A Note Before Beginning:
This is written from within the confusion, not above it. I am not the “auditor” standing outside the burning temple; I am inside it with you, also wondering if the smoke is just part of the ritual. If this piece sometimes points a finger, I am trying to keep three fingers pointing back at myself. The goal here is not demolition but clarification, the kind that hurts not because someone is attacking us, but because we are finally seeing ourselves clearly.
Introduction: On the Tenderness of Letting Go
There is a particular kind of grief that comes with spiritual maturity. It is the grief of realizing that the container is not the content, that the finger is not the moon, and that many of the things we have held most sacred, our traditions, our lineages, our identities as “Buddhists”, may, in fact, be holding us back.
This grief is tender. It should be handled tenderly.
The Buddha spoke of the Dharma as a raft. A simple, functional device built from whatever materials were at hand: grass, twigs, branches, and leaves, to cross from the shore of suffering to the shore of freedom (Alagaddupama Sutta, MN 22). The metaphor is exquisitely precise: the raft is useful. It is necessary. Without it, many of us would drown in the currents of confusion and despair. The raft is not the enemy.
But the Buddha also said something far more challenging: once you have crossed, you do not carry the raft on your head. You leave it behind. Not because it was bad, but because its purpose is complete.
The question this inquiry gently poses is not “Are Buddhists institution evil or self-serving?” That is a child’s question. The question is: Have we, collectively and individually, become so attached to the raft that we have forgotten we were trying to cross a river?
And if so, how do we hold that realization with compassion: for ourselves, for our teachers, for the traditions that have nourished us, and even for the institutions that may now be causing harm?
Part I: Where We Started — The Original Generosity
Before we examine where we are, we should remember where we began, not with nostalgia, but with clarity.
At least in the early texts, the Buddha was not primarily trying to found an institution; his aim was liberation from suffering. He was a human being who had suffered deeply, who had searched desperately, and who had found a way out. His response to this discovery was not self-congratulation but overflowing generosity. He spent forty-five years, according to traditional accounts, walking the dusty roads of northern India, not building an organization, but simply offering what he had found to anyone who was interested.
“Come and see,” he said (ehipassiko). Not “Come and believe.” Not “Come and join.” Come and see for yourself. This invitation to direct investigation rather than blind faith was a radical departure from the revelatory traditions of his time.
The early Sangha was a remarkable experiment in human freedom. It was not a hierarchy but a community of equals, the seniority of a monk was measured simply by the number of rains retreats they had sat (vassa), not by spiritual attainments or institutional power. The Buddha repeatedly refused to appoint a successor, insisting that the Dharma itself should be the guide. When the Sangha expected him to name a leader, his response was remarkable in its transparency: “What does the Bhikkhu Sangha now expect from me, Ānanda? I have taught the Dhamma without making any distinction between inner and outer teaching. The Tathagata has no closed fist of a teacher who keeps something back” (Mahaparinibbana Sutta, DN 16). This was the original spirit: radical transparency, radical non-authoritarianism, radical invitation to direct experience.
Part II: The Natural Drift — How Protection Became Contradictory
What happened next was not a conspiracy. It was not a corruption orchestrated by power-hungry monks. It was something far more ordinary, far more human, and far more relevant to our own lives: people tried to protect what they loved, and in doing so, slowly began to adjust or reinterpret the core message.
Consider what the generations after the Buddha faced. The teachings were preserved orally through sophisticated memorization traditions, not because writing was unavailable (it existed by the 3rd century BCE), but because oral transmission was the established method for preserving sacred texts. The only way to ensure that this precious teaching, this teaching that had saved them, would survive for future generations, was to organize.
They needed to memorize. So they created systems of recitation (sangayana).
They needed to agree on what was authentic. So they convened councils.
They needed to transmit the teachings to new lands. So they established monasteries.
They needed to explain the teachings to new cultures. So they developed philosophies, commentaries, and elaborate scholastic systems.
Each of these steps was motivated by love. Each was an act of devotion. Each was an attempt to protect the raft so that others could cross the river.
But slowly, imperceptibly, perhaps the means became the end. The protection of the teachings became more important than the practice of the teachings. Orthodoxy, “right opinion”, began to replace orthopraxy, “right practice.” The finger pointing at the moon became a sacred object, and the moon itself became a theological concept to be debated rather than a reality to be realized.
