Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 46-minute commentary on Tsongkhapa’s Three Fundamentals of the Path with a systems-theory image: the mind operates like a thermostat, constantly reset to “normal” by culture and habit, and only the determination to be free provides enough disruptive energy to break the loop. He traces the doctrinal spine — self-grasping and self-centeredness as root problems, the three fundamentals (determination to be free, awakening heart, awakening mind) as remedy, each developing a different dimension of the self. The longer second half draws on Jungian shadow theory to reframe guru devotion: we project the “golden element” of our own nature onto teachers because we cannot bear to own our own divinity, and the teacher’s role is to hold that mirror until we can. For practitioners already engaged with Lamrim.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 H and M of B 1992 05 13.mp3
UUID: f45d8993-41a1-4592-99d9-3b41172f94f8
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992-05-13
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.3 minutes
Words: ~5,923
So we’re going to be looking at a very short text by a Tibetan master, a fourteenth century yogi scholar by the name of Je Tsongkhapa. He is very difficult to see, but the very central figure in this print above the image of the Buddha is Je Tsongkhapa. At least it’s a graphic representation of what he may have looked like. The three fundamentals of the path. And we were talking about that we To the degree that our life is in discord with the way things are, that is to say, our life is based upon the way we operate, is in terms of our beliefs, our ideas, our core assumptions.
We have certain premises that we’re operating on. Most of these, a great many of them, are unconscious, that we aren’t aware of them. To the degree that these beliefs and assumptions, ideas are in accord with reality, the way things are, to that same degree we’ll be in harmony with the way things are, to that same degree we can have our expectations reasonably based, can be reasonably fulfilled, we will experience satisfaction, peace. On the other hand, to the degree that our beliefs and ideas and assumptions and the premises upon which we operate our life are in discord or somehow in conflict with the laws of the universe, the way things are, then we’re going to experience disappointment, frustration, dissatisfaction. So we are involved in epistemological errors, errors with respect the way that we know things, the way that we view reality.
The basic, most fundamental epistemological error, incorrect way of knowing, is with respect to the nature of reality, its ultimate nature. We have a misconception as to the nature of the self, who I am. What is my nature? Am I changing or unchanging? Am I permanent or impermanent?
Am I independently existing? Am I dependently existing? Am I singular or multiplicity? Am I an illusion? Am I real?
Am I important? Am I unimportant? Am I responsible? Am I unresponsible? Also, with respect to all the objects, the phenomena around us, we have a misconception, the way they exist.
The way they appear and the way they exist are in conflict. We act upon the way they appear to us, and this causes us problems, causes us pain, ultimately suffering. Based upon this misconception of the nature of the self, the nature of phenomena, especially with the nature of the I, we develop self centeredness. A misconception with the efficacy, the effectiveness of self serving actions engaged in at the expense and exclusion of others. So these are two primary fundamental mistaken premises on which we’re operating.
Self grasping, grasping an independent, solid, concrete, unchanging self, and it depends upon that the fundamental misconception of self centeredness. There are two aspects to the self. One is the private, experiential part of ourselves, which is not open to being related to with other, by others. Then there is the social part of ourselves, that part of ourselves which exists in relationship to others. So in Buddhahood, this paradigm that we’re making use of is the actualization of both the potentials of these two aspects of the self, our experiential self and our social self.
The holistic method must work toward development of both of these aspects of our self. Somehow we want to experience peace within ourselves, but we also have to find an appropriate way of relating without ourselves since essentially we’re social beings. It’s not sufficient to seek peace, inner peace, in isolation. If we if we seek to do that, then that’s the extreme of individualism. It would be it would be shortsighted at best since we have to we exist as social beings.
