Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 49-minute talk from 1987, Alex Berzin surveys the rapid expansion of Tibetan Buddhism across the Western world, from Geshe Wangyal’s arrival in the 1950s through the diverse organizations and lineages now thriving in Europe, the Americas, Australia, and beyond. He maps the major traditions—Kagyu, Gelugpa, Nyingma, Sakya—and their most active teachers and centers, then pivots to a crucial insight: there is no single “Western Buddhism.” Instead, each country and culture shapes its approach according to local history, temperament, and spiritual hunger. Latin countries tend toward devotion; Northern Europe toward intellectual rigor; post-communist regions toward skepticism; Australia toward no-frills practicality. Berzin argues that before hastily stripping away “cultural” elements as inessential, practitioners must first understand what the techniques of Tibetan Buddhism actually do—especially the student-teacher relationship, often mistranslated as “guru devotion.” This relationship aims not at blind obedience but at developing discrimination and independence; the teacher intentionally challenges the student to learn by example, not command. Pitched at serious practitioners encountering these teachings during an early and formative period of Buddhism’s Western integration.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 B in the west .mp3
UUID: 4291ee4c-1778-4ecb-a992-20d104dfd0d0
Teacher: Alex Berzin
Collection: Buddhism in the West
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 48.9 minutes
Words: ~6,977
Let’s begin the way that we began last night, which is basically to, count the breath, to focus on the, breathing out and in one, out and in two, like that, breathing normally, and counting at the same time. It’s a way to put some sort of space in between what we had been doing and what we’re about to listen to, and we’ll count up to eleven twice breathing normally. And then, we set the intention, which is to listen to these, what we’re going to talk about with the motivation that we want to be able to, learn more about, various techniques, various ideas, and so on, within the context of, overcoming our limitations, problems, and realizing our potentials in order to be able to benefit everyone. So sort of try to feel that for a moment. Okay.
Now, this evening, what I’ve been asked to talk about is, Buddhism in the West and the whole process of, bringing it to the West and some ideas about, what the best Western Buddhism might be. And, this is something which can carry on in a fairly informal type of way. So, again, if there’s, you know, any comments or questions as we go along, please feel free to ask. First, I think, it might be helpful to get a general picture of what’s been going on in the West. Buddhism has been in the process of of interacting with the West, coming to the West for quite a long time.
So let me just outline that a little bit to give you some picture of what’s been going on around the world. I suppose the first one that well, I mean, we can speak about all the different branches of Buddhism. You know, the Theravāda and the Zen and, you know, all the various types of things like that. But and there’s certainly many organizations of them throughout the world. But if we think in terms of the Tibetan traditions, the first person coming out was probably Geshe Wangyal, Mongolian Geshe, who came to America in the mid fifties before the Tibetans had to leave Tibet.
And he was the one who was responsible for Geshe Sopa coming over to America. He was the one who was the teacher for Jeffrey Hopkins, for, Bob Thurman. He was the first, lama that I met as well. Most of the, very early people, had this association with Geshe Wangyal, who’s a very great lama. And then I suppose the next ones to start various things in the west were Tarthang Tulku and in the Nyingma tradition and Trungpa Rinpoche and the Kagyu traditions.
These are probably your earliest, going back in the very early six that was the late sixties. But, in any case, there are many, many organizations of Dharma centers throughout the world and, many different, teachers and independent centers as well, which are not part of larger, organizations. It’s, present in, most countries now in the western world, also in some of the eastern block countries as well, Southeast Asia, South America. There are centers in South Africa. All over the place.
The largest group of centers, if we think in terms of the different traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, are probably the Kagyu centers. They’ve been the most widespread. We get Chogyam Trungpa’s organization, which is quite vast, particularly in America and Canada, but other places as well, with, him setting up a university, in America, newspapers, publications, the whole bit. Then you also have Kalu Rinpoche, who is a very great, lama in the Kagyu tradition, one of the teachers of his holiness, the Dalai Lama. And he, has, not only set up a very vast network of centers throughout the world, including places like Southeast Asia, but, also, he set up a large number of three year retreat centers, where you have, people in many places in Europe and in America and Canada, doing three year retreats.
