An Open Letter to the American Zen Community 

About Clergy Sex Abuse in Our Sanghas

Sheryl Lilke, MS, LPC

This is a “living document” that will evolve as I continue to have lively conversations with members of the American Zen community.

(Revised September 29. 2025)

Warm greetings to all American Zen practitioners and sanghas,

I am sharing this letter with the hope that it will inspire conversations within all American Zen traditions about how we can address past and present cases of clergy sex abuse in our sanghas and put our understanding of wisdom and ethics into practice to create communities that prioritize the safety of vulnerable individuals.

I write from the perspective of a licensed psychotherapist. I specialize in working with women survivors of all types of gender-based violence and abuse including intimate partner violence, sexual assault, childhood sex abuse, everyday harassment and discrimination, and clergy sex abuse. I don’t claim to be an expert on many subjects, but I am an expert on this.

I have been a student of Buddhist philosophy and practice for 25 years and a member of a Soto Zen sangha for over 15 years. I’ve received lay ordina-tion and have enjoyed intensive one-on-one instruction with my teacher.

When I write about women’s experiences of violence and abuse, I find that it is helpful to refer to expert research to support my assertions. Unfortunately, women’s descriptions of their lived experiences are often dismissed as being exaggerated, vindictive, unique to the woman herself, or overly emotional. The books and research I draw from are listed under References and Resources; I encourage all readers to learn more about this important subject for themselves.

The thoughts I express here are based on years of experience working with and advocating for women. I have written extensively on the subjects of interpersonal ethics, gender-based violence, and the harms caused by patriarchy and misogyny. The conversations I hope to inspire are not about whether clergy sex abuse happened (it did) or whether harm occurred (it did) but about how our sanghas can begin to honestly address this harm and work to build safe, ethical, and inclusive communities.

If you resist words such as “violence,” “patriarchy,” “trauma,” or “clergy sex abuse,” I urge you to keep an open mind. This language sounds severe because we usually speak about this subject in euphemisms, if at all. If American Zen is to maintain its credibility as a philosophy of virtue ethics, we must not flinch when talking about the serious abuses that have occurred, and continue to occur, in our communities. This is a necessary conversation and while I do not cast blame on anyone other than known abusers, I believe we are all accountable for what happens next.

The Inspiration for this Letter

Several months ago, I started a difficult conversation within my sangha. I had learned that my teacher’s teacher, Dainin Katatgiri, had sexually abused at least two of his female students and had sexually propositioned or harassed many others. Katagiri lied to his sangha and coerced his victims to lie to protect his reputation and position of authority. His freely chosen and oft-repeated actions created a culture of deceit, denial, and secrecy that has lasted for decades in his lineage.

When I came to understand that these facts were well-known but rarely discussed in the American Soto Zen community, I was alarmed. Clergy sex abuse—and the secrecy that often surrounds it—can do serious, lasting harm to individuals, families, and communities even long after the abuse has occurred.

I was also angry to learn that my mentors—people who knew that I was a professional advocate for women’s safety—had kept this information from me. I had been denied the opportunity to decide for myself whether to chant the name of an abuser in reverence. I had not been asked my consent to study the ethical teachings of a man who did not value the safety or recognize the humanity of the women in his care. Instead, I was only told stories about Katagiri’s humor, charisma, wisdom, and kindness.

I expect that many other Zen practitioners are unknowingly chanting the names of abusers and studying their teachings. I am certainly not the only person to be told delightful stories about supposedly brilliant men who chose to abuse women over whom they held great authority. Every student of Zen should be given the respect of being able to choose for themselves whom they accept as an honored teacher and transmitter of wisdom. It is extremely paternalistic to make this decision for another person.

When I brought the subject up for discussion in my sangha, my friends struggled to balance their devotion to our patriarchal lineage with the newfound knowledge that a lineage holder had committed serious acts of abuse. Struggling myself, I failed to communicate clearly what I believed to be at stake for the future of the American Zen tradition. I’m hoping this letter will serve as a correction and as a guide forward for us all.

A Note on Anger

My work as a psychotherapist requires me to understand the concept of emotional regulation. It is a skill that I employ myself, and help others to develop, when we confront and communicate about difficult subjects. The concept of self-regulation is also often used as a weapon to silence victims who attempt to hold powerful individuals accountable for their actions. These women and their advocates are often dismissed as being too angry, vindictive, or even “unhinged.”

