As young Western seekers, we were told directly by the refuge lama, a highly accomplished yogi whose presence and meditative depth made his words seem authoritative, that we could be both Christian and Buddhist. He said there was no conflict, that a person could be both Christian and take refuge in Tibetan Buddhism. Only much later did I begin to see that the metaphysical claims of Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism do not sit comfortably together. When examined honestly they point in opposite directions. This article explores that truth and why the issue deserves more clarity than it usually receives.
The Christian indelible mark
Catholic teaching holds that baptism is not a symbolic rite. It confers a real spiritual character on the soul, a mark that is indelible and permanent.¹ The person baptized is said to belong to Christ in a definitive way. Even if one later rejects Christian belief, the character imprinted by baptism remains. This teaching forms a central claim about spiritual identity. Baptism is a covenant, a seal, and a bond that cannot be undone by human action. Some theologians and exorcists describe it as a spiritual allegiance that shapes the destiny of the person marked by it.²
Vows in Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism also understands vows as real phenomena rather than mental constructs. They are described as subtle forms that arise in the practitioner’s continuum and remain active as long as the vow is kept.
Refuge: The refuge vow is the foundation of the path. To take refuge is to entrust oneself entirely to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. This commitment is said to exist as a subtle form until broken.³
Bodhisattva vow: This vow stabilizes the intention to attain enlightenment for all beings. It is also considered to have ontological presence, shaping the practitioner’s moral and spiritual life.⁴
Tantric vows: Tantric samaya binds the practitioner to the guru, the deity, and the mandala. Tibetan commentaries treat samaya as a form that abides in the subtle body. Maintaining it is essential for any tantric practice to function. Breaking it has extremely dire consequences.⁵ Tantric vows require a view of reality that rejects any creator God and understands the deity as a manifestation of awakened mind.⁶
The awareness of the deities
What makes this tension even more striking is the role of the tantric deities. In traditional Tibetan understanding these deities are not abstract ideas. They are regarded as fully aware and responsive.⁶ When a practitioner takes refuge or samaya, the commitment is made not only in the presence of a human teacher but in the presence of the deity invoked.⁷
This means that even if a lama sincerely believes there is no conflict with Christianity, the deity knows exactly what commitments the practitioner brings into the mandala. The deity is aware of conflicting allegiances. If baptism marks a person as belonging to Christ, the tantric deity would encounter that mark as a pre-existing and incompatible bond.
When my refuge lama told us that being Christian was no problem, I accepted his assurance. He was revered, a man of immense yogic accomplishment. Yet the actual teachings of the system he represented do not support his statement. Neither do the Christian teachings. Christianity requires allegiance to the Most High God and sees baptism as a permanent seal of belonging.⁸ Thus, the two religious systems do not fit together. They are not partial overlaps but mutually exclusive covenants.
The question of whether one can be both Christian and a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner is not merely philosophical. It concerns real commitments that each tradition claims have unseen but powerful form. To treat these vows and sacraments lightly is to misunderstand them. To treat them seriously is to recognize that both paths make exclusive claims on the identity and destiny of the practitioner. Honesty requires admitting that they cannot be combined without dissolving the integrity of one or the other.
Sources
¹ Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed., §§1272–1274. ² Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q. 63, aa. 1–6. ³ Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Taye, The Treasury of Knowledge, Book Six. ⁴ Je Tsongkhapa, The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, Vol. 1. ⁵ Khenpo Ngawang Pelzang, A Guide to the Words of My Perfect Teacher. ⁶ Patrul Rinpoche, The Words of My Perfect Teacher. ⁷ Dalai Lama and Alexander Berzin, The Gelug/Kagyu Tradition of Mahamudra, chapters on tantric initiation. ⁸ Benedict XVI, Address to the Roman Curia, 22 December 2006, section on baptismal identity.
In Tibetan tantric Buddhism, the image of the snake trapped in a bamboo tube is more than a vivid proverb. It functions as a doctrinal warning: once a student enters the tantric path, there is no lateral escape. One either goes upward toward awakening or downward toward failure and “vajra hell.” Teachers have used this image to describe the uncompromising nature of samaya, the vows that bind a student to the guru, the deity, and the tantric methods themselves.¹
What is striking is how explicitly the tradition frames tantra as irreversible and high-stakes, and how rarely that stark truth is communicated to Western beginners before they agree to the vows that supposedly make the tube snap shut behind them. This mismatch between traditional warning and Western presentation is not a minor detail; it shapes the entire experience of Vajrayāna in modern contexts.
When the Warning Arrives Too Late
Many longtime practitioners have reported that the “snake in the tube” metaphor is introduced only after they have taken empowerments, established loyalty to the teacher, and accepted vows they did not fully understand. In one account, students were told after receiving advanced teachings that they were now like snakes [in a tube] with no side exit, and that questioning or leaving the guru’s authority carried dire karmic consequences.² Once framed in these terms, the student is no longer encountering tantra freely. The imagery becomes a retrospective justification for total commitment and an interpretive trap that discourages reevaluation, dissent or disengagement.
This sequencing matters. Warnings given after the student is already inside the tube are not warnings at all; they function as a mechanism of control. Sadly, it’s not just empty scaremongering to get the student to do whatever the teacher wants. The teacher can play a part in destroying the student if he wishes.
Western students, however, often enter tantra without the cultural framework that understands concepts like vajra–hell, and as a result frequently interpret them metaphorically or ignore them altogether during empowerments or teachings. As a result, the gravity of samaya is often hidden in plain sight. Students may assume that vows are symbolic or aspirational when, within the tradition, they are treated as binding conditions that determine spiritual destiny.
The asymmetry of information here is profound. Tibetan teachers know the stakes, but Western students usually do not.
Fear as a Reinforcing Mechanism
Inside the tantric system, samaya is often discussed as a bond of trust and devotion. But its shadow side is rarely addressed openly: the way threats of karmic ruin can be used to enforce silence and obedience. If leaving the guru, criticizing harmful behavior, or even doubting the teacher’s purity is framed as a breach of samaya, then fear becomes central to the student’s experience. Some Tibetan masters teach that both teacher and student can fall into vajra-hell for damaging the guru-disciple bond.³ In practice, however, this warning is most often directed at students, who are told that speaking publicly about misconduct or abuse may destroy their spiritual future.
Why the Snake Matters
The “snake in the bamboo tube” metaphor distills these concerns with unusual clarity. It shows that tantra is not designed to allow experimentation or partial commitment. It requires total participation in a closed system with its own rules, hierarchies, and cosmology. In cultures where this system has historically been embedded, those entering it do so in fuller awareness of the stakes. In the West, students often do not and they may hear such warnings in a highly suggestible state, without really grasping the implications.
One famous guru in the 1980s bluntly told students that they could be both Christian and Buddhist with no conflict whatsoever. This blatantly goes against Christian teaching. In those days Westerners were often thrust into the three-year-retreat program shortly after they signed up for teachings at Dharma centers with no knowledge of what they were really getting into. Many had little preparation to truly understand the arcane nature of samaya and its risks. Furthermore, many Tibetan teachers took advantage of their roles as authority figures to manipulate vulnerable students into sexual relationships and other sorts of commitments. Engaging in secretive sexual relationships with students while pressuring them to take highest yoga tantra vows and practices that would bind them forever often led to deep confusion and psychological unmooring.
