Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. This 79-minute talk, the final session of Ven Thubten Dondrub’s two-year Discovering Buddhism series, explores why and how practitioners develop devotion to a qualified spiritual teacher. Dondrub opens by emphasizing that this culminating teaching is foundational to the entire path to enlightenment. He then methodically presents four arguments for seeing the teacher as a Buddha despite their apparent human form: first, the unreliability of appearances and the obscuring power of mental impurities; second, the fact that Buddhas actively benefit sentient beings through teaching the Dharma, and human teachers doing this work are necessarily vehicles for that compassion; third, the magnifying-glass principle whereby seeing an ordinary teacher as a Buddha amplifies the Buddha’s enlightened influence; and fourth, direct scriptural statements from sutras and tantras confirming that in degenerate times the Buddha manifests as human teachers. Throughout, he distinguishes between absolute guru (the dharmakaya or enlightened mind itself) and relative guru (the human form). He concludes by outlining how to repay the guru’s kindness through thought—remembering their superior compassion compared to the historical Buddha—and through action: making offerings, supporting the guru’s activities, and especially practicing the difficult advice given. Appropriate for serious practitioners already engaged in Buddhist practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: DB The Spiritual Teacher Week 4 2015 04 21.mp3
UUID: f3c2e26a-9d4a-40d3-8186-3280454a64e8
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: The Spiritual Teacher (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2015-04-21
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 78.7 minutes
Words: ~8,575
The clock’s disappeared. Oh, it’s broken. Oh, good. Good. Good.
Good chance getting a new one, sir. That doesn’t tick. We gotta get a non ticking. Good evening, everyone. Welcome.
On this very auspicious night, because this is the very last talk of the entire Discovering Buddhism series, which I’ve been doing for two years now. So this is the end of this first series, last talk. So to make this last talk as as meaningful as possible, to make it a Dharma action, it’s really important that from our side we have the right motivation for being here and the best motivation we can have, or the basic motivation, what makes an action dharma, is having the thought to do something for the benefit of future lives. Recognising that this life is very short, that we’re going to die, everything in this life is impermanent, and our mind is going to continue and so we really need to prepare for our next life. So that’s the basic Dharma motivation.
Then more powerful than that, more deeper is the wish to practice the Buddha’s teachings, not just to get a good rebirth, but to free oneself from Samsāra. But then the greatest motivation we can have is the bodhicitta motivation wishing not only to free ourselves from Samsāra but to free all beings from Samsāra and even more than that, them to achieve the full potential of their mind, which is the enlightened state of blissful everlasting happiness. So to do that, we ourselves have to achieve enlightenment. And to achieve enlightenment, which is not something easy to achieve because it involves getting, not only subduing all our disturbing thoughts, but completely eliminating them by destroying ignorance through developing the complete power of transcendental wisdom. So this is not something easy to do or even to understand.
So to accomplish these things, and in the process of doing those basic things, have to purify our mind, accumulate a great deal of merit. So to do all of these things is not easy by any means. And so to do that, to do it well, completely, efficiently and as quickly as possible, then we definitely need to rely on a qualified spiritual master. So devoting to the spiritual master is the key to the spiritual path. The foundation of all good qualities is the kind and venerable guru, as Lama Tsongkhapa says.
So with that thought, we can be here tonight and think about this subject. So as we say the prayer of refuge in bodhicitta, we can, if one feels comfortable and think it’s meaningful, we can visualize Śākyamūni Buddha in front of us as the source of all the teachings that are our refuge, inspiration and guidance, and at the same time, try to think of all sentient beings surrounding us as a way to help generate that bodhicitta thought, starting with at least thinking of our mother of this life on our left, our father on our right, then the rest of our family, then all our friends and helpers behind us, harmers in front, then as much as we can, to open our hearts to all other sentient beings, starting with the human beings of this world. Then if we believe that animals are sentient beings, then thinking of them, then all the other different beings of cyclic existence and trying to have that basic but very, very important awareness that all of these beings are in essence, in nature, only kind to me, have been only kind to me, but they are right now, have always been, and while they remain in Samsāra will continue to be only suffering.
