---

Tucson Community Meditation Center oppressing people for the attainment of meditative absorption

Arapaho National Forest, 06-19-06

It is my understanding that the Tucson Community Meditation Center (TCMC) got its start in about 1980 as a University of Arizona student meditation club.  At that time there were some Western Zen followers of Akin Roshe and some vipassana (insight) meditation practitioners.  It is my understanding some time in the late 1980s the Zen followers broke off from the vipassana practitioners and formed Zen Desert Sangha (ZDS).  I do not know the nature of the break, however, it is possibly it was due to some kind of conflict between the two groups, or, since ZDS left, then they may have felt that their needs were being met.

I was first introduced to the Tucson Community Meditation Center (TCMC) in the summer of 1990, when I attended a 10-day vipassana meditation retreat led by Mr. Shinzen Young. The retreat was held at the Sanoran Field School in the desert outside of Tucson, Arizona in July, and it was hosted by (TCMC), At the time I thought they were nuts for putting on a retreat on the desert floor at that time of year, because it would be so very hot there.  And, it was.  I attended the retreat anyway because I wanted some retreat time.

The Sanoran Field School is a rustic training center mostly serving campers.  We used the main classroom as our meditation hall.  There was no air-conditioning, just what we call "swamp coolers," which is a device that runs air through damp porous pads.  The device works excellently for bringing the temperature down from 100 degrees (F) to a reasonable 75 degrees (F) in a region of low humidity, like Tucson.  But, the temperatures on the desert floor in July are more like 120 degrees (F) in the shade, so the coolers only succeeded in increasing the humidity.

Meditating many hours a day can be quite a challenge even to the contemplative with many years and several retreats of practice.  Doing so in unrelenting sweltering heat was a tremendous undertaking.  We were all just dripping with sweat all day long.  On top of that the meditation hall became infested with ants, so not only were we sticky with sweat, but we had ants crawling all over us.  Mr. Young suggested that we just meditate on the sensations, which is a reasonable solution to poor planning.

With all of the uncomfortable tactile sensations that impinged upon my awareness during that retreat I found myself propelled into one of the darkest dark nights of the soul I had so far encountered.  My skin burned all over intensely as if I was a burn victim.  There were times when I thought I would go stark raving mad.

There was a young woman there who happened to be a victim of child molestation.  She did not fair well at all.  One night mid-retreat she lost it and started screaming and breaking furniture. Shinzen came and calmed her down.  Remarkably that young woman was there for the rest of the retreat.

Shinzen had brought with him a guest speaker, a woman psychologist by the name of Shirley.  I cannot recall her last name.  Mixing western psychology with Buddhism seemed like a good fit.  He also liked to weave in Native American spirituality and modern physics theory into his talks.  The mix did not seem particularly successful, more New Age, but I was not looking for dharma talks I was looking for an opportunity to meditate rigorously, which I got.

One of the things Shinzen liked to emphasize was guided meditation.  He actually had some equipment made for him that allowed him to dial into any individual because they all wore headsets.  Fortunately these fancy guided meditations were optional, so I did not partake in them.  I have found over the years that guided meditation tends to make people subservient to the guide, and thus it is a common tool of the cult leader.

After that retreat I found out that Shinzen had an affair with Shirley, then dumped his wife of 10 years.  That fiasco caused quite a stir in TCMC, and from what I have heard, throughout the dharma centers where he had led retreats.  It is my understanding at that time that Shinzen lost about 50% of the centers that he used to lead retreats at. 

Aside from the affair and the dumping of his wife, in that order, I did not see what all of the fuss was about. After all Shirley was not some young na•ve devotee, she was a mature woman, a psychologist, and about 10 years older than Shinzen.  His affair seemed less like him overpowering a na•ve devotee and more like him working out an oedipal complex.  However, the board of TCMC had become very offended by the whole thing.  It was in part the board's endless conflicts over Shinzen's personal life that caused me to reduce my participation in the organization.

