An Open Letter to the American Soto Zen Community
About Clergy Sex Abuse in Our Sanghas
Warm greetings to all American Soto Zen practitioners and sanghas,
I am sharing this document with the hope that it will inspire conversations within American Soto Zen about how we can address past and present cases of clergy sex abuse in our communities and put our understanding of wisdom and ethics into practice to create safe and inclusive spaces that protect and prioritize vulnerable individuals while providing an environment that supports true awakening for all.
First, let me introduce myself. My name is Sheryl (Myoshin). I have been a student of Buddhist philosophy and practice for over 25 years and a member of a Soto Zen sangha for over 15 years. I have received jukai, participated in group study and zazen practice with my sangha, and enjoyed years of one-on-one instruction with my teachers.
Along with having a mature understanding of Zen philosophy, practice, and ethics, I am also a licensed psychotherapist who specializes in treating the trauma that is often the result of gender-based violence and abuse. I work exclusively with women to heal the myriad harms done to them by a culture and that does not value their safety or well-being, including domestic violence, sexual assault, everyday harassment, and clergy sex abuse. I don’t claim to be an expert on many subjects, but I am an expert on this.
Over our many years of friendship and study, my teacher expressed to me countless times his belief that American Soto Zen needs more women in positions to advocate for positive change in our tradition. Inspired by his encouragement, I have created this document.
This document may read a bit like a research paper. When I talk or write about women’s experiences of violence and abuse I find that it is necessary to refer to peer-reviewed research in order to be taken seriously. Women’s own descriptions of their lived experience are too often dismissed as subjective, exaggerated, vindictive, unique to the woman herself, or overly emotional.
My thoughts on the subject are based on years of study, research, and writing about ethics, gender-based violence, and the real, measurable harms of patriarchy and clergy sex abuse. The conversations I hope to inspire need not be about whether abuses happened (they did) or whether real harm occurred (it did) but about how our sanghas can begin to honestly address this harm and work to build safer, more ethical and inclusive communities.
If you find yourself feeling resistance to words such as “violence,” “patriarchy,” “trauma,” or “clergy sex abuse,” I urge you to continue reading anyway. The language I use may sound severe to you because we are used to speaking about these subjects using euphemisms and obfuscations. If American Soto Zen is to maintain its credibility as a philosophy of virtue ethics and a path to spiritual development for all beings, we must not flinch when looking at the abuses that have occurred, and continue to occur, in our communities. This is a difficult but necessary conversation and while I do not cast blame or point fingers at anyone other than known abusers, I believe we should all be held accountable for what happens next in American Soto Zen.
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A few months ago I made the difficult decision to take a break from attending meetings of the sangha I have been a member of for over 15 years. This was the result of discovering that my teacher’s teacher, Dainin Katatgiri, had sexually abused at least two of his female students, had sexually propositioned or harassed many others, had lied to his sangha, and had coerced his victims to lie as well to protect his marriage, reputation, and position of authority. This behavior continued for years. His freely chosen and oft-repeated actions created a toxic culture of deceit, denial, and secrecy that has lasted for decades in his linage. When I came to understand that these facts were fairly well-known but rarely discussed in the American Soto Zen community, I was both alarmed and confused.
I was alarmed because, as a psychotherapist who specializes in working with female victims of gender-based violence and abuse, I understand the real, lasting damage such abuse—and the secrecy that often surrounds it—can do to individuals, families, and communities even long after the abuse itself has occurred.
I was confused because my own teachers and mentors—people who knew me to be a feminist and an advocate for women’s safety and well-being—had knowingly kept this critical information from me. I had not been allowed to decide for myself whether I wanted to chant the name of a known abuser of women in reverence. I was never asked for my consent to study and extoll the so-called wisdom 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. Worst of all, he was sold to me as an advocate for women.
I expect that many other Zen practitioners are chanting the names of, studying the teachings of, and hearing delightful stories about men who chose to harm the women over whom they held great spiritual authority. Every person 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 unconscionably paternalistic to refuse to let this happen.
When I brought the subject up for discussion in my sangha, my friends struggled to balance what they were taught must be an unquestioning devotion to our patriarchal lineage with the newfound knowledge that a lineage holder had committed serious acts of abuse. In the days soon after learning about Katagiri’s actions, when I was struggling emotionally myself, I failed to help my community understand what was at stake for the future of our own little sangha as well as the American Soto Zen tradition. I’m hoping this document will serve as a corrective to this failure and as a guide forward for us all.
