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TreeKnot ago

Not saying this is true or isn’t true, however this tradition exists only in tibet, and has no bearing on Buddhism in other countries, however one thing is puzzling and that is why havent we heard from copious victims? Also my guess is that if this was really happening, the families and friends of the abused would be in the streets protesting and shouting to the hills about this, at least this is my humble opinion.

I would like to be careful, because the main religions are trying to remove the heat from themselves and start pointing in other directions even if falsely...i would be very careful to make these serious allegations without concrete evidence and proof...and im not talking about one or two articles and one you tube video....i mean real victim testimonials, court hearings etc....

If you can supply this information it would be most appreciated.

I know for sure if monks did this in Thailand, Burma and Sri Lanka the monks would get beaten and tortured and thrown in prison very quickly because the lay people wouldn’t tolerate it at all.

Also - we fail to talk about Buddhism in the US, Australia and the West generally, and there has been very little if anything at all on child abuse by Buddhist monks which goes to show that even if there is a chance of this happening it is isolated and not spread across the entire culture like Christianity, Judaism and Islam....we know for sure about this....

Narcissism ago

In Burma the police will beat the shit out of someone accused of kiddie stuff or raping a girl.

Kacey ago

treeknot, please read the article I linked to by Parenti and you will understand why there is not a huge outcry in Tibet any more than the serfs in Europe sent up much of an outcry during the middle ages. As for Buddhists in the US many of the monks that came from Tibet were brought here by the CIA as was the Dali Lama. Many have been making a killing teaching a new version of Buddhism to young americans eager to have a religion different from the one they were raised in. There are good Buddhists who follow the best teachings of the religions, just like there are in all religions but..... Here are some child raping monks in Bhutan http://www.trimondi.de/EN/Abuse%20of%20Children%20Monks.htm

While rumors about child sexual abuse in monasteries have swirled around this tiny Buddhist nation for a while, this is the first time confirmed cases of underage monks molested by their seniors have come to the fore. “Every time I tried to scream or struggled, he pinned me with his body, put his hand over my mouth and covered it tightly,” an 11-year-old boy told the magazine “The Raven,” describing how he was sexually abused by a 20-year-old monk in a monastery in Punakha, about 45 miles northeast of the capital city of Thimphu. The underage monk said he and his 12-year-old friend at the monastery were asked to come in turns to sleep with the senior monk. Another pedophile monk, a 60-year-old man, molested not only the two boys, but two other monks, aged nine and 11.

Its not unusual for young boys to not want to speak about being raped. Its not unusual for their parents to believe the "good" priest, preacher, rabbi, monk instead of their child. In many countries it is also not safe to speak out against the ruling religious leaders.

For instance, how long did it take for the scandal to be revealed in Canada about how native children were abused and killed? Canada, not Tibet or Bhutan where control of the populace is much stronger.

Funny when something comes out that people don't want to hear they say "why haven't we heard this before if it was going on?" Maybe because every time before when someone tried to tell they got the same response "never heard of this so it must not be true". Well if every time an issue is raised people say "first I heard of it" then each time will be the first anyone has heard of it and so it will be buried.

TreeKnot ago

Your last comments do not represent what i said...and i repeat, i am not disputing whether it happened or not. The question is whether these monks were following the rules or not and whether the community enforced them. Any sexual abuse by a monk is an action that results in termination, so how they continued to do this is beyond me.

Factfinder2 ago

It is an act that SHOULD result in termination IF the rules are being followed. But very often the senior monks who should be responsible for enforcing the rules are the ones committing the abuse. So, no termination. Refusing to believe it's possible that this could be happening helps perpetuate it.

TreeKnot ago

Who are yiou referring to?

Kacey ago

How do priests who bugger altar boys skirt the rules? Works the same way. Superiors overlook the acts.

TreeKnot ago

Yes i understand that, but the policy in the church as i know it, is to remove the priest and send him to another monastery...as far as I know, if a priest buggers a child there is no rule that the priest should be defrocked....i have never seen this....nor heard of it....

Kacey ago

Yes the church often sends a priest to another church or monastary. That doesn't mean that that is what the rule is, just that that is what the practice is.

for instance celibacy is the rule and not being celibate is cause for defrocking....unless you keep quiet in which case they may turn a blind eye.
http://www.uscatholic.org/blog/2012/05/are-catholic-priests-leading-secret-double-lives

Father Kevin Lee, a priest in Sydney, Australia, came forward this week to admit that he's been secretly married for a full year, and that he hasn't done much to hide this fact from church leaders, who turned a blind eye to his actions. That is, of course, until he publicly admitted his secret marriage, which immediately led to his removal from ministry.

