13. RELIANCE ON A SPIRITUAL TEACHER
YOU SHOULD THINK now that the reason that you and all other sentient beings revolve in the cycle of existence and undergo all these undesirable sufferings and so forth, is that you and they lack realization of the proper relation to a spiritual master. Therefore, request the spiritual masters to give the inspiration to make you overcome obstacles that hinder you from realizing this path.
The actual practice of proper reliance on a spiritual teacher is divided into two: reliance through thought and reliance through action.
RELIANCE THROUGH THOUGHT
Cultivating Faith and Conviction
First, you should visualize your spiritual master at your crown. The spiritual master is the embodiment of all the buddhas. From his heart light rays emanate and in front of him are all the gurus from whom you have received teachings directly.
Visualize all of them in their normal appearance, with all their physical and personality defects, if they have any. To visualize them with all their seeming faults and defects is important at this point, since you are now engaged in a specific meditation on guru devotion which involves—to a great extent—the means to overcome your perception of faults in them.
Then, reflect upon the great benefits of proper reliance on a spiritual master—the eight benefits1 as outlined in the Lamrim, such as getting closer to the achievement of buddhahood. By referring to authentic scriptural sources, by employing all sorts of reasonings most suitable to your mind, by considering examples from the lives of the past masters—that is, by employing any means at your disposal—you should be able to see the great benefits of relying on a spiritual master. It is a very profitable venture!
Therefore, develop the conviction that you should properly rely on him or her. Rejoice in the fact that you have such an opportunity. You should not have the notion that “spiritual master” only refers to high lamas who give teachings from high thrones; rather, the reference is to the spiritual master to whom you relate daily, who leads you on the spiritual path step by step. The kindness of such a guru is the greatest.
Your faith should be reasoned faith, not just blind faith, based on proper intelligence so that when people question and attempt to refute your belief and practice, you will be able to withstand their arguments. Therefore, your faith should be properly based on a firm foundation. If you have this faculty of intelligence, you will be invulnerable to arguments. Otherwise, as the Kadampa masters say, “Faith alone is like a blind person, and it can be led anywhere by anyone if it lacks the complementary factor of wisdom.” So the faith that is supported by the factor of wisdom, and likewise the compassion that is supported by wisdom, is indispensable in a Buddhist practice, whereas faith and compassion alone are common features of all major religions. Therefore, if you cultivate a faith based on a proper foundation, it will be rational and therefore very stable.
The second step is to think about the disadvantages of not relating to a spiritual master and then, weighing the disadvantages and advantages of relating and not relating to a master, decide that you shall relate to a master. As Lama Tsongkhapa advised in Lamrim Chenmo, first it is important to apply all sorts of contemplations; as a conclusion you should develop a deep conviction and make the determination that you must now definitely rely on a spiritual teacher.
Furthermore, seeing that through such a reliance you stand to gain, and that without it you stand to lose, pray that you may have an opportunity for such a reliance in all future lives as well. Think: I wish never to lack the guidance of a qualified master in my future lives; therefore, I decide today to rely on a spiritual master right here and now. That is the decision you have to make.
Reflect now, as a third step, upon the disadvantages and harm of having a breach in your guru devotion practice.2 You will have all sorts of adverse circumstances within this lifetime, and the damage they will cause for your future lives will be great. Therefore, after seeing the harm and disadvantages of having such a breach, you should decide that you will never permit it to occur. Regarding this, it might be helpful to reflect upon stories of the great masters, such as those describing how Naropa in India related to his master Tilopa and how Milarepa in Tibet underwent hardships in fulfilling the wishes of his spiritual teachers and never had any breach in his practice. Having decided that you will rely on a spiritual master, you should determine never to make a breach in your relationship.
The actual process of relying on the guru through thought includes, first, cultivating faith in the spiritual master. For this, while focusing on the spiritual masters in front of you, think that the reason that all the spiritual masters appear to you as though they were ordinary beings is that you have an inferior state of mind and are not able to see them in their own nature as true buddhas.
There are scriptural sources in which Buddha Vajradhara himself says that in future times he will take the form of spiritual masters. Think that it is because of his great kindness that Buddha Vajradhara has assumed the forms of ordinary beings as spiritual masters, in order to suit the practitioners like yourself who have no faculty to see the buddhas directly in their natural aspect.
A Tibetan master said: “If you understand, not just in mere words, the way in which buddhas and bodhisattvas of the past help the beings of the present age, you will see it comes down to the qualified gurus.” Therefore, the kindest spiritual master is the one who gives you teachings, because he is the one who leads you to the achievement of enlightenment. If the buddhas are working for the benefit of us at all, it is only through the gurus. So, if you think along such lines, you will be able to generate deep faith in the spiritual master.