This is not a story about “bad Buddhists.” This is a story about us. This is what happens to anything precious that we try to preserve. We build a museum around it, hire guards, install climate control, and eventually forget that the art was meant to be lived with, not just looked at.
The Buddha himself anticipated this drift. In the Cula-suññata Sutta, MN 121, he describes a progressive letting go even of the perception of the human realm, the forest, the earth, and finally the very perception of the infinitude of consciousness. The path is one of continuous release, yet we have turned it into a project of continuous accumulation.
Part III: Where We Are Now — The Weight We Carry
Today, we inherit this history. For many of us, the raft has become extraordinarily heavy.
We carry the weight of 2,500+ years of tradition.
We carry the weight of cultural expectations: “This is how we bow. This is how we chant. This is how we sit.”
We carry the weight of lineage: “My teacher’s teacher’s teacher was enlightened. Therefore, my teacher is enlightened. Therefore, I am in good hands.”
We carry the weight of identity: “I am a Buddhist. This is who I am. These are my people. This is my tribe.”
None of this is inherently wrong. Tradition can be beautiful. Lineage can be inspiring. Identity can provide community and belonging. But when these things become attachments, when our sense of self depends on them, when we defend them against any questioning, when they become more real to us than our own direct experience, then the raft has ceased to be a vehicle and has become a burden.
The suffering this creates is real. It is the suffering of the person who stays in a harmful spiritual community because “this is my lineage.” It is the suffering of the person who suppresses their own doubts and questions because “the teacher knows better.” It is the suffering of the person who performs rituals mechanically, year after year, secretly feeling nothing, but terrified to admit it because “this is what good Buddhists do.”
Consider how quickly institutional dynamics emerged. According to the traditional account, the First Council was held at Rajagaha roughly three months after the Buddha’s death. The Cullavagga (Vinaya Kd 11) describes the Venerable Mahakassapa, who had arrived after the Buddha’s passing—questioning the Venerable Ananda on multiple points, including his failure to ask the Buddha which lesser rules could be suspended. In a separate encounter recorded in the Samyutta Nikaya, Mahakassapa reportedly addressed Ananda as “boy” (daharaka), to which Ananda replied, “Venerable sir, I have grey hairs, yet now we are to be called ‘boy’?” (SN 16.11). The dynamic was not merely administrative; it carried an edge. The institutional impulse to control, to establish authority, to determine who was “in” and who was “out”, it began almost immediately.
This suffering deserves compassion, not contempt. It is not the suffering of fools or the deluded. It is the suffering of people trying their best to hold onto something precious in a confusing world.
Part IV: Loving-kindness (Metta) — Including Ourselves and Our Institutions
Let us begin the practice of applying the Brahmaviharas, the divine abodes, to this situation, starting with loving-kindness (metta). And let us start by including everyone in its scope.
First, ourselves. If you are reading this and feeling any discomfort, any defensiveness, any sense of “but my tradition is different”, can you meet that feeling with kindness? It is not wrong to love your tradition. It is not wrong to feel protective of what has nourished you. The very fact that you care enough to feel defensive is a sign of devotion. Thank that devotion. Honor it. And then gently ask: is devotion to the container becoming more important than devotion to what the container holds?
Second, our teachers. Most Buddhist teachers are not villains. They are human beings who stepped into a role that is nearly impossible to hold with perfect integrity. They are given authority, reverence, and often, unexamined power. They are surrounded by students who project their own unmet needs for parental figures onto them. They are rarely given honest feedback. Is it any wonder that so many have fallen? Can we extend to them the same compassion we would want extended to us if we were in their position?
Third, the institutions themselves. This is the hardest, but perhaps the most important. Can we see Buddhist institutions not as evil empires, but as collective human attempts to preserve something precious that have, inevitably and predictably, become entangled with ego, power, and money? Can we see the suffering within these institutions, the anxiety of abbots trying to keep the monastery afloat, the exhaustion of administrators, the fear of teachers whose entire identity depends on being seen as enlightened?
The Kakacupama Sutta, MN 21, the “Simile of the Saw”, reminds us that even if bandits were to saw us limb from limb, any hatred toward them would be an inappropriate response. The teaching is extreme because the practice is urgent: we are to extend loving-kindness even to those who harm us. How much more, then, to those who are simply imperfect in their efforts to preserve the Dharma?