So no matter what, I have to achieve enlightenment, that depends on following the Guru, connecting with the Guru, devoting oneself properly to the Guru, a Guru, so for this reason I’ll study this subject. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma and the Supreme Assembly. By the merits I create through listening to the Dharma, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. So then we think the Buddha is very pleased with our motivation and shows this by coming to the crown of our head. And then when the Buddha is directly above our crown, the Buddha then dissolves into blissful golden light so that that light can then pour down into us, blessing our mind to be able to understand this subject of Guru devotion.
Blessing our mind to be able to put it into practice so that eventually we can gain the complete authentic undeclining realization of the mind that is perfectly devoted to the spiritual master. And then just briefly doing the nine round breathing exercise just to let our mind become that much calmer, clearer, more concentrated so that we can use that level of mind to listen to, think about the Buddhist teachings tonight. Okay. Thank you. So in the great treatise on the Graduated Path to Enlightenment that was composed by Lama Tsongkhapa, which sets out the stages of the path to enlightenment from the beginning to the end.
Lama Tsongkhapa places the subject of Guru devotion at the very beginning even though it is one of the most difficult realizations to obtain. But Lama Tsongkhapa places it at the beginning to emphasise the importance of relying on a spiritual master in order to follow the path to enlightenment and be successful in it. And to emphasise that the sooner we’re able to connect with a qualified teacher or a number of qualified teachers, the sooner we’re able to make connections with really qualified teachers and have real devotion to those teachers, the sooner we’ll be able to gain realizations that take us along the path to enlightenment. So I’d just like to quickly repeat something I said last week, based on something that Lama Zopa Rinpoche taught where he mentioned this point, this very fundamental point that because what I want to talk about tonight specifically is specifically how on the basis of meeting someone, one feels, decides, has reason to believe, is a genuinely qualified teacher and one feels a strong connection with that person, how we train ourselves to see that person as a Buddha, because that’s the ultimate thing to do, the final practice to do, to see the Guru, the qualified Guru as Buddha.
This is a very important point, qualified Guru, not any Guru or teacher, but the qualified guru as Buddha. Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, To understand that, one has to understand a very fundamental point. If one doesn’t understand this fundamental point and have belief in it, then guru devotion, seeing someone as a Buddha, is completely ridiculous, it doesn’t make sense and doesn’t work. So the fundamental thing that Rinpoche says one has to have belief in and understand and strong belief in is the fact that the Buddhas exist and that they are omnipresent and they are continuously perfectly acting for the benefit of all sentient beings. There is never a single moment when the enlightened mind isn’t aware of all sentient beings and that awareness is always pervaded by a hundred percent perfect compassion, loving kindness and every other good quality.
Which means that an enlightened mind is constantly aware of me, meaning you, me. It’s aware of me all the time, always has been, always will be, will never lose sight of me, knows exactly everything that is going on in my mind. This what the enlightened mind is capable of. And that mind is always acting for our benefit. And Rinpoche illustrated this by making the point along the lines of the fact that we ourselves, even now, we try to be nice to people, I hope.
We try to be kind to people and help them in our own limited way, and we can see people who are much kinder than ourselves, who have much more dedication than ourselves to helping other people. And these people seem to be just ordinary people, and probably are, from a dharma point of view, ordinary people. They not necessarily have any spiritual belief, and yet they are people very devoted, dedicated to helping others. And then on top of that, there are people who, because of their spiritual beliefs, Buddhist or otherwise, really are practising in order to benefit sentient beings. They are one hundred percent committed to benefiting sentient beings and the nature of the mind is, one becomes familiar with certain practises, the mind takes on those qualities more and more because we have those potentials.
So there are people who are using Buddhist methods to develop their potential for wisdom, love and compassion, generosity, patience, perseverance, etcetera. They’ve been doing it very, very intensively, not just in this life, many lives. So it follows that they have developed incredible love and incredible compassion, incredible altruistic commitment to all sentient beings. There are people who are bodhisattvas, and then there are the many levels of bodhisattvas. There are the bodhisattvas on the path to on the actual path to enlightenment.
There are the bodhisattvas on the path the path of accumulation. There are the bodhisattvas on the path to on the path of preparation. There are bodhisattvas on the path of insight. So there and then so then there are above that, the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth level bodhisattvas, doing amazing things for sentient beings. So all the time, that’s all they do, benefit sentient beings.
