stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

438 STRIPPING THE GURUS
While I do not know what people mean when they claim that
everyone is entitled to his own opinion, I do know that no one
has a right to be wrong in his facts (Askenasy, 1978).
It was, further, not merely Trungpa himself who was transplanted
into the West. More importantly, the closed communities,
feudal/hierarchical power structures and “infallibility of the guru”
teachings of his ancient Tibetan tradition formed the basis for his
own little spiritual “kingdom” in Boulder (Marin, 1995). And it is
those structures, not any excessive partying per se, which create
the “superintendent/guard/prisoner” environment which ruins people’s
lives just as much in non-“crazy wisdom” surroundings as it
does in “uncontrolled” contexts such as Chögyam’s.
It is true that Trungpa (1981), for one, gave at least lip service
to encouraging “an attitude of constant questioning, rather than
ignoring our intelligence.” Butterfield’s descriptions of the interview
process undergone during his own admission as a student,
however, show that one could not become a member of Trungpa’s
community without buying into the full set of ridiculous superstitions.
Consider also Merwin’s fate, when he attempted to question
rather than going blindly along with the dictates of the guru and
his group-thinking community. It is issues like these, not halfbaked,
pulled-out-of-thin-air theory, which matter in evaluating
the potential for harm present in any “true sangha.”
Note further that, by Feuerstein’s own testimony, Drukpa
Kunley’s sexual exploits “did fly in the face of custom and propriety.”
That is, his “crazy wisdom” behaviors were not constrained by
the agrarian society in which he lived.
Obviously, then, after all that, neither social nor cultural nor
psychological-development variations can account for the “difference”
between guru-disciple relationships as practiced in the East
versus the West. Rather, when it comes to the demand for blind
obedience, and to the reported abuse of sex and power, the problems
and alleged abuses exist, and have always existed, just as
surely “on the other side of the pond” as they do in North America.
(Cf. Ramakrishna, and the history of Zen and of lama-sexing,
child-torturing Tibetan Buddhism.)
Persons looking to account for a non-existent “difference” between
East and West in all this further generally ignore the natural
effect of the passage of time on the involved individuals. Someone
like Trungpa was going to become increasingly self-destructive
as the years went by regardless, for his childhood pains and other-