IN THE SUFI MASTER RUMI’S Table Talk, there is this fierce and pointed passage:
The master said there is one thing in this world which must never be forgotten. If you were to forget everything else, but were not to forget this, there would be no cause to worry, while if you remembered, performed and attended to everything else, but forgot that one thing, you would in fact have done nothing whatsoever. It is as if a king had sent you to a country to carry out one special, specific task. You go to the country and you perform a hundred other tasks, but if you have not performed the task you were sent for, it is as if you have performed nothing at all. So man has come into the world for a particular task, and that is his purpose. If he doesn’t perform it, he will have done nothing.
All the spiritual teachers of humanity have told us the same thing, that the purpose of life on earth is to achieve union with our fundamental, enlightened nature. The “task” for which the “king” has sent us into this strange, dark country is to realize and embody our true being. There is only one way to do this, and that is to undertake the spiritual journey, with all the ardor and intelligence, courage and resolve for transformation that we can muster. As Death says to Nachiketas in the Katha Upanishad:
There is the path of wisdom and the path of ignorance. They are far apart and lead to different ends . . . Abiding in the midst of ignorance, thinking themselves wise and learned, fools go aimlessly hither and thither like the blind led by the blind. What lies beyond life shines not to those who are childish, or careless, or deluded by wealth.
At other times and in other civilizations, this path of spiritual transformation was confined to a relatively select number of people; now, however, a large proportion of the human race must seek the path of wisdom if the world is to be preserved from the internal and external dangers that threaten it. In this time of violence and disintegration, spiritual vision is not an elitist luxury but vital to our survival.
To follow the path of wisdom has never been more urgent or more difficult. Our society is dedicated almost entirely to the celebration of ego, with all its sad fantasies about success and power, and it celebrates those very forces of greed and ignorance that are destroying the planet. It has never been more difficult to hear the unflattering voice of the truth, and never more difficult, once having heard it, to follow it: because there is nothing in the world around us that supports our choice, and the entire society in which we live seems to negate every idea of sacredness or eternal meaning. So at the time of our most acute danger, when our very future is in doubt, we as human beings find ourselves at our most bewildered, and trapped in a nightmare of our own creation.
Yet there is one significant source of hope in this tragic situation, and that is that the spiritual teachings of all the great mystical traditions are still available. Unfortunately, however, there are very few masters to embody them, and an almost total lack of discrimination in those searching for the truth. The West has become a heaven for spiritual charlatans. In the case of scientists, you can verify who is genuine and who is not, because other scientists can check their background and test their findings. Yet in the West, without the guidelines and criteria of a thriving and full-fledged wisdom culture, the authenticity of so-called “masters” is almost impossible to establish. Anyone, it seems, can parade as a master and attract a following.
This was not the case in Tibet, where choosing a particular path or teacher to follow was far safer. People coming to Tibetan Buddhism for the first time often wonder why such great importance is placed on lineage, on the unbroken chain of transmission from master to master. Lineage serves as a crucial safeguard: It maintains the authenticity and purity of the teaching. People know who a master is from who his master is. It is not a question of preserving some fossilized, ritualistic knowledge, but of transmitting from heart to heart, from mind to mind, an essential and living wisdom and its skillful and powerful methods.
Recognizing who is and who is not a true master is a very subtle and demanding business; and in an age like ours, addicted to entertainment, easy answers, and quick fixes, the more sober and untheatrical attributes of spiritual mastery might very well go unnoticed. Our ideas about what holiness is, that it is pious, bland, and meek, may make us blind to the dynamic and sometimes exuberantly playful manifestation of the enlightened mind.
As Patrul Rinpoche wrote: “The extraordinary qualities of great beings who hide their nature escapes ordinary people like us, despite our best efforts in examining them. On the other hand, even ordinary charlatans are expert at deceiving others by behaving like saints.” If Patrul Rinpoche could write that in the nineteenth century in Tibet, how much more true must it be in the chaos of our contemporary spiritual supermarket?
So how are we today, in an extremely distrustful age, to find the trust that is so necessary in following the spiritual path? What criteria can we use to assess whether or not a master is genuine?
I remember vividly being with a master whom I know when he asked his students what had drawn them to him, and why they had trusted him. One woman said: “I’ve come to see how you really want, more than anything, for us to understand and apply the teachings, and how skillfully you direct them to help us do so.” A man in his fifties said: “It’s not what you know that moves me, but that you really do have an altruistic and a good heart.”
A woman in her late thirties confessed: “I’ve tried to make you into my mother, my father, my therapist, my husband, my lover; you have calmly sat through the drama of all these projections and never ever turned away from me.”
An engineer in his twenties said: “What I have found in you is that you are genuinely humble, that you really wish the very best for all of us, that as well as being a teacher you have never stopped being a student of your great masters.” A young lawyer said: “For you it’s the teachings that are the most important thing. Sometimes I even think that your ideal would be almost for you to become completely obsolete, simply to pass on the teachings as selflessly as possible.”
Another student said shyly: “At first I was terrified at opening myself up to you. I’ve been hurt so often. But as I began to do so, I started to notice real changes in myself, and slowly I became more and more grateful to you, because I realized how much you were helping me. And then I discovered in myself a trust in you so deep, deeper than I’d ever imagined possible.”