He has a big emphasis on learning Tibetan, in addition to that and, encouraging people to get into translations. Trungpa also has a big translation project as well or had. Then you have all the centers that were set up by the Karmapa, his holiness Karmapa. And that’s a very, very wide network of centers. After his passing away, then you have the four regents, Situ Rinpoche and Shamarpa, Gyaltsab Rinpoche, and Kunzig Shamar Rinpoche.
And they’ve traveled all over the world setting up a lot of centers. They’re probably the biggest ones in Southeast Asia. So there are lots of centers in Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Philippines, and so on. From, that organization, they’re the ones who are quite active down in South America. This is coming from, the Karmapa in Woodstock, New York.
That lama goes down regularly to Venezuela. It’s also been in Colombia. These sort of places are the in Argentina, Brazil. Trungpa has people down in Chile, so it’s quite widespread. You also have Beru Khyentse Rinpoche from the Kagyus.
He set up centers here in Australia, also in New Zealand, very widespread. You also have, one Danish fellow, who, is working with the Karmapas, and he set up a lot of centers. He’s the one who opened up Poland. In Poland, they have, Kagyu centers in about a dozen cities. That’s, by the way, the largest, group, within any of your, Western European country not Western, but European countries is, in Poland.
You know, there’s four thousand people in Poland who have taken refuge. And in, the largest city there where they meet, Krakow, they, have meetings seven nights a week for practice. I mean, incredibly active and very, very enthusiastic. So we have these types of groups. There’s also Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche has come here to Australia as well.
He’s at various centers. The Drigung Kagyu is another tradition within the Kagyu. You know, there are thirteen Kagyu traditions. The karma Kagyu is just one of them. And the the Drigung is probably the other one in addition to the karma Kagyu and the.
The is Kalu Rinpoche’s tradition. And he’s set up the head of the has gone around quite a bit. There’s a lot of centers in Germany from him and other places. So they’re probably the biggest, the Kagyus. Then the next biggest group is probably within the Gelugpa tradition.
And in addition to Geshe Wangyal, who sort of started it off, then there’s Geshe Sopa who visited here. He goes down to Mexico quite a bit. So there’s a center down there. Then we get Thubten Norbu, His Holiness’s brother, Jigme Norbu, who wrote a book on Tibet. He teaches in America and has some centers there.
And another very high lama, Dagpo Rinpoche, has a big center in Paris. And he has quite a lot of centers throughout Europe, travels quite a bit. And then after these were set up, then you get Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Lama Yeshe, who have set up this, large organization, FPMT. Sorry. And then you get, Geshe from, well, other Geshe’s as well who set up very large organizations.
It’s Geshe Rabten who was has had a monastery in Switzerland. He’s passed away. He has centers all over Europe. Then here in Australia, there’s, of course, Geshe Loden. Zasep Tulku, who had been here, has, centers, quite a lot of places in the world, not only Australia, but Canada, where he’s, mostly centered all around Canada.
Also set up one reach recently in Portugal and the Azores and other places. Akong Rinpoche, by the way, I forgot to mention him. He’s one Kagyu lama. He’s the one who’s set up all the centers in South Africa. There’s Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey, who’s in the Gelugpas.
He set up a lot of centers around the world, in Europe, and in Malaysia, he’s quite big. Geshe Kelsang has set up a lot of centers around in England. And then you get a lot of independent lamas scattered in lots of universities and other places within the Gelugpa tradition setting up different centers. What often has happened as well is when you have large organizations, you often will have you know, they will send out lamas to different places, and then they themselves, of course, will get established. And they will branch off and make their own centers in satellite centers around, where they’ve, been.
In the Nyingmas, there’s, Tarthang Tulku has, set up, many centers in America. He’s, reprinted the Tibetan canon, the Kangyur. Tengyur has a big computer project with that. Big publishing company, Dharma Publishing. A lot of activity there.
