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More E-sangha Thought Control

November 30th, 2007 Posted in Buddhism, Spirituality
7208 people have read this post.

Zen teacher Jundo Cohen has just mentioned on his blog and videocast that he has been banned from E-angha. (E-sangha is a well known (or notorious) Buddhist web forum that I’ve blogged about before…)

jundo-banned

Why did Jundo Sensei get banned from E-sangha? Well, he stated in this thread concerning the beliefs of:

“the vast majority of Soto Zen Buddhist teachers in the West! Namely, (1) traditional ideas of rebirth and reincarnation are not to be taken literally in this modern age; and (2) Shakyamuni Buddha was a man, not a god or super-human being, and though enlightened … was a human being like the rest of us.”

On the thread on E-sangha in question, he actually states, after much back and forth with people leading up to this:

“But, in fact, the non-literalist views I am expressing on Reincarnation represent, I believe, the generally dominant view among Zen teachers in the West right now. The reason is not that we have lost the direct line to Buddha’s brain that you’all so evidently possess. The reason is, quite simply, that we no longer live in an age of superstition and hocus-pocus. I do not believe in a magical view of Reincarnation for much the same reason that I do not believe in flying dragons, the tooth fairy, genies, Qilin (a kind a giraffe with fish scales and wings) and such. We do not believe that earthquakes are caused by giant catfish under the earth, or that stomach aches are due to ghost possession, and other things that the same primitive folks (who wrote the Sutras) believed in. Now, we know a little better (although, granted, we have our own modern myths and superstitions). “

Please go read Jundo’s blog entry and watch his video though (along with reading the thread if you can). I’ve mentioned Jundo before as one of the Buddhist teachers attempting to use new media and technologies for teaching. He’s committed to sitting online every day for nine years and working with people without a sangha of their own.

As I’ve detailed before, E-sangha has a bit of a control freak mentality when it comes to “proper” Buddhism as well as a completely authoritarian moderation structure that brooks no dissent or questioning of how the forum is run. If you question moderator decisions, espouse “improper” Buddhist views, or are from an organization that the moderators do not like, you will be banned. Jundo actually made the unforgivable error, in addition to his heresy, of posting a moderator threat to him in public and pointing out that he was a Soto Zen priest on a Soto Zen forum on the site, while the person threatening him wasn’t even a Zen practitioner. The fact that they banned a Zen teacher, one who was trained and recognized by Nishijima Roshi, for pointing out that most Zen teachers in America don’t take reincarnation literally or that they think of the Buddha as a man, not a god, is just an indicator of how bankrupt the forum is as a site for Buddhists.

The Open Buddha site that I started hasn’t really taken off. This isn’t really surprising as it is hard to build community and the reason that I hear, over and over again, about why people hunker down and put up with the bullshit policies on E-sangha is because that is the one place where you can actually find a critical mass of people. I think it is time for people to really re-think this decision.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 30th, 2007 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Buddhism, Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 126 Comments

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    Hey Al,

    What's controversial about the Buddha being a man, not a god? I've heard lots of lamas say the same thing, and thought it was pretty much taken for granted. Is there a different view on E-sangha?
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    One gathers that this is the case. :-) Namdrol on E-sangha, who you will see shutting down the thread with Jundo at the end, is Malcolm Smith. I'm *sure* that you remember Lama Malcolm. He seems to be pretty strict about the whole matter.
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    Too bad! He seemed to take concepts and orthodoxy way more seriously than I'd expect from a Dzogchen practitioner. Although, people who currently practice a lot don't usually end up moderating e-forums.
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    Namdrol and the other moderators and administrators of E-sangha ban viewpoints on the Dharma that conflict (or conflict in their collective and individual opinions) with proper teachings.