A Note on Anger
As a result of my psychotherapy training, I understand emotional regulation and how it can be a necessary skill when dealing with and communicating about difficult situations. However, I also know that it is often used as a weapon to silence victims and vulnerable people when they attempt to hold powerful individuals accountable for abuse. Female victims of abuse and their advocates who seek justice are often dismissed or discredited for being too angry, vindictive, or even “crazy” or “unhinged.”
This muting and shaming of women’s anger serves to muzzle those who seek justice and reparations, and it contributes to a culture in which abuse is more likely to occur. It is a built-in feature of patriarchal cultures and organizations that serves to protect abusers and prevent the transfer of power to vulnerable genders.
Anger (along with sadness, confusion, and heartbreak) is an appropriate response to discovering that one’s spiritual home—an organization that claims to promote virtuous activity, ethical behavior, spiritual development, and safe communities—also harbors and defends criminals and abusers. This is not compatible with valuing the safety and humanity of women and other vulnerable genders.
When women survivors and their advocates speak from a place of grief or sadness, they are usually received with compassion. But when they speak with anger or defiance they are often met with exasperation, judgment, or, worst of all, silence. Patriarchal cultures prefer survivors of abuse to appear weak, quiet, and sad—not powerful, aggrieved, and defiant. We are encouraged to squelch our righteous indignation, ignore our desire for justice and reparations, and move quickly toward a place of forgiveness so that no actual change is required of those in power.
I am angry because my spiritual practice was taken from me and my trust in my teachers was misused. I am sad because I miss my spiritual family and our little zendo on the lake. I am furious at the entire American Soto Zen community and its willful refusal to mete out any reasonable consequences to abusers or acceptable form of justice for survivors. To deny or repress any of these feelings would not be a show of the emotional equanimity that Buddhists so often misunderstand and promote as an ideal—it would be a dishonest act of self-silencing.
Understanding Clergy Sex Abuse
Clergy sex abuse is a subject that is widely misunderstood. In fact, it is often purposefully misrepresented in order to protect the reputations of powerful men and the organizations they are part of. Although I refer to Katagiri’s abuses as an example in this text, he is not the only perpetrator in the Soto Zen tradition. There are other well-known abusers who have been canonized (e.g., Taizan Maezumi) or may soon be canonized (e.g., Richard Baker) in our lineages. Because of this, their harms do not simply live in the past. We continue to chant their names in reverence at our services. We are told to read their books and listen to their recorded talks as reliable sources of wisdom on subjects such as ethics and healthy relationships. We see their biographies everywhere—on sangha websites, in books and magazines, listed as “beloved teacher.” Almost always these biographies are uncritically glowing or, at best, describe the abuser as a “complicated” man. A culture of gaslighting, denial, and secrecy prevails at the expense of truth, accountability, and safety for vulnerable people. This enables clergy sex abuse to continue in the present and leaves women vulnerable.
The subject of clergy sex abuse is not as complicated as apologists make it out to be. In Minnesota, for example, 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 spiritual counseling—even with the victim’s consent—since the 1980s (it is currently a felony). 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 reports telling Katagiri that his actions could be illegal; knowing this, he chose to continue having coerced sexual relationships with his students.
Clergy sex abuse is currently a crime in all 50 states. Legality, however, is not the focus of this text. Because Soto Zen is a philosophy and practice that claims to have a serious commitment to interpersonal ethics and radical interdependence, as well as an organization that strives to provide spaces in which all beings can spiritually flourish, we must turn inward as a community to assess whether our past and current responses to sexual abuse in our sanghas have met our own basic standards of ethics and wisdom.
Over the course of months of discussions with many individuals in Soto 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 the situation in a way that fairly distributes consequences to perpetrators and justice to survivors. It may be clarifying if I directly address some of the statements and assertions 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 spiritual community) and the victim is a member of a devalued population (e.g., a woman in a patriarchal culture), 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 Zen masters are awakened beings whose actions lie beyond reproach or censure. This makes the victim vulnerable to being discredited. In the case of clergy sex abuse in American Soto Zen, when women speak the facts of their own lives out loud it endangers an entire shared (and firmly enforced) sense of reality, system of meaning-making, and hierarchical structure.