Sogyal Rinpoche travels all over the world. He has many centers. He’s been in down in South America as well as all over in Europe and the in North America. Dudjom Rinpoche set up many centers. He was the head of the Nyingmas, Gyalta Rinpoche, many centers, and many independent Nyingma centers as well.
They also have three year retreat places. And in the Sakyas, you get, Deshung Rinpoche, who is an old lama. He set up, various centers. Sakya Trizin, the head of the Sakyas, has traveled throughout the world, giving, many teachings, many different centers. Lama Sherab Gyaltsen Rinpoche, there are many of them.
In fact, when you, ask, are there any women lamas teaching, in the West, in the Sakya tradition, the sister of the head of the Sakya, Sakya Trizin, teaches and is centered in, Vancouver. You also have, some centers of, some organizations which are not affiliated, specifically with one group. There’s Namkhai Norbu who is based in Italy. He goes around the world quite a lot. Different centers.
He teaches a mixture between Nyingma and the Bonpo traditions. There’s Lama Govinda. Remember Lama Govinda? He has a big organization as well, throughout Germany. It’s called the, Ārya Maitreya Mandala.
He has a center in Hungary. These sort of places. There’s the friends of the Western Buddhist order. They have, slightly Tibetan oriented, in some of their approaches. They have centers, all over the place.
And then there are many institutes, like, the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala in India that His Holiness set up where people can study all, you know, various different traditions, not just one. There are also a lot of centers which are regarded as nonsectarian, which means that they’re not specifically from one tradition or another, but present Lamas from many different traditions. Now all of this I mean, although that was an awful lot of names, and maybe those names aren’t familiar to a lot of you. I wanted to just impress on you the fact that it’s big. You know?
There are lots and lots of organizations and lots and lots of independent lamas as well, independent groups all over the place. And so, it really has, become very widespread. You get lots of different types of, centers. You get, basically, city centers and country centers, you know, as a a broad division. And the each of them have their specialty or advantages and disadvantages.
Disadvantages. City centers are very good for people who live around, you know, in the city who have to work. They can have various types of, you know, intensive programs. It depends on the interest of the people and, the situations, you know, of the teachers who are there. Some places, they’re very active.
Like I was saying, in Krakow or in Poland, although there are no lamas there, yet, you know, they take the teachings very, very seriously and they meet seven nights a week. Each night to do a different meditation practice, to discuss things, to work on translations together. They’re unbelievably active in translating anything that they can get their hands on into Polish. I’ve seen myself when you go there, if they get a book in, you know, in any foreign language in English, it’s so rare for them to get that, people will copy it out by hand. You know, three hundred page book copied out by hand so that they would have their own copy of it.
So that type of enthusiasm. Or you’ll have places in city centers where there are lamas. They’ll teach some nights of the week, then the older students will teach, different nights of the week. So you get some very active programs like in London. Here in Melbourne, I believe, you have a very active program.
Other places, it’s, you know, people don’t have so much time or there isn’t so much energy. So they’ll meet one or two times a week. There are many different, varieties of what’s going on. If it’s in a very remote country, then and especially when there’s not a lama there, then, often, you know, people will get together. Let’s say I’m thinking Venezuela, just, because everybody else around in the city is into so many other things than this that, you know, people need a lot of moral support to just be with, others who have a similar type of interest.
In these sort of places, you know, you get this general, thing of, in a remote place, you don’t have so many centers. You know? Maybe you only have one. And for whatever reasons, that one happens to be from one particular tradition. Now, in that type of situation, of course, you can’t expect that everybody is going to feel drawn to that particular, tradition of Buddhism or even that particular tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.
In, places, you know, there might be you know, this is the only spiritual thing available in the entire country, in the entire city or region. And, you’ll get anybody coming who has any type of, spiritual interest. And, particularly in those kind of places, it’s important general, to allow the room for, people to pursue, different types of things because, you know, most of them have no idea even what Buddhism is. I remember being in, in Caracas and, giving a talk at the Buddhist center there, and somebody asked a question. Well, what about Brahma?
