I've lost count of Tibetan masters that have abused their students. Buddhism is simply not what is thought of on first sight and he is absolutely correct about it.
It's an incredibly depressing religion. The premise is basically get off the wheel(of samsara) and exist or cease existing in Nirvana and or keep suffering.
This is why I write returning to fundamentals of practice, which is not Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhism is the psychedelics of Buddhism: it's not for everybody and many people have touched its live wire and been smoked including teachers who Tibetan Buddhist students are taught to view as infallible deities. Zen has this same set of problems to a lesser degree. Go back to basics. Practice what is good at the beginning, the middle and the end. What brings harmony to you and your relationships. Let that be your test.
The depression is assuming life has the lasting qualities we're seeking and continuing to be disappointed until we are crippled. People try and put that on Buddhism because they refuse to see it. The Buddha was actually offering an incredibly hopeful message: see this mass of aggregate sensations for what it is and be liberated, be truly happy without dependence on conditions, without dependence on the world to offer you anything.
All it takes is to see people, interacted with people who are living examples of this, paragons of whatever is furthest away from this "depression" you ascribe to Buddhism. They walk around with huge smiles on their face. Every interaction with them is pure love, pure compassion. They do not have bad days and here they are with nothing more than a robe and a bowl to their name.
May all people know real kindness, real happiness. I'll tell you here and now, what Sasha is peddling is not it. I strongly condemn what Sasha is offering and other teachers who assume the mantle of power for their own egos. He has abused his position of authority to distort the message of the Buddha, to bring confusion to the path and has brought confusion to his own life that is disharmonious, a life of more attachment not less, a life of imbalance not balance and he is passing out this message to anyone who will listen. This is very bad practice, very bad ethics, because he condemns not only himself, he condemns anyone who buys into his poison.
But you can't just drop Tibetan Buddhism just like that. It's a tradition going back thousands of years and I think Dzogchen should be the Northern star in a mad world taking us to peace and happiness. After all they say it's the highest vehicle for liberation. So it's very sad to see them producing people which are accused of ethical transgressions.
What do you consider the paragon of Buddhist practice? Maybe I can check them out online. I've hung around DhO and people complain that Buddhist practitioners have more of an emptiness dryness aspect to them as opposed to lively joyous qualities of other traditions like Advaita. I'm not impressed with Zen masters. They espouse very dry rigorous qualities and they don't appear to me carelessly joyous and happy.
I don't think the OP was dropping Tibetan Buddhism, just pointing out that it can be very complicated and could end up in a lot of confusion (which I agree with). They mentioned Ajahn Geoff [1] as a good place to find deep teaching, which I also agree with. My first introduction to formal Buddhism was through friends that ended up ordaining with him almost 20 years ago. My practice ended up more in vajrayana training, but I still go back to read the books they sent from his monastery often.
Personally, I don't think there is a paragon of Buddhist practice. If you're looking for one I think you might be doing it wrong, so to speak. All three yanas have great teachers, just use your discernment as you follow your path.
I have been part of a Tibetan sect (a Western sect associated with Karma Kagyu). The people there said that Tibetan Buddhism was the most advanced form of Buddhism. But also that it was only for those who were ready for it. Theravada Buddhism to them would be the simplest form: less powerful but probably also less dangerous.
Those people wouldn’t for one second judge a person who wanted to practice a “less advanced” form of Buddhism. It’s all about what the person is ready for, according to them.
I had a teacher (also from Karma Kagyu) who would use a racecar metaphor: the point of a racecar is to be a really fast vehicle. That doesn't mean that a racecar is the most suitable vehicle for all tasks, or "best" in any overall sense of the word. Racecars are only well suited to certain conditions, and are usually driven by people who trained and practiced specially to drive them. Some tasks and lifecycles need a pickup truck, others a minivan, others an 18-wheeler, and personally I love to point out that the bicycle is the most efficient form of wheeled transportation.
So anyways the vajryana is the racecar. The point of that metaphor wasn't to flesh out which schools corresponded to a sedan or anything, but more like to point out how few people drive racecars, how few tasks or challenges are well solved by racecars, how much training, respect, and caution you might want to have before you started driving racecars at full speed, the conditions under which you would consider driving a racecar, etc. etc. And like you said, there's no judgement for not driving a racecar -- if anything there's a lot of respect and/or demand for people to drive more practical vehicles.
tho idk, personally, even though in my material life I prefer a bicycle, in my spiritual life I'm still trying to train to drive the racecar, so maybe it needs an even less sexy anology.
I would describe myself as a follower of Tibetan Buddhism but numerically it is a small fraction of Buddhists worldwide. As an approximation, let's pretend that every single Tibetan is a practicing Tibetan Buddhist; that's ~6.4 million people. Of course that's not true, but numerically, when you count all Western practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism to substitute for the Tibetans who aren't, that number's probably pretty close.
As a fraction of worldwide Buddhism, using a low end estimate of 488 million, that's about 1.3 percent.
So, by analogy, if you're looking for a Christian denomination that's about that size proportionally within the larger religion of Christianity: think of the Amish, the Mennonites, etc. (distinctive because of their dress). Numerically that's a close comparison. Maybe throw in the Quakers too. All together that's about the same size, fractionally.
The point is that, when you're dealing with such a small & unique subgroup, you run the risk of misunderstanding the larger group. You might have complaints about the Amish & the Quakers, but as a subgroup they are so small & unique that it seems a little off to use them as a proxy to criticize Christianity. I would suggest the same is true of Tibetan Buddhism as compared to Buddhism globally.
It's an incredibly depressing religion. The premise is basically get off the wheel(of samsara) and exist or cease existing in Nirvana and or keep suffering.