In the past, women who spoke out about abuse were diagnosed as hysterics and often institutionalized. Today, we casually call them crazy. There is little difference in the nature and result of these methods of discrediting women and both are profoundly misogynistic. When we as a community ignore or discredit women who speak about their own experiences of abuse, or 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?”
The sexual abuse of adults by clergy is a type of abuse that is under-researched, under-reported, and rarely discussed. This makes is difficult to prevent clergy sex abuse of adults and to skillfully address instances of abuse when they are reported. An aspect of such abuse that mental-health experts 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.
In American Soto Zen the power relationship is critical to note because it is based on a relationship of spiritual trust and authority. In the case of a male transmitted Zen priest such as Katagiri, his female students believed that their spiritual development, their ordination or transmission, and possibly their very enlightenment rested entirely in his hands. His role as a trusted confidential advisor in dokusan created an environment in which the students were made even more vulnerable when they shared very personal spiritual or emotional information with him. His immense power in these relationships should have only been used to support his students’ spiritual growth and personal autonomy, never to exploit them for sexual favors or emotional caregiving.
These one-on-one meetings are often where grooming begins in a student/priest relationship. The sense of intimacy between the two can be manipulated to make the victim feel special. Her teacher may tell her that he admires her dedication to practice or her spiritual insights. He may begin to isolate her from the rest of the sangha by telling her that she is more advanced in her practice than they. He may then recommend additional one-on-one meetings and begin to reveal personal details of his own life to make the victim feel that she is his trusted confidant.
Calling it an affair rather than sexual abuse denies the painful complexity of the situation and turns it into a simple failure of judgment shared equally by two people. The truth in Katagiri’s case is that a man with power leveraged the trust granted to him by his position of honored priest and teacher to gain sexual access to less powerful women in his care. Acts of clergy sex abuse are a result of power imbalance, manipulation, and coercion—they are not “affairs” or “inappropriate relationships.” 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.
“Was there any actual harm done to the women?”
Clergy sex abuse can have lasting, devastating effects on the survivor. Women who report having been coerced into sex by clergy are at risk for developing mood disorders, substance abuse issues, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress symptoms. Because they are often disbelieved, dismissed, or blamed for their abuse, survivors have also described feeling unbearable guilt, shame, low self-esteem, and worthlessness.
Another result of clergy sex abuse is that the victim often leaves her spiritual community or abandons her spiritual practice altogether. Losing her spiritual practice and community can be devastating for a survivor—she is without both her trusted teacher and the community she would have otherwise relied upon for support during a very difficult time. Victims often lose their trust in all spiritual guidance and mental-health service providers and so may not seek therapy to help them process their feelings of depression, guilt, grief, and shame. This leaves them more vulnerable to self-harm and suicide.
Research studies have shown that clergy sex abuse exposes both individuals and communities to a significant risk of trauma and harm. The relationship of the Zen priest to his or her sangha is like almost no other. Sangha members agree to trust their teacher with the development of their spiritual life. They make themselves emotionally vulnerable in teaching sessions as well as during practice retreats that leave them exhausted and lower their emotional defenses. In all these environments the teacher must be trusted to re-frain from exploiting their position of power and to not only respect, but also actively facilitate, the students’ safety and autonomy.
“He ordained women so he must have respected them.”
Abusers often perform an imitation of feminism to gain access to women, 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, humor, and habit of telling silly stories as if being charismatic and likable made him less, rather than more, likely to get away with unethical behavior. Every abuser has been described as a “nice guy” by someone.
This behavior is not necessarily always conscious and calculated. The trajectory of becoming an abuser can be gradual as a man sees certain behaviors rewarded with female attention and affection, enjoys that feeling, and then ignores 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, and yet most women know to be wary of a man who claims to “love women.”
“We should have compassion for him; he had a traumatic childhood.”
In my work as a psychotherapist who specializes in treating female 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. Not one of these women grew up to abuse or exploit other human beings as part of their healing process. 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, smart, and charming. We desperately want sexual predators to be creepy monsters who hide in dark alleys. The fact is the vast majority of men who abuse women are their fathers, friends, coaches, and priests.