Finally a computer operator in his forties said: “You have been such a wonderful mirror for me, and you show me two things: the relative aspect of who I am, and the absolute aspect of who I am. I can look at you and see—not because of who you are but because of what you are mirroring back to me—all of my relative confusion, very clearly. But I can also look at you and I can see, reflected in you, the nature of mind, out of which everything is arising, moment by moment.”
These replies show us that true teachers are kind, compassionate, and tireless in their desire to share whatever wisdom they have acquired from their masters, never abuse or manipulate their students under any circumstances, never under any circumstances abandon them, serve not their own ends but the greatness of the teachings, and always remain humble. Real trust can and should only grow toward someone who you come to know, over time, embodies all these qualities. You will find that this trust becomes the ground of your life, there to support you through all the difficulties of life and death.
In Buddhism we establish whether a teacher is authentic by whether or not the guidance he or she is giving accords with the teaching of Buddha. It cannot be stressed too often that it is the truth of the teaching which is all-important, and never the personality of the teacher. This is why Buddha reminded us in the “Four Reliances”:
Rely on the message of the teacher, not on his personality;
Rely on the meaning, not just on the words;
Rely on the real meaning, not on the provisional one;
Rely on your wisdom mind, not on your ordinary, judgmental mind.
So it is important to remember that the true teacher, as we shall see, is the spokesperson of the truth: its compassionate “wisdom display.” All the buddhas, masters, and prophets, in fact, are the emanations of this truth, appearing in countless skillful, compassionate guises in order to guide us, through their teaching, back to our true nature. At first, then, more important than finding the teacher is finding and following the truth of the teaching, for it is through making a connection with the truth of the teaching that you will discover your living connection with a master.
We all have the karma to meet one spiritual path or another, and I would encourage you, from the bottom of my heart, to follow with complete sincerity the path that inspires you most.
Read the great spiritual books of all the traditions, come to some understanding of what the masters might mean by liberation and enlightenment, and find out which approach to absolute reality really attracts and suits you most. Exercise in your search as much discernment as you can; the spiritual path demands more intelligence, more sober understanding, more subtle powers of discrimination than any other discipline, because the highest truth is at stake. Use your common sense at every moment. Come to the path as humorously aware as possible of the baggage you will be bringing with you: your lacks, fantasies, failings, and projections. Blend, with a soaring awareness of what your true nature might be, a down-to-earth and level-headed humility, and a clear appreciation of where you are on your spiritual journey and what still remains to be understood and accomplished.
The most important thing is not to get trapped in what I see everywhere in the West, a “shopping mentality”: shopping around from master to master, teaching to teaching, without any continuity or real, sustained dedication to any one discipline. Nearly all the great spiritual masters of all traditions agree that the essential thing is to master one way, one path to the truth, by following one tradition with all your heart and mind to the end of the spiritual journey, while remaining open and respectful toward the insights of all others. In Tibet we used to say, “Knowing one, you accomplish all.” The modern faddish idea that we can always keep all our options open and so never need commit ourselves to anything is one of the greatest and most dangerous delusions of our culture, and one of ego’s most effective ways of sabotaging our spiritual search.
When you go on searching all the time, the searching itself becomes an obsession and takes you over. You become a spiritual tourist, bustling about and never getting anywhere. As Patrul Rinpoche says, “You leave your elephant at home and look for its footprints in the forest.” Following one teaching is not a way of confining you or jealously monopolizing you. It’s a compassionate and skillful way of keeping you centered and always on the path, despite all the obstacles that you and the world will inevitably present.
So when you have explored the mystical traditions, choose one master and follow him or her. It’s one thing to set out on the spiritual journey; its quite another to find the patience and endurance, the wisdom, courage, and humility to follow it to the end. You may have the karma to find a teacher, but you must then create the karma to follow your teacher. For very few of us know how truly to follow a master, which is an art in itself. So however great the teaching or master may be, what is essential is that you find in yourself the insight and skill to learn how to love and follow the master and the teaching.
This is not easy. Things will never be perfect. How could they be? We are still in samsara. Even when you have chosen your master and are following the teachings as sincerely as you can, you will often meet difficulties and frustrations, contradictions and imperfections. Don’t succumb to obstacles and tiny difficulties. These are often only ego’s childish emotions. Don’t let them blind you to the essential and enduring value of what you have chosen. Don’t let your impatience drag you away from your commitment to the truth. I have been saddened, again and again, to see how many people take up a teaching or master with enthusiasm and promise, only to lose heart when the smallest, unavoidable obstacles arise, then tumble back into samsara and old habits and waste years or perhaps a lifetime.
As the Buddha said in his first teaching, the root of all our suffering in samsara is ignorance. Ignorance, until we free ourselves from it, can seem endless, and even when we have embarked on the spiritual path our search is fogged by it. However, if you remember this and keep the teachings in your heart, you will gradually develop the discernment to recognize the innumerable confusions of ignorance for what they are, and so never jeopardize your commitment or lose your perspective.
Life, as the Buddha told us, is as brief as a lightning flash; yet as Wordsworth said, “The world is too much with us: getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” It is that laying waste of our powers, that betrayal of our essence, that abandonment of the miraculous chance that this life, the natural bardo, gives us of knowing and embodying our enlightened nature, that is perhaps the most heartbreaking thing about human life. What the masters are essentially telling us is to stop fooling ourselves: What will we have learned, if at the moment of death we do not know who we really are? As the Tibetan Book of the Dead says:
With mind far off, not thinking of death’s coming,
Performing these meaningless activities,
Returning empty-handed now would be complete confusion;
The need is recognition, the spiritual teachings,
So why not practice the path of wisdom at this very moment?