    For example, when speaking about the views of Jundo's teacher, Malcolm says on E-sangha:

    "Believing that one's consciousness ceases at death is exactly annihilationism. It is a pernicious view and one forbidden here. "

    So, there are views that are forbidden on E-sangha. It is hardly an open forum where people can really discuss things.
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    ...which puts Namdrol precisely in the shoes of one Sati the Fisherman's Son, who claimed that the Buddha taught that consciousness transmigrates through existences in the Mahatanhasankhaya Sutta. Of course, the Buddha castigated him and reiterated the proper Dharma teaching that forms of consciousness only arise dependent upon contact between sense organs/systems and objects that arise within the scope of their abilities. The eye sees a form, and eye-consciousness arises. The mental processes sense an idea or mental activity, and mind-consciousness arises. The object-forms leave the "field of view", and that consciousness that sensed their presence disappears. This is the arising and cessation of "the world" as the Buddha defined it in the Loka Sutta in the Ninandavagga and elsewhere. The Buddha was explicit in MN38 that these six forms of consciousness, arising as each of the six sense bases interacts with their objects, are the only forms of consciousness.

    Another aspect of Namdrol's statement is the underlying assumption that if one does not actively believe in his position, that one must actively oppose it. He fails to see the false duality of his position, probably intentionally, in order to submit a straw man argument against anyone who finds speculative views concerning any "life after death" to be irrelevant to the Buddha's core teachings, which are designed to eliminate suffering. He and the rest of the Dharma Nazis at eSangha do not recognize any sort of middle position in which one does not consider theories of reincarnation or tit-for-tat notions of karma to be relevant to the elimination of ignorance, greed and loathing. Anything short of outright belief or silence on the part of "non-believers" is considered "anti-reincarnatoin" and therefore "annihilationism" and treated with progressively more vicious attacks on the boards and warnings, suspensions, and banishments behind the wings. The sort of straw-man attack you see above is one of the main weapons the eSangha mods use in their ongoing war on those they view as heretics or "non-believers", as they have no real recourse to the suttas.

    The biggest problem is that they claim to be a "Buddhist" forum, and many people who find themselves drawn to the teachings of the Buddha wind up there because they are at the top of the Google hit lists and come away with a bad taste in their mouth and a skewed impression of what Buddhism is about because they get beat up in the forums by the mods and their legions of toadying brown-nosers that report any activity or discussion that doesn't follow their party line. They claim to provide a Buddhist forum, but they are not a Buddhist forum at all, as they censor and attempt to silence legitimate teachings of the Buddha -- particularly those which challenge speculative views, especially their own -- and in this way they do not represent Buddhism as a whole, rather their own narrow views and beliefs of Buddhism. One can call oneself a Buddhist in their forum only as long as one toes the party line of their narrow speculative views. They are more akin to a totalitarian cult that demands blind obedience from its members. They are to Buddhism what Fred Phelps is to Christians.

