Holding Power Wisely: Ethics, Boundaries, and Care in Buddhist Teaching Relationships

This workshop addresses a gap many Zen centers don't talk about openly: the relational and ethical terrain that opens when you're teaching. It's not about theory. The focus is applied—how power actually moves in a teacher-student dyad, where boundaries erode without anyone noticing, what transference looks like in practice, and how to hold authority responsibly.

Great Vow Zen Monastery, based in rural Oregon, has long engaged seriously with institutional accountability and sangha governance. This retreat reflects that commitment. Rather than treating ethics as a separate domain, it locates them in the lived texture of teaching relationships: the vulnerability that comes with being relied upon, the subtle ways a student's projection can become a teacher's blind spot, the difference between appropriate intimacy and boundary violation.

The two-day format is intensive and peer-focused. You'll work with other teachers and senior practitioners navigating similar terrain—comparing notes on difficult situations, examining your own patterns, and building concrete tools for ethical clarity. This is the kind of work that happens best in person, in conversation, not through lectures.