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Newsletter Nr. 721
Amsterdam, June 30th, 2018


IS SHAMBHALA A CULT? - Part 3: Like Father Like Son? - ELLIOT BENJAMIN

So what do I now think about Shambhala? It is of course deeply disturbing to me to learn about the Shambhala guru Mipham's extensive sexual abuse with many of his women students over a number of years. My immediate reaction was that this very much resembled the outward behavior of his father Trungpa, which stimulated for me the title of this essay: Like Father Like Son? But on further thought, there are also some important differences between them in their behaviors. From all accounts that I have heard or read about, it appears that Trungpa, though an extreme alcoholic and “sexaholic,” engaged in essentially caring and authentic relationships with his women sexual partners, both in bed and out of bed.

On the contrary, from the above reports from the women who were sexually abused by Mipham, Mipham was not at all caring to these women, and on the contrary he was fixated on them performing sexual acts on him, and moved them to a distance, or rejected them, once he was sober. This goes along with what I had already started to learn about Mipham, which was that he was not a particularly caring person. Apparently Mipham, like his father Trungpa, would quite often get drunk, though not nearly to the extent of Trungpa's addiction to alcohol, and this is when the sexual abuse would occur. And it also seems that with the exception of the sexual abuse described in the last story, that perhaps can be construed as an isolated extramarital brief occurrence, though one that Mipham could conceivably do serious jail time for if his victim decides to prosecute him for the crime of rape, Mipham did not continue his sexual abuse once he was married (though this remains to be seen as more evidence is brought to the light by Project Sunshine).

Read more:
http://www.integralworld.net/benjamin94.html