One of the other conflicts that I had with TCMC at that time was their weekly sits were being held at Vijay Gupta's home.  I quickly found out that Vijay was a notorious philanderer who was using the database of TCMC as his own personal black book for seducing women.  That I have no patience for, so between both conflicts I did not sit in meditation with them that year.

I sat another 10-day vipassana meditation retreat put on TCMC and led again by Shinzen, once again at Sanoran Field School in July.  Don't these people ever learn?  Anyway, not having been involved enough with their organization to help them find a better place to hold retreats I again sat the retreat because I wanted to spend sometime meditating.

After the retreat I has some conversation with Mary McWhorter and others and it was decided to move their weekly sit to Mary's garage.  Her garage had to be renovated, but I was unavailable for the work, but I voted for the needed change to get the center away from Vijay's control.  A few years later I donated and installed a ceiling fan in the garaged turned Zendo and I also rebuilt the deck that was outside the Zendo.

One of my on-going conflicts with TCMC was I did not feel that my issues in meditation were being addressed, nor my experiences in meditation were being validated. Over the decades when I spoke of my experiences in meditation with highly respected meditation teachers, such as Shinzen Young, they typically told me to ignore the various phenomena that I have found associated with meditation.  Some of them were even offended, or hostile toward me, so I learned to not speak about my meditation experiences with my meditation teachers, such as Shinzen Young.

Maha-satipatthana Sutta (DN 22.21)

"And what is meditative absorption (sama-samadhi)? There is the case where a contemplative; who is withdrawn from sensory phenomena, and withdrawn from unwholesome mental states; enters upon and abides in the first meditative absorption state (jhana), which is accompanied by bliss (piiti) and joy (sukha) originating from withdrawal..." (through fourth jhana).

In 2000 or the spring of 2001 there was a change in leadership in the board.  At that time since I had been a regular at the sit from the spring of 2000, Mary McWhoter asked me if I wanted to be in the board.  Since I had found the TCMC retreats and weekly sits adequate, but wanted them to be improved I decided to accept her offer.

I was made an officer of TCMC right away. At that time TCMC was one of the largest meditation centers in Arizona.  For TCMC, in addition to my board-level duties, I had also led their weekly meditations, functioned as registrar and manager for their retreats and setup public talks and radio interviews for their visiting meditation teachers, such as Shinzen Young.

In July of 2001 I attended a 10-day Goenka Vipassana meditation retreat in central California. One of the little external signs of the pleasantness of my meditation is my head bobs slightly when I am in deep meditation.  I have sat about 50 or 60 meditation retreats over the last 3 decades.  No one ever seemed to even notice this slight quirk.  However, at this retreat the assistant retreat leader was quite alarmed by the bobbing of my head.  Telling him that I had the effect for 3 decades did not seem to relieve his anxiety, because he asked me to leave on the 8^th day of the retreat.

Being so active with TCMC, when I returned from the Goenka 10-day meditation retreat early, people noticed and asked why I was back so soon.  When I told them that I had been asked to leave the retreat by the assistant retreat leader because my head bobbed when I meditated, they thought it was pretty funny. 

One of them just looked at me quizzically, and said, "That meditation teacher must be insane."

Talk got around TCMC that I had been thrown out of a meditation retreat.  Mary McWhorter, who was one of the senior members of that center, suggested that I call Shinzen Young, who was the guiding teacher of TCMC, to ask him about the situation. So, one evening I called him on Mary's phone and told him about being tossed out of a Goenka 10-day meditation retreat.

He asked, "Well, what goes on in your meditations?"

When I told him what occurs during my meditations. He said, "Hmm, that sounds like jhana.  Unfortunately I do not know anything about jhana."

