Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 31-minute session, Lama Ribur Rinpoche teaches the foundational practice of guru devotion, focusing on how to perceive one’s teacher as the Buddha incarnate. He explains that receiving the full blessing of a teacher depends entirely on the student’s perception and faith, not on whether the teacher is objectively enlightened. Rinpoche explores a central obstacle: when students notice apparent faults or anger in their teacher, he guides them to recognize these as reflections of their own karmic perception rather than truths about the teacher. Using the example of three beings perceiving the same water differently as liquid, nectar, or blood depending on their karma, he demonstrates that no perception can be trusted as independent reality. He then offers classical examples of great yogis misperceived—Asaṇga seeing Maitreya as a worm-covered dog, Krishnacharya appearing as a madman eating fish scraps—and contrasts these with the story of a humble disciple who recognized Vajrayoginī beneath a leper’s appearance, achieving enlightenment before his supposedly more advanced teacher. Suitable for practitioners beginning guru devotion practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 GD.mp3
UUID: 28659c7d-3c11-4aac-845a-9c1b29c844c1
Teacher: Lama Ribur Rinpoche
Collection: Guru Devotion (Lama Ribur Rinpoche)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 31.0 minutes
Words: ~1,673
Is from practicing Dharma. So if if the meeting of such of such proper or qualified teacher and and it meets in encounter or meet a very, very good or qualified disciple, then, the, the Dharma or the practice that come from this is excellent. I think that you will allow me to leave it at that. Then once once a proper disciple have met the qualified teacher, then he should develop or generate his devotion in regarding actions and thoughts. There are three types of faith, and the the faith we are talking here is to is the faith which enables you to see, and the lama has the Buddha. So the the importance of understanding your own teacher as the Buddha himself, it’s because from the the way you perceive your teacher, then this is the way how you’re going to receive the blessing or the inspiration.
Like, it doesn’t matter whether your teacher is really a Buddha or not, he’s really an enlightened one or not, but, the strength, of the blessing you’re going to receive is all depending on your, or your perception of your teacher. So so it’s very important. That’s why this faith is very important perceiving the teacher as Buddha himself. So you need to you need to perceive the lama like the embodiment of all the, Buddhas of the three times. You need to, like the, the vajradhara himself, like the ultimate state of unification himself.
You need to perceive him like, the action of all the Buddha, like the holy action of all the Buddha, for the sentient beings. You need to see him like the embodiment of the ultimate refuge. So, when you are going to if you perceive mistakes, in or faults in the lama’s behavior, then you should, always remember that, the appearances are your appearances or the way the phenomena appear to you, are not are not real or are not stable or not true. It’s not it’s like your perception are not completely are not completely correct. So whatever whatever mistake you might perceive from the side of the lama, that is a like that is a mistake of your own perception.
So when when it happened that you see mistake or faults in the lama’s behavior or in the in the person of the lama, like, if you perceive that a lama is really is really like an angry person, and and because of this or because of of his anger, it’s difficult for you to generate the perception of of him to be Buddha or if is if this lama appears to have a lot of, so and as as this in in the same way, your mind will find difficult to generate the perception of himself like Buddha. So this you should think that there’s no stability. There’s no there’s no complete trust. You can’t complete trust your perception because the perception are depending on your karma. So in the way how the karma is ripening, then the perception are changing.
For example, in the in Samsāra, one glass of water or one vessel filled with water, it can be perceived in three different ways by three different, type of beings. If we take for example the, god, human and the, Preta or hungry ghost, they perceive in three different ways the same water the human will perceive it like water, God will perceive it like nectar due to their positive karma and the Preta will perceive it like, really, unpleasant, unpleasant liquid like, blood and pus. So, due to their negative karma. So the object is one, but the perception are different due to the karma. So you if you think in this way, you can understand how, how, little trust you can have on your perception and so how little trust you can have on your judgment on on the faults you might perceive on the guru.
