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I WAS A TANTRIC SEX SLAVE FOR A SENIOR TIBETAN BUDDHIST MONK
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Used with permission from this site:
[link to www.trimondi.de]
With her book, Traveller in Space: In Search of Female Identity in Tibetan Buddhism, the Scottish philosopher of religion, June Campbell, opened the floodgates for an honest and sound debate about Tantric Buddhism. She worked as a translator for Tibetan lamas, including Kalu Rinpoche, whose "secret sexual consort" she became. Here we reproduce an article about her from the Independent.
The Independent - 10. February 1999 - Paul Vallely
I was a Tantric sex slave
For years June Campbell was the`consort`of a senior Tibetan Buddhist monk. She was threatened with death if she broke her vow of secrecy. But then enlightenment can be like that.
Feet of clay? No, it was a different part of the anatomy - and of all too fleshly substance - which caused the trouble. But, I suppose, you don`t expect Tantric sex to be a straightforward activity. Then again, sex of any kind isn`t really what you`re planning when you become a celibate nun.
It was, said June Campbell as she began her lecture, only the second time she had been asked to give a talk to a Buddhist group in this country since her book. Traveller in Space came out three years ago. Small wonder. The topic of her talk was "Dissent in Spiritual Communities", and you don`t get much more potent types of dissent than hers. For she not only revealed that she had for years been the secret sexual consort of one of the most holy monks in Tibetan Buddhism - the tulku (re-incarnated lama), Kalu Rinpoche. She also insisted that the abuse of power at the heart of the relationship exposed a flaw at the very heart of Tibetan Buddhism.
This was heresy , indeed. To outsiders, the Rinpoche was one of the most revered yogi-lamas in exile outside Tibet. As abbot of his own monastery, he had taken vows of celibacy and was celebrated for having spent 14 years in solitary retreat. Among his students were the highest ranking lamas in Tibet. "His own status, was unquestioned in the Tibetan community", said Ms. Campbell, "and his holiness attested to by all".
The inner circles of the world of Tibetan Buddhism - for all ist spread in fashionable circles in the West - is a closed and tight one. Her claims, though made in a restrained way in the context of a deeply academic book subtitled - "In Search of Female Identity in Tibetan Buddhism" - provoked what she described as a primitive outpouring of rage and fury. "I was reviled as a liar or a demon", she said during a public lecture last week at the nonsectarian College for Buddhist Studies in Sharpham, Devon. "In that world he was a saintly figure. It was like claiming that Mother Teresa was involved in making porn movies".
But it was not fear of the response which made her wait a full 18 years before publishing her revelations in a volume entitled Traveller in Space - a translation of dakini, the rather poetic Tibetan word for a woman used by a lama for sex. It took her that long to get over the trauma of the experience. "I spent 11 years without talking about it and then, when I had decided to write about it, another seven years researching. I wanted to weave together my personal experience with a more theoretical understanding of the role of women in Tibetan society to help me make sense of what had happened to me."
What happened was that , having become a Buddhist in her native Scotland in the hippie Sixties, she travelled to India where she became a nun. She spent 10 years in a Tibetan monastery and penetrated more deeply than any other Westerner into the faith`s esoteric hierarchy. Eventually she became personal translator to the guru as, during the Seventies, he travelled through Europe and America. It was after that, she said, that "he requested that I become his sexual consort and take part in secret activities with him".
Only one other person knew of the relationship - a second monk - with whom she took part in what she described as a polyandrous Tibetanstyle relationship. "It was some years before I realised that the extent to which I had been taken advantage of constituted a kind of abuse".
more at above link
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