The first week of meditation came and went. Each morning I logged in to the zoom call at 07:30 with a hot cup of tea, to meditate with 200 other people, learning the mindfulness of breathing practice. The London Buddhist Centre teaches the practice in four stages, each stage focusing on the breath in a different way. The teacher was a sweet English lady who went by a Sanskrit name, but I couldn’t get past this fact, and the fact that many of the people I’d encountered at the centre had these names. It felt kind of problematic (like saying namaste after a yoga class, Jane becoming Padmanandi, Bob is now Akashamitra…) and a little ego driven (building a new personality around spirituality)…
Ten minutes before the end of each session, the teacher would go on a long spiel about donation, explaining that, while the course was being offered to us for free, a donation was suggested… in fact the suggested amount was £100. Money is an energy, she explained, and by donating we can keep alive the spirit of our meditation. (Or something like that).
On Wednesday evening O & I decided to experience the buddhist centre in person. We made our way to the red-brick building in Bethnal Green for a two hour meditation class. Once there we were split up from the ‘regulars’ and marched shoe-less across the courtyard, into the basement shrine. Another English lady with a Sanskrit name, her northern accent making it seem all the more absurd. She taught us the mindfulness of breathing meditation (as if we hadn’t just spent three mornings learning it). During the tea break between meditation sessions a couple of books lining the the reception hall caught my attention: Sangharakshita, A New Voice in the Buddhist Tradition; The Three Jewels; Going for Refuge. The former had a man on the cover – bespeckled, looking down past his folded hand with an austere gaze, draped in a red robe. There was something unsettling about him. What it was wasn’t immediately obvious. I brushed it off and went back down for the second part of our meditation. And afterwards, walking to my bus stop, I felt as though I was floating on a cloud, a feeling of joy flickering like a birthday candle deep in my chest.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. That guy’s creepy face, the wishy washy speech, again about how we need to donate, during the tea break… Curious about the centre, I started googling… When was the centre set up? Where did it come from? Who is that guy? Then a headline caught my attention: Buddhist, teacher, predator: dark secrets of the Triratna guru. I clicked, and there he was…
“For decades the order has been dogged by claims of sexual misconduct, claims that often strayed into allegations of coercion and abuse but which were thought to involve only a handful of individuals at worst.
Bye, bye, simple feelings of joy and peace.
But now a bombshell internal report, produced by concerned members and shared with the Observer, has found that more than one in 10 of them claim to have experienced or observed sexual misconduct while in the order. Many of the allegations are against Sangharakshita himself, but others make it clear that he was not the only alleged perpetrator.”
I guess the rest of the week was tricky, trying to navigate the positivity that comes from the meditation and the abuse allegations made against the Centre. But maybe the practice is the important bit, maybe I can separate all that stuff from what I’m learning. And I should do more research – what has the Buddhist centre done in the wake of these allegations?
But should I separate those things? It seems like they’re not taking accountability, books hailing a known abuser as a ‘great spiritual voice’ for sale in the bookshop. I guess I feel let down, experiencing the benefits of meditating in a community, to then find it rotten from the inside. Do I carry on? The centre had been populated by middle-class middle-aged ladies, not necessarily a threatening aura, somehow making it feel all the creepier.
Week 2 of the meditation challenge is dedicated to learning Metta Bahvana (loving kindness), a practice I’ve struggled with in the past. Do I carry on? Do I continue practicing on my own, with Waking Up? Or do I find a new community, a new teacher? I’ve been looking at a couple of Zen centres, curious about Zazen ever since reading Shukman’s book… TBC.
