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Community Guidelines
Here are key excerpts from our community content guidelines, which are designed to help create a positive environment for everyone:
1. Please be courteous at all times. If you’re engaged in any kind of discussion, be as prepared to listen as you are to express yourself. Remember that there’s always a real person behind a computer/device screen, and they are likely quite different from you.
2. Think twice before posting anything that’s likely to give offence or be inflammatory. That doesn’t promote good conversation. If you’re upset at something you see here, perhaps let a little time pass before responding. Bear in mind this isn’t a space to vent our views, it’s about exploring respectfully with others what it means to be a Buddhist within our community and in the modern world generally.
3. We may remove posts or comments that are considered off-topic.
4. Everyone has off-moments, and we’ll always try to be in friendly dialogue with you if a problem arises with one of your contributions. But we reserve the right to remove posts and comments (or even suspend user accounts) when we feel these guidelines are not observed.
5. Our current editorial policy around Safeguarding is aligned with the advice given by those tasked with developing Triratna’s approach to this important area of ethical life. If anyone breaches current policy by posting in ways that mean The Buddhist Centre Online potentially break the law by hosting the material, then we will have to remove their posts or comments. We respectfully request that all users bear this in mind when posting. If in doubt, please feel free to ask first before posting. It will save time, energy, and lead to less potential polarisation in these spaces, even if there is disagreement.
Whatever you contribute we very much encourage you to think about it in the light of the Buddhist ethical precepts around 'Right Speech'. These encourage communication that is: truthful, kindly and gracious, helpful and harmonious. We look forward to all you have to bring to the site!
Moderation
We try to keep things light when it comes to moderation of posts and comments within this shared space. And we ask the community itself to lead with this. If you have seen something that concerns you, please feel free to contact us. However, we do ask that you bear in mind the following guidelines, which will help preserve a harmonious atmosphere throughout the site:
Remember there is always a person behind the post or comment you’re objecting to. They may just be having a bad day… If you’re upset, perhaps let a little time pass before responding to them or us.
Try contacting the person first in a spirit of open, courteous engagement to see if hearing their perspective changes your own view of things, or if hearing yours changes theirs.
Take care to make sure what you are asking us to look at is actually against the spirit of the group or the site itself, rather than simply a difference of view or of personal taste. If in doubt, ask a friend and/or the administrator of the group.
The most important things about this is the first bit: we ask the community to lead with this. That means you! Thanks for helping us promote good conversations on The Buddhist Centre Online.
Read the full set of Community Guidelines
In a few months I’ll be marking 15 years as an Order member. It does not get any easier to read about the extent of sexual abuse in our community in the Guardian/Observer. Clearly, it was not just Sangharakshita and it did not stop in the 1980s.
When I think back over my involvement it seems to me that many Order members abused their position or office, though in most cases it was more ignorant patronisation than malevolence. I’ve been reluctant to see that as part of a pattern, but everytime one of these articles comes out a new detail registers that makes it more difficult to keep positive about our Order. It now seems to me that there is a pattern of abuse, which means it won’t stop just because we look into it.
So, nothing personal, but I don’t find Ratnadharani’s letter to the Observer that reassuring. If it is genuinely the case that 13% of us have witnessed sexual abuse by Order members, then saying that we have investigated Sangharakshita is not nearly enough.
This situation is not specific to our movement. It seems that a high proportion of Buddhist groups have similar problems. The fallout from Trungpa continues in Shambala and from Sogyal in Rigpa. Some of us saw the recent confession video from Reggie Ray recently. But it’s never just the leader, because followers emulate the leader both consciously and unconsciously.
I’m glad we now have safeguarding procedures, but as I learned recently they only apply to legal entities like centres. Social media are not covered. There is no way to ensure that all vulnerable people are looked after in all our contexts. It all comes down to local situations and how aware and sensitive the people in that situation are. Give people power and they will use it.
I’ve several times talked to my friends in the Order about my story and each time been told not to go public in a way that would identify the Order members involved. So far I have complied with these requests but it leaves me feeling unsatisfied and that there is a deficit of justice in the Order.
My more spiritual colleagues will no doubt point out that the disadvantage of non-belief in the doctrine of karma is that I have no expectation of a just world; no expectation that it will all be balanced out in the afterlife. And rightly so. But my lack of belief in a spooky just universe does not negate my belief that communities can be just (and the Buddhist communities ought to be just). As a community we recognise injustice and have a desire to intervene that supersedes our faith in the doctrine of karma. Safeguarding is all about obviating the need for karma by ensuring there are consequences for actions in the present. And I’m all for that. But my sense is that the responsibility for ensuring justice in our community is a much bigger one that we presently seem to realise. It cannot rely on Munisha or Ratnadharani or any individual. It either emerges from our collective commitment or it does not. I’m not convinced we’re there yet if only because we still harbour a number of bullies.
I know I am not the only member of the Order who has an ongoing sense that the Order community is unjust in some ways. Many of us are doubtful about the safeguarding because of what happened to Suvajra. Justice has to be seen to be done. But it’s not simple because I know that I could not face the people who abused me either. One of the events that pushed me out of work 14 years ago was a highly confrontation “mediation” session in which an Order member was given free range to express their anger and conspiratorial fantasies regarding me. The mediator (another Order member) simply did not mediate, but just let that person verbally beat me up. It left me traumatised - literally in shock and unable to speak for about an hour afterwards. I have no idea if there were any consequences for the other Order members, but it helped push me over the edge into a serious mental and physical breakdown. No one ever said anything about it afterwards, not even to acknowledge that it went badly for me. I did not, and could not, say anything at the time. I’m told not to say anything too specific now because naming names “won’t help”. I don’t really believe this.
This is just one of several incidents that I think about when I think about the Order investigating Sangharakshita and instituting safeguarding policies. Neither of these seem to help me. I do sometimes wonder what would happen if I went to the Guardian and told them my story the way that Mark Dunlop has. It is certainly one way to bring attention to the things that go wrong in our community and to get revenge on a few bastards who hurt me, usually when I was already down. But I don’t want the kind of publicity and attention that he does. I don’t revel in being the victim. I find it humiliating. I’m ashamed. I also don’t particularly want to identify with being the victim of bullying or abuse. Not that this makes it easier.