A Title of Honour, and What Happened When It Went Unquestioned

Because rinpoche is an honorific rather than an office with any defined body able to grant or withdraw it, a teacher's actual conduct can go unexamined for a long time behind the reverence the title itself commands, a structural vulnerability that came into public view with the case of Sogyal Rinpoche, the founder of the international Rigpa organisation and author of a widely read book on Tibetan Buddhist approaches to death. Former students published detailed allegations of physical, sexual and psychological abuse spanning decades, and an independent investigation commissioned by Rigpa itself in 2018 substantiated a number of the claims, after which Sogyal Rinpoche stepped back from formal teaching and died in 2019.

The case prompted public reflection within Western Tibetan Buddhist communities about how the deference built into the title itself, and the doctrine of devotion to the teacher within Vajrayana practice, had made it harder rather than easier for students to raise concerns, and some centres have since introduced clearer ethical codes and complaint procedures for teachers who carry the honorific, though, as with the guru relationship generally, no central authority exists to enforce such standards across the tradition as a whole.