We exist in relationship to others, and part of ourself would remain undeveloped, underdeveloped. So we have to concern ourselves with the development of our social self and our experiential self. It is by means of the awakening mind that we find peace within, that our own being-for-self or being-for-oneself is brought to fulfillment. One experiences peace within oneself by means of awakening the mind to reality, the nature of the self, the nature of the I, the nature of phenomena. It is by means of the awakening heart that we bring to an optimal mode of being, being for others, that our social self is fully developed.
The potential is completely actualized by opening our hearts to others. So these are the two directions. These are the two fundamentals of the path that we’re seeking to develop, to develop both aspects of our self, experiential self, social self by means of awakening heart and awakening mind. But in order to this requires a great deal of energy, creative potential to uproot. Any system that it requires some input of energy in order to negative feedback system which is self perpetuating itself.
In order to interrupt it, there must be some kind of new energy input into that system. And this energy input, otherwise, is simply going to keep on moving in the same circular fashion. It’s going to perpetuate itself. And like by a negative feedback system I mean for example a thermostat. It’s calibrated.
When the temperature in the room gets to a certain, below a certain threshold, then the heater comes on. It raises the temperature in the room. When gets to a certain threshold, the thermostat will shut off the heater. So it develops what is a homeostatic balance, A certain level where it doesn’t, it has a very narrow range of movement. This is a negative feedback system.
It forces the system to keep coming back to a certain preset position and this is very much what our mind is involved in. Our mind is a system. We are continually being forced to be normal. There are factors which are operating socially, conventionally, culturally, and within our own mind, which are acting like a thermostat, which do not allow us to break beyond a certain range of thinking, viewing, feeling, emotions. They keep us stuck.
They constantly are reinforcing, constantly bringing us back to a certain normality. This is it’s difficult. We’re constantly being forced to be normal. And to be normal in an society is not to be very healthy. So if we’re going to be abnormal, you know, Buddhist is flipped out.
There’s no doubt about it. To be to want to be a loving, compassionate person, you have to be a little bit flipped out. You know, it’s not normal. But it’s kind of a good normal, isn’t it? A good not normal.
Good abnormal. Positive abnormal. So somehow we have to just our society, our peers, our culture, they keep forcing us back to a certain homeostatic balance again and again. We we can’t we can’t quite we force ourselves back. We can’t quite break out these habitual ways of thinking because everything keeps forcing us back in.
I’m studying family therapy at present and one of the fundamentals of family therapy is systems theory. That’s why maybe I talk in this way. I hope it isn’t too irreverent. And there are cases where you begin to view a family as a system. Johnny gets sick.
The parents start quarreling. Johnny gets sick. Oh, Johnny’s sick. Let’s not fight. Let’s take care of Johnny.
Parents quit quarreling. Johnny gets better. The parents don’t have any they aren’t distracted any longer. The parents start quarreling again. Johnny gets sick again.
So there’s this is feedback loop which is set up within a family that you can only understand Johnny’s behavior in terms of the family. That he is acting his sickness acts as a means to keep the family together. He is serving a vital function in that family. If he wasn’t to get sick, the parents would probably break up, the family would break up. So we’re constantly being forced back, constantly to a homeostatic balance, some normality by the system that we’re involved in.
And our mind is a system and our mind is not separate from our social reality. We’re not isolated. It is interacting with other minds, with other pressures, with other forces. So somehow we have to in order to interrupt this balance, this homeostatic, this fixed position, we have to introduce some new energy. Something has to move the system.
Energy in in non physical terms, in terms of the mind, is information. And information is the difference which makes a difference. Somehow we have to find something which makes a difference to us, which moves our mind. We have to put that in that has to be the input into this system of our mind. This is the determination to be free.
This is the only thing which is going to force us out of this egocentric mode that we’re in. Our ego grasping, our self grasping, our self centeredness is new information. The type of information which makes a difference. Finding a difference which makes a difference. So this is the determination to be free.
You know, one wants to change. One begins The new information is that these are not satisfactory. This is that one becomes aware of the high degree of unmanageability in one’s life, the alienation, aloneness, constant struggle that we’re involved in, the question of suffering. It becomes of paramount importance. This new information, these things aren’t okay.
