while we offer our prayers, donations, and metta to the people in Japan, lets consider the bigger picture questions - and lets be willing to hold them, day after day. To give them our attention, even if the answers never come in our lifetimes.

Yoga Teachers Join the Wisconsin Protests

We woke up this morning to another pile of snow here in Minnesota. Winter has officially gotten old. Meanwhile, in the neighboring state of Wisconsin, protests against Governor Walker's anti-union, anti-worker budget plans have made it a week so far. I have been to Madison many times. I have even lobbied in the state capital building, back when I was an undergraduate college student. So, seeing all of this happening is totally exciting, no matter the outcome.

Amongst the protesters have been a couple of yoga teachers, seen above striking a pose.

It should not be ignored, given what's been going on all over the Middle East, that one of the first things Governor Walker did was threaten to bring on the National Guard. Apparently bringing in the military isn't just the favored option of dictators. Meanwhile, complaints about teachers shutting down schools, and bringing their Cadillac Health Plans pile up from both right wing pundits, and average citizens whose diets have too many mainstream media calories. It's really sad to watch middle class and poor people beat up on other middle class and poor people because they have just a little more. And this is really what it has come down to. Greed and envy are stoked amongst the general populace, which then spills into anger and hatred.

Some people get really frustrated with my insistence that the social and political can't be separated from our spiritual lives and practices, but it's hard not to see how they are inter-related in situations like this. Corporate interests have spent the last 70 years whittling away at collective bargaining, and all forms of unionization, to the point where barely 10% of U.S. workers have anything resembling group workers rights. And corruption in some of the largest unions has added to this disintegration, both in terms of limiting average worker rights, but also by giving corporate interests an easy target.

So, it's quite a challenge for the average employee in a company or non-profit to look around, see the step up that many unionized workers have, and not feel some envy. And when you couple that with political parties, corporations, and corporate driven media outlets all saying things like "Look at those greedy people! They won't give their fair share during these trying times!," it's even more difficult for the non-unionized masses to have some equanimity - enough to examine the dominant trends, and see what's happened historically that has led to this present.

I want to extend some empathy towards members of the Tea Party groups. While it's true they have been stirred up and partially funded by wealthy power brokers, they are also composed of mostly middle class folks who are responding to increasingly difficult economic conditions. I don't agree with most of their conclusions, but I see the grassroots quality of the local groups, and recognize that both Tea Party folks and, for example, those protesting in Wisconsin understand the value of collective effort. Both sides "get it" that those at the top have mostly turned their backs, and need to be shaken out of their privileged slumber.

I even want to feel some empathy for those uber wealthy folks, most of whom mistakenly believe that they are entitled to their millions and billions, and that they did it all themselves - that they earned it all, and shouldn't have to give it up. The massive delusion of earning it all yourself. The willful ignoring of all the publicly financed infrastructure, big business friendly laws, labor of one's employees, even the good fortune of the sun coming up every day are habitual views deeply ingrained and hard to remove. And they are one of the things that have actually trickled down from the wealthy. I can't count the number of times that "I did it myself" thought has arisen for me, as well as an accompanied stinginess around money and material possessions that I have, but don't ultimately NEED.

In all honestly, I rarely feel any empathy for corporate and political elites, but the more I at least make the attempt, the easier it gets. And empathy doesn't equal apathy. My criticisms of the now globalized military-industrial complex are often too fierce for even some of my closest friends. This is where spiritual practice steps in. You balance fierce questioning and skillful means, with empathy and non-enemy making. At least, that's what I aim to do.

The gross imbalances between those at the top of the material possession pyramid and the rest of us can't be ignored. In fact, I really can't locate a place within the spiritual traditions I am a part of where I can support those imbalances. They are not only unethical, but could be considered forms of violence. Violence against our selves and others. Violence against the planet.

So, certainly, doing asana or meditation at a protest won't be the thing that changes all of this. However, much of mass social changes is about the accumulation of tiny drops into the pond. The little shifts in consciousness. Even the accumulation of little failures that eventually lead people to Right Action on a larger scale.

While the snow piles up here - and in Wisconsin - drops of justice and liberation are being added to many ponds, across the world. Step outside, and listen to the birds. What is that sound you here?