So there is no question that Buddhas aren’t working for the benefit of all sentient beings all the time. The sad fact is our mind is so obscured, it’s very difficult for that enlightened activity for Buddha penetrate our obscured minds. Certainly it’s practically impossible in the lower realms and also in God realms where everyone’s dancing around floating on lotuses far too much to benefit from the Buddhas. So as I mentioned before, it’s really only in the human realm that the Buddhas can really get to sentient beings in a very powerful way, and most particularly, it’s human beings who have a precious human rebirth, who have faith in the Buddha’s teachings because they then use the Buddha’s teachings. People who don’t have faith in them don’t use them, don’t apply them, but people who have developed refuge and faith in the Buddha’s teachings put them into practice, and so that’s the way the Buddha can most affect us, by teaching the Dharma.
That’s the most powerful way. People might like to think there is all sorts of miraculous ways Buddhas lead sentient beings to enlightenment, but there isn’t. The most miraculous, powerful way the Buddhas guide us to enlightenment is just simply teaching, teaching the Dharma. Because there isn’t anything else. Because then we have to apply it.
We have to practice those teachings. You know, the Buddhas performed all sorts of miracles. You can read in the sutras. You know, the Buddhas performed miracles where they floated in the sky and had water pouring out of their body and flames pouring out of their body at the same time. Now that’s very nice to look at, but it doesn’t actually get rid of your delusions.
It just impresses you. What actually gets rid of one’s delusions is ourselves applying the teachings, but to apply the teachings we have to first hear them and we have to hear them from someone who we respect, who is an embodiment of those teachings, and certainly the Buddha is. So that is the most miraculous, profound, powerful, direct way the Buddhas can guide us. So then the point is, who is doing that on this earth? Who can you see that is teaching the Dharma?
And that is teachers, Buddhist teachers. So some of them at least, if not all of them, some of them have to be Buddhas. Because the argument is if there are ordinary sentient beings teaching the Dharma, how can the the the Buddha who has and these ordinary beings don’t have complete compassion, how can they be teaching the Dharma to benefit others when the Buddha who has unrestricted perfect compassion not be teaching the Dharma. He’s just left it to a dodos to do it, right? Not possible.
Yeah. So the Buddhas are, you know, teaching the Dharma as human beings appearing to be human beings. Sorry. I jumped ahead bit there. So how can we actually see the guru, the qualified teacher, as a Buddha?
So there are four main arguments that are given in the Lamrim teachings by Lama Tsongkhapa of how to train the mind in seeing the qualified guru, the one that or the ones, let’s just say one for the time being, we do one at a time, the one can take many people, teachers as one’s gurus. You can have the root guru and many other teachers. Lama Tsongkhapa himself had, I don’t know, one hundred and twenty or something gurus. So on the basis of meeting someone who’s you’re right? Yeah.
We don’t have to perform a funeral ceremony or something? No? Oh, dear. I’ll just go outside. No.
No. Cuff away. It’s fine. It’s good. No.
No. Has many good qualities as teaching the Dharma blah blah blah blah blah and one feels a strong connection with that person. So this person is a human being, so we focus on the fact that they’re a human being and as I mentioned last week, what is the feature of a human being? A human being has faults. They have faults of various kinds.
So how can we then we see this person who seems to be a human being, a nice human being, an impressive human being, but they don’t seem to be a Buddha. They look like a human being. They seem to be have all the characteristics of a human being, but if I think of them as a human being, that’s not very beneficial. How can I see this person as a Buddha? Hope you understand why we should do that.
I talked about that last week, why we should see the person as a Buddha. So how we can see the Guru as a Buddha is firstly, to be aware, to think that there is no certainty about what appears to my mind. Just because something appears in a particular way to my mind doesn’t mean it’s true, which is what we assume. We instinctively think, we don’t even check, that when something appears to our mind, what is appearing is reality, is true, it is not unmistaken, it is completely correct. But in fact that’s not the case.
We make many, many mistakes all the time. And we make small mistakes about misjudging people events and so on regularly, but we make huge mistakes along the lines of fundamental mistakes like seeing what is impermanent as permanent. We see what is suffering as happiness, we see what is impure as pure, we see what is empty of inherent existence as inherently existent. So we are experiencing all those major mistakes all the time. Yeah?