And this begins to make a difference in one’s life and begins to energize. This is the fuel of the rocket. This is method to finally help us to gain the creative energy necessary to begin to break up these patterns and to move on to higher orders of self correction until finally we begin to understand that there’s no self that needs correcting at all. And then we’re liberated, we’re free. So we’re working with these two aspects of ourselves, social aspect and the experiential aspect.
And the way in which we are seeking to develop them is through awakening our hearts to others and awakening our minds to the nature of reality. And as a prerequisite driving force to energize this new higher order of self correction, this way in which we’re going to develop ourselves is the determination to be free. So these are the three fundamentals of the path: determination to be free, a awakening heart, and a waking mind. Tsongkhapa in his text, and I think it’s in your book, it’s a very short text, it gives us some structure as we go along. He divides his text into three basic divisions.
There’s the prologue, the preliminary. This leads into the actual composition of the text, the main body of the text. And then there’s the epilogue or summary. So the prologue has three divisions. It has the preliminary of making offering, an offering of praise, and a pledge to compose the text, and then a strong encouragement to the student to study it well.
So the very first line, it says, Homage to the foremost holy lama. Homage to the foremost holy lama. This is the offering of praise. So Tsongkhapa’s purpose for paying homage at the beginning of the text is to accumulate creative potential. And it’s hard to understand what it is exactly.
Some sort of energy, some sort of power that we can begin to as a store up which can act as a moving driving force in our life, moving our mind, cause some types of change to occur. Tsongkhapa is paying homage at the beginning of the text in order to create some kind of creative potential necessary to bring the composition of the text to completion so there won’t be any obstacles. Indrances to him is finishing the text, that there will be no interruptions. Creative potential. I think it was Don Juan who said, if one has personal power, if one has no personal power, then no matter what wisdom, most profound truths of reality of the world can be explained to you and it won’t make any difference.
But if one has personal power, creative potential, then one single word uttered at the right time can change the course of your life. It all depends upon one’s personal power. So one way that we can create various ways, such as mentioned previously, generosity, ethics, etc, and the ultimate way is through love. But here, in order to ensure that he is able to complete the composition of the text, in order to create the necessary creative potential, personal power to remove any obstacles, internal and external. Tsongkhapa pays homage.
He pays homage to the foremost holy lama. It should say all. Doesn’t say. Homage to all foremost holy lamas. All means one’s immediate spiritual teacher and her or his preceding teachers, going all the way back in the lineage, all the way back to Śākyamūni Buddha, the historical Buddha.
The central figure is Tsongkhapa. Then there’s row of rows of spiritual teachers. These are his spiritual teacher, his teacher’s teacher, his teacher’s teacher, his teacher’s teacher, etcetera, all the way back to Śākyamūni Buddha, the historical teacher, the historical Buddha. And there’s an unbroken transmission of some kind of energy, some insight, some inspiration, some blessing moving in uninterrupted fashion up to the present day. So to all of these, Tsongkhapa is paying homage.
So this brings us to the question of what we mean by a spiritual teacher, paying homage to the foremost holy lama. So the point of paying homage in general is to help the reader, who is ever going to study this text, to understand that the development of these three fundamentals of the path the fundamentals of the path of determination to be free, awakening heart, and awakening mind if one has developed them within one’s own mind, it depends upon they have to find some way of relating to the spiritual teacher, one’s lama. There’s one of the most famous Tibetan masters of this century, Pabongka Rinpoche, in a book of his called Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. He’s quoting another teacher, a teacher of an important lineage in Tibet. He says, To reach liberation, there is nothing more important than a lama.