The women Katagiri abused were human beings. They were not medicine for his childhood wounds. They were not simply warm bodies that existed to be coerced into sexual activity to help him forget his troubles or boost his ego or cure his loneliness. Katagiri’s victims had full lives and aspirations to spiritual awakening and should have been able to assume that they were safe in their spiritual community and with their teacher. Instead, they were used and dehumanized by the very man whom they entrusted to support and care for them.
“He was a lonely man in an unhappy marriage.”
I speak to lonely women in unhappy marriages every day; none of them believe that committing acts of sexual abuse, exploiting a vulnerable person, or betraying the trust of someone over whom they have power is the path to happiness and fulfillment. And again, they take responsibility for doing their own emotional growth and healing work and view it as a sort of sacred imperative to become more attuned to their own emotions and to the emotions of others in relationship.
One would think that this same attitude of mutual care and emotional maturity would be a requirement for becoming an esteemed Zen master and transmitted priest. One might hope that an individual given the privilege of power and position that comes with leading a community of spiritual seekers would have to prove this sort of emotional intelligence to be considered a safe and healthy teacher. One would assume that, at the very least, a man would be removed from his position of power, banned from one-on-one contact with students, and lose his place of honor in the lineage after proving himself to be an unrepentant serial abuser of women.
None of these reasonable moral ethical assumptions are true in American Soto Zen. The women in our communities will continue to suffer for our tradition’s lack of commitment to a basic ethic of care. The reputation and credibility of American Soto Zen as a spiritual tradition will suffer as well.
“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 expect to commit devastating acts of abuse without consequence. And 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.
At this point you may be becoming fatigued by the repetitive nature of this document; I know I am fatigued by writing it. However, I am even more fatigued by the repetitive cycle of abuse that happens, and continues to happen, in American Soto Zen. I hope you are as well.
“Katagiri didn’t understand American cultural norms.”
Patriarchy and misogyny are American cultural norms. In our country, simply being a woman carries with it an increased risk for interpersonal vio-lence, sexual assault, 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 very American societal structures (which also exist within American Soto Zen) that enable and protect abusers. To frame Katagiri’s acts of abuse as a cultural misunderstanding is terribly mis-guided and of course does not explain the storied histories of sexual exploitation that some American Zen teachers have within their own communities.
“Can’t we allow our teachers to be imperfect?”
A vast chasm lies between being imperfect and being an abuser. One would have to be either disingenuous or completely insensitive to the emotional damage that clergy sex abuse does to women to claim not to be able to 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.
“We all have our mud. Your lotus will be magnificent.”
I am grateful for this response to an email I wrote in which I described Katagiri’s acts of sexual abuse because it allows me to address Soto Zen’s particular style of spiritual bypassing.
Soto Zen practitioners are raised on a diet of Dogen’s indirect and often paradoxical style of writing. We learn to enjoy metaphor as a tool that can spark sudden moments of awakening. Zen students delight in wordplay and often mimic the aphorisms we see in ancient texts in an attempt to convey our own sense of profundity.
Let me be very, very clear—the women whom Katagiri (and Maezumi, 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 suffering of one human being is not mud for another to plant their own lotus seed in.
I cannot state strongly enough that not all mud is created equal. Experiencing difficulty sitting still in zazen or lacking patience with one’s children is not equal to sexually exploiting a vulnerable individual. To even hint that this might be true is morally offensive and dehumanizing to the victims of Katagiri and other abusers.
Clergy sex abuse is not a poem, or a koan, or a teaching story to enable our own awakening. It is a form of sexual and emotional violence perpetrated upon living, breathing women and it is a crime. The American Soto Zen community must understand this and begin to respond to it accordingly.
The Legacy of Our Lineage
I have much more to say about the tainted legacy of American Soto Zen, the unquestioning devotion to our male lineage that some (not all) insist upon, and our deeply unethical practices of enabling, protecting, and canonizing men who abuse women. However, I’ve had this conversation enough times to know that even thousands of words of research-informed expert testimony combined with a sincere emotional plea for justice can fail to inspire empathy for women who were abused by powerful men—even in individuals who believe themselves to be devoted students of ethical precepts and practices.
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 is 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.
These American men and women join spiritual communities in which they are taught that one of the necessary rituals of awakening is to revere a list of nearly 90 all-male names. This grooms us to locate wisdom and authority in the masculine and to respond more favorably to teachings when they are transmitted in a male voice.