The result is a form of spiritual engagement that looks consensual on the surface but lacks true informed consent. Students may be drawn in by promises of transformation but only later discover the rigidity of the commitments they have made. This is especially jarring given that Vajrayāna wraps together the renunciation of the Hinayāna, the boundless compassion of the Mahāyāna, and the esoteric demands of tantra. In this unwieldy fusion, the same tradition that teaches gentle observation of thoughts can also insist that a single critical thought toward one’s guru carries the weight of karmic catastrophe. The threat of vajra-hell sits uneasily beside Buddhism’s wider emphasis on compassion and non-judgment. An ethical issue looms large: a path that describes itself as having no side exit should not be offered as if it does.
To treat tantra’s danger as a secret or secondary detail is to undermine the integrity of the path itself. If practitioners are indeed snakes in a tube, they deserve to be told before they go inside.
Footnotes
¹ “Once you take samaya you become like a snake in a vertical bamboo tube: you’re either going up, or you’re going down. You can’t sneak out the side.” (Kun zang.org) (kunzang.org) ² Note: practitioner-reports and forum posts indicate the metaphor is often applied post-initiation. For example: “A Vajrayana practitioner is like a snake in a tube; … he can either go up or down, not left or right.” (dharmawheel.net) ³ “The metaphor for samaya is a snake in a bamboo tube. It has only 2 directions – up to enlightenment or down to the hells.” (TibetDharma.com) (Tibetan Buddhism)
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
Stanley Mumford, Himalayan Dialogue: Tibetan Lamas and Gurung Shamans in Nepal (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989).
René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Oracles and Demons of Tibet (The Hague: Mouton, 1956).
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.
The ideal of tantric union in Vajrayāna Buddhism is described as the merging of wisdom and compassion, form and emptiness, masculine and feminine. In classical Tibetan art this appears as the yab-yum image of male and female deities in embrace.¹ The symbolism points to inner union, yet within the secrecy and hierarchy of tantra this ideal can become distorted. When intimacy, devotion, and power mix, the result can be psychological or sexual harm rather than awakening.
Union beyond the physical
“Union” (las kyi phyag rgya, maithuna) does not always refer to sexual intercourse. Many lineages teach “mental” or “energetic” union, where teacher and student visualize merging through subtle-body channels or shared deity practice.² Scholar Holly Gayley has examined how such “secret consort” (gsang yum) relationships blur lines between spiritual transmission and sexual exploitation.³
Anecdotal reports from practitioners describe non-physical experiences of sexual arousal or even orgasm initiated by the guru, without consent or understanding. For those unprepared, these experiences can feel like psychic invasion and an intrusion into the mind-body field. The ethical question is whether such experiences can ever be consensual in the context of absolute guru devotion.
The mechanism of “mental union”
Tantric theory holds that through visualization, mantra, and subtle-body control, energies (prāṇa, rlung) can be directed between beings. A guru visualized as a deity may “enter” the disciple’s heart or crown chakra, merging mindstreams in blessing.⁴ In positive settings this symbolizes transmission of realization. Yet in cases of coercion the same mechanism becomes violation: the student’s energetic body is penetrated without consent.
Ritual texts sometimes describe the guru entering the disciple’s central channel (tsa uma) through gaze or mantra, symbolic of energetic or spiritual transmission.⁵ Within Hindu Tantra, similar accounts exist of masters manipulating the disciple’s kundalinī or chakras.⁶ These ideas frame the possibility of non-physical sexualized experiences as part of spiritual union. When combined with secrecy and unequal power, the result may feel like mental rape rather than initiation.
Power, secrecy, and consent
The Vajrayāna guru is regarded as embodiment of the awakened state itself.⁷ Devotion to such a figure can override ordinary ethical boundaries. In Western contexts, where students lack cultural preparation, the potential for abuse rises sharply. Alexander Berzin warns that Western practitioners often misunderstand the traditional checks on guru authority and therefore submit to unhealthy relationships.⁸
Secrecy deepens the problem. The samaya vow forbids disclosure of tantric practices, even to peers. Gayley observes that this secrecy “can be used to reinforce sexual violence and silence abuse.”³
Real-world allegations
At Kagyu Samye Ling monastery and its retreat centre on Holy Isle in Scotland, multiple allegations have surfaced over the past decade. Reports describe bullying and psychological pressure during advanced retreats. Recently it was reported that a British woman may have died by suicide after a four-month retreat there. While there is no public evidence of sexual misconduct toward her, other survivors have alleged earlier incidents of “energy access” by the same teacher. Allegations included the use of “subtle body rape/sexual energy invasion,” according to an article by Adele Tomlin on the Dakini Translations website.⁹
The under-discussed nature of subtle-body abuse
Such cases remain largely invisible because tantric language itself obscures boundaries between metaphor and reality. A teacher’s claim of “mind-union” or “blessing” can mask non-consensual psychic intrusion. Students are often told that doubt equals spiritual failure, and that refusal breaks samaya. Without transparent ethics, the very tools meant to free the mind become weapons of domination.
Moving forward
Ethical tantric practice requires explicit, informed consent at every level: physical, psychological, and energetic. Teachers must articulate clearly what practices entail, and students must retain the right to refuse and leave. The spiritual promise of union cannot excuse the violation of personal autonomy. However, this kind of transparency is unheard of. Proper review structures and support for survivors are practically non-existent in most Tibetan Buddhist centers. The allegations surrounding Samye Ling and Holy Isle highlight what scholars such as Gayley describe as tantra’s “shadow”: the ease with which power can transform spiritual intimacy into a form of manipulation and abuse.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion, “Tantra and the Tantric Traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism.” 2016.
Gayley, Holly. “Revisiting the ‘Secret Consort’ (gsang yum) in Tibetan Buddhism.” Religions 9 (2018).
Snellgrove, David. The Hevajra Tantra: A Critical Study. Oxford University Press, 1959.
Wedemeyer, Christian K. Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism: History, Semiology, and Transgression in the Indian Traditions of Buddhist Tantra. Columbia University Press, 2013, esp. chap. 3–4, on symbolic initiation and tantric ritual language.
White, David Gordon. Kiss of the Yoginī: “Tantric Sex” in its South Asian Contexts. University of Chicago Press, 2003.
“The Guru Question: The Crisis of Western Buddhism and Global Future.” Info-Buddhism.com.
Berzin, Alexander. Relating to a Spiritual Teacher: Building a Healthy Relationship. Snow Lion, 2000.
I am amazed that the PR for Tibetan Buddhism in the West managed for so long to conceal the extent of black magic practiced by lamas in Tibet historically and even to the present day. This concealment, aided and abetted by the squeamishness and obliviousness of some scholars, has to stop. In the dharma centers I was involved in, anything dark in Tibetan lore was relegated to the Bön religion, and the implication was that once Buddhism took hold in Tibet, any kind of evil acts such as harming or killing sentient beings was completely off the table. The truth is that black magic is in the lexicon of the highest lamas in the lineage as well as ngakpas and others. I believe these techniques are used liberally and current scholarship is finally exposing it.