Even in simple things of this present life, the things that you can learn just by sitting down and watching someone, you can’t get anywhere without a person to show you. So how on earth are you going to get anywhere without a lama when you want to go somewhere where you’ve never been before and you’ve only just arrived from a journey through the lower realms? And he continues to say, Therefore, you’re absolutely going to have to go and learn from a lama. Just reading dharma books is not going to work. There has never been a single person in history who gained his spiritual goal without a lama.
Just by reading books on Dharma And it will never happen in the future either. Coming to the practice of spirituality, we’re faced with the problem of of a relationship with a teacher. You know, people have people always come to the practice with some kinds of preconceptions. Some ideas already fixed in their mind about the worth they’re going to get and how they’re going to deal with this person who’s going to give it to them. There’s a lot of overcoming the preconceptions which is necessary to go through.
Sometimes this is quite a disillusioning process. The word disillusioned, you become unillusioned. You lose some of your illusions. You get to the actual reality of the situation. And the very notion that we’re going to get something from the spiritual teacher, that we’re going to get happiness, that we’re going to get peace, that we’re going to get wisdom, whatever it might be that we’re seeking, is one of the most difficult preconceptions that we have to overcome.
You know, the role of the teacher is not to transmit happiness, not to give peace, not even to give wisdom. But the belief what the spiritual teacher can and should do is to give us to help us to believe in ourselves that we can attain these ends, that we can attain wisdom, that we can attain peace, that we can become loving, sane human beings. And help us to develop the inspiration to work toward those ends. And the skills, help us to develop those skills necessary for their actual attainment. And as well, the spiritual teachers should be an example, an embodiment of those attainments.
And this is realistic. This is a workable situation, a viable type of relationship between teachers and students. The teacher helps them to believe that they can attain the end, inspires them to work towards those ends, gives them the techniques, the methods, the skills to attain those ends. And she or he acts as an embodiment of those ends, those attainments, him or herself. And there’s a quote by Lama Zopa.
This is a picture of Lama Zopa, which most of you probably can’t see. Lama Zopa Buddha House is a part of a worldwide network of Dharma centers, monasteries, nunneries, meditation retreat centers called FPMT, Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahāyāna Tradition. There’s about sixty centers around the world, and Lama Zopa is the spiritual director of these centers. And he was here last year for about ten days. I’d like to read a quote by Lama Zopa.
It may seem a little funny to say that you guru devotion to have these realizations. To the ear of somebody with a certain type of mind who has not accumulated much merit or fortune and who has not planted much seeds of the teachings, it may sound a little bit funny. When you hear, You need Guru devotion for the realizations of the path to enlightenment, it looks like the Guru is taking advantage of you by telling you this. The Lama who says this looks like he is admiring himself and asking the disciples to look at him as Buddha and to make offerings. It is very easy to think it is strange when you hear this.
It looks like worldly politics, not Dharma politics, but worldly politics. When you hear this for the first time, especially before you begin to practice, it seems very strange, like cheating. Actually, the proof of how the realization, the realizations development of the mind and experience of the path are dependent upon the very root of the practice. The very root of the strong, stable guru devotion comes when a person actually practices. The person s own experience answers his own questions about how important guru devotion is.
He can see the difference in his everyday life between times when seeing the Guru in the essence of the Buddha and devoting to the Guru in thought and action are not done correctly and correctly. When there is no longer devotion, the mind is like a hot desert where nothing grows. Or there may be devotion but very weak and about to disappear like very thin clouds in the sky. When the mind is like this, the very root of the whole path does not exist or is like very thin clouds about to disappear in the sky. Then with all the rest of the path, the meditations of Lamrim, that is to say the graduated path, or Tantra, no matter how many times you repeat the words, no matter what different Lamrim teachings you read, nothing gives you any feeling.
There is nothing you feel from your heart. Even if you meditate on impermanence and death, it becomes just words. You feel nothing from your heart. Even if you meditate on renunciation or bodhicitta, you feel nothing from the heart. And with shunyata, that is the emptiness, your mind is like a rock.