Survivors of abuse are expected to appear weak and sad—not powerful, aggrieved, and defiant. The shaming of women’s anger is an intentional feature of patriarchal systems that muzzles those who seek justice or reparations and contributes to a culture in which abuse is more likely to occur. Women in American Zen are encouraged to move quickly toward forgiveness so that no actual change is required of the men in power.

Anger is, in fact, an appropriate response to discovering that one’s Zen community—which claims to promote ethical behavior, personal development, and safe sanghas—knowingly harbors and defends abusers.

Understanding Clergy Sex Abuse

Clergy sex abuse is widely misunderstood and is often deliberately misrepresented to protect the reputations of powerful men. Although I occasionally refer to Dainin Katagiri’s abuses as examples in this document, he is not the only perpetrator in the American Zen tradition. There are other well-known abusers who have been canonized (e.g., Taizan Maezumi, Joshu Sasaki, Eido Shimano) or may soon be canonized (e.g., Richard Baker), as well as many others, past and present, with less recognizable names.

The harm caused by past abusers extends far beyond the years during which they were leading Zen communities. To this day, we continue to chant their names in reverence at our services. We are encouraged to listen to their recorded teachings and read their books as reliable sources of wisdom on subjects such as interpersonal ethics and skillful action. We see their biographies and tributes to them everywhere—on sangha websites, in books and magazines, listed as “beloved teacher.”

Almost always these biographies are uncritically glowing or, at best, may describe the abuser as a complicated man who “made mistakes.” A culture of gaslighting and denial prevails at the expense of truth and accountability. In one truly astonishing example of gross understatement, the Rinzai Zen Studies Society website refers to Eido Shimano’s “complicated legacy.” I fail to see what is complicated about a man who was an unrepentant misogynist, serial (and at times aggressive) sexual predator, and probable narcissist.

The subject of clergy sex abuse simply is not as complicated as apologists make it out to be. In Minnesota, the state in which Katagiri sexually abused his students, it has been illegal for clergy to engage in sexual contact with individuals in the course of counseling—even with the victim’s consent—since the 1980s. As a transmitted priest, founder, and head teacher of the Minnesota Zen Center, Katagiri was unequivocally in such a relationship with every student in his sangha. One of his senior students reported telling Katagiri that his actions could be illegal; he chose to ignore this warning and continued initiating sexual relationships with his students.

Clergy sex abuse is a crime in all 50 states. Its legality, however, is not the focus of this letter. Because Zen is a philosophy and practice that claims to have a serious commitment to interpersonal ethics, we must assess whether our responses to sexual abuse in our sanghas have met our own basic ethical standards.

Over the course of months of discussions with individuals in Zen communities across the country, it became clear to me that clergy sex abuse is difficult for most people to identify. Misguided and often harmful attitudes prevent us from collectively addressing clergy sex abuse in a way that fairly distributes consequences to perpetrators and justice to survivors. To bring clarity and objectivity to a subject about which I have extensive knowledge, I have decided to directly address many of the statements and questions I encountered during these conversations.

“Don’t believe those women; they’re all crazy.”

The brilliant trauma expert Judith Herman wrote, “Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens.”

When the perpetrator is a man with power and authority (e.g., a transmitted priest who is the founding teacher of a Zen community) and the victim is a member of a devalued population (e.g., a woman in a patriarchal organization), the victim’s lived experience falls outside of the accepted narrative that is controlled by the people in power.

In this case, the narrative is that a Zen master is an awakened, brilliant, and deeply ethical person whose actions lie beyond reproach or censure. This makes his victims vulnerable to being discredited. In the case of clergy sex abuse in American Zen, when women tell the truth about their experience it endangers an entire shared and firmly enforced hierarchical structure and system of ascribing value to individuals.

In the past, women who spoke out about abuse were diagnosed as hysterics and often institutionalized. Today, we casually question their emotional stability. There is little difference in the nature and result of these methods of discrediting women and both are profoundly misogynistic. When American Zen communities ignore or discredit women who speak about their experiences of abuse, or those who advocate for victims of abuse, it exposes a very serious misalignment of what we claim to value—ethics and interdependence—and what we actually value—hierarchy and male power.

