Looking for Faith, a Contrary position

I carefully read Ross Douthat’s New York Times article “Looking for Faith? Here’s a Guide to Choosing a Religion” several times. Though he is sympathetic, Douthat claims he’s not a card-carrying member of Opus Dei, but it seems certain that he is close to the right-wing Catholic apparatchiks who have seized control of the American Judiciary. Looking at his theological position in the article, I find little evidence to shake my conviction that he is an Aristotelian rather than a Christian as I understand the word.

I will frame my argument against him with the same non-denominational slant he espouses. He begins with an evocative description of a second-hand bookstore where long treatises by Dun Scotus were piled on top of Wiccan texts. There was a vegetarian restaurant attached. I lived in Berkeley at about the same time as Douthat was growing up there. I knew those bookstores well. He might have been describing Moe’s or Cody’s; I’ve been trying to remember the vegetarian restaurant. They were like our Dunhuang Caves, and I sympathize with his motivation. I’d just left the Jesuits with certain knowledge that the church to which I’d dedicated myself had no lock on the truth, but “[b]ut it’s harder, in a pluralist society, to pick just one religious option as more likely than all the others to be true.”

I will follow his line of argument. He proposes that all men and women, if they look deeply enough, have a basic need for some experience of transcendence and, thus, the need to rationally choose one of the basic religious formulations floating around in our universe. People are somehow less human if they neglect this basic need. And, not accidentally, he can help.

This is a lousy predicate floating on a raft of unproven assumptions.

Let me flesh out my argument by reframing it in the context of the current Super Bowl hoopla. We could posit that most humans need to get excited, eat hotdogs and cheese wizz, get caught up in a bit of national excitement, and root for a team. The evidence for this position is right in front of us. We might also extrapolate that this need is universal because sporty expressions ripple out into cricket, rugby, and even table tennis. If I can learn the basic rules of American football, turn on the TV, and watch a game, I might also admire some feats of physical prowess. Even if I do not find it very interesting, and I object to the high level of serious bodily risk involved, it could be argued that I have ticked enough boxes to support the claim that there is a basic human need to be “sportive.”

Almost two decades ago, I met an Australian Zen teacher, Susan Murphy, who is also an accomplished filmmaker, TV producer, and writer. It was an upsetting period of my life. I was struggling with my koan practice, and, not unsurprisingly, this was coupled with huge knots in my emotional life. I sat next to her for the final seven-day meditation retreat before she received her authorization to teach independently, a very powerful connection with her both as a Zen teacher and a human being, enough to travel down under for a few months to see if I wanted to uproot myself and figure out a way to live in Australia and work with her. 

She and her partner, David, lived in a Sydney suburb, a small town called Balmain. I jumped on a ferry near the famous opera house, and 15 minutes later, I was helping prepare dinner in their sprawling, comfortable home. 

David is a minister of the Australian Uniting Church and an academic whose specialty is religious cults. I liked him immediately. He was the pastor in Balmain, and his church was a coffee shop near the town center during the week and a congregational meeting hall on Sunday mornings. The arrangement appealed to my Yankee sense of thrift. I discovered that David’s actions were always close to his intentions. I stayed with them for perhaps a week in a small upstairs room until the flat I’d sublet closer to Oxford Street opened up. 

One evening, in a light-hearted conversation while cooking dinner, David asked, “Do you have a team?” I told him that I was not very interested in sports but that in San Francisco, I had followed the 49ers. He was firm, “You gotta have a team, mate.” If this were a condition for friendship, I did some research that evening and decided that I could back the Sydney Swans Australian football club. I liked their name and their logo. David approved of my choice. He thought that, at some point, we could go to a match together. 

On Sunday morning, I went down into the coffee house to help rearrange the furniture for the religious service. I was to be directed by a young Iranian immigrant who was in charge as much as anyone was in charge. He was extremely handsome. I suspected he was gay. He was clearly a newcomer to Christian worship, and his participation was as serious as it was studious. Over the next three months in Australia, I met at least a dozen other young gay Iranians. One cut my hair. He confirmed that there was a kind of underground railroad for gay men in danger of being executed in Iran. Australian denominations were allowed to sponsor men and women who faced persecution in their homelands. I am unsure of the exact way that gay men found welcoming congregations in Australia, but if they were able to book a flight out of Teheran and had the name and number of a sympathetic pastor when they landed, they would not be returned to the hangman’s noose. This checked one huge essential box of my subjective qualifiers for transcendental experience.