Loving-kindness does not mean pretending everything is fine. It means seeing clearly and still wishing well. It means wanting all beings, including people who run Buddhist institutions, to be free from the causes of suffering.
Part V: Compassion (Karuna) — Feeling the Pain of the Trap
Compassion (karuna) is loving-kindness meeting suffering. And there is suffering here.
There is the suffering of the sincere practitioner who discovers that their teacher has been abusive, and whose entire spiritual world collapses.
There is the suffering of the lifelong Buddhist who realizes, perhaps on their deathbed, that they spent decades accumulating merit and performing rituals, but never actually looked at their own mind.
There is the suffering of the monastic who has doubts but cannot express them without being seen as “losing faith.”
There is the suffering of the layperson who gives and gives to support the temple, secretly wondering if any of it actually helps anyone.
This suffering is not abstract. It is happening right now, in Buddhist communities all over the world. And the most compassionate response to it is not to say “everything is perfect as it is.” The most compassionate response is to name the trap: gently, carefully, but clearly.
The trap is this: we have mistaken the map for the territory, the menu for the meal, the raft for the shore. And we are suffering because of it.
The Buddha named this danger explicitly. In the Alagaddupama Sutta, MN 22, the “Simile of the Water Snake”, he warns that grasping the Dharma wrongly is like grasping a snake by the coils rather than by the head: it will turn and bite you. The teaching itself, if clung to improperly, becomes a source of poison. He then offers the raft simile: “Using the figure of a raft, I will teach you the Dhamma as something to leave behind, not to take with you. … Understanding the Dhamma as taught compared to a raft, you should let go even of Dhammas, to say nothing of non-Dhammas.”
True compassion does not preserve comfort. True compassion tells the truth, but it tells it with tears in its eyes, not with a crowbar in its hand. It says: “I see you are suffering. I see that your devotion to this tradition, which was meant to free you, has become a new cage. And I am so, so sorry. Let us see if we can find a way out together.”
Part VI: Sympathetic Joy (Mudita) — Celebrating Freedom Beyond Forms
If compassion sees suffering, sympathetic joy (mudita) sees freedom, wherever it appears.
And freedom appears in the most unexpected places. It appears in the Zen practitioner who finally stops caring about whether they are doing Zen “correctly.” It appears in the Theravada monk who admits that the Abhidhamma is a human construction, not the Buddha’s final word. It appears in the Tibetan lama who lightly contemplates their own lineage’s hagiographies. It appears in the person who quietly stops calling themselves a Buddhist and just sits with what is.
Sympathetic joy is the capacity to celebrate all of this. Not just the freedom that happens within our tradition, but the freedom that happens outside it. Not just the enlightenment that comes through our teacher’s blessings, but the awakening that comes through a broken heart, a devastating loss, or a quiet afternoon in nature.
This is hard for institutions. Institutions need boundaries. They need to know who is “in” and who is “out.” They need to be able to say: “This is authentic; that is not.” But sympathetic joy is radically anti-institutional. It says: “I don’t care about your credentials. I don’t care about your lineage. I don’t care if you’ve never heard of the Four Noble Truths. If you are suffering less, if you are loving more, if you are waking up, I rejoice in your freedom. Full stop.”
This is not a threat to the Dharma. It is the Dharma’s deepest wish coming true.
The Simsapa Sutta, SN 56.31 offers a profound image: the Buddha holds up a handful of simsapa leaves and asks what is more numerous, the leaves in his hand or the leaves in the forest? What he has taught, he says, is like the leaves in his hand; what he has known but not taught is like the leaves in the forest. The teaching is not the whole of reality. It is a handful of leaves, enough to get us free. Celebrating freedom means celebrating the entire forest, not just the leaves we’ve been given.
Part VII: Equanimity (Upekkha) — The Peace That Does Not Depend on Outcomes
Finally, we come to equanimity (upekkha). And here, perhaps, is the deepest peace.
Equanimity is the capacity to hold it all: the beauty and the brokenness, the devotion and the delusion, the institutions and the individuals, without needing anything to be different. Not because we are indifferent, but because we have touched something that does not depend on any of it.
The Buddha’s awakening was not the founding of a religion. It was a direct insight into the nature of reality. And that reality: the truth of impermanence, the unsatisfactoriness of clinging, the selfless nature of all phenomena, does not depend solely on Buddhism. It does not depend solely on institutions. It does not depend solely on traditions, lineages, or teachers.
