Post from June 22, 2018
JULIA LYNN HOWELL·SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2018
I am re-sharing a “statement” I made on June 22 because recent official letters issued to community members in Shambhala only seem to be thickening with deflection and denial, so I would prefer people who care have some ‘record’ they can refer back to rather than rely on memory and speculation.
The last 6 months have been both treacherous and clarifying as conversations have unfolded, dragged on and danced around the topic of Shambhala sexual abuse. I have often thought it deserves its own unique brand. It’s as if a collective community trauma has been triggered and we are drawn to replay, revisit, deny and avoid patterns that seem so engrained to the community. I've watched, listened and engaged in these conversations both online and off— some held really close and privately, some that spread far. I have followed and at various points engaged both Project Sunshine and Shambhala Initiatives to Address Harm and the various strategies being churned up this time around. After being harassed and manipulated to ultimately STFU (sometimes asked really kindly) by ‘friends,’ court staff and various leaders (of which pretty much everyone is), after being given this “incredible opportunity” to stand in the deep river of this community’s relationship to sexual abuse and feel how its currents continue to impact me, I realize that the (false) hope I had reignited for change in December has died.
I was sexually assaulted by the Sakyong in the kitchen of the Halifax Kalapa Court after his wife, the Sakyong Wangmo, retired for the night with her first daughter, following the celebration of her first birthday in August, 2011. This experience was traumatic for me. It took place one year after we welcomed Jetsun Drukmo home on that very lawn. It also marked the one year anniversary of meeting my then partner, who stood in the same room as me that night and watched, did nothing, turned the other way. As time went on, the community’s formal responses and members’ processes of relating to this disclosure and fact have overall exacerbated my confusion and suffering and eroded my mind and body’s health. The responses and denials continue to trigger me and prevent me from moving on from that harm and I believe are preventing the community from its own “healing”. It is truly sad, hard and painful for me to admit this and I would encourage people who deeply care about this community and this family you serve to realize that nothing can change if it doesn’t begin with honesty and recognition of the facts and factors we are working with. The Sakyong’s Chief of Staff is most certainly aware of this incident of “sexual misconduct” despite what he has said to the contrary and to the Project Sunshine Mediator. Kalapa Council members know about this sexual misconduct, one of whom was supposed to be my MI around this time but never followed up. I have told several personally. And I know I am not the only one.
For me, these past 6 months have strengthened relations, turned up new alliances, softened family members and neighbors, challenged, stretched and at times snapped long-held friendships. I have wondered if and how connections with those I adore and appreciate could continue and be cultivated, how our experience of our relationships might have meaning beyond and regardless of our relationship to Shambhala. I met a lot of you through training, practicing, staffing, being socialized in and socializing as an adult in the community and with community members. And although I love you dearly, the Sakyong and his family included (and this is actually true—it’s pretty fucked up), I can't keep “doing” Shambhala and shambhala as we have been taught and are restricted to do it anymore. I know this because it forces me to twist my heart in ways I know it should not have to be twisted. I know there are many meaningful connections with those I’ve met ‘there’ and I invite you to continue to cultivate those with me without the filter of Shambhala the Thing, The Project.
Come be a friend, become a Velveteen —please do. But please don’t ask me to grapple with this experience through a Shambhala lens. Please consider the contradictions in your practice of the teachings if you have to omit the teacher. I cannot have the guru suspended from teaching duties and remove his body, speech and mind from the throne at programs where he tells me how and what to do with my mind, like you might an abusive Acharya or a sangha member. So because none of these initiatives are addressing the Sakyong and the community is not willing to include him in the remedies being touted, I have no choice but to step away. Don’t come to me and ask me to explain my experience in detail, don’t tell me write it up or file a report, don’t propose mediation, don’t try to pull me in and close to keep me quiet, don’t tell me I’m breaking samaya when it has already been broken by him. The labour required to repair that relationship from his end will require much more than a private meeting. Stop coming to me and asking me to talk about my traumatic experience in your way, or on the terms of Shambhala the organization, the vision, the Sakyong. Don’t tell me to not have any dark hidden corners of my mind and then insist Shambhala and the Sakyong need some. Don’t instruct me to lean in and visualize and dissolve into someone who deeply violated not just my physical/sexual boundaries, but who took advantage of my spiritual boundaries/experience/practice too. Don’t tell me to push myself to the brink of suicide and just accept it because Marpa was abusive. Stop accusing me of wanting the headlines, attention or money. I’ve had the unfortunate opportunity to become really familiar with all the tactics over the course of my life and I can see them — including “kindness”—coming a mile away. I will not keep grappling and replaying this by conceptualizing or justifying trauma as Tibetan crazy wisdom. I will not keep quiet and pretend it’s all ok by embodying some fucked up version of British colonial denial. But what I will do is invite you to be a friend, and I will be yours if you become real.