From the mouths of the saints come these words:
If you do not keep your master’s teaching in your heart
Will you not become your own deceiver?
The Buddha says in one of the Tantras:1 “Of all the buddhas who have ever attained enlightenment, not a single one accomplished this without relying upon a master, and of all the thousand buddhas that will appear in this eon, none of them will attain enlightenment without relying on a master.”
In 1987, after my beloved master Dudjom Rinpoche passed away in France, I was sitting in a train, returning to Paris from the south of France, where he had lived. Images of his thousands of acts of generosity, tenderness, and compassion passed through my mind; I found myself in tears, saying to myself over and over again: “Had it not been for you, how could I possibly have understood?”
I realized, with an intimacy and poignancy that I had never experienced before, just why such a sacred emphasis is placed in our tradition on the relationship between master and disciple, and just how essential this relationship is to the living transmission of the truth, from mind to mind, from heart to heart. Without my masters, I would have had no possibility at all of realizing the truth of the teachings: I cannot imagine even having been able to reach the humble level of understanding that I have.
Many people in the West are suspicious of masters—often, unfortunately, for good reasons. I do not have to catalogue here the many dreadful and disappointing cases of folly, greed, and charlatanry that have occurred in the modern world since the opening to Eastern wisdom in the 1950s and 1960s. However, all the great wisdom traditions, whether Christian, Sufi, Buddhist, or Hindu, rely for their force on the master-disciple relationship. And so what the world needs urgently now is as clear as possible an understanding of what a real master is, what a real student or disciple is, and what the true nature of the transformation is that takes place through devotion to the master, what you might call “the alchemy of discipleship.”
Perhaps the most moving and accurate account of the true nature of the master I have ever heard comes from my master Jamyang Khyentse. He said that although our true nature is buddha, it has been obscured from beginningless time by a dark cloud of ignorance and confusion. This true nature, however, our buddha nature, has never completely surrendered to the tyranny of ignorance; somewhere it is always rebelling against its domination.
Our buddha nature, then, has an active aspect, which is our “inner teacher.” From the very moment we became obscured, this inner teacher has been working tirelessly for us, tirelessly trying to bring us back to the radiance and spaciousness of our true being. Not for one second, Jamyang Khyentse said, has the inner teacher given up on us. In its infinite compassion, one with the infinite compassion of all the buddhas and all the enlightened beings, it has been ceaselessly working for our evolution—not only in this life but in all our past lives also—using all kinds of skillful means and all types of situations to teach and awaken us, and to guide us back to the truth.
When we have prayed and aspired and hungered for the truth for a long time, for many, many lives, and when our karma has become sufficiently purified, a kind of miracle takes place. And this miracle, if we can understand and use it, can lead to the ending of ignorance forever: The inner teacher, who has been with us always, manifests in the form of the “outer teacher,” whom, almost as if by magic, we actually encounter. This encounter is the most important of any lifetime.
Who is this outer teacher? None other than the embodiment and voice and representative of our inner teacher. The master whose human shape and human voice and wisdom we come to love with a love deeper than any other in our lives is none other than the external manifestation of the mystery of our own inner truth. What else could explain why we feel so strongly connected to him or her?
At the deepest and highest level, the master and the disciple are not and cannot ever be in any way separate; for the master’s task is to teach us to receive, without any obscuration of any kind, the clear message of our own inner teacher, and to bring us to realize the continual presence of this ultimate teacher within us. I pray that all of you may taste, in this life, the joy of this most perfect kind of friendship.
Not only is the master the direct spokesperson of your own inner teacher, he or she is also the bearer, channel, and transmitter of all the blessings of all the enlightened beings. That is what gives your master the extraordinary power to illumine your mind and heart. He or she is nothing less than the human face of the absolute, the telephone, if you like, through which all the buddhas and all the enlightened beings can call you. He or she is the crystallization of the wisdom of all the buddhas, and the embodiment of their compassion directed always toward you: the rays of their universal sunlight aimed directly at your heart and mind in order to liberate you.
In my tradition we revere the master for being even kinder than the buddhas themselves. Although the compassion and power of the buddhas are always present, our obscurations prevent us from meeting the buddhas face to face. But we can meet the master; he or she is here, living, breathing, speaking, acting, before us to show us, in all the ways possible, the path of the buddhas: the way to liberation. For me, my masters have been the embodiment of living truth, undeniable signs that enlightenment is possible in a body, in this life, in this world, even here and even now, the supreme inspirations in my practice, in my work, in my life, and in my journey toward liberation. My masters are for me the embodiments of my sacred commitment to keep enlightenment foremost in my mind until I actually achieve it. I know enough to know that only when I reach enlightenment will I have a complete understanding of who they really are and of their infinite generosity, love, and wisdom.
I would like to share with you this beautiful prayer, the words of Jikmé Lingpa, a prayer we say in Tibet to invoke the presence of the master in our heart:
From the blossoming lotus of devotion, at the center of my heart,
Rise up, O compassionate master, my only refuge!
