From Jamui to Delhi, the burden of safety from sexual assault cannot fall on women as reflected on by Sensei Michael Jinpa
Sitting on the porch of the Clear Mind Zen Sanctuary, I often watch young artists. They walk along the waterfront path of Harborview Point. Some move with an unspoken ease in the harbor breeze. Others carry a guarded vigilance. When I read dispatches from Delhi and Bihar, my heart aches. Another wave of brutal sexual violence has led authorities to restrict women’s movements. They lock public parks and push college lectures behind closed digital screens. This familiar sorrow reflects a societal pattern. Society always contracts the victim’s freedom. It avoids examining the poison driving the perpetrator. Indeed, the **burden of safety** should never fall solely on those targeted.
Shifting the Burden of Safety: A Spiritual Injury
Writers describe the exhausting mental arithmetic women perform daily. They constantly calculate risk. They scrutinize their own clothing. Furthermore, they map safe routes and brace for violation. In contemplative practice, we talk about mindfulness. Mindfulness is an open, spacious attention. It allows life to unfold without delusion. However, fear forces a human being into hyper-vigilance. That sacred awareness is stolen. Survival instinct replaces it. This causes a profound spiritual injury. An entire class of people must live in perpetual defensive contraction. This happens simply because others cannot govern their impulses. We must challenge this injustice.
The Zen tradition examines three poisons. These cloud the human heart: greed, hatred, and delusion. Sexual violence and the entitlement behind it manifest severe delusion. They also show deep grasping. It means refusing to see another person as a sovereign being. Instead, it reduces them to an object for domination or gratification. Yet institutional power habitually avoids confronting this delusion. Societies consistently ask women to become invisible. They ask them to stay home and shrink their lives. This happens instead of holding men accountable to basic moral discipline.
Cultivating Collective Responsibility and True Sanctuary
Placing the burden of safety onto those targeted by violence is an abdication of collective responsibility. This distorts karma. It acts as though harm originates in the person who went outside. It ignores the mind and actions of the person committing violence. When a college closes its physical doors, it does not solve harm. When authorities shutter parks, they do not manage violence. They quarantine the innocent. They leave the roots of violence untouched in the dark. We must look deeper for solutions.
My years as a hospice chaplain taught me much. I sat with many people reviewing their lives. In those final thresholds, authenticity matters most. Treating the vulnerable with dignity and care also matters. No one finds peace looking back on a life governed by coercion or cowardice. Peace comes from awakening to our deep interdependence. We must recognize that degrading one person’s safety diminishes everyone’s humanity. Therefore, we must act collectively.
Activists in India call for a shift. They want to move focus from controlling women to confronting men’s conduct. This is a fundamental call to moral clarity. True spiritual practice does not bypass worldly injustice. It does not counsel passive endurance. The Buddhist precept against causing harm demands direct action. We must look directly at where harm begins. We must insist on transformation at the source. This means teaching young boys and men. Strength is measured by restraint, mutual respect, and courage. They must dismantle toxic entitlement. Only then can we build a just society.
Men must look into their own minds. They must confront predatory conditioning. They must dismantle the culture protecting complicity. Until then, our collective home remains fractured. Twilight settles over Harborview Point. The salt air reminds us that the open path belongs to all beings. It belongs to all without fear. Real sanctuary cannot be manufactured by locking doors against targets. It is built. It grows by cultivating a community where everyone can walk into the evening freely, unburdened and safe.
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