“Isn’t it just an affair if the woman gives consent?”

An aspect of clergy sex abuse that mental-health professionals, experts in ethics, and the law agree on is that meaningful consent cannot exist within a relationship when one person holds great power and authority and the other is a member of a vulnerable or less powerful population. To be clear, this is not one person’s opinion, but a matter of basic ethics and law.

In Zen sanghas, the power relationship is based on trust and spiritual authority. In the case of a Zen priest such as Katagiri, his female students believed that their personal growth and their opportunities for ordination or transmission rested entirely in his hands. Katagiri alone held the power to confirm and validate their progress in their studies of Zen philosophy.

Katagiri’s role as a confidential advisor in dokusan (one-on-one meetings of teacher and student) created an environment in which the students became even more vulnerable when they shared deeply personal information with him. His immense power in these relationships should have been used exclusively to support his students’ personal autonomy, never to exploit their vulnerability for sexual favors or emotional caregiving.

These one-on-one meetings are often where grooming begins in a priest/student relationship. The sense of intimacy can be manipulated to make the victim feel special. The teacher may tell the student that he admires her dedication to practice or her profound insights. He may recommend additional one-on-one meetings and reveal details of his own life so that the victim feels that she is his trusted confidant as well.

Acts of clergy sex abuse are a result of power imbalance, manipulation, and coercion—they are not “affairs” or “inappropriate relationships.” Nor are they a simple failure of judgment shared equally by two people. Abusers and their apologists often rely on this sort of language to minimize the severity of the actual harms that result from the deliberate, unethical choices made by powerful men.

“I don’t see how there was actual harm done to the women.”

Clergy sex abuse can have devastating effects on the survivor. Research has shown that women who have been coerced into sex by clergy are at increased risk for developing depression, substance abuse issues, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress symptoms. Because they are often disbelieved or blamed for their abuse, survivors have also described feeling unbearable shame, low self-esteem, and worthlessness.

Victims of clergy sex abuse often leave their sangha or abandon Zen practice altogether. It can be devastating for a survivor to be without both her trusted teacher and the community she might have relied upon for support. Victims sometimes lose trust in all spiritual guidance and mental-health providers and so may not seek therapy to help process feelings of depression, guilt, and shame. This leaves them vulnerable to suicide.

In all environments—sangha services, one-on-one dokusan meetings, sesshin retreats—teachers must be trusted to refrain from exploiting their position of power and to not only respect, but to actively facilitate, students’ safety and autonomy.

“I heard that his female students initiated the relationships.”

In our training, psychotherapists learn about the immense responsibility that comes with transference and countertransference. When two individuals are in a relationship that involves both a power imbalance and real or perceived intimacy, emotions can become complex and confused.

The female students of a male Zen priest may project intense unconscious feelings of paternal love or deity-like devotion onto their teacher. They may pursue closeness in a misguided attempt at merging with an enlightened being or they may confuse physical intimacy with spiritual intimacy.

In response to these unconscious feelings and behaviors in his student the priest may get swept up in the student’s projections, which impedes his ability to respond appropriately. The feeling of being adored or idolized can be intoxicating and even arousing.

It is the sacred obligation of Zen priests to be solely responsible for their students’ unconscious projections and to hold impeccable, inviolable emotional and physical boundaries. This is simply the most ethically imperative work they do. A lack of training or understanding on the part of the priest in no way obviates this ethical imperative because the failure to uphold these boundaries results in immense harm.

“He ordained women, so he obviously respected them.”

Abusers often perform an imitation of feminism to encourage women to make themselves vulnerable and to deflect suspicion from their harmful actions. Humility and kindness can act as a sort of camouflage. In fact, many defenders of Katagiri refer to his kindness and sense of humor as if being charismatic and likable made him less, rather than more, likely to get away with unethical behavior.

This behavior is not always calculated. The trajectory of becoming an abuser can be gradual. A man may see certain of his behaviors rewarded with female attention and affection, enjoy that feeling, and then ignore his ethical training to seek out more and more validation. The abuser may even convince himself that he is a champion of women and therefore deserving of their gratitude and sexual favors. Certainly, most perpetrators of clergy sex abuse never consciously acknowledge to themselves or others that what they are doing counts as abuse. Nevertheless, it is abuse.