In fact the Pope has overridden the defrocking for pedophile rule

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4259164/Pope-quietly-trims-sanctions-sex-abusers-seeking-mercy.html

Pope Francis has been slammed by church officials and sex abuse survivors for cutting penalties for paedophile priests. The Pope is said to be applying his vision of a 'merciful church' to sex offenders by reducing punishments to weaker sentences, such as a lifetime of prayer and penance. It has been revealed by church officials that Pope Francis overruled advice given to him by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith about two priests - allowing them to be punished by a lifetime of prayer. One of the priests was the Reverend Mauro Inzoli, who was found guilty of abusing young boys by the Vatican in 2012 and was ordered to be defrocked. However, he appealed, and in 2014 Francis reduced the penalty to a lifetime of prayer, prohibiting him from celebrating Mass in public or being near children, barring him from his diocese and ordering five years of psychotherapy.

So the punishment was supposed to be defrocking but the Pope lessened it. But that means it was the policy in the past but the practice in the past was of course otherwise. Unless you can find me something in the Catholic rules that says pedophile priests are to be sent to other parishes my contention stands. The policy was defrocking, the practice was moving.

Likewise the Buddhists have rules, but the existence of rules does not prove what the practice is.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/thailand/10130437/Buddhist-monks-arrested-over-Thai-child-sex-abuse-claims.html and http://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-15507304

if Children's Affairs Minister Tissa Karaliyadda is to be believed, child abuse in religious establishments by both Buddhist and Christian clergy in Sri Lanka is rampant. Yet according to figures from Sri Lanka's National Child Protection Authority (NCPA), only three Buddhist monks have been convicted of child abuse in Sri Lanka in recent history. One of those died from poison he drank after he was sentenced for raping a girl aged 13 in 2005. Research carried out by the BBC Sinhala service has revealed that over the last decade, nearly 110 Buddhist monks have been charged for sexual and physical assaults on minors in Sri Lanka. Many of these cases - especially those of a sexual nature - were barely reported by the Sri Lankan media and seldom resulted in convictions.

TreeKnot ago

What about the Anglican, Protestant, orthodox etc...is defrocking the way? Not asking you to provide the research, I am too lazy to do it on my own right now. Religion is not supposed to be government and uphold the laws of the land, that is up to policing....

Why should any Priest or monk be above the laws of the land? Buddha stated that all monks should follow the laws of the land, and that the disciplinary rules refer to monastic life. So there is a split here....

Under reporting like you mentioned back there somwhere..is the only way....but if Buddhist Monks are turning a blind eye...it wont be long before the lay people leave them in droves and will mean the end of Buddist monks....however, there are good monks out there and at this point I forever hold my peace until I hear more of this ....but rest assured i have seen your points...and I am not as naive as you think....im just cautious about anything the mainstream media says and will prod. I like Buddhists in general and think they have a better way, so there is a little bias on my part for sure, not denying it...

Kacey ago

The Catholic church has been more in the news for pedophilia than any other religion or denomination.
Yet the Catholic church reports

The Vatican recently released information that says that the number of Catholics have increased at an exponential rate, even faster than the world population. The Catholic News Agency reports: “over the course of nine years, the number of Catholics worldwide has increased by 17.8 percent

Read more at World Religion News: "Is the Catholic Church Experiencing Exponential Growth or Declining?" http://www.worldreligionnews.com/?p=24535

Of course a church that hides pedophilia might well lie about how many adherents they have.

Religions have really strong holds on people.....

think- ago

Not saying this is true or isn’t true, however this tradition exists only in tibet

I don't know about other forms of Buddhism, but this has been definitely a problem in Tibetan buddhism.

Tibetan buddhism has been heavily influenced by the pre-buddhism shamanic bon / bön religion, absorbing many aspects of its tradition.

The teachings of tantric left-hand-path Tibetan buddhism are plain evil.

Doeing evil (as opposed to doing good in other Buddhist traditions) is, according to their thinking, also fulfilling the will of god, in a way you even have to do evil things "to keep the balance" between good and evil. (That's the common demeaneour in all left-hand-path traditions, like the Luciferian tradition HRC and buddies follow, which also has a strong emphasis on "sex magick".)

Also my guess is that if this was really happening, the families and friends of the abused would be in the streets protesting and shouting to the hills about this

Were there any catholics out in the streets 'protesting and shouting the hills' about child abuse in the Church 20 years ago? Are there are any today in great numbers?

No, there aren't. As in any other religion - no matter which - there is a BIG taboo regarding the raping of minors by clergy / monks / nuns. One reason why many Tibetan children are given to the monks is the poverty of their families, which adds to the difficulty of speaking out for the victims as they appear to be not grateful for what their familiy has done to ensure a good upbringing.

