Want to add to my comment from earlier and explain some of my opinions behind this. The ultimate issue here is that Lucas thinks the Jedi are unquestionable ultimate heroes, but they did not come off that well for most of the audience, and I have to agree.
This is my biggest issue with the prequels, that Lucas did not really convey what he thought the Jedi to be very successfully. Yeah, we get a few lines of dialogue here and there, but nothing that really sticks with the audience unless they are thoroughly examining the films like we are. Of course even then there are still certain major plot points that don’t make the Jedi look too good. Anakin and his enslaved mother is a prime example. Why couldn’t the Jedi free Shmi? Why wasn’t Anakin allowed to see her for a decade?
Like yeah, you could try to explain that in different ways and try to reason it out, but on top of other scenes and plotlines, mixed in with a lack of clear details, its not looking too good. (And this is all coming from someone who grew up with prequels if that means anything.)
I tend to think the main culprit is the sheer amount of other things going on in the films. We really don’t get the Jedi explained as Lucas wanted them to. George Lucas is a talented guy, but I think the prequels would have been better off it were in two parts. One fully explaining the political issues, and another fully exploring the Jedi Order. Seriously, all of the ways Lucas describes the Jedi in the interviews I had brought up never come through that clearly in the prequels. Some things came through in The Clone Wars, but that doesn’t excuse much.
I used to try to reason out all of these things and try to see the prequel Jedi under the most positive light I could, but I always came to the issue that the films themselves don’t show these things. No matter how I tried to rationalize the Jedi’s decisions, and how much I listening to Lucas’ quotes that came out after the fact, they just aren’t present enough in the films.
Lastly, while Lucas is “Buddhist” and were influenced by extremely devoted Buddhist Monks, some consider the Jedi a bastardization of those ideas. So while he may have wanted to base some ideas off of Buddhism, him and his Jedi should never be used as a 1:1 metaphor for Buddhist people and monks. It is fiction over all, and many practices of the Jedi are certainly there for the story only.