Over the next month, through Susan, David, and a Catholic religious who’d converted to Thai Buddhism and taken the Precepts, Bante Tejadhammo, I discovered a strong network of active Buddhists, all the flavors with lots of cross-cover, robust practices, and a very open and supportive gay sangha. I was asked to give a dharma talk about how Issan founded Maitri for a huge (to my mind) group of Zen practitioners at “The Buddhist Library” in Camperdown. That led to another talk for Bante’s group at the Sangha Lodge in another low-key Sydney suburb. The topic of hospice seemed to generate a lot of interest and enthusiasm, the kind that was looking for a project, and it was an overflow crowd. As I recall, there were well over a hundred people in attendance, including many ethnic Thai, Cambodian, and Vietnamese families, along with many gay men. Something that I’d never experienced in California.

Over the next few weeks, I met with several individuals and small groups who’d developed work proposals for hospice care. One man, an architect, had drawn detailed plans for a residential community in a remote location for individuals who were seeking a conscious death. Others were more community-based care closer to home. All the plans were, to my mind, feasible with the right financial support. Everyone who came to see me was aware of this and looking for that extra push to help them realize their dreams. At this point, I began to realize that I did not have connections to the Australian resources that were required, but on a more fundamental level, I had worked with Issan founding Maitri but did not have his skill in guiding another’s practice when it came to living and dying, totally present and serving others. 

Sydney was also interesting as a thriving international hub of gay culture. I liked Oxford Street and the clubs, though there was a preponderance of very ordinary drag. The shows were not Priscilla, Queen of the Desert--more like Madge Makes Coffee with Complaints. I knew that there had to be a more intellectual and cultured gay life, but that would take time to discover. I developed a brief romantic fling with the lead singer in an ambient techno band that had just released a CD that shot up to number one in the local club scene. I had a few lovely, intimate experiences. Gay life seemed to be filled with rich possibilities. 

Back in San Francisco, my internet sleuthing uncovered an organization called the Sydney Gay Buddhist Sangha. I was on the steering committee of a San Francisco that shared the name. We met weekly on Sunday afternoons at the Hartford Street Zendo. I made contact with the Sydney group. There was a membership list, but it seemed to have faded due to a lack of leadership and a regular place to sit. Here was my chance to see if it were possible to develop a practice group closer to the heart of gay life rather than on the University of Sydney campus. At Hartford Street, the gay community welcomed straight friends. In Sydney, it was the other way around. This was perfectly OK, of course, but I wondered if there was a segment of interested gay people who might feel more included if the meditation hall were closer to the gay ghetto.

David told me that my team, the Sydney Swans, rented rooms to outside groups in their downtown clubhouse, a few steps from Kings Cross and Darlinghurst, Sydney’s Castro district. 

I forget who made the initial contact, but yes, they had a room for rent at a reasonable price and would be delighted to host a Sydney gay meditation group. They also invited us into the club's dining room for a buffet meal afterward for a nominal fee. They would be grateful if they had some idea how many would be eating. I didn’t press for vegetarian options. During the simple negotiations, I tried to imagine the San Francisco Giants opening their downtown headquarters to a gay meditation group. Even though English was a common language, I realized I was light years, or Kalpas, away from my cultural home.

I ran a small announcement in the local gay rag. We began our group there once a week, with about 10 people sitting. It was very egalitarian, without a dharma talk. Instead, I had some basic meditation instruction and time for sharing after two periods. I found one of the participants particularly annoying, so I considered it a win.

Now, I started to realize what David meant. I’d arrived at making some choices about my spiritual life, but not with Douthat’s Neoplatonic model. Instead, I was living my life and letting the traces of my choices leave a clue about its direction. I realized living in Australia would be too expensive, so I had to return to San Francisco.  However, I had learned that I needed a team. It is not an easy path. Although the alternatives seem more straightforward intellectually, they lead to a straight-jacketed position. Thank you, David.

Omnibus Est Stupri Aliquem--”Everybody was fucking somebody.”

This is dangerous territory. I could be vague and write about the people I want to talk about as if they were hypothetical and their stories anecdotal, but the damage was real and needs to be discussed. I use only Initials when I do not have solid evidence and the men or women are still alive. Believe whatever you want. You get to decide if you will remain in a world of denial and protect whatever you feel needs protecting. Guru types acting badly are precisely that. Even if I’ve made an error and the few I allude to are as clean as the morning dew, there is a long line of those who fill the bill and then some.

Yesterday, I uncovered some slight nostalgia for the New Age California of the last half of the last century, the last of the last. After all, we all learned so much, didn’t we? I’ve talked at length about Bob Hoffman’s sexual and emotional abuse and its lingering effects. I woke up trying to tell myself that perhaps it wasn’t that bad. After all, I knew at least two other young men who were the object of his aggressive, entitled, and uninvited sexual advances. Why should I think I’m special? Besides, I had a life-changing personal breakthrough, so perhaps I ought to change my tune and be grateful.

Then, a rush of other sexual misconduct started like a tidal wave: Everybody was fucking somebody.

