Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 31-minute teaching on guru devotion, Lama Ribur Rinpoche uses the story of Asaṇga’s twelve-year retreat to illuminate why our perception of our spiritual teacher cannot be trusted. Asaṇga saw Maitreya only as a sick dog until his compassion was so complete that the illusion dissolved. Rinpoche then develops the core theme: because of our negative karma and mental obscurations, we habitually project faults onto those with genuine qualities and overlook the qualities of our teachers, while even Buddha Śākyamūni was perceived as flawed by those around him. Through concrete examples, he shows how self-cherishing mind distorts perception—a teacher’s discipline looks like harshness, a teacher’s modesty gets read as laziness—and urges students to recognize this bias in themselves. He concludes by outlining two modes of devotion: external offerings and the offering of practice, which he presents as the principal form, exemplified by Milarepa’s relationship with Marpa.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 GD.mp3
UUID: 6a37bc50-b9e5-4524-a0f8-d61ed3d1d417
Teacher: Lama Ribur Rinpoche
Collection: Guru Devotion (Lama Ribur Rinpoche)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 31.0 minutes
Words: ~2,153
So, like, explaining in detail what happened to Asaṇga is that in order to either go to Tuśita Pure Land and to receive direct teaching from Maitreya or in order to perceive directly the 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’s holy body. At the end of this twelve years, he got discouraged and so he got out of retreat completely hopeless. He was not he was not he 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, he saw, a dog, a sick dog, and, all his body, all his skin was covered by worms.
So, Asaṇga Asaṇga felt compassion for, for the dog. He didn’t see the dog as Maitreya. Actually, this dog was Maitreya himself, but he did didn’t perceive the dog as Maitreya lacking the highest level of great compassion. He didn’t perceive this dog as being Maitreya, but he thought well, I’m not going to I’m not going to see Maitreya, 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 cut a piece of piece of flesh from his own leg 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, with his closed eyes, he understood there was no dog anymore. So he opened his eyes and there was Maitreya appeared in front of him. So full of faith, 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 appeared to me. And so this means you have really little compassion. 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 with Asaṇga’s spit. Because when he was when he was in retreat and when he was while he was meditating, he used to spit in his own in from one to one side of his meditation place. And and so Maitreya was showing that his robes was filled with the spit of Asaṇga.
So this means that he was with him since the beginning but Azanga didn’t perceive him. And so the reason why And so then, the reason why Azanga was not perceiving Maitreya since the beginning is because his mind was stained with obscuration and from one side and on the other hand he 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 the perception are not totally totally valid and not completely trustworthy. 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 due to have bile bile disease. And you might have the perception of blue blue color snow due to have wind is wind disorder. So due to different type of element imbalance and imbalance element or due to disease, you might have different perception of of the same object. So Nāgārjuna wrote in his text, if 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 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 faults or defect, and and 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 person. So for example, the heretics, what they are called heretics, or like the Hindus,, some, some Hindu were perceiving Buddha and having only faults, have having different and various faults.
And and the cousin of of Buddha himself was perceiving him as having were perceiving Buddha himself as having a lot of faults. And, Gelong Legpai Karma was, 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 and 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 a mistaken perception of the of of phenomenas. So for sure, we ordinary beings, we we can have distorted or faulty or mistaken perception. And, for example, again, in Tibet, 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 what Rinpoche said, that were that they were saying that Ensapa was crazy. I was like, they were calling him the crazy Ensapa because because he was telling things that the people wouldn’t understand. So, and again, Śāntideva, was being called, was called when he was in Nālānda, even if he was a really highly realized being, he was, called 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 on our our karma, negative karma, 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 a fault as a quality and something that is a quality as a fault and is 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, it happened 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 happening 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 these qualities just as because just because he has 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 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 his wine, so all the disciples say, that’s very good. As you’ve seen, how how good is our teacher? Like, he’s having wine, he’s letting us have wine, that’s great. He’s a really and this is really 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 the and 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 and 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 is 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 of 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 not valid, not totally valid. And remembering this example of Asaṇga 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 trustworthy 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 the person of your teacher. And and then then once you once 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 then between these two the main, the main offering that you, that you can make to your teacher is the offering of practice like like Milarepa did with, with Marpa, reaching all these really high realization through the practice of Dharma. So he offered all these realizations, these practices as a means of offering 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