the board finally speaks

I finally received a response to my letter to Robert Conrad, Secretary of the board of directors of Unfettered Mind.  You can read his response here.

Mr. Conrad’s email arrived after I posted my last blog post in which I noted that I had received no response from him for 10 days.  As you can read for yourselves in my letter to him, I had clearly stated my allegation and also clearly indicated where Ms. Siebert had dealt inappropriately with me and the other grievant.  I specifically documented false statements she had made to others about me and the situation, and made very specific requests in an attempt to have Unfettered Mind redress her errors.

In his email Mr. Conrad does not retract any of the false claims made by Stephanie Siebert or address the ethical matter of her conflict of interest in handling my allegation.  In fact, he ignores all that completely.  Instead, after informing me that he has reviewed “some of the correspondence” between me and Ken (provided exclusively by Ken and submitted without either consulting me or requesting copies of other correspondence in my possession), he proceeds to make false and unsubstantiated judgements about me and the relationship I had with Ken, this time adding disparaging and false remarks about my marriage to my ex-husband.

Finally, Mr. Conrad informs me that Unfettered Mind’s grievance procedure is for handling “abuses of power” and asserts that, just as in the therapist-client relationship "an abuse of power can occur... from a client as well".  This is another totally inaccurate statement. I am surprised that Mr. Conrad does not know that a therapist is in a fiduciary relationship where the onus of power lies clearly with the therapist as the person whom the client implicitly trusts to dispense wisdom, skill and guidance.  This unilateral power is clearly reflected in all professional counselors’ codes of ethics.

I am not sure what to make of Mr. Conrad’s email.  Is he dealing with me as a grievant or as an adversary?  Is he acting as a neutral party or as Ken McLeod’s advocate and defense attorney?  Moreover, his remark about abuses of power by clients leads me to wonder if allegations have been lodged against me that I am not aware of.  Am I being investigated by the board of directors for an abuse of power?  Perhaps Mr. Conrad would like to clarify that as well as his own role in the grievance process.  What did he hope to accomplish in his communication with me?  It seems to me that he ignores everything I have said while assuring me that he is “not ignoring me”.

The root of grievance is grief.  One would expect a Buddhist organization to respond to a grievance without prejudice and with an open and compassionate heart not with a closed and defensive one that demands evidence and witnesses before a grievant even speaks.

I regret that I see no reason to pursue private communication with Mr. Conrad or any member of the board until these issues have been clarified.  As long as Unfettered Mind’s grievance procedure has been set up as an adversarial process culminating in a judgment by ADR services, I see no constructive purpose in submitting my grievance to them.

I do continue to welcome the board of Unfettered Mind’s participation in this public forum and I do hope that they will change their adversarial attitude but, until their procedure reflects a more restorative approach to imbalances within their organization, I will be telling and documenting my story here where I am free to talk and where all are free to read and respond to me.

last call

Obstacles in your path should not be regarded as obstacles. They are simply features of the landscape which have to be negotiated. 

~Ken McLeod

I am at a crossroads.

After finally getting a complete list of board members names and emails, I was able to send a letter to Robert Conrad, secretary of the board of directors of Unfettered Mind (who also happens to be an attorney).  The letter was copied to all members of the board.  You can read it here.

In the letter I provided documented evidence of my allegations and of several false claims made about me by Stephanie Siebert, President of the board.  I also indicated her conflict of interest in handling my allegations and explained why I refused to deal with her.  Finally, I reiterated my willingness to participate in a grievance procedure, but with a respectable neutral third party.   

Ten days have passed and I have still had no response to my letter from anyone on the board.

A few days ago, I followed up with an email sent to Ken McLeod, executive director of Unfettered Mind, in which I reviewed my frustrations around trying to get the board to receive my allegations with a proper grievance procedure.  I told him I felt thwarted by his organization as well as dumbfounded by the total lack of response by any member of the board to my last letter, not even to acknowledge receipt of it.  

To date there have been seven months of unbroken silence.

I do not understand this.  I do not understand why, if “there  is no enemy”, I am being ignored by Mr. McLeod and his organization.  What is the meaning of this unyielding silence?  

I told Mr. McLeod that, if he and the board continue to ignore me, I will simply publish my story.  You can read my email here. 

Now this morning I heard from someone unconnected to Unfettered Mind that there has been a grievance procedure posted on the main Unfettered Mind site.  I am not sure how students who need it are expected to find it.  I certainly was not made aware of it by anyone from Unfettered Mind.  

You can read their procedure here. [update August 26, 2014: the page I am referring to has been taken down from the UM website since the publication of this post, so I am providing a link to screenshots of the original page]

It’s a start.  I notice an attempt at neutrality but also an absence of any stated commitment to the principle of compassion which is a central tenet of Buddhism as well as a central part of the grievance policies of other reputable Buddhist organizations (see, for example, the statement provided by Spirit Rock’s Ethics and Reconciliation Council).

 

Also, to my surprise, as a neutral outside party for mediation Unfettered Mind has chosen to use retired judges as their arbiters provided by ADR Services.  I am not convinced of the wisdom of that choice.  I consulted ADR’s areas of expertise and did not see Buddhist Organizations listed among them.  Rather, their expertise seems to be in routine civil matters such as rights, family law and real estate.  (You can consult the full list of their specialties here).  Nonetheless, I have written to ADR Services to inquire about their experience with Buddhist organizations and about their knowledge of the particular issues that arise within the student-teacher relationship in these organizations.  