How does he fit in? You know? So, you know, they they didn’t really have a clear idea of what was Hindu, what was Buddhist, what was anything. And, you know, for that type of group to insist that, this particular center was a a karma Kagyu center to insist, you know, this must be karma Kagyu. Well, they don’t even know what, Tibetan Buddhism is, let alone Kagyu, let alone what Kagyu is.
So, like that, it’s, important to, you know, not make things so tiny and, refined that, it becomes a little bit absurd compared to what the situation is in that city. It’s a big city, lots of different centers, lots of opportunities. That’s a different, story. So, anyway, we get these sort of things around the world. You get, country centers.
Country centers have their problems, basically in the sense that, often they’re in a very remote area. If you want it as a retreat place, wonderful, very good. If you want it as a place for people to live and you expect for them to be able to find work in the area, that becomes a big problem. And, you know, some country centers have had major difficulties with that or they’re a couple hours drive outside of a city and it’s just too far for anybody to go. But, a lot of them do have some type of residential situations.
It works particularly well in countries where a lot of people are on the dole, where you have a type of government that has social services like that that supports people who are out of work. Then, you can have a lot of people who have, you know, some sort of financial resources to go and live in a center like this and not work because, obviously, there is no work in, most of these remote country areas where they’re found. And, you know, so each country is going to be quite different. Now that I suppose is the major thing that I’ve seen traveling around is that, we can’t really speak about Western Buddhism as such, for the most part. I mean, you can say some general superficialities about it, which I I will do.
But, you, have so many different countries and so many different cultures. And just like, you can’t really talk about Asian Buddhism, you know, because you have Indian, Tibetan, Southeast Asian, and even within Southeast Asia, there’ll be differences. Chinese, Japanese, all these sort of things, they’re very different. Well, it’s going to be the same when we look at the West because the West is a very, very broad area with very different types of cultures. You know, the way that Buddhism is approached in, let’s say, Latin countries, which could have more of a devotional type of aspect.
It’s gonna be very different from Northern European countries where the attitude is more intellectual, this type of approach. Even within the countries, you’re gonna have very serious differences according to the history of that country and the role that the religion and the church has played in the history of that country. Like, you know, one might think, well, Italy, Spain, you know, no different. You know, they’re both, strong Roman Catholic countries, but, the experience there is very different. And the way that they approach things are different because of the history.
In Italy, there’s always been great respect for monks, nuns, for the church, for these sort of things. People are extremely devotional in that sense. Whereas in Spain, Franco and many of the rulers use the church to rule the people in a very suppressive type of way. And so there’s a you know, although there is a devotional side, they are also into a very sort of this philosophy of nada, nothingness, nihilism, and very skeptical. Or, you look at a country like Yugoslavia, And, there, again, you know, because, religion has been used by all the different republics, you know, in Yugoslavia having different religions and, you know, slightly disagreeing with each other and fights and stuff like that, then they’re very suspicious of any type of spiritual activity.
And, again, the approach there then is going to have to be very intellectual, very university oriented, philosophically oriented. Each country is gonna be quite different. It takes on the whole character of that country. And even within a country, you’re going to have differences like in Germany, the Bavarians in the south, very emotional, want to be into experiencing things, you know, whole type of Wagner type of mentality as opposed to the Prussians in the north. Berlin, very, very strict, very strong, very aggressively intellectual, wants to know things, you know, in great detail, never tiring of the of the detail.
And so, you know, within the countries, you’re gonna get a lot of variety. Here in Australia where you have, people from so many different cultures, Obviously, you’re going to get different types of, people, interested, but you’re also going to have, you know, your own Australian approach to things, which, from the little that I’ve seen, is one of, no frills. You like things, very much, down to earth. And, you know, the way that Buddhism comes in has to also be, in keeping with, your own culture, your own way of, doing things. That’s something which is important, important to do.