Solomon G. FitzHerbert’s study of the mid-seventeenth century makes the core point plainly. I came across FitzHerbert’s article via a post on Adele Tomlin’s website www.dakinitranslations.com. He argues that tantric ritual and the rhetoric of ritual violence were central to how the Ganden Phodrang state established and legitimated power, not a peripheral curiosity. He writes that Tibetan sources “more than compensate” for the lack of hard military data with abundant materials about the “legitimation and maintenance of authority” through ritual technologies and narratives.¹
Before the rise of the Fifth Dalai Lama, Tibet’s Tsang rulers were already forging political alliances through tantric warfare. FitzHerbert shows that the Tsang kings deliberately patronized lamas famed for their mastery of wrathful and repelling rites. The most favored were the hierarchs of the Karma Kagyu, the “black hat” Karmapa and the “red hat” Zhamarpa, along with the Jonang scholar Taranatha, who was also enjoined to perform repelling rituals on behalf of his patrons.² Their alliances were explicitly religious and martial: an “ecumenical alliance in the name of defending religion and Tibet from foreign armies.”³
Among the Tsang rulers’ most celebrated ritual specialists was the Nyingma master Sokdokpa Lodrö Gyeltsen (1552–1624), self-styled “Repeller of Mongols.”⁴ A disciple of Zhikpo Lingpa, Sokdokpa was the main heir to the revealed cycle Twenty-Five Ways of Repelling Armies (Dmag zlog nyi shu rtsa lnga).⁵ His Mongol-repelling rites were widely famed, and he worked directly with the Tsang ruler Phuntsok Namgyel. One elaborate rite performed in 1605 to coincide with a Tsang military offensive involved producing “some 150,000 paper effigies of enemy soldiers.”⁶ These were ritually destroyed to annihilate the opposing force, with Bonpo specialists also enlisted for their expertise in magical harm.⁷
According to FitzHerbert, Phüntsok Namgyel successfully forged a broad anti-Geluk alliance using tantric technologies of protection and destruction.⁸ After his death, “reputedly at the hands of offensive magic being hurled at him by the Zhabsdrung Ngag dbang rnam rgyal (1594–1651), founder of the state of Bhutan,”⁹ his son Karma Tenkyong (1604–1642) inherited a weakened position. The Shabdrung’s tantric assault, still treated in Bhutanese and Tibetan sources as a historical fact, thus became the legendary moment when a ruler famed for weaponizing ritual power was himself undone by it. It is one of the rare episodes where the logic of esoteric warfare entered the realm of accepted political history.
This is where the Fifth Dalai Lama comes into focus. FitzHerbert shows that in the 17th century the Great Fifth cultivated and systematized an official repertoire of destructive and protective rites in service of government aims. In his words, the Dalai Lama showed a “lifelong concern with learning, authoring and instituting an armory of defensive and offensive rituals for the mobilization of unseen forces” for the state.¹⁰ That program contributed to the Ganden Phodrang’s reputation for “magical power,” and helped stage what FitzHerbert calls the grandest “theatre state” in Tibetan Buddhist history.¹¹
FitzHerbert details three overlapping strategies. First, the new government suppressed, marginalized, or co-opted rival traditions of war magic associated with other schools, including Karma Kagyu and strands within Nyingma, while appropriating selective cycles that could be redeployed under Geluk authority.¹² Second, it rebuilt Nyingma institutions such as Dorjé Drak and Mindröling under Ganden Phodrang patronage, folding their esoteric prestige into the state project.¹³ Third, it sponsored new state rituals based on the Dalai Lama’s own visionary experiences, further centralizing ritual power in Lhasa.¹⁴
The rhetoric was not merely devotional. Lamas and ritual specialists acted as “bodyguards” whose professional task was destructive magic on behalf of patrons.¹⁵ Chroniclers attributed battlefield outcomes to the rites of powerful tantrikas. FitzHerbert highlights Chökyi Drakpa, famed for the Yamantaka cycle known as the “Ultra-Repelling Fiery Razor,” which centered on rites of “protecting, repelling and killing.”¹⁶ In one report, after deploying these rites against a Tümed encampment, “nothing was left behind but a name.”¹⁷
To grasp how such violence could be framed as meritorious, FitzHerbert shows the tantric logic that recasts killing as an enlightened “action” when performed by an empowered adept. The adept receives empowerment, performs extensive propitiation to forge identification with the deity, and then “incite[s]” and “dispatch[es]” oath-bound spirits to defend the dharma. By manipulating the five elements and the “public non-reality” of appearances, the practitioner can pacify, increase, control, or destroy, including against human enemies.¹⁸ The moral frame is clear in the sources he cites and translates. Killing is made licit because it is tantric, ritually purified and redirected as enlightened activity.¹⁹
FitzHerbert also situates Tibetan practices within a longer Indo-Buddhist lineage of war magic. He surveys Indian materials that speak of sainyastambha or army-repelling rites, and notes that the Hevajra states that “black magic for paralyzing armies,” is part of its “manifold purpose” and that the Kālacakra includes descriptions of war machines and siege methods such as “catapults, traps, siege towers, and so on,” alongside esoteric harm and protection.²⁰ He further notes the use of human effigies and effigy destruction in offensive rites against enemies, a hallmark of Tibetan ritual repertoires that drew on wider South Asian and even Indo-European precedents.²¹
Western idealization of Tibetan Buddhism has depended on ignoring this record. The lamas who administered and celebrated these rites were not outliers. They were the architects of a political order that fused charisma, ritual terror, and doctrinal justifications into a program of power. State-sponsored ritual violence was normalized in chronicles and hagiographies as enlightened means. The fact pattern is no longer obscure. It is all in the sources, and FitzHerbert has laid them out.
Although FitzHerbert’s focus is on state-sponsored ritual violence, similar technologies of harm have long been used by individual lamas against perceived enemies including, at times, their own disciples. The anthropologist Geoffrey Samuel has noted that the ritual power claimed by tantric masters can be turned inward, weaponizing spiritual authority to punish dissent or enforce obedience.²² In one well-documented episode from the nineteenth century, the treasure-revealer (tertön) Dorje Lingpa was said to have struck down a rival practitioner through wrathful ritual means, his death interpreted locally as a karmic consequence of opposing the lama’s command.²³ Such stories attest to a cultural logic in which ritual, psychic, or physical violence by enlightened masters could be valorized as the just expression of awakened power. I have personally been a victim of this deluded violent ritual power by Tibetan masters.
If Tibetan Buddhism is to be understood honestly outside Tibet, this history needs to be taught in dharma centers and discussed in scholarship without euphemism. The tradition’s own categories allow for destructive ritual and sanctified killing under certain conditions. Pretending otherwise does not protect the innocent devotees who arrive at dharma centers with open hearts seeking methods for developing compassion and loving kindness in service of enlightenment. Indeed, one must ask what kind of enlightenment tradition could allow, even glorify such violence.
Notes
FitzHerbert, Rituals as War Propaganda, 91. FitzHerbert, Solomon G. “Rituals as War Propaganda in the Establishment of the Tibetan Ganden Phodrang State in the Mid-17th Century.” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 27 (2018): 49–119. https://www.persee.fr/doc/asie_0766-1177_2018_num_27_1_1508
Ibid., 95–96.
Ibid., 95.
Ibid., 96.
Ibid., 96.
Ibid., 97.
Ibid., 97.
Ibid., 101.
Ibid., 102–103.
Ibid., 94.
Ibid., 95.
Ibid., 96.
Ibid., 97.
Ibid., 98.
Ibid., 93.
Ibid., 100.
Ibid., 101.
Ibid., 71.
Ibid., 72.
Ibid., 98–99.
Ibid., 99.
