More Delusion

I may have to reconsider the post I wrote entitled "Secrets of the Ancient Horndog Zen Masters Revealed".

Just about a year ago, the website Buddhist Geeks published a review of the then newly-revealed archive of the writings of zen master Robert Aitken. The archive revealed that Aitken, a major and revered figure in American zen, concealed the allegedly abusive behavior of zen monk, and later abbott, Eido Shimano, for forty-odd years.

The Aitken-Shimano Letters

The same article was published at The Zen Site.

The events and behavior described in this article go well beyond mere animal magnetism and/or personal charisma. Shimano is described at one point, for example, as volunteering to work in a psychiatric ward in order to find more women upon whom to prey. This is genuinely creepy stuff.

I'm going to ponder this some more. I still don't understand how he was able to find so many willing victims over the years. (I expect to be criticized for using the expression 'willing victims', but I don't know another way to describe them. It appears no one was threatened or intimidated. They voluntarily had sex with him, at least sometimes hoping it would improve their chances of 'enlightenment', and afterward regretted it. I still don't understand how this happened so many times.)