Tag: guru misconduct

The Structure of Tantric Abuse

mim

In Tibetan tantric Buddhism, the relationship between guru and disciple is said to be sacred, a channel for transmission of enlightenment itself. Yet within that same structure lies a potential for absolute domination. When a guru feels threatened, betrayed, or exposed, the same system that demands devotion can become an instrument of terror.

The tantric logic of punishment

In tantric doctrine, every vow (samaya) between guru and disciple is a metaphysical bond. Breaking it is said to unleash cosmic consequences. Ancient texts speak of wrathful deities and oath-bound protectors who punish those who “slander the guru” or “harm the Dharma.” The idea is not metaphorical. Illness, accidents, or misfortune are interpreted as visible proof that unseen forces are enforcing spiritual law.¹

A guru who believes this, and who claims mastery of the dark ritual practices that command those forces, often teaches others to believe it. That teacher wields enormous psychological power. To label someone a “samaya-breaker” is to mark them as deserving of sickness or death. This is not an internal accusation only; it shapes the views of the community where the guru holds god-like power. It gives the guru a pretext to use ritual methods to harm students whenever he deems it necessary.

Entities that cause disease

Traditional Tibetan cosmology offers a detailed taxonomy of spirits believed to cause physical and mental harm: bdud (demons), gdon (malevolent spirits), btsan (fiery mountain gods), klu (serpent beings of water), and srin po (ogres).² Each category is said to afflict a different organ, emotion, or realm of life. Texts such as René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz’s Oracles and Demons of Tibet describe elaborate systems of offerings and threats designed to control these beings.

Within this worldview, ritual specialists do not invent malevolent forces but redirect them. A demon bound by oath can be petitioned to punish a perceived oath-breaker. Protector deities can be asked to “remove obstacles” by striking enemies with disease or madness. These ideas are deeply embedded in tantric liturgy and methodology, even if modern dharma centers prefer to describe them symbolically.

The internal logic of coercion

When this metaphysical framework meets the authoritarian structure of a retreat or monastic hierarchy, the result can be catastrophic.³ Gurus can claim divine justification for acts that would otherwise be seen as abusive. If a disciple questions orders, refuses sexual advances, or tries to leave, the teacher can declare them in spiritual violation. From that point on, any misfortune that follows can be attributed to supernatural punishment rather than the guru’s actions.

Real world allegations

The potential for that logic to cross into criminal abuse is not theoretical. Scholar and translator Adele Tomlin has published a series of testimonies from women who participated in long-term tantric retreats under the auspices of major Tibetan Buddhist organizations in the United Kingdom and Nepal. According to Tomlin’s report, complaints were submitted to trustees of the dharma centers, as well as to resident teachers. Police reports were also made, with at least one woman reportedly informed that criminal acts had occurred.

The list of complaints is substantial: “…sexual harassment, sexual assault/coercion, ‘false imprisonment’ i.e. refusing to allow people to leave the retreat for urgent matters, such as medical diagnosis and treatment or due to psychological breakdowns, emotional bullying, insistence on signing non-disclosure legal agreements, refusal to provide proper aid to those in physical pain or serious sickness. It was reported that women who had requested to leave the retreat for the above reasons were responded to with threats that they would go to hell…and telling them they would have short lives, terrible sicknesses and their family members would die and get sick too.” There are also accounts of tantric rituals being misused “to ‘force’ consorts to engage in ‘subtle body energy’ unions without appropriate consent/devotion or even pre-requisite qualifications of the guru or consort for such a relation,” and reports that participants’ passports were confiscated before entering retreats in Nepal.”³ See Tomlin’s article here.

The psychology of fear

Once a disciple internalizes the idea that disobedience invites divine punishment, ordinary safeguards such as the law, conscience, and community protection lose their power. The guru becomes both the source of danger and the only possible protection from it. Fear of sickness, insanity, or karmic ruin may keep followers silent even when they experience or witness abuse. This is coercive control disguised as spirituality.

Why tantra is uniquely risky

Every hierarchical religion can produce abuse, but tantric systems amplify the risk because they contain dark magical rituals that can be used to secretly harm students who do not show proper obedience. In the Tibetan tantric system, the guru is not just a teacher but the embodiment of enlightenment itself. Vows are said to bind across lifetimes. Breaking them is imagined to destroy spiritual progress and unleash demonic retribution. That belief gives abusive teachers a supernatural mandate to harm and a theological excuse when they do.⁴

Many practitioners are drawn to long-term retreats by tantra’s promise of transformation. But are the risks worth it? Without structural accountability, the same tools can become weapons. When secrecy, charisma, and ritual authority converge, even devoted, sincere, and intelligent students can be trapped in a reality of pain and punishment.

For those who have lived inside such systems, the scars run deeper than physical or sexual trauma. The damage is also ontological: the haunting sense that unseen forces will stalk them forever and that they are cursed beyond escape. Healing begins by reclaiming moral and spiritual agency, by recognizing that no guru, spirit, or protector holds dominion over one’s body, mind, or fate. Yet once that agency has been surrendered to powerful gurus and their invisible minions, recovering it can be very difficult.

