Teachers/Guru

“No one is so wrong as the man who knows all the answers.”

(WCZ 27)

If I insist on giving you my truth, and never stop to receive your truth in return, then there can be no truth between us.

(CP 383)

In the cultivation of an inner spiritual consciousness there is a perpetual danger of self-deception, narcissism, self-righteous evasion of truth. . . . The hazard of the spiritual quest is . . . that its genuineness cannot be left to our own isolated subjective judgment alone.

(AJ 352)

Nothing too clear was said about meditation, except that it has degrees and must be preceded by study. “Anyone” can do the simpler kind but a master is needed for the “more advanced.”

(AJ 66)

[The Khempo of Namgyal, the Dalai Lama’s private chaplain] stressed the need of a master for progress in meditation. . . . He insisted on the “ax of true doctrine” which must be used to cut the root of ignorance — and that one must know how to use the ax, otherwise he harms himself. So a man who is skilled in catching snakes can safely catch them but one who is not skilled gets bitten.

(AJ 94-5)

Like everyone else, [the Chhokling Rimpoche] spoke of masters, and the need of finding one, and how one finds one — of being drawn to him supernaturally, sometimes with instant recognition.

(AJ 97)

The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten.

Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.

(xxvi. II. WCZ 154)

One cannot understand Buddhism until one meets it in this existential manner, in a person in whom it is alive. Then there is no longer a problem of understanding doctrines . . . but only a question of appreciating a value which is self-evident.

(ZBA 63)

A master is . . . a child of the ancient Fathers, who bears their tradition with him and transmits it to future generations. . . . He is one who knows the unknown not by intellectual penetration, or by a science that wrests for itself the secrets of heaven, but by the wisdom of “littleness” and silence which knows how to receive in a secret a word that cannot be uttered except in an enigma.

(MZM 72–3)

“For he who knows does not speak,

He who speaks does not know”

And “The Wise Man gives instruction

Without the use of speech.”

(WCZ 120)

It becomes overwhelmingly important for us to become detached from our everyday conception of ourselves as potential subjects for special and unique experiences, or as candidates for realization, attainment and fulfillment. . . . A spiritual guide worth his salt will conduct a ruthless campaign against all forms of delusion arising out of spiritual ambition and self-complacency which aim to establish the ego in spiritual glory.

(ZBA 76–7, italics Merton’s)

Milarepa, angry, guilty of revenge, murder and black arts, was purified by his master Marpa the translator who several times made him build a house many stones high and then tear it down again. After which he was “no longer the slave of his own psyche but its lord.”

(AJ 84)

In order to become a “lamp for oneself,” one must first completely die to one’s empirical “I,”and to do this, one must submit completely to another who is himself enlightened and who knows exactly how to bring one through the perilous ways of transformation and enlightenment. But in no case must one become attached to the methods, the teaching the “system” . . . of this master.

(MZM 225)

All creatures have gifts of their own.

The white horned owl can catch fleas at midnight

And distinguish the tip of a hair,

But in bright day it stares, helpless,

And cannot even see a mountian

All things have varying capacities.

(WCZ 88)

Water is for fish

And air for men.

Natures differ, and needs with them.

Hence the wise men of old

Did not lay down

One measure for all.

(xviii.5. WCZ 104)

How should you treat a bird?

As yourself

Or as a bird?

(WCZ 103)

“You must be your own lamps, be your own refuges. Take refuge in nothing outside yourselves. Hold firm to the truth as a lamp and a refuge, and do not look for a refuge in anything besides yourselves.”

(MZM 218, quoting the Buddha)

I ask nobody to follow me. Everyone should follow his own inner voice.

(II-205, GNV 48)

Don’t listen to friends when the Friend inside you says “Do this!”

(I-182, GNV 67)

Follow the ways of no man, not even your own. The way that is most yours is no way. For where are you? Unborn! Your way therefore is unborn. Yet you travel. You do not become unborn by stopping a journey you have begun: and you cannot be nowhere by issuing a decree: “I am now nowhere!”

(CP 421)

God alone knows the mind of a person; and the duty of a man of God is to act as he is directed by his inner voice. I claim that I act accordingly.

(II-204, GNV 48)