I am plagued by past actions and turbulent emotions:
To protect me in my misfortune
Remain as the jewel-ornament on the crown of my head, the chakra of great bliss,
Arousing all my mindfulness and awareness, I pray!
Just as Buddha said that of all the buddhas who attained enlightenment, not one accomplished this without relying on the master, he also said: “It is only through devotion, and devotion alone, that you will realize the absolute truth.” The absolute truth cannot be realized within the domain of the ordinary mind. And the path beyond the ordinary mind, all the great wisdom traditions have told us, is through the heart. This path of the heart is devotion.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche wrote:
There is only one way of attaining liberation and of obtaining the omniscience of enlightenment: following an authentic spiritual master. He is the guide that will help you to cross the ocean of samsara.
The sun and the moon are reflected in clear, still water instantly. Similarly, the blessings of all the buddhas are always present for those who have complete confidence in them. The sun’s rays fall everywhere uniformly, but only where they are focused through a magnifying glass can they set dry grass on fire. When the all-pervading rays of the Buddha’s compassion are focused through the magnifying glass of your faith and devotion, the flame of blessings blazes up in your being.
So then, it is essential to know what real devotion is. It is not mindless adoration; it is not abdication of your responsibility to yourself, nor undiscriminating following of another’s personality or whim. Real devotion is an unbroken receptivity to the truth. Real devotion is rooted in an awed and reverent gratitude, but one that is lucid, grounded, and intelligent.
When the master is able to open your innermost heart and offers you an undeniably powerful glimpse of the nature of your mind, a wave of joyful gratitude surges up in you toward the one who helped you to see, and the truth that you now realize the master embodies in his or her being, teachings, and wisdom mind. That uncontrived, genuine feeling is always rooted in repeated, undeniable, inner experience—a repeated clarity of direct recognition—and this, and this only, is what we call devotion, mö gü in Tibetan. Mö gü means “longing and respect”: respect for the master, which grows deeper and deeper as you understand more and more who he or she really is, and longing for what he or she can introduce in you, because you have come to know the master is your heart link with the absolute truth and the embodiment of the true nature of your mind.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche tells us,
At first this devotion may not be natural or spontaneous, so we must employ a variety of techniques to help us to achieve this. Chiefly we must always remember the excellent qualities of the teacher, especially his kindness to us. By repeatedly generating confidence, appreciation to the guru, and devotion toward him, a time will come when the mere mention of his name or the thought of him will stop all our ordinary perceptions, and we will see him as the Buddha himself.2
To see the master not as a human being, but as the Buddha himself, is the source of the highest blessing. As Padmasambhava says: “Complete devotion brings complete blessing; absence of doubts brings complete success.” The Tibetans know that if you relate to your teacher as a buddha, you will receive the blessing of a buddha, but if you relate to your master as a human being, you will only get the blessing of a human being. So to receive the full transformative power of the blessing of his or her teaching, the complete unfolding of its glory, you must try and unfold in yourself the richest possible kind of devotion. Only if you come to see your master as a buddha can a buddha-like teaching come through to you from your master’s wisdom mind. If you cannot recognize your master as a buddha, but see him or her as a human being, the full blessing can never be there, and even the greatest teaching will leave you somewhere unreceptive.
The more I come to reflect on devotion and its place and role in the overall vision of the teachings, the more deeply I realize that it is essentially a skillful and powerful means of making us more receptive to the truth of the master’s teaching. Masters themselves do not need our adoration, but seeing them as living buddhas will enable us to listen to and hear their message and to follow their instructions with the greatest possible fidelity. Devotion, then, is in one sense the most practical way of ensuring a total respect for, and therefore openness to, the teachings, as embodied by the master and transmitted through him or her. The more devoted you are, the more open you are to the teachings; the more open you are to the teachings, the more chance there is for them to penetrate your heart and mind, and so bring about a complete spiritual transformation.
So it is only by seeing your master as a living buddha that the process of transformation of yourself into a living buddha can be truly begun and truly accomplished. When your mind and heart are fully open in joy and wonder and recognition and gratitude to the mystery of the living presence of enlightenment in the master, then slowly, over many years, transmission from the master’s wisdom mind and heart to yours can take place, revealing to you the full splendor of your own buddha nature, and with it the perfect splendor of the universe itself.
This most intimate relationship between disciple and master becomes a mirror, a living analogy for the disciple’s relationship to life and the world in general. The master becomes the pivotal figure in a sustained practice of “pure vision,” which culminates when the disciple sees directly and beyond any doubt: the master as the living buddha, his or her every word as buddha speech, his or her mind the wisdom mind of all the buddhas, his or her every action an expression of buddha activity, the place where he or she lives as nothing less than a buddha realm, and even those around the master as a luminous display of his or her wisdom.
As these perceptions become more and more stable and actual, the inner miracle disciples have longed for over so many lives can gradually take place: They begin to see naturally that they, the universe, and all beings without exception are spontaneously pure and perfect. They are looking at last at reality with its own eyes. The master, then, is the path, the magical touchstone for a total transformation of the disciple’s every perception.
Devotion becomes the purest, quickest, and simplest way to realize the nature of our mind and all things. As we progress in it, the process reveals itself as wonderfully interdependent: We, from our side, try continually to generate devotion, the devotion we arouse itself generates glimpses of the nature of mind, and these glimpses only enhance and deepen our devotion to the master who is inspiring us. So in the end devotion springs out of wisdom: devotion and the living experience of the nature of mind become inseparable and inspire one another.