His vocal inflection when he said the word "jhana" was similar to how a lover would say, "You have herpes." But, at least I had a name within a Buddhist context for my experience.  I got right onto the web and browsed for the term, and right away found only about 3 hits for the term "jhana."  I read all of the scant information I could find on the subject. And found while there seemed to be a lot of mystery and fiction assigned to the term, there was sufficient information for me to identify my experience within it, and there were even canonical references to look up. I spent the next three years studying everything on the subject of jhana and the Fruits (Phala) of the Contemplative Life including reading the first 5,000 pages of the Discourses of the Buddha.

In the intervening time I found my fellow board members becoming suspicious of my motives.  Very often the items that I suggested for board-level discussion were removed from the list. At that time I also published a newsletter (19) to help promote our meditation retreats and our teachers.  In that newsletter I began to publish editorials that addressed the issues that my fellow board members were not willing to address.

In the intervening three years after I was booted out of the retreat for a bobbing head I found no additional information on the subject of jhana being presented by my center's itinerant meditation teachers. Within my meditation organization I had asked for empowerment to teach meditation and to address jhana, which none of the other meditation teachers would address. However, that empowerment was not forth coming. Instead I found myself becoming increasingly marginalized after 13 years in the organization.

In early 2003 Shinzen Young, Eric Kolvig and Marcia Rose, who were TCMC's itinerant meditation teachers, filibustered the board of TCMC to have me removed from office because of two articles that I had published in my newsletter.  The first was on the importance for a contemplative to understand the Dark Night of the Soul, and the second was on the Emergence of Western Teachers of Buddhism.

While I was a member in good standing of TCMC I met several people there who had the clear indications of meditative absorption. There was a young Asian woman there who had kriyas when she meditated and she told me that she had OOBs. There was also a man there who had charismatic hearing, what the Buddha called “dibba-sota.” There were other people that I understood had charismatic phenomena or the attainment of meditative absorption. It is my understanding that none of them were validated or respected for their experiences, nor were any of the meditation teachers able to even understand their experiences.

The conclusion is TCMC, like many regional dharma centers, are run by very petty people. And, their dharma teachers are just as petty and really do not understand much about meditation and the dharma. People with the attainment of meditative absorption will not be taken care of there and will most probably be marginalized if not demonized by the leadership of TCMC and their itinerant meditation teachers.

May you dwell forever in the joyful home of the way (Di.t.thadhammasukhavihaaraa)

Jeffrey S. Brooks (Jhanananda)

the Great Western Vehicle

Sources:

The Experience of Meditation (July 23, 2004)

Maha-satipatthana Sutta (DN 22.21)

Southwest Insight E'letter, A monthly newsletter for contemplatives in the Southwestern USA

Dark Night of the Soul, by St. John of the Cross (1542-1591) translated by E. Allison Peers, Image Books, Garden City, New York, 3rd addition, 1959

Commitment as a Refuge, Dark Night of the Soul in Buddhism (January 1, 2003)

The Emergence of Western Teachers of Buddhism

The Suppression of Jhana at a Goenka Retreat (August, 2001)

Tucson Community Meditation Center (TCMC) oppressing people for the attainment of meditative absorption

Evidence of Shinzen Young oppressing people for the attainment of meditative absorption

The Boycotting of Jhana by IMS and Spirit Rock revealed in Correspondence with Marcia Rose, Guiding Teacher, Taos Mtn. Sangha & The Mtn. Hermitage, (February, 2003)

The Boycotting of Jhana by IMS and Spirit Rock revealed in Correspondence with Eric Kolvig, an Insight Meditation Society teacher, (07/2005)

Jhanasamyutta, SN 34, (Bodhi, Bhikkhu trans., Samyutta Nikaya Wisdom, 2000)

Bibliography:

The Great Western Vehicle Archive of Gnosis, Jhana, Samadhi, Kundalini, Ecstatic Meditation (Jhana/Samadhi) and Ecstatic Buddhism

What is Ecstatic Buddhism? (September 19, 2004)

What is Jh‡na? Jh‡na as defined in the Buddha's Discourses (October 13, 2005)

The characteristic manifestations of absorption, Jhana-Nimitta (October 1, 2004)