So we have to realise that just because this person is appearing as an ordinary human being doesn’t mean they are an ordinary human being. That doesn’t you know, just because they appear that way doesn’t prove anything. So in fact, what it could be is this is just my own obscurations. And the more and the teachings say the more obscure our mind is, the more impure our mind is due to our karmic pollutions, the more ordinary our vision of people is. And as we purify our mind, the more pure our view of the world and people becomes.
You know, if we check up, know, we develop a lot of anger and aversion for a particular person, then that person appears to us as very, very unpleasant. But that’s really our own mind projecting those things onto that person. Secondly, what we should remember, this way of thinking is specifically applied to someone we have decided has very special qualities, right? It’s teaching the Dharma and this person has, because of them, I have benefited a lot and so on and I feel a very strong connection with this person, blah blah blah blah, yeah, so, but I still see them as ordinary and that that ordinary view is, you know, hindering me. So to to overcome that ordinary view, then we can think like this.
That this is just due to my obscured mind, just because someone seems to be ordinary, seems to have faults, and by ordinary that can still appear very special, you know, but still a human being, not a Buddha. Because a Buddha is a pretty amazing kind of being. But Buddha is not just a nice person. Buddha is not just a very, very nice person. A Buddha is a spectacular being who can manifest billions of bodies, never dies, is utterly omniscient, is in a state of utter undeclining bliss.
Right? Doesn’t need a body. Just manifesting, we’re just whipping one up for appearance’s sake. When we go out, we dress up and make a nice appearance for ourselves, or the Buddhas whip up a body for appearance’s sake. So that’s one thing, and the other way to think on top of that is to think that these faults that I see in the guru may actually be deliberately acted out by the guru.
And this may be just like as it says, to appear convincingly as a human being, you have to have faults, so the guru manifests just like an actor when they take on a role, study the characteristics of that type of personality they’re acting out and they present some kind of personality traits. So the guru chooses some. But especially what one can think is the very faults that I see in the guru are actually deliberately acted out by the guru to show me that I have that fault, because there is the argument that the faults you see in other people are really what we have ourselves. The very fact that we can identify them in other people is because we’ve got them. I don’t think this is always necessarily the case, but it can be in many cases the case.
So that’s one of the first ways to overcome the wrong view we have of the qualified guru who is helping us in the path to enlightenment. His Holiness, the Dalai Lama makes the point that because His Holiness is always very realistic about things, my teacher Lama Zopa Rinpoche tends to present extreme view of everything, that you have to have this perfect view straight away, that you can never, you must have this complete, perfect devotion to the guru, see them as a guru, as a Buddha without any doubt. But that is extremely, extremely difficult. But His Holiness says, what one has to start off with, and of course really this is the only place we can start off with, but His Holiness says the main thing in developing guru devotion is to focus on the good qualities and not on the bad qualities. And with that, remembering this whole argument about the iceberg that if you can see some very special good qualities, then that means this being has many more, or probably has many more.
That they’re not showing. So the second argument, which is I think very important one, which is the one I more or less have already gone through, is this point that the Buddhas are acting for the benefit of sentient beings all the time. That’s why these beings became Buddhas and there is nothing stopping them acting for the benefit from their side, from our side. There’s plenty stopping us receiving their benefit. I always give this sorry, I’ve got my limited range of examples that I haven’t I really have to expand some, but I think I’m too old to do that.
But one thing that some years ago when I was teaching in Bunbury in Western Australia, one of the regular students there is a nurse and she was telling me once this how when she works in hospital, there are a lot of people in there coming to hospital with lung cancer because of smoking cigarettes. She said even when they’re in there to have operations because of lung cancer, they will go outside and smoke cigarettes. The doctors are giving them all these orders, Don’t do this, don’t do that. They’re practically dying or are dying from lung cancer, and people, no matter what you’re told, people just don’t and the doctors and nurses are trying to help these people who are really, really sick. Don’t do this.
Don’t smoke another cigarette. And they go and puff away. I mean, we sentient beings are really, really difficult to help. And this isn’t something super obvious, you know? I have a friend at the moment, says, you know, he’s a chain smoker, he says he actually coughs up his black mucus at the moment and he’s still check you know?