So if we if we should trust our perception, if we think that we should trust our perception, our way of perceiving, then then we arrive at the point where the where the truth of of existence, like it is explained in Buddhism, it comes like false. Because if we have to if we have to trust the way we perceive, the phenomena appears to our mind like being established by their own nature. It the phenomena appears to our mind like being inherently inherently existent or to being established by their own side and which is actually not true. So from the basic from from the base himself, the perception, our perception is is is, like, mistaken. So there’s no there’s no way of believing that our perception are are valid or faultless.
So, again, in order to under for us to understand that the perception are not established as valid or not established or completely faultless. So, for example, Asaṇga used to — Asaṇga perceived Maitreya as a dog covered with worm. And Tilopa, who is actually a great practitioner, a great yogi of Heruka lineage was perceived as a madman and person who eats the fish intestine and it was considered really low among the people where he was dwelling and the main the real thing is that the real the reality was that Tilopa was being only single pointed concentrated in the practice of Chakrasamvara, Heruka. He wanted to, he wanted, he was searching, was looking for the easiest way how to survive and practice. So, the easiest way he found was that he could survive on eating those fish intestine that was left over by the fishermen because they were considering the intestine not being eatable so they were just leaving those, like after cleaning cleaning the fish, they were leaving all those intestine in in by side.
And so this is what Tilopa was using to used to eat. And the the real reason why he was doing that, it was because that was the easiest way how to survive and practice the yoga of Chakrasamvara. But the way how the other people were perceiving him, they were perceiving him as mad because only a mad person can eat a fish intestine while you can have all the other all the other things. So only because of only a mad person can do stuff and can do a certain action then he became a mad in the perception of all the other people. But reality was completely different.
Another example is it’s regarding the great practitioner, Nagpopa, who in Sanskrit is called Krishnacharya, and was another of the Chakrasamvara lineage as well, and he used to used to fly and with all those disciple surrounding by victory banners and so forth because due to his to his siddhi or to his power that he achieved through the practice. And and one time during one time during his life, he he came to cross to a point where he had to cross the river and he and all the other disciples stopped and at the at the side where and they have to cross the river, there was a woman affected by a leprosy and Nagpopa or Krishnacharya, he wanted to wanted to help this woman but he thought if I’m going if I’m going to help her I have to touch this woman and so I will get I will get the disease myself or I will get sort of remnant or sense of obscuration, obstacle from that. So I rather I rather leave her leave her here. And so I He and all the other disciple crossed the river walking over over the water, not not touching the surface of the water due to his, attainment, due to his, siddhi.
And the last of his, the lower of his disciple, came at the at the very end of the disciple and he was, a very sort of low practitioner. He didn’t have even, he didn’t have hope of, he was hopeless in the sense that he was not going to reach any siddhi like his teacher in this life. So, knowing that he said, well I don’t have like the hope of walking on the water like they do so it’s better for me to help this woman. And so he took on his shoulder, he helped in taking the woman on his shoulder and with her, he was crossing the river and obviously he was drowning because he was not able to stand on the water or to fly on the water. So at the when he reached the middle of the river, he felt that he was not anymore in the water, but he was like above the water level.
And the woman was Vajrayoginī herself. And she manifested in her one face, two arms form with the holding the skullcup and the curved knife. And she embraced him and they and they flew to the the Khechari Pure Land. So what happened is that he, that he was the last of the disciple, reached the Pure Land before his teacher and the teacher and teacher didn’t reach, like didn’t didn’t go to the pure land as well he didn’t attain the enlightenment state in that life. So and this was because he, he like, he believed in his own appearances.
He believed that that he had that appearance of this woman affected by leprosy. He believed to that and so he didn’t he didn’t perform what he has to be done. So this was because Krishnacharya believed to his own wrong perception. So this is not only for ordinary beings, all these really highly realized yogi or practitioner, they still had, like, invalid perception. And so in this case for Krishnacharya perceived Vajrayoginī in the manner of a woman affected by leprosy and as well as Asaṇga was perceiving for a long time like a dog covered with worms.
So again was perceiving Maitreya like a sick dog with the covered by worms.