Geoffrey Samuel, Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), pp. 429–432.
Cathy Cantwell and Robert Mayer, “Representations of wrathful deities in treasure literature,” in Tantric Revisionings: New Understandings of Tibetan Buddhism and Indian Religion (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 131–133.
In Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies, Geoffrey Samuel offers a sweeping anthropology of Tibetan religion that refuses to take Tibetan Buddhism at face value. He finds a living tradition shaped by older and more unruly forces beneath the polished scholastic surface of the monasteries. What emerges is a civilization of monks and magicians, of disciplined philosophers and ecstatic ritualists. His argument is simple but radical: Tibetan Buddhism is the result of Indian Buddhist ethics and philosophy meeting the shamanic substratum of the high plateau.¹
Two orientations: clerical and shamanic
Samuel organizes Tibetan religion around two poles. The first, the clerical or monastic orientation, descends from Indian Buddhism with its monasteries, ethical codes, and scholastic systems of thought. It values restraint, karmic causality, and the gradual cultivation of enlightenment. The second, the shamanic orientation, grows from indigenous Tibetan practices centered on ritual efficacy, spirit interaction, and the manipulation of unseen forces. This orientation values power (dbang) more than purity and treats ritual specialists not as moral exemplars but as technicians of spiritual power.²
These two strands were never simply reconciled. Tibetan civilization attempted to domesticate the shaman. The ecstatic healer and spirit-fighter was refashioned into a lama, wrapped in robes and scriptures yet still capable of commanding spirits, averting misfortune, or destroying an enemy through ritual means. The civilized shaman is not a metaphor. It is a social type, the institutionalized magician of a literate Buddhist society.³
Dark rituals and the question of subjugation
The most uncomfortable continuity between these worlds lies in the domain of ritual violence, what Tibetan sources call drag-po or wrathful rites. These practices are directed not toward enlightenment but toward control: the binding, subduing, or annihilation of obstructing forces, whether demonic, psychic, or human.⁴
Samuel interprets these rites not as moral aberrations but as necessary expressions of the shamanic orientation within a Buddhist frame. Indian Buddhism had long flirted with magical power but kept it at the margins of monastic life. In Tibet, ritual mastery became central. The same lama who taught compassion might also perform a subjugation rite, using effigies, mantras, and visualizations of wrathful deities to annihilate obstacles, whether spiritual or human. Such practices, found in the Nyingma and Kagyu tantric cycles and institutionalized in monastic ritual manuals, embody a logic foreign to classical Indian soteriology yet native to shamanic cosmology, the idea that power must be met with power.⁵
What makes these rites “civilized” is not their ethical domestication but their integration into a bureaucratic religion. The Tibetan monastery became a regulated arena for managing violence and transforming it into ritual performance. The monastic code that forbade killing also licensed symbolic destruction: paper effigies burned, dough figures pierced, and demons tamed through mantras.⁶ This was how a society of monks could still believe in, and even engage in, acts of ritual aggression.
Power and legitimacy
Samuel’s analysis is more about social structure than theology. The clerical orientation secured legitimacy through moral authority and learning, while the shamanic orientation maintained relevance through immediate and pragmatic results. The former built monasteries; the latter kept communities going amid famine, disease, and invasion. Tibetan Buddhism’s durability, he argues, comes from this uneasy synthesis. The scholar-monk and the ritual adept needed each other: the first to lend doctrine and order, the second to command the spirits that haunted every valley and household.⁷
In this light, the dark rituals of subjugation are not aberrations but instruments of governance. They discipline the chaotic powers of the landscape just as the monastery disciplines the passions of the mind. To them, the wrathful deity is not a contradiction of compassion but its shadow: compassion armed.
Rethinking the “Buddhist” in Tibetan Buddhism
Samuel’s greatest contribution may be to unsettle what we think “Buddhist” means. By treating Tibetan religion as a field of interacting orientations rather than a single orthodoxy, he exposes the limits of modern, idealized Buddhism. The vision of Tibet as a purely pacific, philosophical culture depends on forgetting the tantric rites that promise to destroy human enemies or subjugate spirits.⁸ Samuel does not moralize about this tension; he historicizes it. The so-called civilized shaman is a figure born of necessity, mediating between an imported moral system and an indigenous world of volatile gods.⁹
A note on tantra as the mediating field
Samuel does not treat Hindu tantra as a third, independent strand within Tibetan Buddhism. Rather, he presents tantric practice as the meeting ground of the clerical and shamanic orientations. By the time tantra reached Tibet, Indian Buddhism had already absorbed many Śaiva and Śākta elements. What Tibet inherited, therefore, was a fully developed tantric Buddhism rather than a simple blend of Buddhist and Hindu ideas. In Samuel’s account, tantra provided the channel through which shamanic power could operate within a clerical framework. It was the mechanism that allowed ecstatic and ritual techniques to coexist with the disciplines of monastic scholarship.
He also describes tantric Buddhism in Tibet as a two-way exchange. The imported Indian systems of Hevajra, Guhyasamāja, Cakrasaṃvara, and others were reinterpreted through local cosmologies of mountain gods, territorial spirits, and ancestral deities. The result was what he calls “tantricized shamanism” or “shamanized Buddhism.” While Hindu tantra was one historical source, the Tibetan tantric complex became a hybrid formation that expressed shamanic cosmology through Buddhist doctrine.¹⁰
The afterlife of the civilized shaman
Civilized Shamans was published in 1993, before the wave of globalized Tibetan Buddhism tried to reframe lamas as psychologists or humanitarians. Yet its insight remains vital. Beneath every system of enlightenment lies a system of control. The Tibetan synthesis worked precisely because it did not abolish the shamanic element. It incorporated it, turning ecstatic violence into liturgy and spirit warfare into cosmology.¹¹
For those interested in understanding tantric practice, especially the darker currents of subjugation and protection, Samuel’s anthropology is a cautionary mirror. It reminds us that ritual power is never purely symbolic. Even when intellectualized, it retains the logic of coercion: to bind, to summon, to annihilate. Tibet’s civilization was built on mastering such forces. The tension Samuel describes is not an accident of history but a model of how Tibetan religion evolved. Civilized shamans appear wherever doctrine meets magic, wherever ethics must coexist with power. Tibet made that paradox explicit.¹²
It has taken me decades to admit something that began as a faint suspicion, then settled into unease, and now has crystallized into a sober conclusion: Tibetan tantric Buddhism is not what I thought it was. Nor is it what I believed when I first encountered it many years ago, a bit before the time His Holiness the Dalai Lama received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.
Back then, the first wave of Tibetan lamas and rinpoches were arriving in the West. To many of us, they seemed like emissaries from a lost Shangrila. Coming out of the disillusionment of the Vietnam War years, with trust in government and organized religion badly shaken, we were primed to seek something transcendent and pure. And here were these men, holy men trained in the monasteries of old Tibet, carrying with them an aura of mystery and profound wisdom. Meeting them felt like an unimaginable stroke of good fortune.
The historical Buddha’s teachings struck us as luminous and deeply humane. The philosophical treatises were subtle, the meditation techniques precise and effective. And then there was tantra. We were told, almost in passing, that tantra too came directly from the Buddha. No mention was made of its roots in Shaivism, or its overlaps with the worship of Shiva, Kali, and the other tantric currents in Indian religion. Yes, there were references to the 84 Siddhas, some of whom practiced in Hindu traditions, but it was presented as a kind of colorful backdrop rather than something that demanded careful inquiry. The task, we were told, was to study the dharma, not to ask too many uncomfortable questions.