He said, yeah. I really gotta give up. Yeah. Really gotta give up. Yeah.
So we we are really thick. We are deeply thick, obscured people. Yeah. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. It includes me, I’m not trying to put anyone down.
Anyway, so it’s very difficult even for enlightened beings to get through to us. From their side, they’re doing everything possible, but we have lots of obscurations, you know, from our side. So anyway, yeah, but the way the Buddhas can, the most amazing way the Buddhas can help us is to teach human beings the Dharma. So who is doing that? Who can you see in the world?
You can’t see any actual Buddhas, people with golden bodies radiating light with long, what do you call them, earlobes and blue hair. I haven’t seen any of these people around teaching the Dharma, but you can see people like His Holiness, the Dalai Lama and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who don’t have long ear lobes or blue hair, teaching the Dharma. You can see those people teaching the Dharma in an amazing way and living the Dharma themselves as just amazing examples of the Dharma, of Dharma practice, of the bodhisattva way of life. You can see those people. But they seem to be, just from an ordinary point of view, ordinary people, human beings.
They’ve got arms and legs like us and they go to sleep or seem to go to sleep and they eat and drink and go to the toilet and get sick and grow old and stuff like that. So, oh, just a human being. Where’s the Buddha’s helping me? I want a Buddha to help me. But they are doing the Buddha’s job, therefore and they’re the only ones you can see doing it.
And since that’s what Buddhas do, you know, what do the Americans say? If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s a duck. Maybe that’s not a very good example to you. But sorry now, I just go to hell for that one. So if it’s someone doing the Buddha’s work properly and is having the effect that the Buddhas have, then it’s a Buddha.
That is a Buddha. That’s a pretty good chance that that person is actually a Buddha because we can’t find anyone else in this world doing what Buddhas do, but Buddhas definitely teach the Dharma to people. Yeah? Alright. And especially, you know, the Buddha’s supposed to be guiding me.
They have unrestricted compassion for me, so who is guiding me is my spiritual master. So then another argument, which is not exactly, in my opinion, proving that someone is a Buddha, but think, anyway, it is the argument that which I’ve already mentioned, but this is the third point, is that the Buddhas are constantly acting for the benefit of all sentient beings And so wherever the Buddha mind perceives a sentient being who is wanting to practise the Dharma, is trying to practise it, and they have someone teaching them the Dharma, then the Buddhas act through that person. So by the person seeing that person as a Buddha, even though the person may not be a Buddha, but by seeing them as a Buddha, because of having that pure view, then the actual Buddha’s enlightened influence can come through to that person via that person who isn’t a Buddha. And they give the analogy in the teachings that the rays of the sun are constantly shining on the earth all the time, but the earth doesn’t burst into flames. But if you take a magnifying glass, what do you call it?
Magnifying glass, and you focus the rays of the sun through that, then the grass will burst into flames. Yeah? I think that’s a great analogy. So so if if the the enlightenment enlightening influence of the Buddha is focused through an ordinary teacher, then that can cause the student’s mind to awaken. So that’s why it’s valid to see the qualified person, even if they’re not a Buddha, as a Buddha.
That’s why during the Bendigo retreat, the month long Bendigo retreat last year when Lama Zopa Rinpoche was there. At one point, there was a French monk giving a talk on Guru devotion, actually talking on this very point. Was he leading the meditation? Oh, maybe you weren’t. Were you there at that point?
No. I I think he was yeah. He was leading the meditation on these four points, and Rinpoche was doing was in the background doing preparation for the initiation he was going to give. And then after some time, he got up to go to the toilet, manifesting an ordinary human behavior. And he walked past the French monk leading the meditation.
Anyway, later on, sometime later, Rinpoche said to everyone when Rinpoche was teaching, he said, When I walked past the monk, I thought to say to everyone this may sound very strange. He said, I thought to say to everyone, I’m not a Buddha, but the guru is a Buddha, which is a very profound thing. Because of course, Rinpoche knows many people there see him as their guru. So he’s saying from my side, I’m not a Buddha, but the guru is a Buddha. So even you know, he’s saying even though I’m not a Buddha, from if you see me as a Buddha, I am a Buddha for you.