Each of the men in the Soto Zen lineage, over the course of 2500 years of exclusively male-to-male transmission, explicitly agreed to be included on a list from which women were excluded. Each generation knowingly and deliberately erased the wisdom, labor, care work—the very existence—of the women in their communities. Some of the men on this list, we’ll never know exactly how many, abused and exploited women.
I acknowledge that there has been some movement toward reparations and equity in American Soto Zen. Many sanghas now also chant a lineage of women ancestors or chant no lineage at all. Many include a short eko after the male lineage that acknowledges Zen’s history of erasing women’s names and contributions. Quite a few sanghas are led by transmitted priests of vulnerable genders. However, I know of no official actions taken by American Soto Zen to sanction known abusers, to remove their names from official lineage documents, or to significantly repair the damages of the past or prevent abuse in the future.
The glowing biographies of and references to known abusers remain. The Minnesota Zen Center’s website proclaims, “Katagiri Roshi is remembered with appreciation for his deep practice, wise teaching, and warm heart.” Ryumonji Zen Monastery lists Katagiri as an “honorary founder” with no reference to his criminal acts. The very rare mentions of Katagiri’s history of committing clergy sex abuse are referred to as “affairs” or “relationships” and are always preceded by fawning descriptions of his charming personality, protestations of his unwavering support of women, and heart-rending depictions of his difficult childhood. None of this erases or mitigates the harm he caused.
Many sanghas now publish statements of ethics on their websites and have instituted systems for reporting instances of abuse. This is a positive first step toward creating safe spaces for all. However, if a sangha does not explicitly inform all new and existing students about its lineage’s history of clergy sex abuse and does not allow students to choose for themselves whether to study the teachings of a known abuser or chant his name in reverence, then it is perpetuating a culture of gaslighting and abuse. In cases such as this a statement of ethics on the website is a hollow gesture.
The future legitimacy of American Soto Zen lies in taking meaningful actions to protect women, issue real consequences to the men who abuse them, and show authentic concern for the well-being of all vulnerable individuals. Until a significant majority of people who hold the power to create change—cis-male Zen priests and practitioners in particular—take up the burden of that labor, no American Soto Zen space can claim to truly value the lives of Zen women more than the reputations of Zen men.
Care as an interpersonal resource should flow from the powerful to the vulnerable. The majority of our reverence, respect, and protection must be reserved for vulnerable living beings.
The complexity of this subject cannot be fully explored in a short document—each of the sections in this text can be supported by additional research, first-person testimony from women survivors of clergy sex abuse, and direct references to Soto Zen ethical teachings. I may expand this text into a book; until then, I offer a few additional points for readers to consider:
Compassionate people now recognize more than two genders and no gender is a monolith. Individuals may more closely identify with their race, social class, country of origin, political party, or any other identifying feature depending on the situation. I often refer to “women and men” or “females and males” in the text because that is the way patriarchal cultures, including Soto Zen, have historically based their distribution of power, privilege, and resources. I want to make it clear that all non-cis-male genders are vulnerable under patriarchy and in Soto Zen sanghas; I refer to “vulnerable genders” to reinforce this idea.
Most of the voices advocating for safety and inclusion for all genders in Soto Zen sanghas belong to women, non-binary, and trans individuals. 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 in their spiritual communities 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.
Moral philosophy, spirituality, and human psychology are not hard sciences. Nothing about them can be proven beyond a doubt and so I can only offer arguments for and against harmful traditions and practices that are based on research and my own professional expertise. The inherent subjectivity of these ideas is what makes them such richly creative and hope-inspiring material to work with. Let’s not be afraid to imagine how we might create safe and inclusive spiritual communities for all.
Women who speak uncomfortable truths and start hard conversations are often characterized as being enemies of the institutions they are trying to change. Women are in fact the best friends Soto Zen has ever had. We have labored for centuries without recognition. We have silently endured abuse and the erasure of our humanity to preserve the honored lineage. We are now ending our silence to alert people in power about a serious threat to the legitimacy of our tradi-tion so they can take steps to correct it. Whistleblowing should inspire gratitude and must be treated as a necessary call to action.
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 discussion of why we place so little value on women’s lives and well-being.
Clergy sex abuse is not something that happened in the past. It is, without a doubt, still happening in our communities. What we do now may prevent harm to current and future vulnerable members of American Soto Zen communities.
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