I think it’s worth noting that the writer here has never been to MAPLE and never talked to Soryu Forall. I think the author is really only qualified to give First hand opinions on the training and leadership at OAK.
As the OP points out Soryu asserts that he has an organizational structure that makes him responsible for what happens in his organization. Are you arguing that Soryu is not a guru in the sense he describes in his talk and thus does not carry the responsibilities he describes?
I haven’t watched the video, but the way that responsibility works is that if you have the ability to respond to a situation to change the outcome, then you have response-ability. So yes, Soryu does have responsibility for this situation, as does every other person involved in the situation.
If what Soryu is talking about in the video is blame, not responsibility, then sure he could set up an organizational structure where he takes all the blame. In some sense, he has done this (hence him getting blamed here despite never having met), but if so I don’t have to buy into that structure. Blame is a moral and social claim and others don’t get to dictate my morals or social choices.
I think in terms of the actual dynamics of how to ensure that the situation doesn’t happen again and that there is restorative justice, putting the blame all on him isn’t the best way to get changes made. I think he should take a significant proportion of the blame as leader of the CEDAR organization, but that there were many people more directly involved that should also take much of the blame.
I think it’s quite problematic to see responsibility not about upholding promises that one makes and responsibility being about social roles one has.
If I throw a party, then I have a special responsibility that the room is warm enough as the host that my guests don’t have even when everyone can turn the thermostat.
Soryu is actually talking about responsibility in the video. He claims that a guru-lead organization is ethically superior to a joint-stock corporation because that while in a joint-stock corporation nobody is really responsible for what the organization does in a guru-lead organization responsibility is clear.
By his own standards, he’s more responsible for what happens here than the CEO of a major corporation is when something problematic happens in that organization.
Responsibility is about neither it’s about counterfactual causality. Accountability on the other hand is about promises and maybe that’s what we’re talking about here?
If I look at the dictionary, one of the meanings of responsibility is:
a duty to deal with or take care of somebody/something, so that you may be blamed if something goes wrong
In the video there the claim that in contrast to a CEO who’s power is limited and thus does not have a duty to solve all ethical misdeeds of his organization a guru has more power and more duty to deal with significant ethical problems in his organization and is supposed to be blamed if things go wrong.
Yeah, I think that a leader who has more power should probably be assigned more blame (as stated above), but not sole blame, unless there’s some sort of bizarre structure where they have absolute power.
You are right, others also need to be accountable for their actions and participation. I do think, that there is a dynamic at the MA in which Soryu has a lot of power over people in the space in ways that are unique to this kind of group that needs to be accounted for and that Soryu and the board need to be accountable for maintaining a program design that is known to cause serious harm. I suspect that if everyone involved in causing harm or in acting unethically to cover harm up in this organization were held accountable there wouldn’t be any or there would be very few core leaders left. Nearly everyone has been complicit, and there is a lot of deep learning and healing needed between many community members.
I personally think it is extremely problematic for people to be given positions of greater responsibility in a role without behaving responsibly or being accountable for their impact. Hence the dozens of people that exist whose lives have been very fucked up as a result of engaging with Soryu. Many of whom do know him personally and whom know him better then you do and who spent much longer working and training with Soryu then you have. Some for over 5 years. Some who helped start the organization and have since seen many people leave broken and traumatized as a result of Soryu’s abuse and irresponsibility. As founder and head teacher Soryu is responsible and should be held accountable for many things within the organization but specifically for his actions and the actions he has instructed his students to carry out thereby abusing his position of influence and power as a spiritual teacher.
It’s funny to me that you can even talk about responsibility or anything else this organization supposedly stands for. Yet you don’t seem to think Soryu is responsible for literally instructing his students to coverup an incident sexual assault by an executive director, and telling that director that he doesn’t not have a choice except to participate, get rid of the woman he is in love with, and resume a position of power. Yes that man should also be held accountable for his choices as well as others who participated—but that does not mean Soryu should be given a free pass on the harm he personally caused in my life (it doesn’t matter if I met him) through his actions and his decisions. Which were then carried out by his students. Either he is brainwashing and indoctrinating people or everyone in the organization also has questionable ethics and morals. Which one is it? You have a real point though that he is not the only responsible party here—in fact the other three main responsible parties in this situation in my sexual assault and in covering it up have all gone out of their way to block any communication with me so that might tell you a thing or two about the how responsible and compassionate they have become as a result of being a part of MAPLE.