“We should have compassion for him; he had a traumatic childhood.”

In my work as a therapist for survivors of gender-based violence, I have heard countless stories of horrific childhood abuse and neglect. Some of my clients lost one or both parents at a very young age, some were terrorized by their parents. None of these women grew up to abuse or exploit others. Instead, they took responsibility for their own healing and bravely did the difficult work of facing down their trauma for the explicit purpose of being able to have healthy and safe relationships in their adult lives.

The emotional and intellectual gymnastics we do to make excuses for male perpetrators of sexual violence is so common that philosopher Kate Manne has coined a word for it: “himpathy.” One reason we do this is the uncomfortable cognitive dissonance we face when the perpetrator is someone we know to be accomplished and charming, or someone we were told was brilliant and kind. We desperately want sexual predators to be creepy, ugly, ignorant monsters who hide in dark alleys. In fact, most men who abuse girls and women are their fathers, friends, coaches, teachers, and priests.

The women Katagiri abused were human beings. They were not band-aids for his childhood wounds. They were not simply bodies that existed to help him forget his troubles or cure his loneliness. They should have been able to trust that they would be safe in their sangha and with their teacher.

“He was a lonely man in an unhappy marriage.”

I speak to lonely women in unhappy marriages every day—none of them believe that exploiting a more vulnerable person is the path to their own well-being. Again, they take responsibility for their own healing and often view it as a sort of sacred imperative to become more skillfully attuned to their own emotions and to the emotions of others so that the harm that was done to them does not result in harm to others.

This same attitude of mutual care must be a requirement for becoming an esteemed Zen master and transmitted priest. An individual who is granted the privilege of power that comes with leading a Zen community should have to prove a depth of emotional maturity before being allowed to spend time alone with students. At the very least, a man should be removed from his position of authority, banned from one-on-one contact with students, and lose his place of honor in the lineage after showing himself to be a serial abuser of women.

None of these very reasonable ethical assumptions are currently true in American Zen. The women in our communities will continue to suffer for our lack of commitment to a basic ethic of care. The reputation and credibility of American Zen will suffer as well.

“Is it necessary to completely destroy Katagiri’s reputation?”

Katagiri destroyed his own reputation when he made the choice to sexually abuse women. If we don’t have a problem with repeatedly extolling the vir-tues of abusive men, then why not their vices? This “himpathetic” (see above) argument only sounds valid if you value a man’s reputation over a woman’s right to safety and autonomy.

“But even the women themselves don’t claim it was abuse.”

Experts who study the subject say that one challenge of talking about clergy sex abuse is that the survivor is often unable to identify what happened as abuse. Because she is an adult at the time of the abuse, she may think she is at least partially at fault and may believe the abuse was consensual if she is unable to see the role of power and transference within the relationship. It can take years for survivors to be able to identify what happened to them as abuse and realize it was not their fault—some never do.

Our culture encourages women to bear much of the burden of responsibility for their own abuse—several of the comments I address in this letter illustrate this point. This is a feature—not a bug—of patriarchy. It keeps women in abusive marriages despite the risk to their own lives. It prevents women from reporting rape to the police. And it conveniently allows American Zen communities to claim that clear instances of clergy sex abuse are actually “complicated situations” involving two consenting adults.

No matter how survivors choose to frame their stories, trauma experts, the law, and basic ethics label Katagiri’s (and Maezumi’s and Baker’s, etc.) actions as clergy sex abuse. The women’s stories are theirs to tell, and I do not question their interpretations of their complex lived experiences. We can grant women power over their own narratives while simultaneously constructing an overall narrative of the history of clergy sex abuse in American Zen.

“Aren’t we all complicated humans who do both good and harm?”

Yes. However, we do not all abuse our power to sexually exploit and traumatize women. And we do not all commit devastating acts of abuse without consequence. We do not all expect to be honored and canonized as wise and skillful Zen masters despite having a known history of committing deeply unethical, abusive, criminal acts.

If we as a community do not believe that sexually abusing women is an offense serious enough to remove current perpetrators from positions of authority or past perpetrators from positions of honor, it begs a serious discussion of why we place so little value on women’s safety and well-being. Is American Zen truly willing to continue to claim blindness to its blatantly sexist, dehumanizing-to-women approach to clergy sex abuse?

