Fallout from an initially trivial event amongst C-list celebrities in UK has brought to public light the set of abusive practices now known as “gaslighting”. This is very useful enlanguaging. There’s a clearly expressed article about it here:
[www.independent.co.uk]

“Ten years ago I’d never heard the term “gaslighting”. But I realised something wasn’t right when I began to believe the person telling me that my mind was betraying me. I hadn’t just been lied to, I’d systematically and consciously been manipulated into questioning my own cognisance, driven into a spiral of self-loathing and constant anxiety by the belief that my perceptions were irrational and wrong.“

“Gaslighting … is breaking down a person’s trust in their own mind – something so damaging it can take years to recover from. It’s a daily form of coercive manipulation designed to make someone so vulnerable and confused that they rely more on their abuser than on themselves. It exists in the same sphere of controlling behaviour as isolating someone from friends and family, making them entirely reliant on their [abuser]. A common form of gaslighting exists in the chillingly common abuser’s refrain: ‘You can’t leave me – no one will ever love you like I love you’.”

Gaslighting is Peter Young’s primary method at Pathgate.

What’s truly shocking is that Peter Young very openly forces people to question their own cognisance in this destructive way. He claims it is the only method that breaks down the “non-enlightened mind”, and thus open the enlightened mind. His victims believe this, decimating their own lives as a result.

The straightforward proof that this claim is a lie is: Peter Young uses fear and violence. Only someone who knows they are in the wrong, and seeks manipulative power over another, uses fear and violence. There is no need for fear and violence. That is the big lie. Objectively, in observable fact, across the world, throughout all recorded history, and today, in every field, fear and violence closes people off, shuts them down and reduces their capacity for development.

Someone who is working from good intent, and seeks another person’s liberation, uses positive reinforcement. This is scientifically true, psychologically true, pedagogically true, and spiritually true. The Buddha also constantly told his followers to listen to their own minds, and to very beware of those fakers who taught anything else.

To help anyone who still fears Peter Yeung, I thought it might be helpful to give more insight into Peter Yeung’s fundamental emotional and psychological weakness.

I hope this shows why he should be pitied, not feared. And also why he should be avoided.

Peter Yeung himself recounted the story that one of his teachers told him, over 25 years ago, to forgive his father. His response was to proudly declaim: “My father was never there, so there’s nothing to forgive!”

With that profoundly ignorant dismissal, he inevitably descended into playing out the role of the shadow-father: bullying, violent, aggressive, obsessed with status and being worshipped, helplessly drawn towards power for the sake of power, uncaring of the hurt he inflicts on others, and despicably cruel to those who place their trust in him.

Peter Yeung treats his students like fools, because he knows within himself that he is just a damaged child. Peter Yeung knows that anyone who seeks to learn from a damaged child must be a fool.

This is why Peter Yeung cannot stand any criticism, however constructive, however honest, however positive, and however much good it will do him.

Any hint of anything less than total worship drives him insane with rage, because to him, all he feels in that moment is his father’s (perceived) rejection of him.

I once saw him get into a literally insane cycle of denial, becoming more and more aggressive at every turn, when a very loyal (totally brainwashed) student was trying to very politely and gently tell him that there was a typo in a document. This student kept pointing out the typo because in her brainwashed state, she couldn’t conceive that Peter Yeung was more interested in being worshiped than seeing the truth of this tiny, insignificant error. He finally overwhelmed the student with his aggression, and she fell silent, entirely confused.

Peter Yeung was literally unable to even accept the presence of a typo, as it hinted he was not perfect. He didn’t think about this – he immediately reacted with violence, and locked into that, as his damaged child was frozen in agony inside himself.

Peter Yeung cannot stop himself from denigrating his students, both in class, and to anyone around him. I witnessed a Tulku gently reproach him for being so mean to his students, to which Peter Yeung reacted angrily (which is very bad behaviour towards a Tulku), and then went into an unstoppable rant about how worthless his students were. Peter Yeung went as far as to say that his students might give the impression of not being entirely worthless, but to trust him on this, as he knew his students better than anyone. The Tulku fell silent.

Peter Yeung is entirely blind to the fact that any teacher who feels that he must constantly denigrate his own students, because he genuinely believes them to be incompetent morons despite years of “learning at his feet”, is, by definition, a bad teacher. That this shows him to clearly be a bad Buddhist, and a bad human being, also doesn’t ever occur to him.