Your experience itself gives you the answer. You can understand from the life stories of the lineage lamas of the lam rim path, how they practiced Guru devotion and had incredible realizations. You can understand Guru devotion from this. But the actual proof comes from your own experience through meditating the path. The relationship between a spiritual teacher and a student is a very extremely profound one.
It’s something which is quite hard to understand, and unlike the relationship between an academic situation. Last year, a Jungian analyst, I think his name was Robert Johnson, came to L. A. And he gave a talk on Owning Your Own Shadow. The shadow is part of our unconscious personality.
It represents unknown or little known parts of ourselves, attributes and qualities about ourselves. Most often the shadow is seen as something reprehensible, something despicable, something we’d rather not know that was a part of ourselves, qualities which we wish to exclude from our conscious awareness of who we are and becomes a shadow. Robert Johnson was talking about that over the course of developing a therapeutic relationship with one of his clients through analysis, that they eventually develop such a trust that this person would begin to, the client would begin to willingly divulge parts of his shadow to the analyst. And they begin to talk about their shadow. Talk about their egotism.
Talk about their mental laziness, their cowardness, all their various fears, their unreal fantasies, their love of money, their love of sex, all their various schemes, all their various plots, all those various parts that we’d rather not only not have others know, we’d rather not know that we possess all of these these usually negative, despicable qualities, thoughts, ideas, aspirations, feelings within our own mind and part of our own personality. We’d rather exclude them from saying this is who I am, my identity. We’d rather not know about them. Usually these get dumped on one another people. They get their alienated personality potentials which get projected.
Whenever you see an enemy, you’re looking at yourself. It’s something that you refuse to become aware of in yourself. So you project it, you dump it on someone else and you aren’t even aware of this process. Whenever there is an afflictive emotion, whenever there is an emotive element in our view of another person, there is definitely some projection, some degree of projecting part of your shadow on another person. Johnson went on to say, These people readily began to let the skeletons out of their closet when it was in a safe enough situation, when enough trust had developed in their relationship.
But they they will put up a terrific fight against acknowledging the gold. Within the shadow is goal. Within the shadow, within these alienated personality potentials is a divine quality. Just as well as the dark side, you know, the base and the sordid part of ourselves, there is something there is some element of divinity, some golden quality, something very wonderful, which we also alienate from ourselves, is also part of our shadow. And the hero worship is is a manifestation of the golden element within the shadow projected on another person.
So that we simply cannot bear the weight of our own divinity, of our own our own golden quality. The weight that goes with owning the golden quality of our shadow If we is to assume it’s necessary if you acknowledge, if you feel very deeply one’s divinity, if you acknowledge one’s specialness, one’s gold. And it demands of you that you take a greater responsibility. That goes with this acknowledgment, this when one feels it very deeply, that one has to accept the responsibility to actualize it, to live out one’s divinity and of who we actually are, to live out who you recognize yourself to be. And people, you know, not wanting to take this greater responsibility, not wanting to bear this weight.
And it’s a spiritual teacher who helps us to become aware of and manifest and then to reintegrate the golden element within our own shadow. The spiritual teacher gives us a chance. You know, when you like many of you were inspired last weekend by the Dalai Lama. You know, he’s a he’s a beautiful person. And there’s something there’s something very a very rare feeling arises in you, feelings of inspiration, a feeling of of beauty, of life, of the possibilities of what life could be like, another way of being.
And you see it there. You see it out there. You see this beautiful person. You know, there’s a verse which goes, in other words in other words, the depthless blue sky, I have forgotten how beautiful my mind can be. When we see something beautiful, we are seeing the beauty of our own mind.
The spiritual teacher gives us an opportunity to get in touch with these dormant potentials within our own mind. Positive potentials. There’s enough chance to get in touch with the negative potentials. Gives gives you know, initially initially, we these potentials are projected out onto the spiritual teacher, but the spiritual teacher as if acts as a neutral, as if acts as a mirror. And that gives us a chance to to draw out these dormant, little known, repressed potentialities of our own self.
