The religion in theory is different from the religious state with living, breathing humans in charge. Indeed. I practiced Buddhist meditation for some years an

The religion in theory is different from the religious state with living, breathing humans in charge. Indeed. I practiced Buddhist meditation for some years and was very interested in Buddhism. However, what I always found difficult was the relation between teachers and students. On the one hand, someone who has many years of meditation experience is better at detecting typical pitfalls during practice and can help people move forward. On the other hand, this sometimes results in a strong division between laypeople and monks/teachers (typically ex-monks). A subset of teachers use their perceived religious authority this to go on power trips, or worse, physically abuse people. Once religion becomes organized it becomes a very powerful tool to subject people.