    Yes, it's not an open forum. The reason it's not an open forum is so that they can run roughshod on those who do not fall in their lines. In doing so, it becomes a lie to call it a "Buddhist" forum.
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    Well spoken.
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    Try again. Your opinion about the Mahatanhasankhaya Sutta was well explained.
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    I am Professor Karma Gedun MD. FRCP.
    I was a " Senior Contributor " to E Sangha. A year or so ago, tired of constant threads about "Jesus as a Bodhisattva," "Buddhism is the same as Hinduism " etc I posted a thread saying that I was going to convert to Islam. Most people got this immediately. I repeated the same ( possibly unfunny ) joke a few weeks ago in reponse to a crudely rascist anti-Arab post on E sangha. This time I was threatened with being banned unless I apologised for the " hurt anger and disruption" I had caused.I refused and told them to grow up. I was then suspended from posting. E Sangha is a circus run by control freaks, chief among them is indeed " Loppon Namdrol" who invisbles every post that disagrees in a coherent way with his views. In effect E Sangha , particularly the Tibetan Forum has become a vehicle for a hard core group of followers of a particular teacher based in Italy who sends " empowerments " by satellite. I kid you not. Bit by bit all other views of Vajrayana Buddhism are being closed down leaving a cultic monoculture.
    Karma Gedun.
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    One Mans Meat.
    A brief look at Thought Control as practised on E Sangha.
    The tone and tenor of what goes on on E Sangha can largely be traced back to the influence of Namdrol. For sometime and increasingly the Forum has become his own personal fiefdom where he struts and preens and gives his imperial thumbs up or down to members , subjects and threads. A tactic he commonly deploys is to create a double bind that makes the members wrong whatever they do.
    A recent example was the great meat debate.
    For years until recently Namdrols view, and Namdrols views are always absolute, was that meat eating was manditory. Woe betide any Vajrayana student who enquired however tenatively whether they might be excused meat at Tsog Pujas ( these are particular ceremonies common in Tibetan Buddhism, involving eating and drinking.) Namdrol would roar that such behaviour amounting to Samaya breaking. This is the most serious thing that a Vajra student can be accused of. It means breaking certain oaths between teacher and student. Many, possibly most Vajrayana students are firmly convinced that Samaya breaking leads post-mortum to particularly nasty hell states. So by refusing meat they risked hell. Opponents of this view were ridiculed and humiliated and frequently their posts would be "invisibled."
    Suddenly, overnight, this position was reversed. Namdrol had become a vegetarian, we were informed. Whats more that was the position he had ALWAYS held. Anyone who was not a vegetarian was not a Buddhist, and was the same as a murderer or war criminal. To cries of " you have changed your view! " he replied with threats , "invisiblings " and the whole panoply of the deranged emporer. When it was pointed out that the teacher whose view he currently espoused was not a vegetarian he rumbled and blew and sent up clouds of smoke in the manner of The Great Oz.
    Whereupon the vast majority of the Tibetan forum nodded sagely and agreed that indeed that HAD been his position all along...The members of TB forum fall into three main groups. a small group of level headed and sincere practitioners. Perhaps 10%.They stay out of controversy. When the wind of Namdrol starts to signal itself, when eddies and breezes start to set the trees swaying they withdraw for a while.Then there is a group of the confused and weak, about 80%, and the remaining 10% who are Namdrols thugs-in -training. These tactics of course will be well known to anyone who has studied cultic behaviour, always keep the dependent on the wrong foot, change the rules frequently so the vulnerable are always wrong. Maintain control thereby. This tactic is deployed frequently by Namdrol and his cohorts on E Sangha.

    KG.
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    So, whats to be done ?
    We have a situation where the largest and most widely read Buddhist website by far has been hi-jacked by cultists. As will be quickly discovered by any who test my statement, this small group maintains power by any means necessary, They allow no free discussion.
    I will put my cards on the table here, I am a traditional literal rebirth believer. It seems clear to me that the Buddha taught literal rebirth. However that is not the issue. There is no Buddhist practice which depends on belief in a particular doctrine. All it needs is a "taste and see" mentality. Many people on encountering Buddhadharma can maintain and develop a sincere and fruitful practice without being in any way preoccupied with the literal truth or otherwise of rebirth.
    This should be self evident, in fact it probably IS self evident to the mods and admin of E Sangha. However this is not a doctrinal issue. This is about control.
    This is about those with, perhaps, a sense of personal inadequacy who have become a dictatorial elite in their own tinpot cyber world, within that world they have absolute power to a degree possibly unique in the western world. Any and all dissent in silenced.
    So to return to my question ,what to do ?
    Possible responses ;1) Teyes.
    E Sangha is fortunate in having a patron who is both rich and remarkably hands-off. Teyes as he is known started the Forum as a pious act and leaves it to itself. Does he know what is being done in his name ?
    2) A few good men. There are , even within the moderating team, people who are uncomfortable to say the least with Namdrols style. Amomng the membership, and particularly outside of the Tibetan Forum those similarly uncomfortable almost certainly form a large majority. Posts constantly refer to the posters fear of suspension or banning.
    I carefully left a trail of crumbs to this site before being banned from E sangha. I dont know what the usual hit rate is for this site, but judging from the numbers of hits since I posted here first, I would guess that a number of people followed the trail. A proportion of them will know the truth of what I am saying and agree. To those people I would say, Imagine E Sangha without Namdrol and his cohorts . Imagine a Tibetan Forum where all schools are equal, dzogchen and non dzogchen alike. Where no one implies second class citizenship to non-dzogchen students.
    On the wider forum , imagine a place where practice rather than beleif is what counts. Where humour and tolerence abound, where mods have the lightest of hands in matters of doctrine, but instead are focussed on promoting positive relationships between schools and traditions based on commonalities.
    Non-banned members of E Sangha, its in your hands. It really doesnt have to be like that. Why not reclaim your website for the good of all ?
    Karma Gedun.
    ( Peter ).
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    imagine a Tibetan Forum where all schools are equal
    imagine a place where practice rather than belief is what counts
    where humour and tolerence abound,
    where the mods have the lightest of hands in matters of doctrine,
    but instead are focussed on promoting positive relationships between schools and traditions based on commonalities -