Or you can see in America, America and Canada, one of the big things that people are into there is adult education, university continuing type of courses, that type of thing. And in Kalu Rinpoche’s organization, the one of the Kagyu ones, they’ve started a program of courses in Buddhism in which it’s approached like a university course in that everybody is has to get to the book of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, kindness, clarity, and insight. And they have to read a chapter. It’s like an assignment. You read a chapter each week.
You come in. You have to talk about it. Report on it. Discuss it. And it’s done in the context of people, you know, taking responsibility to do that.
At the end, you get a certain certificate, and you have to, speak, you know, with the teacher and discuss your own feelings and, experiences with, the material. And this is something which is very suited to a North American mentality. In other countries, you try to do something like that, and people might, really find it, extremely bizarre and, not like schooling or these sort of things at all. Like, for instance, in Germany, where the schooling tradition is so strict that, most people can’t stand it and rebel and go, you know, completely to the opposite side, particularly in Bavaria. So we’ll you know, you’ll get all these different approaches.
And when you think in terms of, how to, best, adopt Buddhism in Australia, As I say, it’s very important to have a a good understanding of what Australia is all about, what your culture is all about, how the people think, how they react, what is going to appeal to them, and teach it in that way, present it in that way. This is very much in keeping with the Buddha’s method of, skillful means. You use methods which are skillful, in accordance with each individual individual person, each individual situation. But there are general trends that we can see in Buddhism. Also, I mean, you know, there’s a whole another trip when you think of Southeast Asia where it’s a very strong Tibetan Buddhism now, but it’s appealing to a Chinese.
You know, it’s the Chinese people in these countries, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, and so on, who are turning to Tibetan Buddhism. And, you know, their whole approach is one of, you know, extreme devotion, extreme sort of, you know, really into praying and these type of things. And again, it’s a very different orientation than you would have for Western people. Becomes interesting when you teach in Hawaii because there there are many centers where you have, you know, both, you know, traditional American type of approaches, but also a lot of, you know, fifty, sixty year old Japanese ladies and Chinese ladies coming in as well, with, you know, their own particular cultural background to these, centers. So you get lots of mixes in places as well.
Then it becomes quite difficult. In any case, before we, look at some of the general trends that, I think are going on or that, can be going on, it’s, very helpful to get some idea of, what are the techniques of Tibetan Buddhism, you know, because, we tend to very often be quite, what’s the word, excited to change things. You know? We’re too enthusiastic about that. Let’s change and make it into Western Buddhism.
Let’s throw out these pujas or this or that that we don’t like and, or that, you know, seems a little bit alien to us, basically, because we don’t understand it. And, you know, let’s adapt it to, something Western. And before we can really do that, you see, I personally feel that it’s quite premature to, decide really, what is essential and what’s not essential in the, Tibetan Buddhist traditions and what is culture and what is actual essence. Because as my own main teacher, Serkong Rinpoche, pointed out, you can argue things on many different levels. Like, for instance, you can say the example that he used was monk, robes do not make the monk or nun.
Right? And so, you can, give a big argument for that, and it’s very reasonable. It shouldn’t just be, you know, changing your costume. You have change your attitudes and so on. And so a lot of western, monks and nuns are not into wearing the robes, not into following a lot of traditional type of things because the robes do not make monk or nun.
But, if you look at it deeper, then, as, Serkong Rinpoche pointed out, but there may be very deep, very important reasons for wanting to wear them. Because, when the monks and nuns don’t wear them, then, you know, it tends to, they tend to get into a whole feeling of, almost being hypocritical of, saying they have vows, but then actually, following them all, not being a big difference between themselves and, lay persons. A lot of people give up the robes. Give up, being a monk or a nun. And on a deeper level, there may be very important reasons for, why you’d want to wear the robes.
And so like that, things that, on one level might seem, very, superficial to us and that, they can be done away with. There can be a lot of very deeper, very much deeper reasons why, they are important and why we don’t want to make a hasty decision as to what we want to keep and what we want to throw out. Now, what are the techniques in Tibetan Buddhism that are noteworthy? And, one of the ones so you have to get into an understanding of how they actually train people, in the tradition. And one of the ones is, that, you know, that Buddhist training is not one of just simply passing on information.