And Tibetan buddhism was, before the Chinese took over, a theocracy. This is why still today the Dalai Lama is not only the highest representative of Tibetan buddhism, but the exiled head of state for Tibetans.

Religious power plus political power = doubled authority, doubled difficulty to oppose TPTB and coming forward as a victim.

garouwarrior ago

Your reasoning sounds sensible.

However, I've heard this sort of rebuttal before from Jewish and Evangelical Christians.

Which we now know that child abuse from religious leaders in both communities is ENDEMIC but extremely under-reported.

think- ago

However, I've heard this sort of rebuttal before from both Jewish and Evangelical Christians.

This.

TreeKnot ago

However Jewish and Evanligecal christians do not have the same rules?? Or do they? Not sure..i know for a fact that if any Buddhist monk has sexual relations of any kind its over, no tranferring to other monastries or rehab..its over...you can find alot of evidence of this by visiting many Buddhist sites that have the Buddhist Monastic code available....

The are four serious offences that any monk must be removed which are called the ‘Parajika’ offences: 1. If a monk kills a human being 2. If a monk steals anything 3. If a monks makes a false claim that he possesses spiritual powers 4. Sexual intercourse of any kind....

Then there are 13 rules which require rehabilitation..which is a complex and rigorous process: Masturbation is one of these, even as far as touching a person in a lustful manner and also referring or aluding to any sexual act....there are more.....but i will not go into it..because these rules are freely available for anyone to see....

However I do agree with the under-reporting, but even so, it is very hard for any monk to get away with it for long...and im certainly not saying it doesn’t happen...however it is not comparable to other religions.

Buddhism is general does not tolerate this behaviour from any monk...the monks themselves are very strict about this..and it the first four rules any monk learns before going forth.

If you would like to research it..simply search “Buddhist Monastic Code” and see the “Parijika” rules....or “rules entailing defeat”.....

Thank you for your reply.

Kacey ago

treeknot, don't Catholics have rules that priests must be celibate? Just because there are rules doesn't mean rules are followed. Aren't protestants opposed to having sex with someone who is not your spouse? How many protestant ministers have broken that rule? Counselors and therapists have rules about sex with clients. I personally know a couple who have broken that rule. If breaking rules will always get you the appropriate punishment why aren't at least 1/2 the US congress under investigation by the Ethics Committee. When looking at pedophilia we cannot afford to be naive.

TreeKnot ago

Sorry, I understand why you might think I am naive. However in Buddhism its a one strike policy. I am sure there have been many who have done it..no doubt although I do not personally know anyone. However the stakes are high, I do not know the rules in Catholicism, in Judaism and Islam it is quiet ok to have sex with an underage person if they are Goyim or infidel. Buddhism has no such rules...it is not ok, never for a monk to have sex with any being at all...this is my point.

So if they did do it, I am stunned at how they got away with it....I think it can be only two main reasons 1. Every monk in that particular monastery was doing it, so therefore it is premeditated and even more sinister and deifes all logic of Buddhism. 2. It was one or two monks and the other monks didn’t know it was going on. Once found out, these monks would, should disrobe immediately and then face the legal consequences of their actions if the victims were children.

If the monks did this for a long time, it baffles my mind how they got away with it with no one saying anything....I am not questioning the claims, just questioning the rules and regulations of that monastery....maybe they weren’t practicing the rules at all? I dont know...whatever it is, it is frightening and needs to be condemned.

What I am getting at , there is no rape culture in Buddhism. if you rape you are out on your own, and the monks will not defend you if it is true. You will be left poor and to deal with the consequences.

There is also the case where there are writers who don’t report accurately as well, and this is a problem too...and not to mention those who want to bring Buddhism down, please dont deny this...

So the Truth here is, no monk can have sex of any kind, so if they did...in Lord Buddha’s eyes (as is quoted in the rules) that person in no longer a monk and cannot call himself a monk nor represent the Buddha or his teachings in anyway, as the Buddha made it clear that Monks are not to engage in any sex whatsoever, not even masturbation.... Sooooooo if a monk has sex, that monk in the Buddha’s eyes, is no longer affiliated, defeated and can never be a monk again as long as he lives.....

think- ago

The are four serious offences that any monk must be removed which are called the ‘Parajika’ offences: 1. If a monk kills a human being (...)

I know you said that you are talking about monks in Thailand, Burma and Sri Lanka.

But take Buddhist monks in Myanmar, they have been killing Muslim Royingas. So it seems that it depends on which Buddhist tradition you look.

TreeKnot ago

No the monks in myanmar follow the same rules...and most articles on the matter are not accurate and usually by people who want to push a narrative..however our subject is child abuse...so i will stick to that, if you ant to go down the killing rabbit hole i suggest you do some deep research on the myanmar issue before making up your mind...have a nice day.