JULIA LYNN HOWELL·SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2018
I am re-sharing a “statement” I made on June 22 because recent official letters issued to community members in Shambhala only seem to be thickening with deflection and denial, so I would prefer people who care have some ‘record’ they can refer back to rather than rely on memory and speculation.
The last 6 months have been both treacherous and clarifying as conversations have unfolded, dragged on and danced around the topic of Shambhala sexual abuse. I have often thought it deserves its own unique brand. It’s as if a collective community trauma has been triggered and we are drawn to replay, revisit, deny and avoid patterns that seem so engrained to the community. I've watched, listened and engaged in these conversations both online and off— some held really close and privately, some that spread far. I have followed and at various points engaged both Project Sunshine and Shambhala Initiatives to Address Harm and the various strategies being churned up this time around. After being harassed and manipulated to ultimately STFU (sometimes asked really kindly) by ‘friends,’ court staff and various leaders (of which pretty much everyone is), after being given this “incredible opportunity” to stand in the deep river of this community’s relationship to sexual abuse and feel how its currents continue to impact me, I realize that the (false) hope I had reignited for change in December has died.
I was sexually assaulted by the Sakyong in the kitchen of the Halifax Kalapa Court after his wife, the Sakyong Wangmo, retired for the night with her first daughter, following the celebration of her first birthday in August, 2011. This experience was traumatic for me. It took place one year after we welcomed Jetsun Drukmo home on that very lawn. It also marked the one year anniversary of meeting my then partner, who stood in the same room as me that night and watched, did nothing, turned the other way. As time went on, the community’s formal responses and members’ processes of relating to this disclosure and fact have overall exacerbated my confusion and suffering and eroded my mind and body’s health. The responses and denials continue to trigger me and prevent me from moving on from that harm and I believe are preventing the community from its own “healing”. It is truly sad, hard and painful for me to admit this and I would encourage people who deeply care about this community and this family you serve to realize that nothing can change if it doesn’t begin with honesty and recognition of the facts and factors we are working with. The Sakyong’s Chief of Staff is most certainly aware of this incident of “sexual misconduct” despite what he has said to the contrary and to the Project Sunshine Mediator. Kalapa Council members know about this sexual misconduct, one of whom was supposed to be my MI around this time but never followed up. I have told several personally. And I know I am not the only one.
For me, these past 6 months have strengthened relations, turned up new alliances, softened family members and neighbors, challenged, stretched and at times snapped long-held friendships. I have wondered if and how connections with those I adore and appreciate could continue and be cultivated, how our experience of our relationships might have meaning beyond and regardless of our relationship to Shambhala. I met a lot of you through training, practicing, staffing, being socialized in and socializing as an adult in the community and with community members. And although I love you dearly, the Sakyong and his family included (and this is actually true—it’s pretty fucked up), I can't keep “doing” Shambhala and shambhala as we have been taught and are restricted to do it anymore. I know this because it forces me to twist my heart in ways I know it should not have to be twisted. I know there are many meaningful connections with those I’ve met ‘there’ and I invite you to continue to cultivate those with me without the filter of Shambhala the Thing, The Project.
Come be a friend, become a Velveteen —please do. But please don’t ask me to grapple with this experience through a Shambhala lens. Please consider the contradictions in your practice of the teachings if you have to omit the teacher. I cannot have the guru suspended from teaching duties and remove his body, speech and mind from the throne at programs where he tells me how and what to do with my mind, like you might an abusive Acharya or a sangha member. So because none of these initiatives are addressing the Sakyong and the community is not willing to include him in the remedies being touted, I have no choice but to step away. Don’t come to me and ask me to explain my experience in detail, don’t tell me write it up or file a report, don’t propose mediation, don’t try to pull me in and close to keep me quiet, don’t tell me I’m breaking samaya when it has already been broken by him. The labour required to repair that relationship from his end will require much more than a private meeting. Stop coming to me and asking me to talk about my traumatic experience in your way, or on the terms of Shambhala the organization, the vision, the Sakyong. Don’t tell me to not have any dark hidden corners of my mind and then insist Shambhala and the Sakyong need some. Don’t instruct me to lean in and visualize and dissolve into someone who deeply violated not just my physical/sexual boundaries, but who took advantage of my spiritual boundaries/experience/practice too. Don’t tell me to push myself to the brink of suicide and just accept it because Marpa was abusive. Stop accusing me of wanting the headlines, attention or money. I’ve had the unfortunate opportunity to become really familiar with all the tactics over the course of my life and I can see them — including “kindness”—coming a mile away. I will not keep grappling and replaying this by conceptualizing or justifying trauma as Tibetan crazy wisdom. I will not keep quiet and pretend it’s all ok by embodying some fucked up version of British colonial denial. But what I will do is invite you to be a friend, and I will be yours if you become real.
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