    sounds like Esangha in 2003.
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    That's what I wanted to start with Open Buddha (http://www.openbuddha.com) but, so far, without the critical mass of people actually using it, the site hasn't taken off. This is the core problem with starting a new site and building community. You need enough people to get it going but how do you get enough people?
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    Al, I will check out openbuddha when I have a minute. Its very commendable to undertake such a venture.

    "Founder member "
    I can well believe that E Sangha was very different in 2003. I joined in 2005 and even then the style was far more collegiate, there was more dialogue and actual debate, although the seeds of Namdrolism were already evident.
    Within in a year or so all debate ( particularly in the Tibetan Buddhist Forum ) was closed down. Posters receive a one line answer yes or no from Namdrol or one of his clones. If the poster persists Namdrol will reply with a one liner about how his answer must be correct because he knows far more about the subject than the poster or the posters teacher, or Nagarjuna or Atisha or Dogen etc etc. If the poster continues it becomes personal, Namdrol, who will have come in to the discussion commando style by now ( even if it is a clone who has been replying,) feet first and through the window, will tell the poster that they are stupid , ignorant and that their view demonstrates the fact. Further posts which fail to display total submission to the Great Oz will be " invisibled " swiftly. Any who think that this is an exaggeration, and who have access to E Sangha, can trawl through Namdrols back posts where they will see this pattern repeated scores of times. At this point Namdrol's Mini-Me's will emerge from the woodwork to form a queue in order to administer their own slap to the transgressor rather like that scene in " Airplane " where the passengers queue to slap the passenger with hysterics. It is a blood sport.
    I find it extraordinary that it has been tolerated for so long.
    An alternative to E Sangha is to be supported, two good websites, a new one and a reformed E Sangha cleansed of the influence of the namdrols would be even better. As I have said above, it isd the hands of the members. I know for a fact that many of them agree.
    K.G.
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    Wow, KG, I think you need to look into Chogyal Namkhai Norbu's teachings and students at a bit more personal level before you write them off as a kooky cult. First of all, Norbu is widely recognized as a Dzogchen master... not a cult leader. Secondly, the idea may seem strange to you that he would give transmission via webcast, but if you understood the nature of transmission a little bit better, it would perhaps not seem so strange. What I find strange, personally, are people who believe a vase needs to be touched to their head... over and over and over again as they go around collecting empowerments which apparently do them not much good.

    Namdrol's meat position is not as flip-floppery as you try to make it seem, either. He said that he is now vegetarian but he would never refuse samaya substances, which means he will still eat meat at Gana Puja, etc. I certainly see nothing wrong with Namdrol's most recent decision; he's been trying to do the right thing all along and has come to the conclusion that for him this is the right course of action. He's not oblivious to the fact that masters eat meat, nor did he say he was disregarding the importance of meat in the tradition he follows. Like many things in Ati teachings, there are some apparent contradictions which actually make sense viewed from the proper perspective: (1) our intention is to benefit all beings, so eating meat obviously seems to negate that intention. However, meat is not slaughtered specifically for the rituals, which (2) form an important part of going beyond dualism vision. Not only Dzogchen, but even Sakyamuni said that if one believes he has understood emptiness but disregards cause and effect, he has made a grave error and will degenerate swiftly into amorality. In the experience of nonduality, nobody is going to start killing beings and eating them. In the experience of duality, we realize beings as temporary phenomena in a state of suffering. All things self-liberate, regardless of clinging and aversion, eventually, but knowing this we do not make light of the cries of the suffering beings nor do we add to their misery. By acting in this manner, we show that we have an understanding of karma and of emptiness.

