Is Enlightenment Compatible With Sex Scandals?

Prompted by meditation teacher Culadasa's (whose book Scott reviewed) cheating accusations, and the broader pattern of enlightened Buddhist teachers' sex scandals (three of the four great American Zen founders; Trungpa, Sogyal, etc.), Scott asks what enlightenment actually does. If these accomplished, sometimes officially-'certified-enlightened' teachers cheat freely, maybe enlightenment doesn't free you from desire or make you moral — maybe a minimalist account where it rewires some suffering/selfhood processing but not decisions. He floats an experienced practitioner's theory that meditation 'dissolves social conditioning,' after which the Inner Light of Compassion is supposed to shine through but sometimes just goes AWOL, leaving you valueless — fine in a monastery, dangerous in the world. Connects it to Algernon's Law (why is our default consciousness so well-protected?) and the LSD/relaxed-priors/entropy framing (do these failure modes reveal what strong priors are for?).

Quality 68 · Strong. A short, thoughtful treatment of the enlightenment-sex-scandal puzzle, with a genuinely interesting 'dissolves social conditioning, but the compassion doesn't always fill the gap' theory and the Algernon's-Law / relaxed-priors framing. Strong-low; brief and speculative.

Claude’s paradigm shift 52 · Moderate. Reframes a known puzzle with a fresh 'enlightenment as conditioning-dissolution / entropy' lens; modest but real novelty. Moderate.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. A within-discourse essay on meditation/consciousness; no material-world effect. Within-blog influence.