In searching “grievance” on the main Unfettered Mind site, I found three links.  One of them opens to a talk on the four immeasurables where Ken makes an important distinction between a retributive approach to grievances and a genuinely compassionate one.  A compassionate approach relates to suffering and is characterized by openness and a concern with redressing the imbalances that cause people to keep hurting.  It is a response that it is committed to addressing injury, promoting healing and serving what is true as opposed to serving one's personal agenda.

Here is an excerpt worth reading:

Justice is the social expression of compassion. Because you have all of these different things, competing things. You know, this person’s hurt, this person’s been injured, etc., etc. So how do you relate to the suffering? And you relate to the suffering. Because suffering has always arisen out of an imbalance. And what you are seeking to do in justice is redress, redress the injury or address the imbalance. You follow?

Now this has become very contorted in our society, mainly because the original form of justice, which sought the re-balancing between the two partners—two partners, not partners, but the perpetrator and the injured party—tried to address that. And what they would do is they would bring their grievance to the king who was meant to be wise and things like that, and he would say, “Okay, then you pay this kind of restitution, or you do this—x, y and z,” and that takes care of it. So it was addressing the imbalance being created by the crime or the illegal action, or what have you. And that’s what was meant by the king’s law. Okay?

But as time went on, the state became the mechanism which mediated between the parties. But then the state had its own agenda in maintaining its system of laws. So it started to protect its system of law and the idea of actually balancing, re-balancing that relationship between the victim and the perpetrator has gotten lost... addressing the imbalances. That’s compassion ... people felt healed...

And you notice that the word that we use in connection with justice is service. And that is the expression of compassion. In compassion, you become a servant. Or you serve the situation. You don’t seek to impose your will. But you serve. You serve what is true. That’s the expression of compassion. You don’t try to control it according to your own agendas.

I hope to hear from the board soon.
Patricia

a path outside established institutions

Thanks again to everyone for reading the blog, and for the comments and questions received both publicly and privately.  They have been very helpful.

 It’s been a long week and this is going to be a long post…

First, I would like to report that nobody from Unfettered Mind has come forward in response to my invitation to discuss the issue of a grievance policy, except the mysterious Jen Shiang who, in a comment on my Open Letter, claims to have inside information about how allegations have been handled by the board of directors.  This is disappointing, as I had hoped that someone representing the organization would have been willing to clarify the board’s official position. 

That said, last week Stephanie Siebert (President of Unfettered Mind) did send out a letter to explain how she and the board of directors have dealt with me and the allegations I have referred to in this forum.  The letter was not sent to me directly but was forwarded by Jeff Tipp out of his concern for transparency.  (Incidentally, Jeff is slated to host the next conversation on the Unfettered Mind ning site Demystifying the Nature of Mind.)  I am grateful for Jeff’s openness and honesty.  By including me in the exchange, he gave me the opportunity to respond to Ms. Siebert.

Second, since some of you already know that I am in fact one of the students making allegations, I would like to clarify why I have chosen not to publish my story at this time.  An Open Letter was written as a public appeal for a grievance procedure within Unfettered Mind.  To that end, the details of anyone’s allegations, including my own, are irrelevant and I would like to keep the two issues clearly separate.  Although I would like to speak freely about my own experience, in the absence of a procedure to contain that process, I have chosen not to out of consideration for everyone involved.  If Unfettered Mind definitively refuses to adopt such a procedure, I might reconsider my position.  

Third, I have decided to share my exchange with Ms. Siebert and my thoughts about it (you can consult her original email here and my reply here.  The only information I have edited out are the names of other people mentioned). 

As you can read for yourselves, Ms. Siebert denies that any allegations have been made to date, denies that there even was a relationship between me and my former teacher, and justifies the board’s dismissal of my allegations on the basis of having reviewed evidence provided exclusively by one side.  She justifies this unilateral process based on what she describes as my “refusal to cooperate”. 

What Ms. Siebert knows but does not disclose is that: 1) last year I did submit a written allegation to her, as did one other student, 2) as his close friend and confidante, she both had previous knowledge of my relationship to my former teacher and was mentioned in our correspondence in that regard, 3) I did not supply her with more written information because she did not honour my repeated request both to know the names of those to whom she would submit this information and to know Unfettered Mind’s grievance policy and/or procedure.

Ms. Siebert makes no mention of my own requests or my reasons for them but treats my allegations as mere “innuendo”.  Moreover, she accuses me of “playing cat and mouse” and of “want[ing] to know the inner workings” of a 501c3 non-profit organization.

Finally, and on a more positive note, An Olive Branch informed us that Ken McLeod recently acknowledged receipt of some examples of grievance policies sent to him along with an invitation to contact them or the Faith Trust Institute.  Mr. McLeod has said that he is carefully considering the policies.  We were very happy to hear that and are hopeful that he might also consider the following:

Unfettered Mind is a non-traditional approach to Buddhist practice whose mission is to provide environments of awareness "for those whose path lies outside of established institutions”.  This conveys an apparent willingness to challenge the patterns entrenched in the institutional structures of a more traditional Buddhist organization.  But it is not the structures that are themselves the fetters.  It is the rigidity of thinking that can accompany them.  The presence of constraints cannot disable awareness any more than freedom can disable patterns of thought and behavior.  Only both together, in the paradoxical marriage of freedom and constraint, can enable us to overcome the mind’s enslavement to its own patterns.

While the presence of a formal grievance policy cannot replace awareness in any person or organization, its absence may allow the repetition of harmful patterns to continue unchecked and unchallenged.  

With thanks for your generous attention,

Patricia