“Japanese priests didn’t understand American cultural norms.”

Actually, they understood perfectly—patriarchy and misogyny are American cultural norms. Research shows that in our country simply being female carries with it an increased risk for interpersonal violence, sexual as-sault, PTSD, depression, anxiety, and stress-related diseases. This is not due to an inherent inferiority or weakness within women. It is a disease of male entitlement and the American societal structures—which also exist within American Zen communities—that enable and protect abusers.

To frame acts of abuse perpetrated by Japanese priests as a cultural misunderstanding is misguided and does not explain the storied histories of sexual exploitation that many American-born Zen teachers currently have within their own communities. It is also racist to imply that sexual abuse is more acceptable or prevalent in Japanese culture than in American culture.

The multicultural United Nations defines violence against women as a human rights violation and urges us to “not invoke any custom, tradition or religious consideration to avoid (our) obligations with respect to its elimination.” Cultural conditioning, regardless of one’s culture of origin, is not an excuse for violence against women.

“Can’t we allow our teachers to be imperfect?”

A vast chasm lies between being imperfect and being a serial sexual abuser of women. One would have to be completely insensitive to the trauma that clergy sex abuse can cause, or not able to see women in their full humanity, to not discern the difference.

I am not advocating for abusers to face a firing squad or encouraging a so-called “witch hunt.” I am making the very reasonable request that we not minimize the harm that known abusers have caused or insist on presenting men who commit clergy sex abuse as examples of wisdom and ethical conduct. Being canonized in the lineage is a privilege they lost when they chose to sexually abuse women.

“The specific acts of abuse you refer to happened decades ago; things were different then.”

Were they? The current president of the United States has been found liable in civil court for sexual assault and has been credibly accused of raping adolescent girls as well as sexually abusing and harassing dozens of other girls and women.

An accused rapist sits on the Supreme Court. The woman he raped still receives death threats.

A significant number of very public, very powerful men are known to have participated in an international sex-trafficking ring that specialized in procuring young girls to be raped at parties thrown for that explicit purpose. None of the well-connected rapists known to have participated have faced consequences. Survivors who have bravely come forward to tell their stories are widely discredited and even mocked.

Conservatively, one-quarter of American females will experience sexual abuse or assault in their lifetime. The vast majority of those incidents will never be reported to police and fewer than 4 percent of rapists will ever face trial. Approximately 94 percent of sexual abuse perpetrators are male.

Nothing has changed since the 1970s. The American Zen community can either condone the continued sexual abuse of women or actively work to end it. Complacence is complicity.

“Let’s work toward forgiveness rather than blame.”

Women who advocate for forgiveness of abusers are often held up as being open-hearted and wise while women who advocate for holding abusers accountable are seen as being vindictive and morally undeveloped. The reason for this is simple: Patriarchal organizations benefit when we skip past meting out consequences to abusers and move directly to forgiving their many harms.

I believe that it is kind and open-hearted to advocate for victims of abuse. It is fair to expect abusers to face consequences. It is a form of complicity to coerce forgiveness.

Trauma experts understand that expecting a victim to bypass her anger is cruel and can compound the harms already done. Unconditional forgiveness is a fantasy much like the revenge fantasies that victims have about their abusers. Neither scenario is available to regular people.

The conditions that make forgiveness possible very rarely materialize. First, the perpetrator must fully acknowledge his crime and the effect it had on his victim. He must offer sincere repentance. He must receive a fair and just consequence. Only then can his victim be given the opportunity (never required) to offer whatever form of forgiveness she feels would be an aid to her healing.

It is important to understand that those of us who were not directly harmed by the perpetrators of clergy sex abuse are in no position to be offering forgiveness or absolution. We can only support victims and work diligently to prevent future abuses.

“It seems unfair to lump a respected and beloved teacher like Dainin Katagiri in with real bad guys like Eido Shimano.”

I would like to suggest that American Zen communities form a committee to answer some pressing questions: Exactly how many acts of sexual violence and abuse against women make a Zen priest a “real bad guy”? Is coercing one woman into sex ten times less bad than coercing ten women into sex one time each? Does it mitigate the harm done to the woman if her abuser was “brilliant,” or if he wrote a book about ethics, or if he had a dif-ficult childhood, or if he ordained women? How bad exactly (on a scale of 1 to 10) must a man be before a woman’s life is worth as much as his?