It’s not, you know, taking, things from my computer and programming your computer, with the same data, because, obviously, that’s something that you could do in a school as well. You can just learn all the facts, put up charts on the wall or whatever. This type of thing. But rather, the, whole, orientation is in addition to that, to developing the character of the student. You know, you want to develop their various personality traits, and this is what’s done in terms of a student, teacher relationship.
This is, something which obviously can only be entered into when, you know, they’ve both examined each other very, very well, and they’ve decided that, you know, this is the type of relationship that we want to enter into. I think of, you know, the relationship that I had, with my own main teacher, Serkong Rinpoche. He used to train me to, be his translator to translate. Of course, he wasn’t telling me that he was doing that at the time. But, when I was with him, at any time of the day, any situation, he could, you know, say, what did I just say?
And I’d have to repeat back to him word for word what he just said. Did you ever see these, Peter Sellers movies? I forget what it was. The one where he’s supposed to be training as, you know, someone in martial arts and he has a guy who’s with him, his attendant that at any time he’ll attack him. Right?
And he always has to be on guard. You know, you have the the the scene from the movie. Not now. But it was little bit like that in the sense that, you know, any situation what did I just say? Now, obviously, if, there isn’t this understanding between the student and the teacher that this is the relationship, if somebody comes in and starts doing that with you, you can get very hostile, very angry, and so on towards the teacher.
That’s why it’s very important to, you know, have established a certain type of relationship. Now whether or not that type of relationship can be established between westerner and westerner, that I don’t know. That’s yet to develop. That really hasn’t happened. But it is something which we should see in this context.
Obviously, the person who’s doing this, the teacher has to be extremely skilled. They really have to know what they’re doing. You can’t be playing tricks with people or playing games. It’s quite important. We have these sort of things.
You see, brings up the whole topic of what’s usually translated as guru devotion. And that’s something which has caused a great deal of misunderstanding in the West. As I’ve been saying these past days, you know, the big majority of misunderstanding about Buddhism in the West has been due to the translation terms that have been used. They’re very misleading. And so guru devotion is quite high on our list of offending terms because, first of all, the word guru is a little bit too heavy now in the English language.
We get, you know, fakers and all sorts of charlatans who, call themselves guru, in order to swindle a lot of money out of people. And, so you wanna shy away from, using a a word that has that association in people’s minds. And devotion has the whole the whole idea of, becoming a mindless slave. Oh, guru, guru, Lama, Lama, tell me what to do. And, you know, you just obey.
Let me kiss your feet. And, this is really, completely inappropriate and not at all what, is going on in the, tradition. See, as Westerners, we tend to go to one of two extremes. Either we say, you don’t need a teacher. You don’t need a guru.
And, so, you know, I can learn everything out of books, which obviously is not going to do anything except maybe give us some information. And even that’s going to be limited. Or we go to the other extreme of, you know, we’re joining the army. We make it into some sort of cult, and, we sign over our minds to a teacher, and, we just blindly obey everything that they say. Both of them are equally, faulty extremes, extreme positions.
What, we’re talking about here, what’s translated by the what’s usually translated by the word devotion, is a wholehearted commitment. It’s a commitment to the spiritual teacher, not in the sense of a duty or obligation, but you put your whole heart into it. Like, I’m going to enter into this relationship, in which I’m going to grow. And one of the rules of the relationship is that whatever happens, I’m going to look at it as a way for me to be able to grow. You know, what lesson can I learn?
In other words, not seeing it as, you know, why in the world is, this Lama telling me all the time, you know, what did I just say? You know, come on. Get off my back. But, you know, he’s and, you know, not criticizing and saying he’s on some sort of power trip or some game with me. But looking at it from a point of view of, hey, this is incredible opportunity of somebody who really cares so much that, you know, they want to train me to be able to remember and to be able to, you know, pay that type of attention with, everything that I hear so that then I can translate in any situation.