Lastly, I know for a fact from speaking to many other women about what they experienced that these sorts of things have happened multiple times. This is far from the first situation where Soryu has been involved in covering up sexual harassment and sexual abuse most of which has happened at MAPLE when incidents were reported directly to him—he has followed the same patterns and script almost to a T to suppress, silence, and deny issues of sexual misconduct. I have zero doubts in my mind that if Soryu continues to be a teacher without radically becoming a different person which I don’t think he is capable of as many people have attempted to address issues directly with Soryu over the last decade—that more people will be harmed in many different ways including more incidents of sexual harassment and abuse bring mishandled. But maybe you are one of those followers who seem to believe that it is ok for him to harm others because he is doing “good”, because the risks are justifiable, or because you personally get to benefit from it.
No real or legitimate restorative justice will be possible without Soryu also being held responsible and accountabile for his actions; and stepping down from teaching and the board of directors while a third party investigation happens. If you truly cared for the suffering that I and so many other past students have endured you would be asking for the same thing and asking for real responsibility, accountability, growth, increased awareness, compassion for suffering, and integrity in the organization you support and are a party of instead of attempting to defend the organization’s irrepressible behavior in online forum. The reality is you don’t know the stories I do, you don’t know the history of this organization as indicated by your incorrect reference to OAK being less then a year old on your comment on Medium which has since been updated, and you are not seeing these issues clearly.
I clearly stated that I see Soryu as responsible as he could have counterfacrually caused something else to happen. Of course, everyone else in that situation is also responsible.
Accountability and responsibility are two separate things of course, both useful concepts.
At this point though this conversation isn’t feeling truth seeking or mutually respectful/loving to me so I’ll quite likely stop responding in this thread.
Worth noting that I reached out directly to Soryu by email at the time of the events and that I requested conversations with Soryu multiple times in 2021 prior to any public acknowledgment of these issues to discuss these issues and specifically his role in these incidents. Soryu had a direct role in instructing others on how to respond to and treat me in these events. These requests for conversation were entirely ignored and Soryu has not been willing to speak to me about any of these events in the year and a half since they happened. I still have not had a direct conversation with any member of MAPLES leadership since these events—which goes to show how “seriously” they are taking these issues.
I think it’s worth noting that the writer here has never been to MAPLE and never talked to Soryu Forall. I think the author is really only qualified to give First hand opinions on the training and leadership at OAK.
As the OP points out Soryu asserts that he has an organizational structure that makes him responsible for what happens in his organization. Are you arguing that Soryu is not a guru in the sense he describes in his talk and thus does not carry the responsibilities he describes?
I haven’t watched the video, but the way that responsibility works is that if you have the ability to respond to a situation to change the outcome, then you have response-ability. So yes, Soryu does have responsibility for this situation, as does every other person involved in the situation.
If what Soryu is talking about in the video is blame, not responsibility, then sure he could set up an organizational structure where he takes all the blame. In some sense, he has done this (hence him getting blamed here despite never having met), but if so I don’t have to buy into that structure. Blame is a moral and social claim and others don’t get to dictate my morals or social choices.
I think in terms of the actual dynamics of how to ensure that the situation doesn’t happen again and that there is restorative justice, putting the blame all on him isn’t the best way to get changes made. I think he should take a significant proportion of the blame as leader of the CEDAR organization, but that there were many people more directly involved that should also take much of the blame.
I think it’s quite problematic to see responsibility not about upholding promises that one makes and responsibility being about social roles one has.
If I throw a party, then I have a special responsibility that the room is warm enough as the host that my guests don’t have even when everyone can turn the thermostat.
Soryu is actually talking about responsibility in the video. He claims that a guru-lead organization is ethically superior to a joint-stock corporation because that while in a joint-stock corporation nobody is really responsible for what the organization does in a guru-lead organization responsibility is clear.
By his own standards, he’s more responsible for what happens here than the CEO of a major corporation is when something problematic happens in that organization.
Responsibility is about neither it’s about counterfactual causality. Accountability on the other hand is about promises and maybe that’s what we’re talking about here?
If I look at the dictionary, one of the meanings of responsibility is:
In the video there the claim that in contrast to a CEO who’s power is limited and thus does not have a duty to solve all ethical misdeeds of his organization a guru has more power and more duty to deal with significant ethical problems in his organization and is supposed to be blamed if things go wrong.
Yeah, I think that a leader who has more power should probably be assigned more blame (as stated above), but not sole blame, unless there’s some sort of bizarre structure where they have absolute power.