The Fruits (Phala) of the Contemplative Life (September 13, 2004)

The Language of Gnosis (October 15, 04)

A Proposed Unified Theory for the Experience of Gnosis

A Chart of the various stages of absorption, Samadhi Chart

The GWV master directory of translations of the TIPITAKA, The Earliest Buddhist Canon of Literature

Jhanasamyutta, SN 34

(Bodhi, Bhikkhu trans., Samyutta Nikaya Wisdom, 2000)

Anapanasati Sutta (MN 118) Mindfulness of the breath

Kayagata-sati Sutta, MN 119 "Mindfulness of the Body"

Satipatthana Sutta (MN 10) the Four Paths of Mindfulness

Samaññaphala Sutta (DN 2) "The Discourse on the Fruits of the Contemplative Life"

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Translation by Jhanananda

The Interior Castle, St. Teresa of Avila, translation and introduction by Mirabai Star. Riverhead Books, Published by the Berkley Publishing Group a division of Penguin Group USA Inc. 375 Hudson Street, New York NY 10014, 2003

Jhana Support Group, A dialog support group for ecstatic contemplatives in a Buddhist context

The Demonizing of Ecstatic Meditation (Jhana)

Exposing translator bias in the translation of the Pali Canon and other Asian literature (updated 11-10-04)

The Witch-hunt Continues, The Oppression of the Ecstatic Contemplative

The Suppression of Jhana by the "Sangha" (July, 7, 2005)

The Boycotting of a GWV Jhana Retreat at Bell Springs Hermitage by the monks of Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery (14 Apr 2004)

The Cha'an, Son and Zen Concept of Makyo the "ghost" or "devil's cave"

Correspondence with Sudhamma 04-19-04, revealing the lack of jhana among the orthodoxy

Correspondence with Sudhamma 8 Jun 2004, revealing the resistance to jhana and the ability to oppress those ideas by the Theravadan Orthodoxy

The suppression of Jhana by European Vajrayana teachers revealed in Correspondence with Ingmar Pema Dechen 6/3/03

Correspondence with Mark Vetanen Jan 22, 2004, revealing the negative Zen attitude toward jhana as "bliss ninny"

Correspondence with Bhikkhu Samahita 04-04, revealing the attempt to subvert jhana in the non-canonical belief in "supramundane" verses "mundane" jhana by the orthodoxy

Herman Hofman on the poor treatment of ecstatic meditators on Yahoo Groups, 10 Apr 2004

The dirty little secret of Asian Buddhism by Mark Vetanen, 25 Apr 2004

Correspondence with Mark Vetanen 27 Apr 2004, revealing the oppression of a Western interpretation of the Dhamma by the Zen Orthodoxy

The orthodox views of some Theravadan monks revealed in Correspondence with Richard Estes (aka Bhikkhu Dhammarato) in the guise of Phramaha Somsak 7/21/05

Correspondence with Bhikkhu Sujato revealing the conflict over jhana within the Theravadan Orthodoxy Wed, 27 Jul 2005

Long term meditator but no hint of Jhanna! And anti Jhanna philosophy of some Buddhist schools. By Stephen Hendry, 29 Jul 2005

Original Buddhism And Brahminic Interference by Dr. K. Jamanadas

Jnanavira, Dharmachari. Homosexuality in the Japanese Buddhist Tradition. Western Buddhist Review, Volume 3. Journal of the Western Buddhist Order, 12 Oct, 2005 revealing pedophilia and misogyny in Japanese Buddhism.

SCANDAL HAUNTS TEMPLE MURDERS, A textbook example of the warping effect that $10 billion of China White heroin had upon major media, law enforcement, and judicial processes in Arizona. B.Q. 4-20-96 by Brian Downing Quig, also reveals ties between organized crime and the Buddhist orthodoxy of Asia

More information on Goenka's cult-like activities within VRI

A view into the Goenka cult by a long-term member

---