Project them onto him, her, and then begin to the process of reintegrating into conscious awareness. You know, what you see in the Dalai Lama, what you see in Mother Teresa, the very fact that you see it has to mean that it’s a potential that you that it exists as a potential within yourself. Otherwise, you couldn’t recognize it. So these people act as a catalyst to help us to to draw out from our shadow these personality potentials. Then they act as a base upon which we can devote ourselves as it were.
You know, we are paying homage to a part of ourselves. I talked about the taking as a paradigm of sanity a Buddha, that which we hold is valuable, it is only an interim step to the point that we can reintegrate it into ourselves until we are Buddha. We have to have someone who’s powerful enough, who can bear the weight of our own divinity until we are strong enough to to reintegrate it and bear it ourselves. And this is the function of the spiritual teacher, one of the functions. Mirror of our own Buddha nature, our own unconditioned goodness until we’re strong enough to bear it ourselves.
So there’s a beautiful homage or tribute to a woman paid to her teacher by the name of Suzuki Roshi who died about don’t know, it’s been about ten years who had lived in the United States for quite some time. It’s that great Zen master. Here the spiritual teacher is referred to as a Roshi, and she’s truly one of Suzuki Roshi’s disciples, who wrote this tribute to her teacher. A Roshi, a spiritual teacher in the Zen tradition, is a person who has actualized that perfect freedom with the potentiality for all human beings. He exists freely in the fullness of his whole being.
The flow of his consciousness is not the fixed repetitive patterns of our usual self centered consciousness, but rather arises spontaneously and naturally from the actual circumstances of the present. The results of this, in terms of the quality of his life, are extraordinary. Buoyancy, straightforwardness, simplicity, humility, serenity, joyfulness, uncanny perspicacity, and unfathomable compassion. His whole being testifies to what it means to be alive in the reality of the present. Without anything said or done, just the impact of meeting a personality so developed can be enough to change another person’s whole life.
But in the end it is not the extraordinariness of the teacher which perplexes, intrigues, and deepens the student. It is the teacher’s utter ordinariness. Because he is just himself, He is a mirror for his students. When we are with him, we feel our own strengths and shortcomings without any sense of praise or criticism from him. In his presence, we see our original face.
In the extraordinariness, we see is only our own true nature. When we learn to let our own nature free, the boundaries between master and student disappear in a deep flow of being and joy in the unfolding of Buddhist mind. As I mentioned previously, we are constantly, consciously and unconsciously, imbuing with varying degrees of power the people and things around us such that they’re able to exert influences over our mind. In the throes of romantic love, one’s beloved, Just the little raising of the lips or just a little smile or a little frown can throw you into ecstasy or despair. Just that little movement.
That’s how much we’ve empowered that person. They’re able to exert that much influence. Just that little movement of the facial muscles is able to have that effect upon you. So in the same way, the spiritual teacher can become a potent force in our lives in helping us to break out of our usual self restricting compulsive patterns. Again, this idea of patterns, of negative feedback systems, of going through the same repetitive, habitual ways of thinking, ways of feeling, ways of knowing.
This requires some kind of energy to break out, determination to be free, love and compassion, but also the spiritual teacher. And one’s devotion to the spiritual teacher serves as an energizing force, a way of developing the creative power necessary to begin to break up these patterns, to move on to higher orders of self correction and then begin to move beyond any types of patterns, modes of existence at all, and simply develop in spontaneity, dwell within spontaneity without any habitual patterns, without any reaction, habitual reactive patterns, reacting within spontaneously expressions responding to the present situation in the present moment, anew, afresh each moment. So, you know, as as we mentioned previously, the the central role of the teacher is to instill some kind of confidence in ourselves that we can change. At some level, we don’t believe we can. Intellectually, you may agree with me that you can change.