The teacher of Patrul Rinpoche was called Jikmé Gyalwé Nyugu. For many years he had been doing a solitary retreat in a cave in the mountains. One day when he came outside, the sun was pouring down; he gazed out into the sky and saw a cloud moving in the direction of where his master, Jikmé Lingpa, lived. The thought rose in his mind, “Over there is where my master is,” and with that thought a tremendous feeling of longing and devotion surged up in him. It was so strong, so shattering, that he fainted. When Jikmé Gyalwé Nyugu came to, the entire blessing of his master’s wisdom mind had been transmitted to him, and he had reached the highest stage of realization, what we call “the exhaustion of phenomenal reality.”
Such stories about the power of devotion and the blessing of the master do not merely belong to the past. In a figure like Khandro Tsering Chödrön, the greatest woman master of our day, who was the wife of my master Jamyang Khyentse, you see very clearly what years of the deepest devotion and practice can create out of the human spirit. Her humility and beauty of heart, and the shining simplicity, modesty, and lucid, tender wisdom of her presence are honored by all Tibetans, even though she herself has tried as far as possible to remain in the background, never to push herself forward, and to live the hidden and austere life of an ancient contemplative.
Jamyang Khyentse has been the inspiration of Khandro’s entire life. It was her spiritual marriage to him that transformed her from a very beautiful and slightly rebellious young woman into the radiant dakini3 that other great masters hold in the highest regard. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche looked to her as a “spiritual mother,” and always used to say how privileged he felt that of all the Lamas she revered and loved him most deeply. Whenever he used to see Khandro, he would take her hand and tenderly caress it, and then slowly place it on his head; he knew that was the only way he could ever get Khandro to bless him.
Jamyang Khyentse gave Khandro all the teachings, and trained her and inspired her to practice. Her questions to him would be in the form of songs, and he would write songs back to her, in an almost teasing and playful way. Khandro has demonstrated her undying devotion to her master by continuing to live after his death in the place in Sikkim where he lived toward the end of his life, where he died, and where his relics are kept, enshrined in a stupa.4 There, near him, she carries on her clear, independent life, devoted to constant prayer. She has read the whole Word of the Buddha and hundreds of volumes of commentaries, slowly, word by word. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche used to say that every time he went back to the stupa of Jamyang Khyentse, he felt as if he were coming home, because Khandro’s presence made the atmosphere so rich and warm. It was as if, he implied, my master Jamyang Khyentse was still present and still alive, in her devotion and her being.
Again and again, I have heard Khandro say that if your link with your master is kept really pure, then everything will go well in your life. Her own life is the most moving and exquisite example of this. Devotion has enabled her to embody the heart of the teachings and radiate their warmth to others. Khandro does not teach in a formal way; in fact, she does not speak a great deal; but what she does say can often be so penetratingly clear that it becomes prophetic. To listen to her fervent and blissful chanting, or to practice with her, is to be inspired to the depths of your being. Even to walk with her, or shop, or simply sit with her is to bathe in the powerful, quiet happiness of her presence.
Because Khandro is so retiring, and because her greatness is in her ordinariness, only those with real insight see who she is. We live in a time when those who thrust themselves forward are frequently admired the most, but it is in the humble, like Khandro, that the truth really lives. And if Khandro were ever to teach in the West, she would be a perfect master: the very greatest kind of woman master, one who incarnates with a mysterious completeness the love and healing wisdom of Tara, enlightened compassion in its female form. If I were to die, and Khandro were there next to me, I would feel more confident and more at peace than if any other master were by my side.
All that I have realized I have realized through devotion to my masters. Increasingly, as I go on teaching, I become aware, humbly and with real awe, of how their blessings are beginning to work through me. I am nothing without their blessing, and if there is anything I feel I can do, it is acting as a bridge between you and them. Again and again, I notice that when I speak of my masters in my teaching, my devotion to them inspires a vision of devotion in those listening; and in those marvelous moments I feel my masters are present, blessing and opening the hearts of my students to the truth.
I remember in Sikkim in the 1960s, not long after my master Jamyang Khyentse had died, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche was giving a long set of initiations, the visionary teachings of Padmasambhava, which can take several months to bestow. Many masters were there in a monastery in the hills behind Gangtok, the capital, and I was sitting with Khandro Tsering Chödrön and Lama Chokden, Jamyang Khyentse’s assistant and master of ceremonies.
It was then that I experienced, in the most vivid way, the truth of how a master can transmit the blessing of his wisdom mind to a student. One day Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche gave a teaching about devotion and about our master Jamyang Khyentse, which was extraordinarily moving; the words flowed from him in a torrent of eloquence and the purest spiritual poetry. Again and again, as I listened to Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and watched him, I was reminded in the most mysterious way of Jamyang Khyentse himself, and how he had been able simply to speak and pour out, as if from a hidden inexhaustible source, the most exalted teaching. Slowly I realized, with wonder, what had happened: the blessing of the wisdom mind of Jamyang Khyentse had been transmitted completely to his heart-son Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, and was now, before us all, speaking effortlessly through him.