Peter Yeung is to be pitied, for he is entirely driven by the damaged child within himself that still cries out for his father’s love and approval. He experiences no satisfaction and no love. None of his students love him, they all fear him. Peter Yeung feels that fear is the best he can possibly hope for from anyone, because he cannot experience love, because that damaged child within himself feels eternally rejected, and is eternally in fear of further rejection.

Peter Yeung only ever feared his father, because his father was always absent, and so Peter Yeung always felt rejected or the threat of rejection. In taking on the role of a father figure to his students, Peter Yeung has no experience of love to draw on.

Peter Yeung is tortured by the fear of the damaged child that the reason his father was absent was because his father did not love him.

Penor Rinpoche consistently refused to allow Peter Yeung to show off his martial arts or other skills to him, despite Peter Yeung doing everything he could to get the chance to. I heard Peter Yeung say that he’d been trying for years to get the opportunity to do so, and failed every time. Peter Yeung complained bitterly about this, and could not understand why Penor Rinpoche showed zero interest in Peter Yeung’s “powers” – to the point where Penor Rinpoche would ‘accidently’ miss appointments during which Peter Yeung planned to show-off in front of him.

Peter Yeung is a huge disappointment to his teachers, his students, and himself. And, deep down, he knows it. This is why he has become more and more erratic, desperate and despotic over the years. He is locked in a self-destructive cycle by the damaged child he clings onto inside himself. He drags everyone around him into that destructive cycle, because he cannot face the essential emotional truth of his life and come to peace with it.

The only dangerous thing about Peter Yeung is that he believes the big lie he has told himself: that if he attains enough power over others (by any means he can) his daddy might finally love him. This is why he constantly lies to everyone around him, and even to Penor Rinpoche, as witnessed by another commentator in the other thread about Peter Yeung on this forum.

No matter what one thinks of Penor Rinpoche, to anyone who knows something about Tibetan Buddhism, and Tibetan culture, to be called a liar, in public, by the person who one calls his root guru is perhaps the most shameful thing that can possibly happen. It really is very clear evidence of who Peter Yeung is.

The Chinese community in Newcastle, who Peter Yeung has tried to engage with and impress many times over the years, refuse to have anything to do with him. The Tai Chi Union of Great Britain refuse to have anything to do with him. From the little information I have, the Tibetan Buddhist community, including Palyul, Nyingma and Namdroling Monastery, refuse to have anything to do with him now that Penor Rinpoche is gone. Every institution (like Newcastle University) or group who hired out spaces for Peter Yeung to teach in over the years, more or less quickly refused to continue to rent him their space.

All the students I saw over the years who had some talent and intelligence, got as far away as possible from him, as quickly as possible, after they’d spent some time with him. Everyone of any value, from every walk of life, refuses to have anything to do with him.

The only students who remain are brainwashed, obsessed with obtaining power themselves, or in such fear that they dare not leave. These are the people who surround him. Peter Yeung is very clever, and cannot fail to see and understand this. Peter Yeung is however, entirely blind to the reason for it. He has told himself that it is because he is such an advanced being that no one understands him.

Peter Yeung therefore lives out a life of constant rejection by anyone who could give him a sense of self-worth. He relives again and again the fundamental rejection-trauma he experienced through the absence of his father when he was a child (and throughout the rest of his life). This is his own personal hell, that he creates everyday for himself.

The last 15 or so years he has built a new persona based on his supposed “perfect” understanding of Buddhism… yet he even gets 4 Noble Truths totally wrong. The 4 Noble Truths are the most basic and easy to understand introductory level of Buddhist thought. A child can understand them. Peter Yeung gets them totally wrong because he has interpreted them to feed his lust for power.

Peter Yeung claims to be a Vajrayana expert (as well as Hinyana and Mahayana expert, of course) … and yet is still ridiculing his own senior student, in public. The senior student has been with him for more than 20 years. Peter Yeung is so blind to his own shortcomings that he cannot see that if his senior student “deserves” this ridicule as part of “Vajrayana advanced practice”, then it is Peter Yeung who is at fault, who is incompetent.

Peter Yeung is no different to Donald Trump – reduced to puffing himself up with blatant lies backed up by the most puerile bullying of those around him… and totally unaware that anyone with half a brain recognises him clearly, and with ample data-driven evidence, as a total fool and incompetent. Like Donald Trump, Peter Yeung is dangerous, and to be avoided, but at the same time pitied for being a sham of a man.

This is the truth of it.