And yet, the Buddha himself had urged his students to test his words as one tests gold: cutting, burning, hammering to see if it is true. I carried that instruction into Tibetan Buddhism. But the environment I found myself in didn’t encourage such testing. Quite the opposite.
Very quickly, I was drawn into the highest yoga tantras. After a series of initiations that were performed in Tibetan, a language I didn’t understand, I was informed by a lama I scarcely knew that from now on, I had to do whatever he told me. Cognitive dissonance set in immediately. Around me, others spoke of him as a fully enlightened buddha. Terms like samaya and vajra hell were introduced without context, wrapped in a swirl of historical Buddha teachings and cryptic tantric concepts. Critical thought was not just discouraged; it was quietly undermined. The lama was king, and the student’s role was obedience.
For Westerners raised with democratic ideals and an education that stressed inquiry, this was a bewildering fit. Many of us unconsciously overlaid our early religious conditioning onto what was, in fact, a foreign and feudal religious structure with a pantheon of strange and colorful deities. The result of treating the lama as an omniscient god created confusion, sometimes tragedy. I have heard of suicides, psychotic breaks, and lives unmoored. At the same time, I know people who genuinely believe they have benefited from Tibetan Buddhism. For years, I counted myself among them, until my own turn came.
I was privately attacked by my gurus during a tantric ritual for what I considered minor offenses related to situations outside of my control. What followed was worse: a series of what can only be described as black magical assaults. I now look back at those suicides I had once heard about and wonder: had they endured similar attacks, subtle or overt, after questioning or disappointing their teachers? Perhaps. I cannot know for sure. But I do know this: the mask of compassion many lamas wear often drops when they feel challenged or exposed. Not all, certainly. But enough to form a pattern.
That slow dawning that Tibetan tantric Buddhism was not what it was presented to be has been deeply painful. The disillusionment runs far beyond personal disappointment; it speaks to a betrayal of trust, the suppression of critical thought, and the dangers that arise when power is handed to unaccountable gurus who claim authority over hidden magical practices and wield them at will. Brought into a Western culture of sincere but searching seekers, this has created a toxic mix that leaves people vulnerable at the very moment they are most open.
Kurukullā, the red goddess of magnetizing, depicted in a traditional Tibetan thangka style, embodying the tantric power to attract and bind.
Western seekers approaching Tibetan Buddhism are usually drawn to its most humane face. Chenrezig practice promises the cultivation of boundless compassion through visualizing Avalokiteśvara and reciting his mantra Om Mani Peme Hung. Tonglen “taking and sending” practice trains the mind to breathe in the suffering of others and breathe out relief. These sincere aspirations are the public face of Tibetan Buddhism. Yet this religion also preserves a hidden curriculum. Alongside compassionate practices sit the four activities that structure tantric ritual: pacifying, enriching, magnetizing, and subjugating. This fuller picture is rarely presented to beginners, and yet it has consequences for any claim to informed consent.[1]
The four activities: not just compassion
The four activities, known in Sanskrit as caturkarman, classify tantric rites by their intended effect:
Pacifying (śāntika) calms illness and obstacles.
Enriching (puṣṭika) augments longevity, merit, charisma, retinues, and wealth.
Magnetizing (vaśīkaraṇa) draws people and circumstances into a chosen orbit.
Subjugating (abhicāra) forces or destroys enemies.
These are not modern inventions but standard categories across tantric manuals and commentaries.[2]
While Western students are typically introduced to the activities of pacifying and enriching, the other two, magnetizing and subjugating, remain obscure, despite being prominent in tantric ritual literature. Historian Jacob Dalton has shown that violent tantric rites were not marginal but integral, even harnessed by Tibetan states to consolidate power in the medieval period.[3]
Kurukullā: the red goddess of attraction
Kurukullā, a red goddess associated with Amitābha and Tara, epitomizes magnetizing. In traditional texts she is praised as the deity of attraction, and in Tibetan sources she is sometimes known as the “Magnetizing Tara.” She is depicted holding a arrow, bow, flower and hook, all instruments of enchantment. [4]
Contemporary dharma centers sometimes describe her as a deity of love and influence, a kind of esoteric Cupid. But Tibetan ritual manuals, as catalogued by Stephan Beyer and translated in part by modern scholars, show that Kurukullā rites include binding the loyalty or desire of others.[5]
The omission of this material in introductory teachings is significant. Students often hear of compassion, not of enchantment and coercion.
Subjugation and tantric violence
Subjugating rituals, by contrast, can be overtly violent. Dunhuang manuscripts detail effigy rites and “liberation” practices, in which enemies are ritually slain to protect practitioners and their patrons. Dalton notes that these methods scaled from local shamanic forms into state-sanctioned tantric technologies by the 13th century.[6]
Even today, wrathful practices remain part of Tibetan public culture. Cham dances of Mahākāla, staged annually in monasteries, dramatically enact the destruction of obstacles. While these are often seen as symbolic, their presence keeps alive a framework where wrathful force is ritually mobilized against perceived threats.[7]
Samaya: the binding vow
In Highest Yoga Tantra empowerments, disciples take vows of refuge, bodhisattva vows, and tantric samaya commitments. Samaya is described as a “sacred bond” with the guru and the deity. Root downfalls include disrespecting the master or revealing tantric secrets. Breach is said to bring spiritual ruin.[8]
This means that students who take empowerments without understanding the full scope of tantric practices, including magnetizing, subjugating, and punishment rites, are effectively giving consent under partial information. Despite not understanding fully what they are entering into, the bond of samaya can become a blanket mechanism of control.
As the 17th Karmapa indicated in teachings earlier this year, samaya breakers are spoken of in language that implies wrathful retribution, both spiritual and physical. The retribution he described is not symbolic but actual. See my essay, “Read Between the Lines,” for more on this.[9]
Survivors’ voices
Accounts from survivors and critical practitioners suggest that magnetizing and wrathful practices are not just metaphors. Women have described experiences of sexual energy being manipulated at a distance, sometimes calling it a form of “astral rape.” Whether one interprets this as energetic manipulation or psychological intrusion, the perception of violation is real.
Lion’s Roar published testimonies arguing that samaya has been used as a principal mechanism of coercion in abuse cases. Independent investigations of groups like Shambhala document patterns where devotion and secrecy prevented victims from speaking out.[10]
Buddhist communities are now grappling with these realities. Some organizations are introducing explicit consent policies, recognizing that the charisma of a guru, altered states of consciousness induced during a ritual, and the binding reality of vows can impair a student’s capacity to freely choose.[11]
Historical context does not erase ethical duty
Scholars such as Ronald Davidson have contextualized tantric violence as a product of medieval frontier politics and kingship.[12] This explains how such rites developed. But historical context does not remove the ethical obligation to disclose them to modern students.
Without disclosure, the vows taken in empowerments are not truly informed. The student consents to Buddhist compassion, but is bound to a system that also contains sexual enchantment, psychological manipulation, and deadly punishments.