I look forward to the committee’s ruling on how excruciatingly low the bar is for being considered not a “real bad guy” in American Zen.

“Is it a crime for a man and woman to fall in love?”

In short, yes—if that man is a member of the clergy and the woman is receiving his counsel. Of course, not only is legal intervention in cases of clergy sex abuse exceedingly rare, but these harmful relationships are often romanticized by people who either innocently misunderstand clergy sex abuse or cynically stand to gain from the reframing.

Though “falling in love” is a deeply complex process that is unique to every couple, some universal conditions exist. The individuals must spend a significant amount of time together. There must be a mutual sharing of intimate details about both individuals’ inner lives and emotional landscapes. There should be an equality of power and autonomy and deep trust. Both people must make themselves vulnerable and care must be given and received equally. Close physical proximity, sensual touch, and deep eye gazing bring the emotional connection into the physical realm.

When the emotional connection deepens significantly and both individuals find the physical aspects pleasurable, a romantic attachment has been formed, and they may agree that they are “in love.”

For a Zen priest to fall in love with his student, countless sacred boundaries must first be breached, and multiple catastrophic failures of care must occur. Contrary to what pop songs would have us believe, true love doesn’t take us by surprise—it is cultivated and nurtured over a long series of intentional interactions.

In every one of these moments—the first awareness of wanting to spend more time alone with a student, the first time a gaze is held a little too long, the first daydream of kissing—the priest has a choice. He may, with a full understanding of power dynamics and interpersonal ethics, choose to act in the best interest of his student and either actively steer the relationship back onto correct course or remove himself from it entirely.

Or he may choose to act selfishly and unethically, over the course many in-teractions, to pursue his own pleasure at the risk of great harm to his student.

“You clearly have a biased agenda because you exclusively focus on male perpetrators. People who are not cis-male can also cause harm.”

Cis-females and other genders are indeed capable of causing many forms of harm and must be held accountable when they do. However, women, non-binary folks, and trans people rarely need to be held accountable for sexual abuse in their relationships with cis-males because instances of such abuse are vanishingly rare. In fact, in our country, males perpetrate 93-99 percent of adult sexual assaults (statistics vary slightly by source).

The sexual abuse of men by women in American Zen is not a documented problem (although men sexually abusing other men has been documented). This is in part because American Zen is a deeply patriarchal culture that has shown a willingness to actively promote the masculine point of view, support male entitlement, and protect and defend male abusers.

I stand just as firmly against violence directed at men as I do violence directed at women and other vulnerable genders. However, this letter is about the pervasive disease of male-perpetrated abuse that affects American Zen communities. Accusations of bias are merely attempts to distract from this necessary conversation.

“We all have our mud. Your lotus will be magnificent.”

I am grateful for this response to an email in which I described Katagiri’s acts of sexual abuse because it allows me to address Zen practitioners’ par-ticular style of spiritual bypassing.

In my tradition, Soto Zen, students are raised on a diet of Dogen’s paradoxical language. We enjoy metaphor as a tool that sparks sudden moments of awakening. We mimic the aphorisms we see in ancient texts to convey our own sense of profundity.

Let me be very clear—the women whom Katagiri (and Maezumi, and Shim-ano, and Baker, and others) abused are not metaphors. They are human beings. Their pain and trauma do not exist as a teaching story for the rest of us. The very real harm done to one person is not mud for another to plant their own lotus seed in. I will not wax poetic about another woman’s suffering, and I will not allow others to do so.

Not all mud is created equal. Fidgeting during zazen or lacking patience with one’s coworkers is not equal to sexually abusing a woman. To even hint at this is morally offensive and dehumanizing to the victims of Zen abusers.

Clergy sex abuse is a form of sexual and emotional violence perpetrated upon living, breathing women—and it is a crime. The American Zen community must understand this and begin to respond to it accordingly.

The Compounding Harm of Institutional Betrayal

Institutional betrayal is a term coined by psychologist Jennifer Freyd to describe institutional policies and responses to reports of abuse that can often be more harmful to the individual than the abuse itself. Because of the lack of understanding of clergy sex abuse and the patriarchal nature of the Zen tradition, survivors of are likely to suffer this form of betrayal.

