The structure of religious legitimation in Hinduism and Buddhism gives unconstrained power to the guru and to those with only a shallow knowledge of the underlying philosophies, almost anything can be presented as spiritually enlightening. Even more than Catholic ordination, transmission gives extraordinary power to the teacher who can plausibly claim direct descent from the Buddha. Although not as thoroughly anti-sex as the Catholic Church, most of the movements discussed here claim to be puritanical: ascetic control over desires is part of what makes them morally superior. Hence what we see in the cases of abuse and exploitation is not just misuse of authority but also disdain for the very rules which justify claims to authority. This chapter examines the cases of Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, Choygam Trungpa and Shambala, Californian Zen, Hare Krishna, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Divine Light Mission. Our main argument is that the system of abuse in these cases had a powerful feedback loop. Those around the guru, whose own status depended on the piety of the guru, had a powerful vested interest in normalising the guru’s deviance: exploitation was re-interpreted as a special gift and bad behaviour was glossed as a ‘teachable moment’.