    As for the idea of reincarnation being just a silly old superstition along with ghosts in the stomach, etc.,well the person who made that remark is obsessed with labels and shows a lack of understanding of emptiness. A person of this mindset is in no position to judge the beliefs of "superstitious Buddhists" of the past. Words are empty of inherent reality and Occam's Razor simply defines the limits of our perception, which is very poor indeed. Especially that of any monkey on this speck of dust in the middle of fathomless space who believes his perception is good enough to make some firm assertions about reality. Both Max Planck and Erwin Shrodinger disregarded nihilism/scientific materialism and they were the forefathers of quantum physics and modern biology. Shrodinger went so far as to write a paper challenging the entire scientific community as to what it deemed worthy of calling "life" and it was his ideas which lead to the discovery of DNA, the basic structure or concept of which he had essentially mapped out theoretically, inspiring the top biologists of the day. He explained that to limit "life" to the idea of something that is "carbon-based" and something we puny humans would recognize as "life" was an infinitely limiting proposition and this can hardly be argued even today. Planck, on the other hand, said that we would never be able to figure out reality as we oruselves, which we don't understand, are part of that very reality. By what merit does any boring-minded status quo "skeptic" claim otherwise? Certainly not the level of merit of these two brilliant and honored scientific minds.
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    Personally, I have no issues with Namkhai Norbu or his methods. If one thinks that one has to be within three feet of a teacher to receive an empowerment, I think that you are being a bit limited. That being said, after I attended one of Norbu's more distant empowerments, I made a point of attending a retreat with him in person.

    Let's stay away from bashing teachers like Namkhai Norbu, please. I have the utmost respect for him and others who have dedicated their lives to the Dharma.

    As an aside, when people quote the Buddha as having said this and that, I begin to wonder as the sources for what the Buddha actually said on certain things is often contradictory. This isn't surprising when we realize that what we have was written down hundreds of years after his death and may not even be the entire body of what he taught (as many Mahayana practitioners believe).

    For myself, I remain open to the concept of reincarnation but I'm not sure that I really "believe" it per se. It depends on how one wants to define things (including "belief").
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    Incidentally, I ran into some problems myself with E-sangha at first, but that's because I kept trying to compare it to Western Hermeticism / Qaballah all the time. After a while there... and after receiving transmission, by the way, from Norbu, everything changed for me in a big way. I realized that I just didn't care about Qaballah all that much anymore and stopped paying my B.O.T.A. dues. There is a very good reason for this (and I was making great progress in B.O.T.A., Tarot, Qaballah and Thelema), but it would be very hard to explain. My first introduction to Dzogchen was not E-Sangha, by the way, but Judy Kennedy's book, "Beyond The Rainbow" or something... she is a member of B.O.T.A. as well as a Dzogchen practitioner and I can't remember exactly what she said, but something in that massive brick of a book inspired me to really look into it. Norbu just happened to be the most convenient "in" for me and I'm very glad I became part of the Dzogchen Community. The difference between "instantaneous" and "gradual" path couldn't be more obvious than when you're sitting there doing it. And, once you've caught a glimpse, you have a much better idea what all the other forms of mysticism are about... there's a reason Buddhist teachers tend to ignore the siddhis: the same reason why they cultivate an attitude of renunciation. Maybe you can call 72 goetic demons to do your bidding... maybe you can master elementals and do all kinds of neat tricks Franz Bardon would be proud of... so what? It's on the same level as learning to play the guitar real well; not that important unless you want to just stay stuck in the same old places.
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    BTW, Cool Al, nice to meet you! That was a really nice response. I expected to be banned or slammed, actually for me straightforward tone. It's nice to meet someone online like yourself who is obviously open-minded and seems pretty kind-hearted, too.

    Good luck with everything. If there is another Buddhist forum around, I'll certainly be up for a few posts here and there. I stopped talking much about it online when I realized I was probably not helping people, but confusing them... when I should really just be practicing. ;)
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    I don't know about kind hearted as I have a pretty reactionary temper but I try not to penalize people for being straight up with one another unless someone is purposefully trying to get someone's goat.
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    Oh, I did make Open Buddha (openbuddha.com) but it isn't being used much. I'm wondering if I should convert it from the Drupal-based community site to a straight up web forum.