You are right, others also need to be accountable for their actions and participation. I do think, that there is a dynamic at the MA in which Soryu has a lot of power over people in the space in ways that are unique to this kind of group that needs to be accounted for and that Soryu and the board need to be accountable for maintaining a program design that is known to cause serious harm. I suspect that if everyone involved in causing harm or in acting unethically to cover harm up in this organization were held accountable there wouldn’t be any or there would be very few core leaders left. Nearly everyone has been complicit, and there is a lot of deep learning and healing needed between many community members.
Actually Matt you don’t seem to understand what the actual definition of what responsibility is.
Here are a few links:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/responsibility
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/responsibility#:~:text=1[uncountable%2C countable] a,responsibility for the European market.
https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/responsibility
I personally think it is extremely problematic for people to be given positions of greater responsibility in a role without behaving responsibly or being accountable for their impact. Hence the dozens of people that exist whose lives have been very fucked up as a result of engaging with Soryu. Many of whom do know him personally and whom know him better then you do and who spent much longer working and training with Soryu then you have. Some for over 5 years. Some who helped start the organization and have since seen many people leave broken and traumatized as a result of Soryu’s abuse and irresponsibility. As founder and head teacher Soryu is responsible and should be held accountable for many things within the organization but specifically for his actions and the actions he has instructed his students to carry out thereby abusing his position of influence and power as a spiritual teacher.
It’s funny to me that you can even talk about responsibility or anything else this organization supposedly stands for. Yet you don’t seem to think Soryu is responsible for literally instructing his students to coverup an incident sexual assault by an executive director, and telling that director that he doesn’t not have a choice except to participate, get rid of the woman he is in love with, and resume a position of power. Yes that man should also be held accountable for his choices as well as others who participated—but that does not mean Soryu should be given a free pass on the harm he personally caused in my life (it doesn’t matter if I met him) through his actions and his decisions. Which were then carried out by his students. Either he is brainwashing and indoctrinating people or everyone in the organization also has questionable ethics and morals. Which one is it? You have a real point though that he is not the only responsible party here—in fact the other three main responsible parties in this situation in my sexual assault and in covering it up have all gone out of their way to block any communication with me so that might tell you a thing or two about the how responsible and compassionate they have become as a result of being a part of MAPLE.
Lastly, I know for a fact from speaking to many other women about what they experienced that these sorts of things have happened multiple times. This is far from the first situation where Soryu has been involved in covering up sexual harassment and sexual abuse most of which has happened at MAPLE when incidents were reported directly to him—he has followed the same patterns and script almost to a T to suppress, silence, and deny issues of sexual misconduct. I have zero doubts in my mind that if Soryu continues to be a teacher without radically becoming a different person which I don’t think he is capable of as many people have attempted to address issues directly with Soryu over the last decade—that more people will be harmed in many different ways including more incidents of sexual harassment and abuse bring mishandled. But maybe you are one of those followers who seem to believe that it is ok for him to harm others because he is doing “good”, because the risks are justifiable, or because you personally get to benefit from it.
No real or legitimate restorative justice will be possible without Soryu also being held responsible and accountabile for his actions; and stepping down from teaching and the board of directors while a third party investigation happens. If you truly cared for the suffering that I and so many other past students have endured you would be asking for the same thing and asking for real responsibility, accountability, growth, increased awareness, compassion for suffering, and integrity in the organization you support and are a party of instead of attempting to defend the organization’s irrepressible behavior in online forum. The reality is you don’t know the stories I do, you don’t know the history of this organization as indicated by your incorrect reference to OAK being less then a year old on your comment on Medium which has since been updated, and you are not seeing these issues clearly.
It’s the state of being the person who caused something to happen, it’s a causal definition. E.g., Merriam Webster on this: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/responsibility
I clearly stated that I see Soryu as responsible as he could have counterfacrually caused something else to happen. Of course, everyone else in that situation is also responsible.
Accountability and responsibility are two separate things of course, both useful concepts.
At this point though this conversation isn’t feeling truth seeking or mutually respectful/loving to me so I’ll quite likely stop responding in this thread.
Worth noting that I reached out directly to Soryu by email at the time of the events and that I requested conversations with Soryu multiple times in 2021 prior to any public acknowledgment of these issues to discuss these issues and specifically his role in these incidents. Soryu had a direct role in instructing others on how to respond to and treat me in these events. These requests for conversation were entirely ignored and Soryu has not been willing to speak to me about any of these events in the year and a half since they happened. I still have not had a direct conversation with any member of MAPLES leadership since these events—which goes to show how “seriously” they are taking these issues.