But I have a feeling that at a more basic level that we’re all very stuck, that we really don’t think we can change. So this takes a lot of work, a lot of coming down to that level of contradicting that pattern, instilling within us the confidence that we can change, that we can go beyond our perpetual dissatisfaction, and that we can grow in love and compassion, that we can grow in wisdom, and to inspire us to make that effort, to work toward these ends, and to give us the necessary skills to actualize, to achieve them, and then to serve as a living reminder. And this is really important. In all of this, I’m not talking about myself. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.
To live as a living reminder of the real possibility of another way of being. And I think that’s terribly necessary. It’s not enough to read in books, in abstract, in theory. We have to see somebody that actually is living a different way of life, that actually is possible that we see somebody in the flesh breathing. Lama Yeshe.
Lama Yeshe was the founder of Buddha House. We have to understand why it is both necessary and possible to abandon our ordinary limited view of ourselves and generate in its place the awakened self identity of a fully evolved being. We have to realize that our low opinion of ourselves, which keeps us trapped in the cycles of perpetual dissatisfaction, only arises because we are ignorant of our basic, essentially pure nature. By generating the prerequisite renunciation, bodhicitta, and wisdom, and by delving into our clear nature of our mind, we create the space in which true self transformation takes place. Yet it is not enough merely to know why such self transformation is necessary and possible.
We must also generate the strength and the confidence that will enable us to follow this radical approach to fulfillment. In other words, we need to be inspired. We have to know that the attainment of enlightenment, completion, Buddhahood, totality, or whatever we want to call it, is not only a theoretical possibility but something that people like us can and do actually achieve. Although it is true that the tantric teachings of Śākyamūni Buddha have been in existence for two thousand five hundred years, do they exist for us if we have not yet met a qualified tantric master? Are they real for us or not?
Despite the extensive explanations of such realized adepts as Naropa, Marpa, and Tsongkhapa, can can we say that tantra is a reality for us before someone has introduced it to us? Of course not. And the same is true for the teachings of Sūtra, and just the teachings of the Buddha in general. The fact that Buddha taught the four noble truths a long time ago does not make them true for us. They only become part of our reality once we have realized them.
And this depends upon having met a guru who can show us their truth clearly in a way we can understand. If we do not have the living example and inspiration of the external guru, our inner wisdom will remain weak and undeveloped. Then finally, goes on to say, in terms of the spiritual teacher as a living example, The main reason that religion in both the East and the West has degenerated so much nowadays the rarity of meeting good spiritual examples. If people never meet highly realized beings, they have no way of knowing the limitless possibilities of their own consciousness. It is not enough that there are texts recording the deeds and accomplishments of past masters.
By themselves, such stories cannot inspire us very much. In fact, they may only increase our feeling of remoteness. Buddha and Jesus lived such a long time ago, we may think, and their purity belongs to another age. It is impossible for someone like myself living in this degenerate twentieth century to attain anything resembling their levels of purity. Or we may reject these accounts of past masters completely, dismissing them as fairy tales fit only for gullible children.
The only way we can lay to rest these feelings of doubt, incapability, and cynicism is in coming face to face with someone who has activated his or her highest potential. Only then do we have an example of purity and spiritual evolution who we can actually see and relate to ourselves. Thus, the outer guru is of utmost importance. We need the example of someone who while human like ourselves has developed beyond the bounds of what we presently think possible. When we see someone who has reached beyond selfishness, who has transcended the petty concerns of this world, who speaks and acts from intuitive wisdom, and who is truly dedicated to the welfare of others, then we can have faith and conviction that these attainments are possible for ourselves as well.
Otherwise, if our only models are those of greed and aggression, our vision of what we are and what we can become will be sadly limited. So because the spiritual teacher is the source, the life the source, the life, and the fruit of the spiritual path. At the very beginning, Tsongkhapa pays homage to the spiritual teacher. I’ll stop there.