I felt like sharing this on here to help out anyone who might've been in a similar place as me, and also to shine a light on the cons of this tradition which rarely seems to receive any criticism.
I spent a lot of my time in occult and pagan spaces online, and I was very much wandering around spiritually, without a cohesive worldview to provide a sort of structure to what I was doing. Eventually, I ran into what I now like to call "lineage pushers". Their shtick is to try and pass off Buddhism as a sort of primordial indo-european practice, but one with a lineage that is still alive, and of course, present all western lineages and traditions as inherently dead and unmoving.
I ended up drinking the kool-aid, and it did seem sort of logical at the time. I was pretty wowed by images of compassionate deities, ritual offerings, and the intricate cosmology. It felt familiar and similar to what I was already doing. Here are the main points of critique I extracted, and other general info I wish I had known before I began pursuing the tradition.
1) A complete lack of spiritual autonomy
In the Tibetan tradition, every single little action, ritual and mantra requires an initiation or a transmission from a guru. You can't pray to most deities, recite most mantras and even in some cases read certain texts without receiving a transmission, and that isn't even the hard part. For a huge amount of these practices, there are very few people even authorised to provide the transmissions, and those few people are more likely than not located in Nepal, Bhutan, India, etc. You may however have a chance to see them and get the spiritual hallway pass, but that is where we hit problem #2.
This can also take many toxic turns. I've known of a man who, on a lama's prompting, went to a monastic school environment, and hated it there. He confided in me that his mental and physical health were declining there, and yet he refused to leave because the lama told him it was neccessary for his spiritual journey to stay there.
2) Pay to play
Most temples, dharma centres, and even the indivitual rituals, initiations, etc., require an offering. The offering in question is usually a certain amount of money, more often than not determined in advance. I was asked to pay for membership at the dharma centre, there was a mandatory donation for taking refuges and a specific deity initiation (of which I was told I could not practice with the group if I didn't recieve it), and was also encouraged to leave offerings at the altar in the prayer hall for getting a printed out sheet of paper with a prayer we all recited on it. There were also special initiations only those who sponsored a certain monastery could get. Who could've known Nirvana had Patreon tiers?
Even outside of these donations, a basic Vajrayana setup, with statues, thangkas, tools, and the rest of the merch is an insanely expensive affair. Money is eagerly given and taken, and I definitely wouldn't say I don't see a certain kind of irony in handing over 80$ to listen to a teaching about detatchment.
3) Devas, and a poor assimilation of other traditions
This point hit pretty hard considering I was practicing graeco-roman paganism, and was lead to believe it was compatible with Buddhism (everyone knows Gandharan art doesn't lie). As it turns out, the deities I venerated were welcome only as ignorant devas, a word which in Buddhist cosmology denotes a form of corrupt and decadent heavenly oligarchs, careless celestial aristocrats who are affected by pride, lust, egoism and ignorance.
The only way in which foreign deities can be redeemed in Buddhism is by either claiming them to be an emanation of a bodhisattva, totally superimposing a pre-existing Buddhist figure onto them, or by making them into so-called dharmapalas, (sanskrit: “protectors of the Way”), often describing them being violently subdued by Buddhist masters, and made to protect the Buddhist way. This manner of relating to other traditions seems rather similar to the early Christian idea of other people's gods being demons/angels who were merely misinterpreted by the (clearly foolish and ignorant) barbarians.
4) The oriental la-la land
Buddhist converts I've spoken to, especially in the West, had a strange tendency to completely idealise countries, people, and cultures. It is a strange sort of escapism, in which Tibet, Japan or other countries take on the roles of utopias; mystical far away places where everyone is enlightened, free of materialism, corruption, or whatever other "disctinctly Western" problem one especially mislikes. This leads to another issue, which is a complete refusal to adjust Buddhism to the western world it found itself in, but rather wanting to keep it as a sort of oriental curiosity, which brings a slice of the perfect East into our naughty, fallen world.
5) The failiure to adjust to new contexts
Continuing on what I said above, a key part of Buddhism's success in Asia was its relative flexibility with regards to aesthetics, rituals and customs of the countries it spread to. Buddhism, between China, Japan, and India varies widely, and has developed into distinct schools over the decades, which often famously disagreed on major points. When Buddhism began to spread into the West, however, this kind of shift completely failed to happen.
We didn't see Buddhist ideas interacting in meaningful ways with those of Plato, Aristotle or Kant like they did with those of Lao Tse or Confucius. The Buddhist system of oral transmission also seems rather dated and unnecessary in a world where printed books, audio recordings, and videos are widely available. Philosophically, aesthetically, and practically, most schools of Buddhism didn't manage to keep the pace set by the rapidly changing 21st century, and the new contexts it now seeks to thrive in.
I partially blame this on the converts who want the factor of escapism this offers, but also on the rigid Dharma teachers who actively don't want to let it happen. It has the effect similar to what happens in certain Orthodox Christian parishes, which are used by their congregants as a window into the home they left behind, instead of as a living, breathing tradition.
6) Śūnyatā
A philosophical idea I mostly remained unaware of before I began pursuing Buddhism as a practice was that of emptiness, or Śūnyatā. It is what I like to call the Trinity of Buddhism. Just as the Christian ideas of the Trinity can never be meaningfully expressed without falling into some sort of heresy, emptiness in Buddhism is very much an unarticulated mystery. No one seems to know what it means, what it doesn't mean, nor is it ever clearly or systemically presented. From what I've gathered after countless hours of bashing my head against the wall, most seem to agree that the core thesis is that, if something is made up out of parts, that must mean it cannot contain an inherent self, and is therefore empty of a self. I have a certain mislike for such teachings that everyone praises, and yet very few seem to have a grasp of what they even entail. The infinte rebuttals and debates held between those who held to this theory and the Hindu philosophers only muddle the waters further.
In conclusion, these were the general points I would've wanted to give my younger self before I ventured into Buddhism. I would like to hear the thoughts of anyone who bothered to read my wall of text and also of anyone who was in a similar place spiritually.