Research shows that the most harmful action an organization can take is to prioritize the reputation of the organization over the well-being of the survivor. This can come in the form of blaming the survivor for their abuse, covering up or minimizing the abuse, or allowing the perpetrator to remain in a leadership role.

Although American Zen lineages may feel that they are protecting their reputations by refusing to identify and adequately respond to cases of clergy sex abuse, they are actually compounding the trauma of victims. This will likely result in a decrease of support and participation, especially among women and people of vulnerable genders.

The Legacy of Our Lineages

I have more to say about the tainted legacy of American Zen and our deeply unethical, misogynistic practice of enabling, protecting, and canonizing men who abuse women. However, I’ve had this conversation enough to know that even thousands of words of research-informed expert testimony com-bined with a sincere plea for justice can fail to inspire empathy for women who were abused by powerful men.

Sociologist Carol Gilligan describes how, in America, our patriarchal indoctrination begins early. Boys are taught that being empathic and relational is unmanly. Girls are taught that following their inner knowing of what is right and wrong can make them unsafe. This creates a culture in which men feel entitled to women’s care as well as their bodies, and women feel powerless to push back against this narrative.

When these men and women join Zen communities they are taught that a necessary ritual of personal development is to revere a list of nearly 90 male names. This grooms us to locate wisdom and authority in the masculine, to respond more favorably to teachings when they are transmitted in a male voice, and to experience cognitive dissonance when we learn about the true characters of the men whom we were told embodied Zen wisdom.

One result of this dissonance is that the glowing references to known abusers are still everywhere you look. The Minnesota Zen Center’s website proclaims, “Katagiri Roshi is remembered with appreciation for his deep prac-tice, wise teaching, and warm heart.”

A more in-depth biography on offer begins with nothing short of hagiography: “Katagiri Roshi was a beloved figure during his lifetime. The profound yet human way in which he presented Buddhism touched people’s hearts and inspired many to study, practice, and teach Zen as a lifelong path. He supported equality for women in all aspects of Zen practice….”

Along with more fawning descriptions of his character and a heartrending depiction of his childhood, there is a brief mention of his “affairs” and “inappropriate sexual behavior” with female members of his sangha. The words “abuse,” “coercion,” “lie” and “secrecy” do not appear in the document, and the word “trauma” is used only in reference to Katagiri’s childhood experiences. Katagiri’s reputation as a wise and kind man is firmly centered in this version of the story. The full humanity and suffering of his victims is barely acknowledged and there is not even a hint of suggestion that Katagiri should have faced any consequence more severe than the mild censure on offer.

The reputations of other known abusers also continue to benefit from the failure of the American Zen community to publicly and unequivocally acknowledge the individual and collective trauma caused by clergy sex abuse. In 2018, during the height of the #metoo movement and soon after his death, Tricycle magazine took the cowardly position of referring to Eido Shimano simply as a “problematic pioneer” of Zen. Is it truly a controversial editorial stance to come out strongly against sexual assault?

The landing page of White Plum Asanga’s website refers to Taizan Maezumi as “one of the great pioneers of modern Zen.” Elsewhere on the website, alongside many photos of him smiling warmly, an extensive biography and timeline lists Maezumi’s many “major contributions” to American Buddhism. Not a single word about the women he sexually abused is included in the otherwise comprehensive text. The women he exploited have been summarily and unapologetically erased from Zen history.

The word “brilliant” is used so often to describe these men who abused women it’s as if there is a general belief in American Zen that a man can possess a level of intelligence that entitles him to commit acts of sexual violence against women. Intelligence without a foundation of ethics, kindness, and emotional attunement is not an admirable quality. A few characteristics that most abusers share is that they’re brilliant manipulators, brilliant actors, and brilliant liars.

Until the biographies of Zen abusers are rewritten to center the women they harmed, no real change is possible. Unless we accept that a man cannot be both a sexual predator and a wise and brilliant Zen master, American Zen has no credibility as a philosophy of ethics and is certainly not a safe place for people of vulnerable genders.