Conclusion
The compassionate practices of Chenrezig and Tonglen have a genuine power to transform, yet Tibetan Buddhism’s esoteric side contains hidden technologies that are not peaceful but harmful: the rites of magnetizing, subjugation, and punishment. These are attested in texts, preserved in ritual, and acknowledged by scholars and survivors alike. Until these dimensions are more fully disclosed, the vows taken in tantric empowerments remain shadowy. Consent given without knowledge of the whole spectrum of practice is not true consent. It is, as this essay argues, an illusion.
Source Notes
1. Rigpa Wiki, “Four activities,” accessed 2025. Rigpa Wiki is a practitioner-maintained encyclopedia that summarizes key Vajrayana concepts. Its entry on the “four activities” clearly lays out pacifying, enriching, magnetizing, and subjugating as the classical categories of tantric ritual. It is not a critical academic source, but it reflects how contemporary Tibetan Buddhist institutions themselves present the material.
2. Study Buddhism, “What is Samaya?” and “Empowerment.” Study Buddhism is a project led by Alexander Berzin and colleagues, offering accessible introductions to Buddhist theory and practice. These entries explain samaya as a binding relationship with a guru and empowerment as the ritual granting of authority to practice tantra. They are useful for showing how Tibetan teachers explain vows and empowerments to Western audiences.
3. Jacob P. Dalton, The Taming of the Demons: Violence and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism (Yale University Press, 2011). Dalton’s book is a landmark study of ritual violence in Tibetan Buddhism. Drawing on Dunhuang manuscripts, he shows that wrathful rites, including violent subjugation and “liberation” rituals, were integral to tantric practice. Dalton’s work challenges romantic views of Buddhism as purely peaceful.
4. Wikipedia, “Kurukullā” The Wikipedia entry gives a concise overview of Kurukullā as a magnetizing deity across Buddhist cultures.
5. Stephan Beyer, The Cult of Tārā: Magic and Ritual in Tibet (University of California Press, 1973). Beyer’s study remains a foundational ethnography of tantric ritual in Tibet. His translations of ritual manuals include examples of both compassionate and wrathful practices, including rites of attraction and subjugation. It is particularly valuable for showing how deity practices were embedded in everyday Tibetan religious life.
6. Dalton, Taming of the Demons; see also Jacob P. Dalton, “A Crisis of Doxography,” in Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 28, no. 1 (2005). In addition to his book, Dalton’s article “A Crisis of Doxography” analyzes how violent rites were classified in Tibetan scholastic traditions. He shows that even systematizing scholars struggled to reconcile wrathful tantric methods with Buddhist ideals, which underscores their presence and their tension.
7. Associated Press, “Wrathful deities in Tibetan Cham dance,” 2024. This news report covers annual cham dances in Tibet and in exile communities, where wrathful deities like Mahākāla are invoked to repel obstacles. It illustrates that wrathful practices are still a living part of Tibetan Buddhist culture, even if framed from the public as symbolic or theatrical.
8. Study Buddhism, “Samaya”; Rigpa Wiki, “Empowerment.” Both entries describe the vows and commitments made during empowerment rituals. They confirm that samaya includes strict obligations to the guru and to secrecy. Their language highlights how the bonding process is explained to new students, and how much is left unspoken.
9 “Read Between the Lines: A Glimpse Into the Dark Heart of Guru Devotion,” Tantric Deception, April 4, 2025. This essay analyzes a teaching by the 17th Karmapa, where he discussed samaya and hinted at punitive consequences for breaking devotion. It shows how even contemporary high lamas continue to invoke the discourse of samaya enforcement, reinforcing the concerns about consent.
10. Lion’s Roar, “When Samaya is Used as a Weapon,” 2018; Buddhist Project Sunshine Reports, 2018–2019. Lion’s Roar published reflections by teachers and survivors on how samaya language has been used to silence or coerce students in abuse cases. Buddhist Project Sunshine was a grassroots effort to document sexual misconduct in Shambhala and other Tibetan Buddhist organizations. These sources provide survivor-centered evidence of how samaya functions in practice.
11. Buddhist Ethics Working Group, “Consent in Vajrayana,” 2021. This collective statement from Buddhist practitioners and ethicists proposes new standards for sexual and spiritual consent in Vajrayana contexts. It emphasizes enthusiastic, ongoing consent and rejects the misuse of tantric language to excuse coercion. It is an attempt at reform efforts from within the tradition.
12. Ronald M. Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement (Columbia University Press, 2002). Davidson’s historical study situates tantric Buddhism in the political and social context of medieval India. He shows how esoteric practices were bound up with kingship, warfare, and elite patronage. His work helps explain how violent and manipulative rites could become integral to the tradition, even if they clash with Buddhist ethics.
To view Tibetan Buddhism as purely meditative and philosophical is to miss a large and still under-mapped terrain of ritual manuals and spell collections. A 9th to 10th-century Tibetan “book of spells” from the Dunhuang cave library (British Library IOL Tib J 401) shows that Tibetan monks compiled practical ritual instructions covering healing, protection, exorcism, and subjugation. It is the earliest surviving compendium of Tibetan Buddhist magical ritual and looks exactly like what we’d call a grimoire: a working handbook of spellcraft.¹
Moving forward in time, the 18th-century polymath Slelung Zhadepa Dorje (Sle lung Bzhad pa’i rdo rje) assembled a large tantric cycle centered on the Jñānaḍākinī. Within that cycle, scholars have identified several distinct grimoires of spells that are, again, practical instruction sets embedded in a broader tantric collection. As one study notes: “This paper seeks to examine such techniques in several grimoires of spells found in the tantric cycle of Gsang ba ye shes mkha’ ’gro… compiled and edited… by Sle lung Bzhad pa’i rdo rje (1697–1740) in the 1730s.”²
“Magical practices in Buddhism are still one of the least studied aspects of the religion.”³
Despite strong indications that there are many such grimoires, from Dunhuang through later ritual cycles, there is no comprehensive catalog. Scholars themselves admit the field’s patchy mapping. Sam van Schaik emphasizes the neglect, and others underline that studies too often treat magic as a literary trope rather than as practical ritual.³ ⁴
Personal experience
I do not come to this subject as a detached scholar. I was targeted by two different lamas at different times, one of whom used coercion to draw me into a sexual relationship and then employed what I can only describe as black magic when I resisted, questioned, and tried to break free. Living through those experiences is what drove me to investigate Tibetan spell craft.
“From the inside, the grimoires of Tibetan Buddhism do not feel very different from the grimoires of Western occultism.”
Although I practiced intensely for years in long retreats, I was never taught these darker rituals, yet I witnessed unsettling rites performed by my lamas. After rebuffing the advances of the first guru, I experienced what felt like severe magical attacks that reverberated for years. The cognitive dissonance was crushing: I believed these teachers were fully enlightened buddhas, yet I suffered severe trauma and PTSD.
“Fear of vajra hell kept me clinging to the practices, even as abuse intensified.”
My second guru was later exposed publicly for sexual and psychological abuse. Being caught in his orbit, I became the target of annihilation rituals. Surviving and recovering has been extraordinarily difficult. I now see that while some teachers avoid such practices, others weaponize spells of magnetism and subjugation to manipulate students, especially women, for sex and energetic vampirization. This gray area of practical magic within Tibetan Buddhism is vast and dangerous.