Approaching the topic from a different angle, you should reflect that although the spiritual masters are, in fact, true buddhas, their not appearing to us as such is due to our own ignorance. At this point, it is helpful to reflect that Asanga saw his master Maitreya in the form of a dog, and that Maitripa saw his guru Savaripa as an ordinary hunter, and that Legpa Karma saw the Buddha as having all sorts of faults. Think that it is because of your ignorant mind that you are not able to see spiritual masters as true buddhas. Perceptions in general are deceptive. You can conclude that since your own perception is unreliable, you will never generate even a single thought of perceiving fault in the master.
Reflect that there must be manifestations of the Buddha who are actively working for your benefit; if there are such beings, they are probably your spiritual masters. But then the thought might arise that you see all sorts of faults in them. Analyze whether this perception is illusory or not: if they are true buddhas, how can they have faults? It is only your own perception that is unreliable.
As the Panchen Lama says here, the appearance of these faults is not because your spiritual masters have faults, but rather because they are using skillful means by portraying such faults in order to show themselves as ordinary beings so that you can relate to them more easily.
How can we ordinary beings, whose minds are always under the influence of ignorance, determine what is true and what is false with great certainty? Our judgments, even concerning ordinary things, are frequently clouded by our emotions. For example, we often see the actions of our loved ones—even if they are harmful—as wonderful, whereas we judge even the positive actions of a person we dislike as pretentious and false. We cannot rely upon our own perceptions; it is a fact that we misapprehend many situations. If this is a general fact, how can we still stubbornly maintain that our perceptions about our own spiritual masters must be true?
Sometimes it is effective to take as the central figure of the merit field the spiritual master to whom you feel most distant and in whom you feel you see faults. You can also visualize this master, in whom you find it most difficult to develop faith, as the wisdom being at the heart of Buddha Shakyamuni. Then reflect upon his qualities—his body, personality, and so forth. This practice will actually help you to overcome perceptions of faults in all spiritual masters. It is very difficult to perceive all spiritual masters as true buddhas, but it is possible to overcome perceptions of faults. If you were to suspend your practices until you could see all the masters as buddhas, it would be a long wait until you could commence your practices. Overcoming the perception of faults lays a good foundation within your mind for other practices such as refuge, renunciation, and so forth, and the progress you make in these practices will increase your faith in spiritual masters. So, the point that is most indispensable at the initial stage is the overcoming of misconceptions about faults in the spiritual master.
Without your masters’ proper guidance, how can you have the knowledge of the paths, let alone embark upon the right one? That you have the knowledge to embark upon a spiritual path and to discriminate between right and wrong is due to the Buddha’s kindness in appearing in an ordinary form to teach you. Therefore, you all should reflect that the little understanding that you have about the stages of the path, and the little practice that you can do with the hope of planting some seed in your minds, is due to the kindness of the spiritual master. Without the guidance of the gurus you might be able to read some texts, but integrating the teachings with your own minds through proper instruction is possible only by following the advice of a teacher. It is only through his kindness that you will be able to accomplish such a feat.
By thinking in such terms, you will find that the kindness of a spiritual master is great, and greater still is his appearing in the present form so that you can have direct access to him. For example, if a person who has very high rank comes with his guards displaying all the grandeur of his position to help someone who is very sick and bereaved, it may not be very helpful; on the other hand, if he comes as an ordinary person, without any servants and so forth, he can be more helpful to the troubled person and may deeply touch the patient’s mind. Similarly, the appearance of the buddhas in their sambhogakaya (enjoyment body) form may not be as beneficial to you as their appearance in the form of spiritual masters. The buddhas in their sambhogakaya form are accessible only to bodhisattvas on high levels.
So you should realize that through the great kindness of the spiritual master, at this time of degeneration still the buddhas are able to portray themselves to you in a physical form and help you according to your own disposition. It is almost like they are protecting those who are abandoned by all other refuges. When you think in such terms, you will really begin to appreciate the great kindness of the spiritual masters, which surpasses the kindness of all others. Such forms of reflection will enable you to actually see the perception of faults in the guru as helpful for increasing faith in his skillful means. Thinking in such terms will increase faith and respect in the guru. So that is how you cultivate faith and conviction in the spiritual master.
Without faith, even though you might have a very clear visualization and image of the spiritual master, it will not be very effective—it is almost like having a clear image of a good painting. So, develop single-pointed faith and respect for the spiritual master. Such a faith in the guru, firmly based on the realization of him as a true Buddha, can come about only when you have first developed a general understanding of the entire framework of the Buddhist path. For a person who possesses such knowledge, the recitation of even a short guru yoga text can become a profound guru devotion practice. It is for this reason that I always emphasize the importance of study for Buddhist practitioners. It is very difficult to explain the importance of guru devotion to someone not familiar with Buddhist doctrines because if such a person is doubtful of the possibility of buddhahood in the first place, there is not much point in repeating that Vajradhara has said that the spiritual masters are manifestations of the buddhas.
