The arc of a crisis: in the aftermath of sexual abuse in Shambhala Buddhism

Abstract

How does a sexual abuse crisis unfold and what is the collateral damage to a religious community in its aftermath? In this essay, I present the arc of a crisis as it took place in the Shambhala Buddhist community over the five years following the Buddhist Project Sunshine reports in 2018, including allegations against its spiritual leader Sakyong Mipham. These revelations had a shattering effect on the community and led to his eventual separation from the Shambhala organization. As an auto-ethnography, this is an experimental piece of writing arising out of an uneasy collision of identities as a scholar, practitioner, and survivor. Though a mosaic of vignettes narrated in the first-person feminist voice, I depict a range of community responses and chart the fragmentation and divergent trajectories of a community in crisis.