Recently I learned of an old aquaintance who has been invited to "teach" in the Toronto home of a young person I also know.

The history of this man goes like this: in a city in the US during the 1980's this man and his female partner set up a group house to begin teaching Buddha Dharma. Fair enough.

When I arrived in the same city, and met with the founders who had the same root guru as I do, I recognized something was amiss. Needless to say, since my instincts were operating, I did not fall under the sway,but participated sometimes and sometimes stayed away making my own way in life.

A dominant member of the student group who lived in that house, a woman you might have thought was the main clog in the wheels for her dedication and devotion to this couple, sometimes gave me serious talk about the error of my ways, but I persisted, being true to myself while partaking of some of the activities available, when they appealed to me and when time allowed.

Years later in the early 1990's, in another city in another country I was in retreat with a teacher (also a student of my root guru) a woman whom I respect and admire for, among other traits, her unstinting conscious relationship to her own integrity.

Imagine my surprise when she invited me to tea with the woman who had been the main force behind the couple in the foreign city! I believed we would have tea and catch up on chat and that would be that.

The woman instead handed me a letter and an apology. She apologized for having taken me to task, for having given me "serious talk " about the error of my ways. She deeply needed my forgiveness.

The letter was even more of a shock: in it, she revealed what had been really going on that house. The male 'teacher' used his position to insist all female students have sex with him. He dictated that this woman and her younger sister go out into the world and find other women "friends" to bring back for this man's sexual appetite!

Far from being a teacher he was a sexual predator in Tibetan robes.

This is the same "teacher" who has been invited to "teach" in the home of this young female person I know.

I emailed her. She responded. Her response indicates so many of the problems of our times: she admitted to having had difficult sexual experiences when younger, although with no one from what she called the "Dharma" Community. She went on to say that she is in effect choosing to focus on the 'teaching" and not the "teacher" or his previous actions. She then descibed in highly articulate language her position vis a vis open-heartedness, flexibility and what she called
"genuine integrity." These last three she cited as qualities necessary for living in complicated times.

Now the ethical problems presented here are numerous: the young host of the predator clearly has not come out of her own denial and emotional trauma from her own past. Her desire to sweep "past it" and get to something she is calling the Dharma, sets up a false separation between Dharma teaching and ethics.

For example, how is it possible at the same moment to live with what she is calling "genuine integrity" and entertain, without speaking about the past, this "teacher"? How is it possible to believe this teacher has something to teach, without addressing what is the most important part of his personal history?

The fact that the man hid behind the robes of a Tibetan monk while procuring women for his own sexual pleasure, speaks volumns of his attitude toward Tibetan Buddhism.

The question here is not one of never letting the man, who may have something to say, to teach again. The question instead is to light up the very difficulty, present him with it, and ask him to teach about that. What, in other words, has he learned from these experiences?

In this way, through open dialogue all the women in the room are made safe, he is allowed to air what must be a conflict in his being, and all can proceed.

The irony in all this? He teachers ethics!