It was common knowledge that Claudio Naranjo was fucking KS, but also RS and a few other young women in the groups. He loved the Enneagram, sex, and drugs in no particular order. One woman who lived in his harem had a psychotic break and died in a car crash, but that didn’t stop his behavior. He didn’t even introduce a word of caution. According to this wild, wide-eyed version of the “Work,” there was something to be learned from all our interactions.

Several priests were involved, and they were not celibate--at least for some period of time. They were middle-aged men acting like teenagers. One exclaimed that the vow of chastity was like closing off Soldiers Field. The gay priest came after me, but I wasn’t having it. I’d taken a leave of absence and was having sex, but not with men who’d pledged religious vows.

Joe Scerbo and another friend, an older woman I loved very much but who has cut off communication because of my insistence on talking about things she thinks should be secret, organized a weekend of tantric massage. There was only a hair’s breadth between what transpired and a full-on orgy. It had almost nothing to do with meditation and everything to do with getting naked in a large group with lots of scented oil. A cute guy there from Ichazo’s Arica Training confirmed that those groups, too, were sexually permissive. It was, in his view, part and parcel of being sexually liberated and doing esoteric work.

KS tried to establish an independent “Work” group but lost her license to practice psychotherapy in California when she recommended the services of David (pronounced Da’vid), a Chilean seer who read either your palm or your skull. I forget the particulars, but his blowjobs were legendary. One man who followed KS out of California, I will not use any initials because his crime was so heinous, molested his teenage daughter. Yeah, “everybody was fucking somebody,” but then there are sexual crimes that scream to high heaven.

In these circles, Mr. G. was a mythological figure. You said his name in a hushed voice and bowed your head. We were told he was a trickster whose sexuality was part of his repertoire of teaching tools. Of course, there is only anecdotal information, but that was enough to create a kind of blanket permission for anyone taking up the “trickster” methodology to fuck whomever they wanted, and I say that’s what they wanted, not Liberation. Of course, I, too, only have anecdotal evidence, but I’m not fucking students.

Swami Muktananda, the guru’s guru, had multiple sexual relations with young, underaged women, even girls (I didn’t say dozens because even he probably lost count). No one disputes that, but the other gurus defended him! Naranjo said Muktananda was not a lecher, but he could not break the public perception of the Brahmacharya, so he had to keep his sex life secret. No, Claudio, he was a lecher. Luckily, he preferred caucasian to Indian women and avoided a raft of other cultural taboos. The only question I have is what kind of legal mechanism his successor’s lawyers set up to avoid legal claims bankrupting Yoga Siddi Dam.

One teacher in the broad Hoffman group was credibly accused of sexual misconduct with an employee’s teenage daughter. A teacher from the UK described it as “getting his jollies.” The very Brit description confirms that his conduct was known, not taken seriously, and the subsequent shuffling of responsibilities was seen as shielding the Institute from liability. Why didn’t someone call it out, have him removed, or shut down the operation? One word: power. Money and greed played a role, but the winner was pre-ordained.

I know that HK was fucking at least one woman in our work group. I stood beside him when he invited her to his bed after the meeting ended. Although it was the woman who approached him for sex, he was still her teacher, and, following even loose interpretations of the ethics of student-teacher sexual relations, this was way out of bounds. I could barely believe my ears. HK went so far as to suggest that so and so in the group sleep with so and so but stop sleeping with so and so. He tried to set me up to sleep with one of several women in the group, but at that point, I decided that I’d had enough.

A high-level Scientology auditor didn't even pause before she stuck her tongue down my throat after attending a Dianetics lecture in Palo Alto. When I told her her advances were unwelcome, she told me that being gay could be handled in a few auditing sessions and offered me a cut-rate. The ride back to San Francisco was icy. I’ve never been good at small talk after rejecting a sexual advance. Looking back, “What the fuck did you think you were doing?” might have been appropriate.

Two of the Zen groups I sat with had teachers who slept with students. I told myself that these were adults making decisions about their own lives. I sat meditation with two of the men (they were all men) whose behavior became controversial. In both cases, I learned an enormous amount. In one case, it became challenging. This teacher practiced a kind of serial monogamy, and I wanted to maintain relationships with his former wives or girlfriends.

The case of Richard Baker is more complex. He was not the teacher. Suzuki Roshi was. Baker Roshi and his wife in the 60s could be best described as swingers. I’m sure that Baker and Suzuki Roshi talked about this aspect of his life, and you can also be sure that I have absolutely no idea about the content of those discussions. It was after Suzuki’s death that the accusations mounted, forcing him to resign, but at that point, it all seems to me to be an internal power struggle for control of Zen Center’s assets and not the conversation “Omnibus est stupri aliquem” I’m talking about.

Did we have a part in it? Of course. At 80 years old, what amazes me is that we were so reckless with our emotional lives, and some of our teachers threw any reasonable guidelines in the gutter. Not every case was rape, but hormones ruled the day. In Zen, the Path of Liberation is sometimes called the Path of Intimacy, and sexuality is key. Its fabric is complex and sacred, but in the last half of the half, most of us, students and teachers, treated it with little care and even less self-awareness.