Notes

  1. Stanley Mumford, Himalayan Dialogue: Tibetan Lamas and Gurung Shamans in Nepal (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989).
  2. René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Oracles and Demons of Tibet (The Hague: Mouton, 1956).
  3. Adele Tomlin sole author of Dakini Translations website: NOT SO “HOLY ISLE”? TRAGIC TALES OF REPORTED (AND ENABLED) BULLYING AND SEXUAL MISCONDUCT TOWARDS WOMEN AT SAMYE LING UK BUDDHIST CENTRES THAT ENDED IN PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL HARM, ATTEMPTED SUICIDES AND MURDER. Article excerpted with attribution.
  4. Geoffrey Samuel, Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993).

The Moral Logic of Ritual Killing in the Wrathful Practices of Tibetan Buddhism

mim

This piece follows up on my previous essay, “Tantric Deception: Black Magic and Power in Tibetan Buddhism,” which explored Solomon FitzHerbert’s study of tantric statecraft and the normalization of ritual violence in seventeenth-century Tibet. In this post, I turn to an even more revealing feature of FitzHerbert’s findings: the Fifth Dalai Lama’s own moral reasoning about ritual killing.

In his autobiography, the Fifth Dalai Lama confronts the criticism that tantric rituals of destruction should not be directed “against ordinary people.” His response is stunning in its candor: “We do not need to be ashamed of this,” he writes, “as it is taught in the Tantras.”¹ He goes further, citing the eight kinds of spirits who “fiercely execute the punishment” on behalf of the enlightened adept.²

Here the Great Fifth is not apologizing for violence; he is codifying it. FitzHerbert explains that the Dalai Lama invokes a moral category known as the ten fields of liberation (sgrol ba’i zhing bcu), a rubric for identifying the kinds of people whose killing can be ritually justified in tantric Buddhism.³ These include those who “cause harm to the Buddhist religion,” “bring dishonour to the Three Jewels,” “endanger the life of the guru,” “slander the Mahāyāna,” “sow discord among the vajra community,” “prevent others from attaining siddhi,” or “pervert views concerning karma and its retribution.”⁴

In other words, violence against the enemies of the dharma was not merely tolerated; it was systematized. The moral categories of Buddhist tantra aligned precisely with the ideological boundaries of religious loyalty. To kill an “enemy of the faith” was to enact liberation through wrathful compassion, a punitive act performed in the name of spiritual duty. In this context, the term liberation does not refer to enlightenment but serves as tantric code for killing.

The crucial question, then, is this: who decides who counts as an enemy of the dharma? It is the guru, a figure endowed with godlike authority, who makes that determination and authorizes the strike, much as a mafia boss sanctions a hit within his own organization.

Such ideas did not remain abstract. As FitzHerbert shows elsewhere, the Dalai Lama’s government ritualized the deployment of these doctrines in warfare and political suppression.⁵ What we see in these passages is the theological backbone of that policy: a cosmological logic that made violence both righteous and karmically justified.

When the “Fields of Liberation” Become Personal

The ethical implications of this doctrine extend far beyond the seventeenth century. Its structure, dividing the world between defenders and destroyers of the dharma, still echoes in the tantric imagination today. Within closed guru/disciple networks, where authority is absolute and ritual power is personalized, this logic can turn inwards toward vulnerable disciples.

When a teacher is accused of abuse–sexual, financial, or psychological–some may interpret criticism of that teacher as slander of the Mahāyāna or harm to the guru, two of the very offenses listed in the ten fields of liberation. Under this view, the accuser becomes a threat to the vajra community itself. The rhetoric of “vajra hell,” karmic downfall, or spiritual ruin can be mobilized as a form of punishment.

Even when no public or obvious ritual of destruction is performed, the doctrinal framework legitimizing wrathful retribution remains intact and the teacher may privately extract revenge. A teacher who sees himself as an accomplished tantric adept may claim to act from “enlightened wrath.” Certainly he convinces himself that is the case. He may claim his retribution is not from malice but from a compassion that destroys obscurations and seeks to protect his community from dissenters. In this way, spiritual authority can blur into coercion, and the old metaphysics of tantric punishment can be redeployed against dissenting students.

Thus, the problem is not simply historical. It lies in a theological grammar that still allows destructive acts to be reframed as enlightened means. When criticism is recast as “slander of the dharma,” and when the guru’s person is identified with the deity itself, retaliation can be justified as upholding the sacred order.

Facing the Doctrine Honestly

When Western seekers encounter Tibetan Buddhism, we are often presented with an image of serene compassion, untainted by coercion or cruelty. Yet the Fifth Dalai Lama himself dismantles that illusion. He writes without hesitation that violent tantric rites are legitimate instruments of enlightened rule. The “theatre state” of seventeenth-century Tibet was the political expression of doctrines like the ten fields of liberation.

If the tradition is to be understood honestly, these passages should be part of an open and very public conversation. The Fifth Dalai Lama’s own words make clear that within tantric ethics, destruction is allowed, and killing can be framed as an act of perverted compassion. The challenge for modern practitioners and scholars alike is to recognize how this same moral architecture can exist whenever authority claims transcendence from accountability.

Footnotes

  1. Solomon G. FitzHerbert, “The Fifth Dalai Lama and the Tantric Politics of State Formation in Seventeenth-Century Tibet,” Arts Asiatiques 27 (2018): 88.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Ibid., 89.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Ibid., 74–83.