Shimano’s defense, as outrageous as it may sound to some, is worth inspecting. Not because I side with Shimano, but because his views of sexuality are widely held in certain precincts of American Buddhism. In this country, we have learned the hard way that religiosity is no guarantor of morality. But many Americans still imagine that Buddhists are the good kind of religious people—or that they are not religious at all, just “spiritual.” Buddhists, they know, or think they know, do not have the Jewish, Christian, or Muslim beliefs in “dualism,” in good and evil; they are not censorious, always worried about sin and shame. Drawn to what they imagine is a kindler, gentler way of being, imported from a more pacific part of the world, Buddhists themselves, confronted with the worst things a teacher can do, may choose to be willfully naive. It can be especially hard to face demons in a tradition that promises that there are none.
Soon thereafter, I asked whether having sex with a teacher could affect a student’s Zen practice. “Negatively or positively?” Shimano asked me.
“Either,” I said. “Could it affect it positively?”
“Could be,” he said.
“Could be?” I asked.
“Could be.”
“Could it affect it negatively?” I asked.
“Could be.”
“So,” I said, “who would decide, in that situation, whether it’s a good idea?”
“Unfortunately,” Shimano said, “we don’t have God”—there is no Western-style, Judeo-Christian, yes-or-no answer. He started and stopped a bit more, searching for the right words, until he found something he was happy with. “Maybe dharma”—nature, the universe—“is our answer.”
Without saying so explicitly, Chayat was describing the potential for evil at the heart of Zen Buddhism. The true dharma knowledge, what students come to Shimano to learn, is that there is no good and evil, that all is one; but true dharma knowledge isn’t very helpful to a woman being pressured to have sex. And—here’s another way that Buddhism can protect, even incite, evil—those who seem to possess the greatest wisdom, or the most spiritual magnetism, may be uniquely incapable of telling right from wrong. “When you yourself are so in the light, you may not see your own shadows very well,” Chayat said, about Shimano. “He is a remarkably astute, deep, profound, spiritually evolved, charismatic leader. But as we know there can be these flaws.” In an e-mail months later, she clarified the term flaws: “As we have come to realize, there has been a long history of secret maneuvering and sexual misconduct.”
Although our conversation occurred less than a week after Chayat had referred to Shimano as a “sociopath,” I do not believe there was anything insincere in her measured praise of the man. Good/bad, compassionate/cruel, empathetic/sociopathic: although his life’s work is to defeat such simplistic dualities, he embodies them.
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