Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 30-minute talk, Lama Ribur Rinpoche teaches guru devotion by examining how our perceptions of our teachers are filtered through obscuration, negative karma, and self-cherishing. He opens with the story of Asaṇga’s twelve-year retreat seeking Maitreya: exhausted and discouraged, Asaṇga encounters a diseased dog and offers his own flesh to help it, licking the worms from its body with his tongue. In that moment of pure compassion, the dog vanishes and Maitreya appears, revealing he had been present the whole time. Rinpoche uses this and other examples—including Buddha’s own cousin perceiving only faults in him for twelve years, and the great Śāntideva dismissed as merely eating and sleeping—to establish that even realized beings may misperceive their teachers. He then walks through how our own self-cherishing causes us to see faults as qualities and qualities as faults, using concrete scenarios of a teacher offering wine and a teacher waking students early. The remedy is to recognize the unreliability of our ordinary perception and, once committed to a guru, offer devotion through the practice of dharma itself.
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File: 03 GD 1994 04 16.mp3
UUID: ab88f55e-c446-42e8-8053-0b66426f75e8
Teacher: Lama Ribur Rinpoche
Collection: Guru Devotion (Lama Ribur Rinpoche)
Date: 1994-04-16
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 30.5 minutes
Words: ~2,181
So, like explaining in detail what happened to Asaṇga is that, in order to perceive, either to go to the, Tuśita pure land and to receive direct teaching from Maitreya or, in order to perceive directly the holy holy body of Maitreya in this life, he entered in retreat. And and during twelve years of retreat, every like, every three years, he was like he was hoping to to have some result of his practice. And so he was having different perception, but never never perceiving directly, never seeing directly the Maitreya holy’s body. At the end of these twelve years, he get discouraged. And so he got out of retreat completely hopeless.
He was not was not like, he understood that he was not going to see Maitreya. So when he got out of retreat, he saw before I mean, just before his his meditation room or place, it’s a dog, a sick dog, and all all this all his disease or the skin was covered by worms. So and Asaṇga Asaṇga felt compassion for for the dog. He didn’t see the dog as Maitreya. Actually actually, this dog was Maitreya himself, but he didn’t perceive the dog as Maitreya, lacking the great compassion, lacking the high highest level of great compassion.
He didn’t perceive this dog as being Maitreya, but he thought, well, I’m not gonna to I’m not going to see Maitreya, so at least I’m going to help these sentient beings. So he he tried to understand in which way he could cure the dog from the worm that were eating up his flesh and at the same time trying to take care of the worm, not letting them die. So what he did is that he he cut a piece of a piece of flesh from his own leg, and and this was going to be the food for the worms. And he thought that if he was going to pick up all each and every worms by with his hands, the worms were going to be injured or they were going to die. So, the only way to do that, he was going to, lick them to, take with with his tongue each and each and every of this worm.
So so he cut his flesh, and he put it on the ground, and then he was approaching the dog with the eye closed in order to and then in order to take with his tongue all the worm out and to put it in the flesh in the piece of flesh. So while he was doing that, while he was trying to reach the dog, he with his closed eyes, he understood there was no dog anymore. So he opened his eyes, and there was and Maitreya appeared in front of him. So full of rage, he he, like, he cry out to Maitreya saying, oh, you don’t have compassion because in these twelve years, I I wanted to see you so much, but you never appear to me. And so this means you have really really little compassion.
And and Maitreya said, it’s not true. I was with you since the beginning, but you didn’t see me. And Maitreya showed his robes that they were stained. They have filled with Asaṇga’s spit. Because when he was when he was in retreat and when he was in his retreat meditating, he used to spit in his own in from one in one side of his meditation place.
And and so Maitreya was showing that his robes was filled with the with the spit of Asaṇga. So this means that he was with him since the beginning, but Asaṇga didn’t perceive him. And so and the reason why and so then, the reason why Asaṇga was not perceiving Maitreya since the beginning is because his mind was stained with obscuration and from one side, and on the other hand, it didn’t generate the highest level of bodhicitta. So due to these reasons, it was not perceiving Maitreya, and at last, it perceived Maitreya as a dog. So this means that we that our perception are not totally totally valid and not completely trustful.
And Again, we might have different perceptions due to our to disease or wind disorder in in our body. For example, you might have the perception of yellow instead of white. For example, you can perceive like yellow color snow on the top of a mountain due to having due to have bile bile disease. And you might have the perception of blue blue color snow due to have wind wind disorder. So due to different type of element imbalance imbalance element or due to disease, you might have different perception of of the same object.
So wrote in in his text wrote in his text, we if we look to our negative karma, if we look to our, like, very vast accumulation negative karma, it is it is very good that we see our lama being human. It is really, like, a fortunate thing to perceive the lama as a human if we take a look of our huge accumulation negative karma. So I’ve been I’ve been asked to give a little bit some time for question and answer, but I think what about if we finish the guru devotion today and then we do question and answer tomorrow? At the time of Buddha, when Buddha Śākyamūni was present in the in on this earth, even if Buddha Śākyamūni was completely lacking any faults, any fault or defect, and it was adorned with all the minor and major marks. But there were a lot of there was a lot of people that were perceiving faults and defect in what he was doing and in his persons.