At the end of the teaching, I turned to Khandro and Chokden, and I saw tears streaming down their faces. “We knew that Dilgo Khyentse was a great master,” they said, “and we know how it is said that a master will transmit the entire blessing of his wisdom mind to his heart-son. But it is only now, only today, only here, that we realize what this truly means.”
Thinking again of that wonderful day in Sikkim, and of those great masters I have known, these words of a Tibetan saint that have always inspired me return to me: “When the sun of fierce devotion shines on the snow mountain of the master, the stream of his blessings will pour down,” and I remember the words of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche himself, which express perhaps more eloquently than any other passage I know the vast and noble qualities of the master:
He is like a great ship for beings to cross the perilous ocean of existence, an unerring captain who guides them to the dry land of liberation, a rain that extinguishes the fire of the passions, a bright sun and moon that dispel the darkness of ignorance, a firm ground that can bear the weight of both good and bad, a wish-fulfilling tree that bestows temporal happiness and ultimate bliss, a treasury of vast and deep instructions, a wish-fulfilling jewel granting all the qualities of realization, a father and a mother giving their love equally to all sentient beings, a great river of compassion, a mountain rising above worldly concerns unshaken by the winds of emotions, and a great cloud filled with rain to soothe the torments of the passions. In brief, he is the equal of all the buddhas. To make any connection with him, whether through seeing him, hearing his voice, remembering him, or being touched by his hand, will lead us toward liberation. To have full confidence in him is the sure way to progress toward enlightenment. The warmth of his wisdom and compassion will melt the ore of our being and release the gold of the buddha-nature within.5
I have become aware of the blessings of my masters trickling down to me almost imperceptibly and informing my mind. Ever since Dudjom Rinpoche died, my students tell me my teachings became more flowing, more lucid. Not long ago, after hearing Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche give a particularly astonishing teaching, I expressed my deep admiration for him and said: “It’s almost miraculous how effortlessly and spontaneously these teachings flow from your wisdom mind.” He leaned toward me tenderly, with a teasing glint in his eye. “And may your teachings in English flow in exactly the same way,” he said. Since then, through no doing of my own, I have felt my ability to express the teachings grow more and more natural. I consider this book to be a manifestation of the blessing of my masters, transmitted through the wisdom mind of the ultimate master and supreme guide, Padmasambhava. This book, then, is their gift to you.
It is my devotion to my masters that gives me the strength to teach, and the openness and receptivity to learn and go on learning. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche himself never stopped humbly receiving teachings from other masters, and often those who were his own disciples. The devotion that gives the inspiration to teach, then, is also the devotion that gives the humility to go on learning. Gampopa, Milarepa’s greatest disciple, asked him, at the moment of their parting, “When will be the time for me to start guiding students?” Milarepa replied, “When you are not like you are now, when your whole perception has been transformed, and you are able to see, really see, this old man before you as nothing less than the Buddha himself. When devotion has brought you to that moment of recognition, that moment will be the sign that the time for you to teach has come.”
These teachings have been brought to you from Padmasambhava’s enlightened heart, across centuries, over a thousand years, by an unbroken lineage of masters, each one of whom only became masters because they had learned humbly to be disciples, and remained, in the deepest sense, disciples of their masters all their lives. Even at the age of eighty-two, when Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche spoke of his master Jamyang Khyentse, tears of gratitude and devotion came to his eyes. In his last letter to me before he died, he signed himself “the worst disciple.” That showed me how endless true devotion is, how with the greatest possible realization comes the greatest devotion and the most complete, because the most humble, gratitude.
All the buddhas, bodhisattvas, and enlightened beings are present at all moments to help us, and it is through the presence of the master that all of their blessings are focused directly at us. Those who know Padmasambhava know the living truth of the promise he made over a thousand years ago: “I am never far from those with faith, or even from those without it, though they do not see me. My children will always, always, be protected by my compassion.”
All we need to do to receive direct help is to ask. Didn’t Christ also say: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you. Everyone that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth”?6 And yet asking is what we find hardest. Many of us, I feel, hardly know how to ask. Sometimes it is because we are arrogant, sometimes because we are unwilling to seek help, sometimes because we are lazy, sometimes our minds are so busy with questions, distractions, and confusion that the simplicity of asking does not occur to us. The turning point in any healing of alcoholics or drug addicts is when they admit their illness and ask for aid. In one way or another, we are all addicts of samsara; the moment when help can come for us is when we admit our addiction and simply ask.
What most of us need, almost more than anything, is the courage and humility really to ask for help, from the depths of our hearts: to ask for the compassion of the enlightened beings, to ask for purification and healing, to ask for the power to understand the meaning of our suffering and transform it; at a relative level to ask for the growth in our lives of clarity, of peace, of discernment, and to ask for the realization of the absolute nature of mind that comes from merging with the deathless wisdom mind of the master.
There is no swifter, more moving, or more powerful practice for invoking the help of the enlightened beings, for arousing devotion and realizing the nature of mind, than the practice of Guru Yoga. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche wrote, “The words Guru Yoga mean ‘union with the nature of the guru,’ and in this practice we are given methods by which we can blend our own minds with the enlightened mind of the master.”7 Remember that the master—the guru—embodies the crystallization of the blessings of all buddhas, masters, and enlightened beings. So to invoke him or her is to invoke them all; and to merge your mind and heart with your master’s wisdom mind is to merge your mind with the truth and very embodiment of enlightenment.