Therefore, first of all it is very important to have some understanding of emptiness and the law of interdependence and how they are complementary. This will enable you to develop deep conviction in the law of causality, which in turn will enable you to develop conviction in things that are beyond the perception of ordinary beings, thus helping you to have conviction in the Three Jewels.
You can reason that if the spiritual master Buddha Shakyamuni has proved truthful and reliable on very profound matters—like emptiness and impermanence—then his statement that the spiritual master is the manifestation of the Buddha can also be relied upon. Approaching the topic in such a manner will enable you to develop a deep faith and conviction in the Buddha’s doctrine; following the stages of the path found in Lamrim will then be very fruitful. Without such a basis, the practice of guru devotion may not be so beneficial and appealing at the beginning.
Cultivating Respect
It is through recollecting the great kindness of the spiritual master that one cultivates respect. Now, again focusing upon the master that you have visualized in front of you, reflect that the understanding you develop of the entire path is due to his kindness. Because of the force of this contemplation, nectar descends and so forth.
The guru’s kindness includes the kindness of giving you teachings and taming your mind and so forth. You should mentally review the great kindness of the individual spiritual masters, beginning with those who taught you the alphabet and how to read, and including those who gave teachings on the treatises; monastic, bodhisattva, and tantric vows; commentaries on generation and completion stages of tantra; transmissions and so forth; and even advice as to the way you lead your life. So the entire way of life and outlook are taught by the spiritual masters.
When you think in such terms, you will truly be able to see the great kindness of the spiritual master; his kindness surpasses that of Buddha Shakyamuni. From the point of view of qualifications, all the buddhas are equal, but from the point of view of kindness, the spiritual master’s kindness far exceeds that of the buddhas.
Having perceived the master as the Buddha, cultivate strong faith, and, reflecting upon his kindness, develop deep respect for him. That is how to relate to a spiritual master through thought.
RELIANCE THROUGH ACTION
This practice is done by following the teachings that the spiritual master has given, living according to his advice, and making offerings to him and serving him.
Although living according to his advice is the real offering to a master, if you find that any part of the master’s advice contradicts the general mode of approach of the Buddhist doctrine, you should examine it and then explain to the spiritual master why you cannot fulfill that advice. As Ashvagosha said in his Guru Panchashika (Fifty Verses on the Guru), “Regarding the directions that are unfit, explain their unsuitability in words.” Also, Gunaprabha in his Vinayasutra (The Condensed Essence of Ethics) said, “Reverse the directions if they are unwholesome.” In the same vein, a Mahayana sutra reads, “Comply well with the advice that accords with the positive ideals, and act contrary to that which is against the principles.” There are some exceptions where the spiritual master sees very special benefits for a certain individual; then, although the advice may not directly accord with the general approach of Buddhist doctrine, it is nevertheless given. I am telling you all this from my own experience; not everything I say should be accepted by you. If what the Dalai Lama says accords with the general mode of approach of the Buddha’s doctrine and seems sensible, then you should follow it; if you find that anything that the Dalai Lama says contradicts the general approach of the Buddha’s doctrine, you should just leave it. This is an important point.
If you do not apply this caution, there is a danger that a person who claims to be a spiritual master but who is ignorant of the Buddha’s doctrine may give some advice that could prove harmful. Then, both the disciples and the master will harm themselves.
Therefore, it is very important to judge whether or not the direction given accords with the framework of the Buddhist doctrine encompassed in the Tripitaka (Three Scriptural Collections).3 Many people in the West mistakenly term Tibetan Buddhism Lamaism;4 so, there is also a danger, if you are not very careful, of really making it Lamaism in the true sense of that word. This point has been greatly emphasized by Lama Tsongkhapa in his Lamrim Chenmo.
CONCLUDING ACTIVITIES
While meditating on the practice of reliance, make requests to the spiritual masters in front of you. In a sadhana, when one feels exhausted by the meditation, at the end one can do the repetition of mantras; in the same manner here, after you do the specific meditations on Lamrim, you should follow with the rest of the recitation and repetition of the guru’s name mantra or praise verses. Invoke your master’s inspiration, and dedicate all the merit that you have gained through such a practice to the benefit of all beings. You can again visualize nectar descending from the spiritual master at your crown, and passing down through your body, or you could do the visualization of the guru himself descending through your crown and entering into your heart, remaining there inseparably. This is a very powerful practice, which will make you invulnerable to negative actions, because you will always feel that the guru is there to witness all your actions.
Although the practice of proper reliance on a spiritual master is contemplative in nature, at the end of the contemplation you should do absorptive meditations as well, dwelling on the conclusion. This combined practice of contemplation and absorption is necessary.
You should end each session of Lamrim practice before you become exhausted; otherwise, if you try to make sessions very long, you may feel so tired that you will not want to repeat them. Therefore, initially it is very important to end the session when you are not yet tired, so that your practice of dharma will be steady like a stream, not momentary like water gushing out of a broken tank, emptying the tank in a few minutes.