What the rites actually claim to do: magnetizing and subjugation
Classical Vajrayāna sorts ritual aims into four “activities”: pacifying, enriching, magnetizing, and subjugating. These are not marginal ideas; they are a standard frame for tantric ritual. Magnetizing (Tib. dbang du sdud pa) is explicitly defined as bringing others “under one’s control,” while subjugation names violent rites directed at overcoming obstacles and destroying opponents.⁵ ⁶
Texts and prayers for magnetizing circulate broadly, for instance, the “Wang Dü” prayer attributed to Mipham, described as “magnetizing or bringing under one’s control.” None of this is esoteric in the sense of being unknown; it is central to tantric categories and practice rhetoric.⁶ ⁷
From ritual claims to real-world power: how coercion maps onto communities and individuals
A ritual manual promising to attract, influence, or subdue doesn’t automatically produce abuse. Still, the rhetoric of magnetizing and subjugation sits within a social system that grants absolute authority to gurus and expects strong devotion from students. When high-status teachers have access to rites whose very names project attraction and control, the risk of translating ritual language into interpersonal domination is real.
Recent history demonstrates the danger. In 2018 Rigpa, the international organization founded by Sogyal Rinpoche, published the results of an independent investigation by the law firm Lewis Silkin that validated numerous allegations of physical and sexual abuse and identified serious safeguarding failures.⁸
The published report recounts patterns of violence and coercion including “slapping,” “punching,” “hitting with a backscratcher, phones, cups and hangers,” and documents testimonies of sexual abuse, concluding that the community had failed to protect students.⁹
This is not to claim that tantric ritual texts instruct teachers to abuse students. It is to note a combustible mix: magical mechanisms of control, asymmetries of authority, sacralized obedience, and the frequent absence of external accountability.
Bringing the strands together
Books of spells are the norm: Tibetan Buddhist literature contains actual “books of spells” and multiple grimoires embedded in tantric cycles. These are not aberrations but part of the tradition.¹ ²
An under-researched domain: Leading scholars explicitly acknowledge that this area of Buddhist practice is still understudied.³ ⁴
Control as a ritual aim: The four tantric activities include “magnetizing” and “subjugating,” both routinely glossed as bringing beings or circumstances under one’s control.⁵ ⁶
Abuse linked to ritual rhetoric: Documented cases in Tibetan Buddhist communities show how claims to ritual power combined with intense guru-devotion can provide cover for coercion and severe abuse.⁸ ⁹
Where the research gap still matters
A fuller picture of “how many” grimoires are in Tibetan tantric collections requires systematic cataloging across canons and private libraries. Right now we have case studies and local inventories rather than a master list. These texts need to be thoroughly studied in their historical and contemporary contexts and exposed to the world for what they really are–recipes for white and black magic–not sugarcoated as quaint and innocuous artifacts.³ ⁴
Without naming and analyzing how these are taught and performed, it is hard for communities and individuals to protect themselves from magical attacks.
What better safeguards look like
Name the risk: community materials should explain what “magnetizing” and “subjugation” denote in practice and how these can and will be used against students at the guru’s discretion.
Independent oversight: adopt and publish external safeguarding standards and reporting channels. The Rigpa case shows why self-policing fails.⁸
Informed consent and boundaries: spell out that teacher/student sex, even where allowed by law, requires adult consent free of spiritual pressure, and that the bar for “free of pressure” is very high in asymmetric relationships.
Don’t assume that all Tibetan Buddhist lamas have pure intention and integrity.
“The safest course is to avoid Tibetan Buddhism altogether, since in practice the guru’s needs and moods often override the Buddha’s teaching of non-harm.“
A closing note on method
This article is a call for transparency and insistence on precision. Tibetan Buddhist archives contain grimoires. The tradition attracts students to its supposedly compassionate practices while concealing that darker “magnetizing” and “subjugation” practices are core ritual elements. Scholars say this area is understudied. And history shows that these techniques of control, in the hands of unaccountable authorities, can easily become abusive, even deadly.
Footnotes
Sam van Schaik, “The Early Tibetan Book of Spells.” Analysis of British Library manuscript IOL Tib J 401 from Dunhuang (9th–10th century). This manuscript is recognized as the earliest surviving Tibetan compendium of spells and rituals, containing instructions for healing, protection, and exorcism. See: Sam van Schaik, Early Tibet blog (2008), and also referenced in his book Tibetan Zen: Discovering a Lost Tradition (Snow Lion, 2015).
Sle lung Bzhad pa’i rdo rje’s Jñānaḍākinī cycle study (Academia.edu). Scholarly paper examining several grimoires embedded in the tantric cycle of Gsang ba ye shes mkha’ ’gro, compiled and edited in the 1730s by Sle lung Bzhad pa’i rdo rje (1697–1740). The paper highlights ritual techniques, their organization, and their status as practical spell collections within a broader cycle. Available on Academia.edu.
Sam van Schaik on magical practices in Buddhism. Statement that “magical practices in Buddhism are still one of the least studied aspects of the religion.” Quoted in his writings on Buddhist magic, including his blog Early Tibet and in Tibetan Zen (Snow Lion, 2015).
Cameron Bailey, “The Magic of Secret Gnosis: A Theoretical Analysis of a Tibetan Buddhist ‘Grimoire’.”Journal of the Korean Association of Buddhist Studies 84 (2020): 145–176. Available via Academia.edu. Bailey notes that “magic power in Buddhism has been studied more from the perspective of a literary trope than as practical and exactingly specific ritual techniques,” and examines grimoires embedded within the Gsang ba ye shes mkha’ ’gro (Secret Gnosis Dakini) cycle compiled by Sle lung Bzhad pa’i rdo rje in the 1730s.
Vajrayāna framework of four activities. Standard tantric taxonomy of ritual aims: pacifying (zhi ba), enriching (rgyas pa), magnetizing (dbang sdud), and subjugating (dbang ’joms). Discussed in multiple Vajrayāna handbooks and summaries, including descriptions in online resources such as Rigpa Wiki and introductory texts on Vajrayāna Buddhism.
Definitions of magnetizing. Magnetizing (dbang du sdud pa) is routinely glossed as “bringing others under one’s control.” See standard glosses in Vajrayāna dictionaries, sadhana commentaries, and contemporary teaching materials (e.g. Rigpa Wiki, “Four activities”).
“Wang Dü” prayer attributed to Mipham. A widely recited prayer describing magnetizing activities, attributed to the 19th-century scholar Mipham Rinpoche (1846–1912). Circulates in Tibetan and English translation as a practice of magnetizing or bringing beings under one’s control.
Rigpa Independent Investigation, Lewis Silkin LLP (2018). Commissioned by Rigpa International following widespread allegations against founder Sogyal Lakar (Sogyal Rinpoche). The final report documented physical assaults, psychological abuse, and sexual exploitation, and called out systemic safeguarding failures. Full report available through Rigpa’s website and media coverage (2018).
Findings on abuse in Rigpa/Sogyal Rinpoche’s communities. The Lewis Silkin report and subsequent coverage summarized multiple testimonies: repeated slapping, punching, use of objects to hit students, as well as sexual coercion and exploitation of women. Findings were corroborated by survivor accounts and reinforced calls for reform in Tibetan Buddhist organizations.
The question of what the soul is, whether it exists, and what happens to it after death lies at the center of the world’s major religious traditions. Christianity, especially in its Catholic tradition, affirms the soul as eternal and God-given. Hinduism has multiple schools, often affirming an eternal self or ātman. Buddhism, including Tibetan Buddhism, rejects the idea of a permanent self or soul and instead speaks of mind and consciousness as a conditioned stream of awareness without enduring essence.
