be so disillusioned by this current situation that they think we have reached a turning point that signifies the beginning of the final decline and demise of Buddhadharma. Sadly, some students may be so disillusioned that for them, there is no turning back. Im afraid there is no doubt about it: Buddhism is declining in this world. I am certain that the misgivings people have about the key stakeholders in Buddhadharma like the Tibetan rinpoches who should have a vested interest in the survival of Buddhism is one of the reasons why so many feel so discouraged. While Buddhism has always faced outer obstacles like invasions, forced conversion by Islam, cunning conversion by Christianity, patronizing assimilation by Hinduism, and so on its main obstacle is internal and stems from sectarian attitudes. Today, most of us are barely aware of this, even though its the greatest of all the threats Buddhism is facing. There are many factors contributing towards the degeneration of Buddhadharma. Under the banner of rational objectivity as opposed to superstition, and clothed in a supposedly undogmatic liberalism, many among the European and American Buddhist elite are currently promoting a version of Buddhism that completely does away with reincarnation. Their campaign has the potential to destroy Buddhism far more surely than any of its internal scandals. After all, the current scandal is about just one person, whereas the pernicious and apparently contagious trend of misrepresenting the Dharma which is being perpetrated by many and affecting even more is spreading so fast that it is far more insidious and destructive. In addition, theres a large group of respectable life-style teachers who cherry-pick and plagiarize Buddhist ideas without compunction. They market their approaches as mindfulness and secular ethics, but are careful to leave out any terms, expressions or jargon that sound even remotely religious, on the pretext of making the Buddhas ideas accessible to modern people. They lack the decency even to acknowledge the original author of the ideas and practices they peddle, and instead often try to insinuate or even baldly claim that they have discovered it all for themselves. To me thats theft, plain and simple. I would have thought that westerners, who so cherish notions about intellectual property and whose countries enforce strict copyright rules for the protection of writers and institutions, would behave better. Even more dangerous are the self-made gurus who use mindfulness and other Buddhist practices to turn the essence of the Buddhist path into techniques for increasing our love of samsara. By doing so, they utterly destroy the entire purpose of the Buddhadharma, which is to liberate suffering beings from samsara. If this perversion of the Buddhas teachings is not demonic the devil incarnate, as Christians might say what is? At the other extreme, Buddhism is also being undermined by the pervasive tendency in Sikkim, Nepal and Bhutan to preserve so-called precious culture and age-old tradition at any cost. In the process of trying to embalm their traditions, they are effectively hijacking Buddhism and stripping it of all meaning and relevance for this modern age. Sogyal