There has been some hopeful movement toward repair in individual American Zen sanghas. Many groups chant a lineage of women ancestors along with the patriarchal lineage or chant no lineage at all. Quite a few sanghas are led by transmitted priests of vulnerable genders. However, I know of no widespread actions taken by a majority of American Zen communities to sanction known abusers, remove their names from official lineage documents, describe their crimes in clear and objective language, or significantly repair the damages of the past and prevent harms in the future.

Some sanghas have published statements of ethics and have instituted systems for reporting instances of abuse. This is a positive first step. However, if your statement of ethics appears on the same website as a glowing or equivocating biography of a known abuser, it is rendered meaningless. You cannot claim to support the safety and dignity of all people in one place and then honor the “complicated legacy” of a sexual predator in another.

To further support these statements of ethics, we must also be fully transparent with all new and existing members of our communities about the history of clergy sex abuse in our lineages. We must allow everyone to choose for themselves whether to study the teachings of known abusers (though it’s unclear why we insist on continuing to offer them as an option at all). This is the only way to end the culture of gaslighting and denial. Without these actions, a statement of ethics is a hollow gesture.

Some may say that a difficult choice must be made by all American Zen communities. The choice is not difficult—we either believe that sexually abusing women disqualifies a man from a position of respect and honor or that it doesn’t. We either value women’s humanity as much as men’s reputations, or we don’t. We either believe that all women are entitled to safety and autonomy or we believe that some men are entitled to exploit women for their own pleasure—both cannot be true. If you find yourself responding to any of these choices with ambivalence, you may want to deepen your study of ethics and examine your gendered cultural conditioning.

Instituting an Ethic of Care

Zen is a philosophy of virtue ethics. Our precepts describe a set of characteristics one is expected to embody to be a virtuous, or ethical, person. This a masculine way of conceptualizing ethics born out of our patriarchal lineage. When we build a foundation of love under our ethics and put them into action, they become what feminist philosophers call “care ethics.” Care ethics moves beyond a list of obligations and characteristics and centers the creation of communities built on trust and mutual caretaking.

Care must flow from those with resources to those in need. To create safe communities that thrive, most of our reverence, respect, and protection must be reserved for the people we practice with and for vulnerable individuals. Focusing attention and energy on preserving the reputations of abusers is like building our communities on quicksand.

Most of the individuals I observe attempting to build safe communities on a foundation of love and care are cis-females, non-binary, and trans. This requires an immense amount of emotional labor and puts us at risk for re-traumatization. To require vulnerable people to do the work of advocating for their own safety is an unconscionable failure of empathy. Cis-males must take up this work as their own, just as the onus of advocating for racial justice must be on people who are not members of vulnerable races and ethnicities. Until a significant majority of people who hold the power to create change take up the burden of this labor, no American Zen space can claim to truly value the lives of Zen women more than it values the reputations of Zen men.

Putting Our Vows into Action

One lesson I’ve learned from the conversations of the past several months is that our Zen practice is just as likely to put us to sleep as it is to wake us up. Practitioners rise at dawn to make it to the zendo in time to hit the han, accumulate thousands of hours of zazen, take vows to uphold the precepts, and study the sutras.

It appears that some of us believe that our stiff joints, diligent study, and the hours we spend sitting in silence absolve us of the obligation to ensure that the real, vulnerable human being sitting on the cushion next to us is safe and well cared for.

Based on the conversations I’ve had over the past few months and the lack of urgency to take meaningful action to protect women and censure predators, it is clear to me that some American Zen practitioners carelessly mistake their complacency for the beloved Buddhist emotional catch-all state of being: equanimity. This is spiritual bypassing in its laziest form.

Currently, the American Zen insistence on floating above the real-life traumatic events happening in our communities with a pseudo-spiritual attitude of blithe detachment, twisted statements of ethical relativity, and vague gestures toward emptiness is its own form of violence. I encourage all readers of this letter to not erroneously and self-servingly equate your utter indifference to women’s suffering with some sort of nonjudgmental wisdom.

There is simply no point to Zen study and practice if it does not awaken in us a sense of responsibility to care for others, keep them safe, and diligently uphold our ethical vows. All American Zen communities have an easy choice before them. They can continue to whitewash the reputations of men who sexually abused and dehumanized women; lied to their communities; ignored their vows; and left a legacy of secrecy, violence, and trauma in their wake. Or they can commit to an ethic of care directed toward the vulnerable humans who practice beside them every day.

References and Resources

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