The outer teacher introduces you directly to the truth of your inner teacher. The more it is revealed through his or her teaching and inspiration, the more you begin to realize that outer and inner teacher are indivisible. As you gradually discover the truth of this for yourself, by invoking it again and again in the practice of Guru Yoga, a deepening confidence, gratitude, joy, and devotion are born in you, through which your mind and the wisdom mind of the master do actually become indivisible. In a Guru Yoga practice he composed at my request, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche wrote:
That which accomplishes the great purity of perception
Is devotion, which is the radiance of Rigpa . . .
Recognizing and remembering that my own Rigpa is the master—
Through this, may your mind and mine merge as one.
This is why all the wisdom traditions of Tibet have placed so much importance on the practice of Guru Yoga, and all the foremost Tibetan masters have treasured it as their innermost heart practice. Dudjom Rinpoche wrote:
It is vital to put all your energy into the Guru Yoga, holding onto it as the life and heart of the practice. If you do not, then your meditation will be very dull, and even if you do make a little progress, there will be no end to obstacles, and no possibility of true, genuine realization being born within the mind. So by fervently praying with uncontrived devotion, after a while the direct blessing of the wisdom mind of the master will be transmitted, empowering you with a unique realization, beyond words, born deep within your mind.
What I would like to give you now is a simple practice of Guru Yoga that anyone, whatever their religion or spiritual belief, can do.
This wonderful practice is my main practice, the heart and inspiration of my whole life, and whenever I do the Guru Yoga, it is Padmasambhava that I focus on. As Buddha himself was passing away, he prophesied that Padmasambhava would be born not long after his death in order to spread the teaching of the Tantras. It was Padmasambhava, as I have said, who established Buddhism in Tibet in the eighth century. For us Tibetans, Padmasambhava, Guru Rinpoche, embodies a cosmic, timeless principle; he is the universal master. He has appeared countless times to the masters of Tibet, and these meetings and visions have been precisely recorded: the date, the place, and manner in which they occurred, along with the teachings and prophecies Padmasambhava gave. He also left thousands of visionary teachings for future times, which have been revealed again and again by the many great masters who have been his emanations; one of these visionary treasures, or termas, is the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
I have always turned to Padmasambhava in times of difficulty and crisis, and his blessing and power have never failed me. When I think of him, all my masters are embodied in him. To me he is completely alive at all moments, and the whole universe, at each moment, shines with his beauty, strength, and presence.
O Guru Rinpoche, Precious One,
You are the embodiment of
The compassion and blessings of all the buddhas,
The only protector of beings.
My body, my possessions, my heart and soul
Without hesitation, I surrender to you!
From now until I attain enlightenment,
In happiness or sorrow, in circumstances good or bad, in situations high or low:
I rely on you completely, O Padmasambhava, you who know me: think of me, inspire me, guide me, make me one with you!8
I consider Padmasambhava as the embodiment of all my masters, and so when I merge my mind with him in Guru Yoga, all of them are included within him. You can, however, use any enlightened being, saint, or master from any religion or mystical tradition for whom you feel devotion, whether they are alive or not.
This practice of Guru Yoga has four main phases: invocation; merging your mind with the master through his heart essence, the mantra; receiving the blessing or empowerment; and uniting your mind with the master and resting in the nature of Rigpa.
1. Invocation
Sit quietly. From the depths of your heart, invoke in the sky in front of you the embodiment of the truth in the person of your master, a saint, or an enlightened being.
Try to visualize the master or buddha as alive, and as radiant and translucent as a rainbow. Believe, with complete trust, that all the blessings and qualities of the wisdom, compassion, and power of all the buddhas and enlightened beings are embodied in him or her.
If you have difficulty visualizing the master, imagine this embodiment of truth simply as a being of light, or try to feel his or her perfect presence there in the sky before you: the presence of all the buddhas and masters. Let all the inspiration, joy, and awe you then feel take the place of visualization. Trust, simply, that the presence you are invoking is really there. The Buddha himself said: “Whoever thinks of me, I am in front of them.” My master Dudjom Rinpoche used to say that it does not matter if at the beginning you cannot visualize; what is more important is to feel the presence in your heart, and know that this presence embodies the blessings, compassion, energy, and wisdom of all the buddhas.
Then, relaxing and filling your heart with the master’s presence, invoke him or her very strongly with all your heart and mind; with total trust, call upon him or her inwardly: “Help me, inspire me to purify all my karma and negative emotions, and to realize the true nature of my mind!”
Then, with deep devotion, merge your mind with the master, and rest your mind in his or her wisdom mind. And as you do so, give yourself up to the master completely, saying to yourself something like: “Help me, now. Take care of me. Fill me with your joy and energy, your wisdom and compassion. Gather me into the loving heart of your wisdom mind. Bless my mind; inspire my understanding.” Then, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche says, “There is no doubt that the blessing will enter your heart.”
When we undertake this practice, it is a direct, skillful, and powerful way to carry us beyond our ordinary mind and into the pure realm of the wisdom of Rigpa. There, we recognize, come to discover, and acknowledge that all buddhas are present.
So, feeling the living presence of Buddha, of Padmasambhava, of your master, and simply opening your heart and mind to the embodiment of truth, really does bless and transform your mind. As you invoke the Buddha, your own buddha nature is inspired to awaken and blossom, as naturally as a flower in sunlight.