Now this type of relationship then is intended for us to be able to stand on our own two feet, to be able to make our own decisions. It’s not within the context of becoming a mindless slave. We can see this from the examples that we find in the life of the Buddha himself. In a previous life, he was Bodhisattva. He was studying with the teacher.
This teacher told him to told all the students to go out and steal for him. And everybody went out except the Buddha, and the Buddha stayed back. And the teacher went and they said, you know, why didn’t you go out and steal for me? Don’t you wanna make me happy? And the Buddha said, well, how can stealing make anybody happy?
And then the teacher said, ah, you’re the only one who understood the lesson, the only one who understood the point of it. And a similar thing, Serkong Rinpoche, my own teacher, did as well. He was in one center in the West, and, he started teaching something, and he explained something completely incorrectly, just outrageously incorrectly. And, all the students, you know, dutifully copied it down. You know?
Yes. Very respectful. And, then in the next session, Rinpoche said, you know, last session, I said something completely outrageous and wrong. You know? Don’t any of you think all you did was write it down?
Teachers make mistakes. Trans you know, they have slips of the tongue and so on. Translators make mistakes. You yourself make mistakes when, you try to copy something down. Everybody hears things differently.
You know, the classic example is Lama says. Right? You know? Lama gives a a certain talk and you ask everybody in the room what they said and everybody has a different version of Lama says. And then they make it into the Pope says and, you know, it’s ridiculous in terms of the misunderstanding that they have and then taking it into concrete words of, god.
Rinpoche said that, you have to check up everything. Buddha said that you have to check up everything. Buddha said, don’t believe what I say just out of respect for me, but check it up. Examine for yourself as if you were buying gold. Now people get confused because they think, you know, well, once I’m in a relation with a spiritual teacher, I’m supposed to see them as Buddha.
This means that they are an infallible god. Right? And everything that they say is absolutely true. I I, sir, carry out the orders and don’t think for yourself. Well, that’s completely incorrect because, as, you know, we saw, the point of it is not to get angry.
The point of the relationship is to try to learn from whatever the teacher does. Now in the case of the Buddha, the teacher said go out and steal. The point to learn was, you know, this was ridiculous. You don’t just, do things like that. You have to discriminate.
Right? And don’t just be a mindless slave and follow some sort of authority figure. That was the lesson which was to be learned. You don’t learn you don’t teach that to somebody by just telling them that writing it on the blackboard, but you teach it to them in a live type of example. That’s, you know, the importance of a of a student teacher relationship here is that it’s a living relationship.
And in the living interaction, you know, you have you learn what is going on. And so we shouldn’t think that these teachers are infallible. His Holiness Dalai Lama always points that out that, you know, one should never look at him as, being infallible or as any teacher as infallible. You look at the great masters in the past, someone like Marpa. His teacher, Naropa, manifested a mandala of the deity Hevajra one day.
And he went to Marpa and he said, which one do you bow down to first? Do you do prostrate first to? Teacher, myself, or to Hevajra, which was the particular meditational deity of Marpa. And Marpa said, well, I see you every day. I this is the first time I’ve ever seen Hevajra.
I’ll prostrate first to him. And he did so. And Naropa said, you just made a big mistake, you know, because they meditate and he snapped his fingers and the deity dissolved back into him. And he said, you know, these deities don’t exist in dependence upon, you know, the realized masters. And so this was a big mistake that Marpa made.
Now nobody puts down Marpa because he made a mistake. You know, like that, you find many many examples of teachers who made mistakes. These are things now, whether or not they do that intentionally or not, that is, you know, depends on our relationship to that teacher, how we look at it. The point is that we learn from it. And so, as it says in the, you know, there’s a guidebook of how to interact with a spiritual teacher called fifty verses on how to rely on the spiritual master.