Our greed caused great damage. We didn’t want to leave the Summer of Love behind and feel left out. You didn’t have to be a hippie to flaunt the sexual mores of our parents' generation and many more preceding theirs. We thought that we had opened the secret gate to the mystery of sex! There were soft angelic voices in the air as one SAT member wandered across Cuernavaca searching for her lost diaphragm so that the Aztec god of love might descend. Oh, the fucking arrogance is astounding. Like those priests magically or mystically released from their vows, we’d regressed to pubescent insanity.

Later, out of the wreckage, carefully worded policy statements about sexual conduct have been crafted by a cadre of experts called into service; there are policies and procedures for dealing with accusations of sexual harassment. Sister Mary Ignatius could not have engineered a safer place to do the difficult work of deep introspection, but it is a bloodless hellhole of denial and repression. We constructed in less than a generation what occupied the Catholic Church for millennia.

At least part of the fault here, and I do consider it a fault, is the model of “enlightenment” or awakening or finding the way--it requires submission, but the who, what, and where are left to “one who knows” to use a phrase popular with the followers of Mr. G. And for most people that still means someone wearing a funny hat spouting nonsense and then inviting you to his bed.

Is there another way? I certainly hope so, but it will take time, care, and respect to emerge. Until then, to paraphrase another biblical maxim, “By their sins, you shall know them.”

Ordo Amoris

This is not the first time I’ve been disappointed in our roman catholic shadow government. I’m starting to feel the ghosts of Pius 12 playing footsie with Mussolini and Hitler, but perhaps my paranoia is winning the day. It is still unnerving to watch this unfold. 

JD Vance told us to Google it. I share this much with our Catholic VP—I often use Google while constructing theological arguments. What shows up in my search for “Ordo Amoris” does not go back to the sayings of Jesus but originates with Augustine, another convert from some weird Gnosticism almost 400 years after the life and death of Lord Jesus and, I might add, a favorite of Opus Dei. 

So, let’s take care of the biblical sources right away. JD’s “family and friends first” is on shaky ground. I’m not saying the scripture has nothing to say about your mother, but you should not elevate those conversations to prayers to the Blessed Virgin. Three passages will cover my argument. 

Matthew 12:47-50: “47 Someone told him, ‘Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.’ 48 He replied to him, ‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ 49 Pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers. 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’”

John 15:12–13: “12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

And then, of course, Luke 25-37, the story of the Good Samaritan. I’ll only quote Luke’s rhetorical question: 36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” 37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

Obviously, Jesus was not as narrow-minded as JD. Or perhaps I should say, “properly ordered.” Loving your parents, especially your mother, is high on the list of virtues to be emulated. Even the Dalai Lama tells his followers to love the world like your mother. But add a Latin formulation from Agustine to Aquinas, and ordo amoris has the ring of natural theology if not the Revealed Word of God. 

But I have trouble with it. It is called natural theology because it states that the order of the world as we find it should be respected because it provides a broad outline of what God intended for the world. But Natural Theology, at least as far I recall, was a relatively confined discipline, covering the “Just War Theology” and a list of sexual disorders that included contraception, sexual attraction, and the proper positions for sexual intercourse. Of course, there were other applications, but this is where the rubber met the road in my Jesuit theology: justification of the war in Vietnam, condemning the sexual revolution, and the “gay Kabal.”

But here is where I can legitimately put on both what remains of my Ratio Studiorum (should I tell JD to Google it?) and my Buddhist robes: Compassion is not a zero-sum game. Vance wants to use lofty-sounding Latin to justify draconian budget cuts that mostly affect poor immigrants and people of color because he can then say that Catholic teaching justifies budget cuts. The order of the universe tells us to take care of our own first. I will not comment on the finite limits of the possible US debt obligation, but this is not a conversation about compassion or the proper order of love. It is bookkeeping, and paying the bill is included. Luke’s tale is explicit. After the Samaritan cared for the man: “35 The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’ 

Father Ignatius also teaches us that Love is expressed in actions, not words. Compassion is the supreme virtue in most Buddhist sects, and I suspect in most interpretations of the teaching of the Lord, though the language is slightly different. I usually try not to give spiritual advice online, but this is a no-brainer: JD, talk to your priest or spiritual director. You are doing something wrong if your compassion is not growing and expanding, including more while excluding none. Change your life, and don’t take the advice of your bookkeeper or the tax collector as the word of God. 

I found this article by Frederick Bauerschmidt and Maureen Sweeney in The Church Life Journal helpful. They are a couple. Maureen is an immigration attorney, and Frederick is a theologian.

https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/ordo-amoris-wisely-extending-love/