2. Maturing and Deepening the Blessing
When I come to this part of the practice, merging my mind with the master through the mantra, I recite the mantra OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM (pronounced by Tibetans: Om Ah Hung Benza Guru Péma Siddhi Hung), which I think of as actually being Padmasambhava, and the blessing of all the masters, in the form of sound. I imagine my whole being filled with him, and I feel, as I recite the mantra—which is his heart essence—that it vibrates and pervades me, as if hundreds of little Padmasambhavas in the form of sound were circulating inside me, transforming my whole being.
Using the mantra, then, offer your heart and soul in fervent and one-pointed devotion, and merge and mix and blend your mind with Padmasambhava or your master. Gradually you will feel yourself coming closer to Padmasambhava, and closing the gap between you and his wisdom mind. Slowly, through the blessing and power of this practice, you will find you actually experience your mind being transformed into the wisdom mind of Padmasambhava and the master: You begin to recognize their indivisibility. Just as if you put your finger into water, it will get wet, and if you put it into fire, it will burn, so if you invest your mind in the wisdom mind of the buddhas, it will transform into their wisdom nature. What happens is that gradually your mind begins to find itself in the state of Rigpa, as the innermost nature of mind is nothing other than the wisdom mind of all the buddhas. It is as if your ordinary mind gradually dies and dissolves, and your pure awareness, your buddha nature, your inner teacher, is revealed. This is the true meaning of “blessing”—a transformation in which your mind transcends into the state of the absolute.
This “maturing of the blessing” is the heart and main part of the practice, to which you should devote the most time when you do the Guru Yoga practice.
3. Empowerment
Imagine now that from the master thousands of brilliant rays of light stream out toward you, and penetrate you, purifying, healing, blessing, empowering, and sowing in you the seeds of enlightenment.
To make the practice as rich and inspiring as possible, you could imagine it unfolding in these three phases:
First, dazzling light, crystal white in color, bursts out from the forehead of the master and enters the energy center in your forehead and fills your whole body. This white light represents the blessing of the body of all the buddhas: It cleanses all the negative karma you have accumulated through negative actions of the body; it purifies the subtle channels of your psycho-physical system; it gives you the blessing of the body of the buddhas; it empowers you for visualization practice; and it opens you to the realization of that compassionate energy of Rigpa, the nature of mind, that is manifesting in everything.
Second, a stream of ruby red light shines out from the throat of the master into the energy center at your throat, filling your entire body. This red light represents the blessing of the speech of all the buddhas: it cleanses all the negative karma you have accumulated through harmful speech; it purifies the inner air of your psycho-physical system; it gives you the blessing of the speech of the buddhas; it empowers you for mantra practice; and it opens you to the realization of the radiance of the nature of Rigpa.
Third, a stream of shimmering blue light, the color of lapis lazuli, bursts out from the heart of the master into the energy center at your heart, and fills your whole body. This blue light represents the blessing of the mind of the buddhas: It cleanses all the negative karma you have accumulated through negative activity of your mind; it purifies the creative essence, or energy, within your psycho-physical system; it gives you the blessing of the mind of the buddhas; it empowers you for advanced yoga practices; and it opens you to the realization of the primordial purity of the essence of Rigpa.
Know and feel that you are now empowered, through the blessing, with the indestructible body, speech, and mind of Padmasambhava, of all the buddhas.
4. Resting in the Rigpa
Now let the master dissolve into light and become one with you, in the nature of your mind. Recognize beyond any doubt that this sky-like nature of your mind is the absolute master. Where else would all the enlightened beings be but in the Rigpa, in the nature of your mind?
Secure in that realization, in a state of spacious and carefree ease, you rest in the warmth, glory, and blessing of your absolute nature. You have arrived at the original ground: the primordial purity of natural simplicity. As you rest in this state of Rigpa, you recognize the truth of Padmasambhava’s words: “Mind itself is Padmasambhava; there is no practice or meditation apart from that.”
I have given this practice here, as part of the natural bardo of this life, because this is the most important practice in life and so the most important practice at the moment of death. Guru Yoga, as you will see in Chapter 13, “Spiritual Help for the Dying,” forms the basis of the practice of phowa, the transference of consciousness at the moment of death. For if, at the moment of death, you can unite your mind confidently with the wisdom mind of the master and die in that peace, then all, I promise and assure you, will be well.
Our task in life, then, is to practice this merging with the wisdom mind of the master again and again, so that it becomes so natural that every activity—sitting, walking, eating, drinking, sleeping, dreaming, and waking—starts to be increasingly permeated by the master’s living presence. Slowly, over years of focused devotion, you begin to know and realize all appearances to be the display of the wisdom of the master. All the situations of life, even those that once seemed tragic, meaningless, or terrifying, reveal themselves more and more transparently to be the direct teaching and blessing of the master, and the inner teacher. As Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche says:
Devotion is the essence of the path, and if we have in mind nothing but the guru and feel nothing but fervent devotion, whatever occurs is perceived as his blessing. If we simply practice with this constantly present devotion, this is prayer itself.
When all thoughts are imbued with devotion to the guru, there is a natural confidence that this will take care of whatever may happen. All forms are the guru, all sounds are prayer, and all gross and subtle thoughts arise as devotion. Everything is spontaneously liberated in the absolute nature, like knots untied in the sky.9