(np) New Pope?

[Ian Livingston]

Good questions both. I wonder about the first often. I wonder if
appropriate sexual education couldn't be more successfully grafted into
primary schools, so that kids could learn what is and is not appropriate
outside the rumor mill. Could sex education be incremental instead of the
"okay, here's how it's done, don't forget the rubbers" approach kids get
now. There was a time it was up to parents, but they've never really been
reliable communicators, have they? No one ever gave me the scoop. Had to
learn it after the fashion of animals. Never mind the embarrassing moments.

I have known adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse who developed
profoundly disturbing post-traumatic stress disorders on the margin of
schizoid psychosis, so I think the child is directly affected with or
without the input of others. Adults, on the other hand, well, I think
you're right about that. Nothing like a like some of that ole time
Stockholm syndrome touched off by a little hysteria to send a dreamer into
a nightmare. I know it is a ghastly overgeneralization, but it seems a big
problem in the West, that many of the students of spiritual leaders are
vulnerable for whatever reason in the first place--the most common
vulnerability being narcissistic personality issues. Those folks yearn for
attention, and well, the rest is just kind of tragic, in an obscure way,
where the hubris is really bound up with the hollow self. The resulting
relationship to the teacher is really weird. I know of one woman who was
studying under a Mahayanna nun who beat her regularly. When she tried to
consult others about the beatings she met with the same attitude of it
being bad juju to tell stories about the teacher out of class. She
eventually got connected to a lawyer and the whole lineage had to pay a
tidy sum of US dollars for the actions and the cover-up. Don't know what
they do about such things now, but I doubt much has changed. It's an
attitude built into the religion, and that's a part of what cured me of
religion.

On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 9:13 AM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net>wrote:

>  On 2/13/2013 11:31 AM, Ian Livingston wrote:
>
> Paul M says: Sex is such an enormously big deal in the West--and seems to
> get bigger the more it is used to sell products.  Zen comes in >from the
> East and sort of upsets the applecart as it were.  Does anyone else wonder
> about all of this?
>
>  Big in the West? India and China alone account nearly 1/3 of the human
> population currently living on Earth. India being the birthplace of
> Buddhism, and China the birthplace of Chan which became Zen upon its
> walkabout to Japan. Seems to me they take sex pretty seriously. The
> Japanese have some pretty wacky sex trips going on.
>
>  Sex is big in the West because anti-sex is big in the West. The Puritans
> put the hex on sex with their biblical insecurities, and the
> Catholics--well, as Zappa noted, Catholics are notoriously horny, what can
> you say? I rather think it has more to do with when and where people
> develop sufficient emotional intelligence to differentiate between the need
> for a good bowel movement or a better diet and the desire to ejaculate that
> determines their susceptibility to sexual messages or temptations. You can
> be a spiritual leader and still have little emotional intelligence. Many
> Buddhist sangha, like their Catholic counterparts, live apart from the
> other sex and the cesspool of modern media from youth, before they have a
> chance to develop any understanding of sex. They are naive and horny and
> they have few defenses against their own impulses other than prayer and
> masturbation. One must know the appetites before they can control them. And
> then there's the latin gift of machismo, according to which conviction it
> is better to have several families with a number of different women than to
> suffer the unmanly humiliation of sexual deprivation because of
> inconvenient offspring.
>
>
>
> Good answer.
>
> Next question: What is to be done?  (in a non regulatory. anarchistic
> manner)
>
> Second question:  Is the enormous damage done to children when subjected
> to sexual activity (testified to by psychologists who treat them) inherent
> in the the vulnerabilities in the  immature human animal, or is it due in
> some significant part at least to the attitudes of adults?  I  know I'm
> treading on dangerous ground here.
>
> Not to draw any kind of direct comparison, but I was struck by the
> experiences of the women who were touched or asked for sexual favors by
> their beloved zen teacher.  Much of the woe came after they reported the
> unwanted contacts to others.  It turned out to be more about the disrespect
> shown the master than about violation of the student.
>
> P
>
>
>  (testified to by the psychologists who treat them
> On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 7:21 AM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net>wrote:
>
>>  On 2/13/2013 8:03 AM, Monte Davis wrote:
>>
>>  Not that the Times had contributed anything to the buildup of Joshu
>> Sasaki:
>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/us/09zen.html
>>
>>
>>
>> Several Mahayana teachers have been important to me over the years,  but
>> there’s one lama I would never trust alone in a room with eclairs or
>> cannoli.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> P
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org<owner-pynchon-l at waste.org>]
>> *On Behalf Of *Keith Davis
>> *Sent:* Tuesday, February 12, 2013 8:57 PM
>> *To:* David Morris
>> *Cc:* Markekohut; malignd at aol.com; pynchon-l at waste.org
>> *Subject:* Re: (np) New Pope?
>>
>>
>>
>> How about this?
>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/world/asia/zen-buddhists-roiled-by-accusations-against-teacher.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130212
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 8:45 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/opinion/the-pope-could-still-right-the-wrongs.html?ref=opinion
>>
>>
>>
>> Still, Benedict has one last chance to right some of the wrongs of the
>> recent past by forcing out Cardinal Angelo Sodano<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/angelo_sodano/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
>> the dean of the College of Cardinals and the man who, more than any other,
>> embodies the misuse of power that has corrupted the church hierarchy.
>>
>>
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>
>>
>> But Cardinal Sodano ranks with the Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony as
>> an egregious practitioner of the cover up. As John Paul II’s secretary of
>> state, he pressured Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict, in
>> two notorious cases.
>>
>> In 1995, Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër resigned as archbishop of Vienna,
>> trailed by accusations, soon proven, that he had abused young men. Cardinal
>> Ratzinger wanted the pope to speak out; Cardinal Sodano overruled him.
>>
>> Cardinal Sodano also pressured Cardinal Ratzinger to abort a case filed
>> in 1998 by several men accusing the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder
>> of the Legionaries of Christ, of abusing them as seminarians. Cardinal
>> Sodano was a longtime beneficiary of money and favors from Father Maciel.
>> Priests who left the order told me he received at least $15,000 in cash.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  He was personally involved in protecting pedophiles.  I hope he rots.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> www.innergroovemusic.com
>>
>>
>>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20130213/04544f61/attachment.html>