So for example, the heretic, the what they are called heretical or like the Hindu. Some Some Hindu were perceiving Buddha as having only faults, having different and various faults. And the cousin of Buddha himself was perceiving him as having were perceiving Buddha himself as having a lot of faults. And Gelong Legpey Karma was a relative to Buddha Śākyamūni and stayed with him for twelve years. And for twelve years, he perceived only faults.
He was not able to perceive just one qualities. He perceived only faults in Buddha Śākyamūni. So so due to obscuration and negative karma, you the sentient beings are going human beings are going to perceive faults and and defect in their in their teacher. So if if a highly realized being can have, like, fault like, mistaken perception of their of of phenomenas, so for sure, we ordinary beings, we we can have distorted or fake perception or faulty perception. And, for example, again, in Tibet, a great practitioner already that already achieved the unification of Vajradhāra, like Gyalwa Ensapa.
He actually, because of having obtained the perfect state, he was able to he was he was like giving teaching and speaking in in Sanskrit. And and because because due to his realization. And and there there were some Tibetan, obviously stupid, who were who were this is what Rinpoche has said, that were that they were saying that Ensapa was crazy. It was like they were calling him the crazy Ensapa because because he was telling things that the people wouldn’t understand. So and, Śāntideva was being called was called when he was in Nālānda.
Even if he was a really highly realized being, I was called the one the one who would only eat, sleep eat, sleep, and defecate. Even if he had really high qualities and he was really highly realized, but he was perceived by other people like the one who does only these three things. Based based on our our calm or negative karma and obscuration, and based on our self-cherishing mind, we have a different type of perception, and we can actually mix up qualities with faults. We can see something that is false as a as a quality and something that is a quality as a fault. And it’s actually very much to do with our obscuration and our self-cherishing mind.
For example, we if there is a teacher and a student, and the student, they happens to like him very much wine. So the teacher invites the student to have a glass of wine and to and he drinks himself. So what is happening to what’s happened to the student? The student will perceive the teacher as very good. He will see very good.
He’s having wine with me. Now finally, he has he has these qualities just as because just because he has this this fault. So in reality, the teacher should try to try to avoid to drink wine himself and also teach the disciple not to have it. But and that is the that is the quality. But if but due to his self-cherishing mind, due to the self-cherishing mind of the disciple, he sees that as a fault.
And and when the teacher is inviting everybody to have wine, so all the disciples said, that’s very good. Did you see how how good is our teacher? Like, he’s having wine. He he’s letting us have wine. That’s great.
He’s a really and this is really a good person. So this means mixing up, like, the faults with with the qualities due to his to your own perception, due to your own obscurations. Again, if there is a teacher who has two students, and the teacher is indeed a very good teacher, he wakes up very early in the morning, and he makes his prayer. And and the those two students likes likes to sleep, actually, so they would like to stay in the bed. But because the teacher wakes up and let make them to wake up, so they wake up and just start learning or they start studying the text.
So what is happening there is that, actually, that is a quality. It’s a quality of the teacher that himself is very much responsible and is very much responsible also for their student. And he wants he wants them to wake up early and to start studying and to start, learning since the very beginning. But what is going to be perceived by this student is that due to the fact that they want to sleep, he will be perceived like, like a fault. They will start saying, well, we have a very bad teacher.
He just he wakes up in early in the morning when no one is waking up. And and not only he wakes up by himself, but he wants us to wake up. So so that’s that’s like that’s like outrageous. I mean, is is not that it’s not going to be perceived like a quality of the teacher, but it’s going to be perceived as a fault. So the the the reason why it’s going to be perceived as a fault is because due to their student obscuration and due to their own self-cherishing mind.
So in this way, you can understand how our mind makes us to perceive the fault as the qualities and the quality as faults, and it can make us to perceive faults in what in in a place where they are not. So you should try to stop. Like, you should try to understand that that your mind, your perception are not valid, not totally valid. And remembering this example for of Asaṇga and Tilopa and so forth, where really highly really highly realized practitioners still have that that invalid perception. So obviously, your ordinary being, you’re you’re going to have this, like, not completely trustful perception or not not valid perception.
So you you you should you should be, like, aware of this possibility to have to have the perception of fault in in the person of your teacher. And and then then once you once you once you choose one one teacher as your guru, And then there is a way of relating to him, and there’s a way of, being, like, showing devotion through offerings. And, there are two type of offering, the external one and the offering of practice. And between these two, the main offering that you can make to your teacher is the offering of practice, like Milarepa did with Marpa, reaching all these really high high realization through the practice of Dharma. So he offer all that as he offer all this realization, all this practice as a mean of offering to to Marpa.
So so that’s basically how you should contemplate regarding the guru devotion, how to relate towards your spiritual guide, how to relate in the in the thought and the actions and in action. And, so that’s it for the guru devotion tomorrow, in very brief. So tomorrow, we are going to, talk about, the method of meditation in, regarding the precious human rebirth. So tomorrow, because we are talking about the the opportunities you have in this body and the freedom and the leisure