The Christian and Catholic Understanding of the Soul
Christianity teaches that every human being has a unique, immortal soul created by God. According to Catholic doctrine, the soul is the spiritual principle of the human person. It is eternal in destiny, surviving bodily death, and directed either toward communion with God or separation from Him.
Scriptural sources include Genesis 2:7, where God breathes life into Adam and he becomes a living soul [1]; Matthew 10:28, where Jesus warns of the danger of losing the soul [2]; and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which affirms that the soul is created by God and immortal [3]. In this view, the soul is not an impersonal principle but a personal identity, judged and redeemed by God.
Hindu Views on the Self (Ātman)
Hinduism is diverse, but most of its classical schools affirm the existence of ātman, the true self. The Chandogya Upanishad teaches “tat tvam asi” (you are that), affirming the identity of the self with Brahman [4]. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad declares, “This self (ātman) is indeed Brahman” [5]. The Bhagavad Gita teaches that the self is eternal and indestructible [6].
Distinguishing Hindu and Christian Concepts
Both Hindu and Christian traditions speak of something enduring at the core of human existence, but they do so in different ways.
Christianity teaches that the soul is created by God, personal, and accountable before Him. It does not preexist from eternity but comes into being by His will and remains dependent on Him for existence, judgment, and salvation.
In Hindu thought, Advaita Vedānta emphasizes the identity of the self (ātman) with Brahman, dissolving individuality into the absolute. Dvaita and many Bhakti traditions instead teach that the self remains distinct yet eternal, existing in relationship with the divine. In all of these cases, the ātman is uncreated and co-eternal with ultimate reality, not brought into being by God.
Thus, while both traditions sometimes use personal and sometimes abstract language, the Christian soul and the Hindu ātman play very different roles. The soul in Christian theology is a created person before God; the ātman in Hindu philosophy is an eternal essence, whether one with Brahman or distinct in devotion.
The Creator God in Christianity and Hinduism
Christianity affirms one personal Creator God who brings the universe into being from nothing and sustains it in existence.
Hinduism presents a wide range of views. In Bhakti traditions, deities such as Vishnu, Shiva, or Devi are worshiped as supreme creators. Vedānta schools affirm Brahman as the ultimate source, though in Advaita this is not a personal act of creation but the manifestation of māyā. Other schools such as Sāṃkhya and Mīmāṃsā reject a creator altogether, viewing the universe as self-arising.
Thus, while Christianity grounds the soul in a personal God who creates and judges, Hindu thought ranges from devotion to a personal creator to cosmologies where no creator is necessary.
Buddhist Rejection of the Soul
Buddhism arose in part as a rejection of the Hindu doctrine of ātman. In the Anattalakkhana Sutta, the Buddha declared that none of the five aggregates of existence constitute a self [7]. The doctrine of anātman (no-soul) became central.
Mind and Consciousness
In Tibetan Buddhism, mind and consciousness are viewed as a stream of awareness, conditioned by karma. The Abhidharma-kośa describes consciousness as momentary and dependent [8]. Unlike Christianity and Hinduism, which affirm an eternal principle (soul or self), Buddhism denies it, calling belief in permanence a delusion.
Yet questions arise. If there is no soul, then what suffers in the hell realms described in Tibetan texts? The Bardo Thödol warns of the horrors of the Vajra Hell, a realm said to be utterly without escape [9]. The Hevajra Tantra declares that those who violate tantric commitments “will not be liberated for as many eons as there are atoms in the universe” [10]. The Cakrasaṃvara Tantra and later commentaries also teach that breaking tantric vows leads to vajra hells without release [11].
This presents a paradox: if there is no enduring self, who is suffering eternally?
Tibetan Buddhist Schools Under Examination
Madhyamaka – Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā argues that all phenomena, including the self, are empty of inherent existence [13]. But if the self is an illusion, how does karma persist? If Vajra Hell is eternal, how can something that does not exist suffer forever?
Yogācāra (Mind-Only) – The Yogācārabhūmi Śāstra introduces ālayavijñāna, the “storehouse consciousness,” which preserves karmic seeds [14]. Though intended to avoid affirming a self, it functions much like one: carrying memory, identity, and karma. Hinduism here provides a comparison: the Bhagavad Gita teaches that the self carries karma through many births [6]. Yogācāra denies the term “soul,” yet reintroduces something strikingly similar. Christianity differs again: not a karmic storehouse, but a personal soul created by God.
Dzogchen (Great Perfection) – Dzogchen teachings, such as the Kunjed Gyalpo (All-Creating King), speak of rigpa, primordial pure awareness that is timeless and luminous [15]. Though Dzogchen denies that rigpa is a soul, the resemblance is striking. If rigpa is eternal, pure, and the ground of all experience, how is this different from what Christians call the soul or Hindus call ātman? The denial seems rhetorical rather than substantive.
Vajrayāna and Deity Possession – Tantric scriptures describe deity yoga, in which practitioners invite deities to merge with them [16]. If there is no self or soul, what exactly is being merged with or possessed?
Conclusion
Across Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, the question of what endures, what we might call the soul, self, or consciousness, reveals fundamentally different views of human identity. Christianity anchors personhood in a created, immortal soul made by God and accountable to Him. Hinduism envisions an eternal ātman, uncreated and either one with or distinct from the divine. Buddhism, in contrast, denies any enduring essence, seeing the sense of self as a conditioned process. Yet in its Tibetan forms, teachings on karmic continuity, primordial awareness, and tantric transformation often edge back toward affirming something that functions like a self.
From long immersion in both Catholic and Tibetan Buddhist traditions, I have come to believe that the Christian vision alone sustains coherence between moral responsibility, continuity of consciousness, and the promise of redemption. It affirms not only that we exist, but that we are known and loved by the One who created us. Against the shifting alternatives of an impersonal absolute or an empty stream of awareness, in my opinion, the Christian understanding of the soul remains the clearest expression of what it means to be human before God.
References
[1] Genesis 2:7, The Holy Bible (ESV). [2] Matthew 10:28, The Holy Bible (ESV). [3] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part I, Section Two, Chapter One, Article 1, §366. [4] Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7, in Radhakrishnan, S. (trans.), The Principal Upanishads. [5] Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.4.5, in Olivelle, P. (trans.), The Early Upanishads. [6] Bhagavad Gita 2.20, in Zaehner, R. (trans.), The Bhagavad-Gita. [7] Anattalakkhana Sutta (Samyutta Nikaya 22.59), in Bhikkhu Bodhi (trans.), The Connected Discourses of the Buddha. [8] Vasubandhu, Abhidharma-kośa. [9] Bardo Thödol (Tibetan Book of the Dead), in Evans-Wentz, W.Y. (ed.). [10] Hevajra Tantra, Snellgrove, D.L. (trans.), The Hevajra Tantra: A Critical Study. [11] Cakrasaṃvara Tantra, in Tsuda, S. (trans.), The Samvarodaya Tantra. [12] Hevajra Tantra, ibid. [13] Nāgārjuna, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Kalupahana, D.J. (trans.). [14] Yogācārabhūmi Śāstra, Xuanzang (trans.). [15] Kunjed Gyalpo (All-Creating King), in Namkhai Norbu (trans.), The Supreme Source. [16] Cakrasaṃvara Tantra and Hevajra Tantra, ibid.
Tantric Deception 