And his fifty stanzas in it is by an Indian master, Ashvaghosha. And in it by the way, you can find it in English. It’s in the back of this Mahāmudrā book of the ninth Karmapa that I had done, Mahāmudrā: Eliminating the Darkness of Ignorance. But in that, it explains, and this is the standard text that absolutely everybody, all the traditions follow for how to, act with a spiritual teacher. It says, if your teacher says to do something which, you can’t do, well, what you do is you very politely go and you, say you don’t get angry with them, but you say, I’m sorry.
I don’t understand what you said, or I’m sorry. I can’t do that. Or, if, you know, I am to do that, it would help me very much to understand what your thinking is behind that. Could you please explain to me? You know, these are the standard procedures, not just I I, sir, in the army, and you blindly follow, orders.
That’s extremely important. People have so much misunderstanding in the West because when it becomes, something like in the army, or, you know, the teachers are like god, you know, completely infallible, then, it really starts to become a cult, and it becomes quite dangerous. You know? People don’t think for themselves. They become totally dependent on a teacher.
They can’t make any decisions for themselves without asking a teacher. That’s dangerous. Teachers are always going to mirror the way that, students are. I mean, this is one of their techniques. And so, if, students are very indecisive, very often you’ll have teachers who are going to be completely indecisive as well.
They’ll say one thing, and then, you know, they’ll throw some dice. And then five minutes later, they’re you know, everything has changed. And then the next day, again, everything has changed. And, again, the next day, everything has changed. Well, you know, what’s the point in that type of thing?
The point is that, the indecisive students eventually are going to get to a point where they get disgusted with that, fed up, and they say, we have to be more decisive. You have to know what’s going on. You have to know what the plans are. Everything has to be organized, and you can see it’s a very good technique for teaching people to be more organized because, you know, they’re never gonna get that way themselves unless they can see the disadvantages of, things being chaotic. And so, you know, there are many, many things that are going on in these type of relationships.
But if you just take it, you know, as being in the army, you’re gonna get into a lot of trouble. So, this is important in any type of, you know, the way that Buddhism is coming into the West is to have a clear idea of what actually is the role of the spiritual teacher, what is the relationship of the students to that teacher, and, to see that, you know, through the interaction, we are learning. The teacher is helping us to be able to stand on our own feet, make our own decisions, think for ourselves because he or she is obviously helping us to become a Buddha. Becoming a Buddha doesn’t mean to join the army. Becoming a Buddha means to be able to make our decisions for ourself, to know what to do, to develop discrimination.
This is important. So we have, this type of, issue with the, spiritual, teacher. Also, you’ll find teachers will, themselves, you know, experiment with things and, themselves will themselves will admit that, they might have made some mistakes. You can look at, Lama Yeshe, for instance. He himself, at, one point earlier in his, career with Westerners, had given some initiations without following the proper procedures, standard procedures of the vows that should be given or the type of prerequisite initiation that should be given with that.
His own teacher, Konchog Gyaltsen Rinpoche, the junior tutor said, uh-uh. That wasn’t, proper to do it like that. And Lama Yeshe changed. And, so he, you know, went back to following, you know, doing things in the more traditional type of way. So like that as well.
You know, that doesn’t mean that we lose respect for them. It doesn’t mean that we don’t see them, you know, with great respect as someone who’s helping us reach enlightenment. But we should have a realistic attitude towards them. And when we’re looking at them, you know, as a Buddha, blah blah blah, these sort of things, that doesn’t mean as god. We’re looking at them in the context of whatever they do is for us to learn.
So you can look to learn from. So you can look at that example of how he had given the initiation one way and then was reprimanded and then gave it the more traditional way. What do we learn from that? We learn that you don’t just, you know, all of a sudden change things just because it seems convenient. But that, there can be deeper reasons for doing things in a more traditional way.
And so, you know, one can look at it with total respect and see that it is totally possible for a teacher to have made a mistake. Doesn’t, make us lose faith in that teacher. Important. Realistic. Then another issue is one of, you know, in the Tibetan traditions, you know, even within one lineage like the Gelugpa, there are different textbooks which are used.
Different ideas. Different ways of define.