The Seattle Insight EAR Council acts as a third party (outside the teaching team and Board) to address concerns within the sangha. The purpose of the EAR Council is twofold: (1) to directly hear and address any ethical concerns around teachers’ behavior, and (2) to provide a healthy way to work with conflicts and grievances that arise within the sangha. The Council is available to anyone within the larger Seattle Insight community requesting help. The EAR Council intends to foster an environment of responsibility and integrity, and to treat all parties involved with fairness, compassion, and respect.
To foster and ensure the safety of the teacher/student relationship, Seattle Insight Guiding Teachers, Assistant Teachers, and Local Dharma Leaders have all agreed to follow the Teacher Code of Ethics, which comprises five training precepts. These precepts have an expanded scope, making them explicitly appropriate to the role of teachers and leaders at Seattle Insight. The EAR Council’s primary role is to provide confidential consultation to anyone with ethical concerns according to the Informal Resolution guidelines below. In the rare occasion that a more formal process is necessary, the Formal Grievance Process may be used.
Conflicts will inevitably arise within the Seattle Insight community. The health of our community is not measured by the presence or absence of conflict, but instead by our willingness to find effective, responsible, and compassionate resolution of interpersonal tensions when they arise. The intention to attend to and learn from conflict is a clear application of Buddhist practice in our daily lives. Without this intention, practice can become simply a comfort rather than a deep transformative vehicle for our lives.
Anyone in the sangha may approach anyone on the EAR Council for consultation. The EAR Council may be contacted by email at EAR@seattleinsight.org, or by personally contacting any one of the Council members.
Someone from the EAR Council will listen to the concerns carefully and will discuss possible directions or courses of action depending on the situation. The EAR Council representative and the sangha person may choose to prepare a written summary, including any agreed next steps, to be provided to the full EAR Council. Once the EAR Council is notified about a concern, it will determine how it can best be of service to the parties concerned and, if appropriate, the sangha as a whole, including whether the informal resolution process or a formal grievance process is appropriate. In most cases, the informal process should be used. In determining how to respond, the EAR Council will consider whether the concern directly or indirectly affects the health of the Seattle Insight community.
To avoid compromising its role as an impartial friend to all community members, the EAR Council will not be involved in deciding individual disputes but will set up an impartial Grievance Committee, as necessary, to facilitate resolution of the issue. In addition, to avoid any conflict of interest, any member of the EAR Council, a person asked to serve on a Grievance Committee, member of the Seattle Insight Board, or other person involved in informal consultations or a formal grievance process, who feels that he or she cannot be objective and impartial for any reason should excuse him or herself from the process.
An important function of the EAR Council is to encourage an intention of mutual respect and reconciliation when conflict arises in our community. In this role, the EAR Council will seek to be of service to the parties concerned and, if appropriate, the sangha as a whole. For most issues that do not involve a serious transgression of ethical concern, the EAR Council will use an informal process to resolve the concerns. In this process, the EAR Council may function as follows:
In addition, the EAR Council may sometimes recommend and arrange for the involvement of neutral third parties, such as a mediator or a teacher from outside the Seattle Insight sangha.
A request for a formal grievance process may be made by any person at any time by submitting to the EAR Council a written request that includes:
Examples of ethical concerns for which the Formal Grievance process may be appropriate include any one of the following:
The EAR Council will decide whether or not to accept a sangha member’s request or, instead, to address the matter under the Informal Resolution procedures. If the EAR Council determines that the Formal Grievance process is appropriate, it will notify all affected parties and set up an impartial Grievance Committee to hear the concern(s). Please contact the EAR Council for the full formal procedures at EAR@seattleinsight.org.
Karen has taught college courses in conflict resolution, women’s studies, non-violent communication, and child and human development. She was actively involved in development of an anti-bias curriculum and courses in social and political contexts of human development and ethics. Karen also was the Academic Dean for 10 years. Becoming a lawyer in 1985, Karen worked in the Juvenile Courts in Los Angeles for 15 years. During her years as an attorney, she was trained in community conflict resolution and participated in many forms of mediation. Karen also participated in the founding of several non-profit corporations, and served on their boards.
Karen found her way to Seattle Insight at Keystone Church in 2001. She and her partner, Niki, have been regular members ever since. Niki is a child and family therapist. They live in the U-District with various cats and sometimes enjoy visits from their son and granddaughters. They regularly attend the Bioneers Conference and are passionate about the preservation of the earth and social justice.
Temira (they/them) began practicing meditation in 2013 at the urging of a therapist. Two years later, they worked up the courage to join the Pacific Hermitage Sangha in White Salmon, Washington. It wasn’t long before they fell head over heels for the Dhamma and began sitting retreats. In the middle of the pandemic, Temira sat a retreat with Tim Geil and met the Seattle Insight community. They saw something unique, gentle, kind, and ardent in the members of this sangha, and felt an immediate sense of welcome and connection.
Temira brings a background in mediation and counseling to the EAR Council. They were trained in mediation and restorative justice in the early 2010s and completed a Master’s in Counseling in marriage and family therapy in 2018. Prior to this, they worked various service industry and manual labor jobs. They currently work on a mobile crisis response team that covers three rural counties in the Columbia River Gorge. Temira is passionate about fighting for equity and social justice for those holding marginalized identities. They brings that lens and a sense of cultural humility into their work with clients.
Temira believes that spiritual practices are fundamental to our ability to live a fulfilling life. They recognize that spiritual abuse can profoundly affect one’s sense of safety and one’s ability to self-actualize. They also recognize that micro-abuses and micro-aggressions can also impact a person’s spiritual safety. Temira is committed to holding a safe space for people to talk about these experiences and resolve them so Seattle Insight remains a welcoming and supportive place for people of all identities.
Miles stumbled onto the Dhamma path and quickly found his way to Seattle Insight back in 2007. He has been an active and grateful member of the sangha ever since. He served on the Seattle Insight board from 2011 until June 2016. In his professional life, he’s a lawyer. His practice focuses on litigation and dispute resolution. He is trained in facilitative, interest-based mediation and served for many years as a volunteer mediator with the Snohomish and King County Dispute Resolution Centers. This mediation model is focused on acknowledging and drawing out the often unspoken needs and interests that underlie a dispute, rather than the positions that drive it. It is inspiring to be a part of a process that empowers people to discover their own solutions rather than having them imposed by someone else.
He is also a volunteer at the University of Washington Medical Center, providing companionship and a listening presence to patients referred to the palliative care team, and with Harborview Medical Center’s No One Dies Alone Program. Before that, he was a hospice care volunteer. What he values most about hospice and palliative-care work is not knowing—or even being expected to know—the answers. Instead, he feels privileged to be one of the few people on the hospital staff whose only role is to be present and connect with another person.
Ken began practicing with Seattle Insight in 2011, a year after his wife Ewa joined the sangha. Originally from New England, he came to Seattle in 1998 for graduate study at the University of Washington, where he is now staff, working in engineering faculty development. He enjoys cooking, cheering on Seattle Reign FC, and all things bicycle-related.