If every Buddhist temple on earth closed tomorrow, the truth of suffering would still be true.
If every Buddhist text was burned, the nature of mind would still be available to anyone who looked.
If every Buddhist teacher was revealed to be perfectly human and perfectly flawed, the path to freedom would still be walkable.
Equanimity is the profound relaxation that comes from knowing this. It allows us to engage with institutions without being owned by them. It allows us to honor traditions without being trapped by them. It allows us to love the raft while also being willing to let it go.
The Salayatana Vibhanga Sutta, MN 137 speaks of six kinds of equanimity based on household life and six based on renunciation. The equanimity of renunciation is not cold or distant, it is the even-mindedness that comes from seeing the constructed nature of all things. It is the peace that allows us to say, with the Buddha on his deathbed: “All conditioned things are subject to decay. Strive on with diligence” (Mahaparinibbana Sutta, DN 16).
Part VIII: A Gentle Question
So where does this leave us?
Not with a demolition. Not with a victory. Not with the satisfaction of being “right” about the corruption of institutions.
Just with a question. A gentle, persistent, loving question:
What are you holding that is holding you?
Is it your identity as a Buddhist?
Is it your loyalty to a teacher?
Is it your investment in a tradition?
Is it your fear of what you would be without any of it?
The Buddha encouraged this kind of self-inquiry relentlessly. In the Kalama Sutta, AN 3.65, he famously advised the Kalamas, who were not yet his followers, but simply people confused by competing teachers, not to go by reports, lineage, tradition, or scripture, but to know for themselves: “When you know for yourselves that these things are unskillful, blameworthy, criticized by the wise, and lead to harm and suffering, then you should abandon them.” While the sutta’s original audience was not yet practicing within the tradition, the principle it embodies, direct investigation over blind acceptance, has been widely extended by contemporary teachers as a support for maintaining a critical, reflective relationship with one’s own spiritual community. The authority, finally, is not in the institution but in the direct seeing.
And if you are holding something that is holding you, if the raft has become a burden, what would it mean to begin, slowly, gently, to set it down?
Not to throw it away in anger. Not to burn it in rejection. Just to place it on the shore, with gratitude for having carried you this far, and to take a step onto the ground that was always there.
A Closing Reflection: The Shore Was Always Here
The Buddha’s last words were: “All conditioned things are subject to decay. Strive on with diligence.”
He did not say: “Protect my teachings.”
He did not say: “Defend the institution.”
He said: “All conditioned things are subject to decay.”
Institutions are conditioned things. Traditions are conditioned things. Lineages, rituals, scriptures, identities, all conditioned, all decaying, all impermanent.
The raft is rotting. It always was. That was never the problem.
The problem was forgetting that we were trying to cross a river.
May all beings be free from suffering.
May all beings hold their rafts lightly.
May all beings discover the shore that was never far away.
Sutta References
- Alagaddupama Sutta, MN 22 — The Simile of the Water Snake and the Raft Parable
- Mahaparinibbana Sutta, DN 16 — The Buddha’s final teachings and last words
- Simsapa Sutta, SN 56.31 — The handful of leaves
- Kakacupama Sutta, MN 21 — The Simile of the Saw on loving-kindness
- Cula-suññata Sutta, MN 121 — Progressive letting go
- Kalama Sutta, AN 3.65 — Knowing for oneself (with attention to its original audience)
- Cullavagga, Vinaya Kd 11 — The First Council dynamics
- Samyutta Nikaya 16.11 — Mahakassapa and Ananda exchange
- Salayatana Vibhanga Sutta, MN 137 — Six kinds of equanimity
- Mahatanhasankhaya Sutta, MN 38 — On right grasping of teachings
Author’s Acknowledgement: This essay draws on the early Buddhist suttas as preserved in the Pali Canon. Interpretations offered here, particularly regarding institutional dynamics and the application of the Kalama Sutta, represent the author’s understanding and are offered as part of an ongoing conversation, not as final authority. Readers are encouraged to investigate the teachings for themselves.
This piece is offered not as a final word, but as a continuation of a conversation. If it has caused any pain, that pain is regretted. If it has caused any clarity, that clarity is dedicated to the freedom of all beings.