It works that way. That’s, you know, dependent arising. So the final argument to prove or to suggest that the guru is a Buddha, oh I knew I should have, drat, is that in various teachings, in various texts, the Buddha said this himself in various Mahāyāna Sutras, the Buddha says in the degenerate times, I will appear in the world as human teachers. So you should see the teacher as the Buddha. Actually for those people who are familiar with reading the Sūtra of the Golden Light, which is a Sūtra that Lama Zopa Rinpoche recommends people read a lot, so we read that group of us on Sunday.
So if you remember, in there, it makes the point about the king who went to listen to Ratnachaya, the monk Ratnachaya recite the Golden Light Sūtra, and it points out that the king dressed in fresh clothes, sat on the throne very humbly trying to forget he was a king and saw the preacher, Ratnākara, as the Buddha, thinking of the monk as the Buddha. And then there’s another section in that Sūtra where it says, you know, people came back from listening to the monk recite the golden light sūtra, and they told their family today, we saw the Buddha. We heard the Buddha teach the sūtra. They didn’t say they heard a monk teach the Buddha teach the sūtra. They they say they heard the Buddha teach the Sūtra.
They were blessed by the Buddha. Yeah. But there are there are many other more direct statements in various sutras where it says, You should recognize the qualified teacher as me. This is me appearing in the world this way. And also of course in many tantras it says the same thing.
I’ve been bringing the book, I’ve left it outside every class but it has some of these quotes. Sorry. It’s a little book I have that’s not published. But I think if you get Rinpoche’s Giant book, I’m sure there are quotes from Sutras in that. The Heart of the Path book, which I showed a few weeks ago.
And the point is that if one has faith in the Buddha, the Buddha doesn’t lie. It is impossible for the Buddha to lie. So if the Buddha says that in the degenerate times, I will appear in what appears to be ordinary human form teaching the Dharma, if the Buddha said that, we have to believe it’s true. It is true. So on the basis of these four things, we can, working on these, we can step by step train our mind to overcome our ordinary wrong view of the guru as an ordinary deluded being, and step by step train our mind to see the guru as Buddha.
My teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, says that actually one should train the mind not only to see the Guru as Buddha in the sense of think, come to this state of mind where you think the guru, your teacher is the Buddha, but actually you’re trying to actually see with your eyes the Buddha there, which I think is pretty incredibly difficult to do. That’s what my guru says. Any questions? Okay. You said you’ve got four counts.
Yeah. Number well, first one was we can’t trust our appearances. Second one, that the Buddhas are still working for sentient beings by teaching. Oh, okay. Okay.
Yeah. Then the third one is that the guru is like the media the agent for the Buddhas. And then the fourth one is that vajradhara, when he you know, the the tantric aspect of the Buddha, he said that this is this is true, that the gurus are manifestations of the Buddha. So one thing that my teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, talks about a lot is that what is also really important to understand when we talk about the Guru as Buddha, talk about the, Rinpoche mentions there is what is called the absolute Guru and then there is the relative Guru. So the relative Guru is the human being teaching us the Dharma or what appears to be a human being teaching the Dharma.
That’s the relative guru. The absolute guru is the dharmakaya, which is the enlightened minds of all Buddhas. So that is the absolute guru, and from that state, that formless dharmakaya, the enlightened mind, from that the human gurus manifest. So from the absolute guru, the relative guru appears in a particular way to suit a particular group of people who have the karma to be guided by that person. So for example, this gold framed picture up here represents what is called the Lama Chopa merit field, the field of merit of all the gurus.
And at the center is Lama Tsongkhapa. And then there are all the other Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, all the different deities, arhats, dakas and dakinis and Dharma protectors. But what one’s supposed to understand is that all of those, every one of those figures, beings, is a manifestation of the ultimate Guru, the Dharmakāya. There are all ways that the ultimate Guru appears to guide us. So the ultimate Guru, the Dharmakāya, appears as Buddhas, as bodhisattvas, as arhats, as deities, different levels of deities, as what are called the dakas and dakinis, as Dharma protectors and also human beings.
It’s all one. They’re all aspects, manifestations of the enlightened mind. So in developing devotion to the Guru, the main devotion is training to see the Guru as Buddha and then one devotes to the Guru Buddha in thought and action. And the way to devote to the Guru in thought is by remembering the kindness of the Guru. So things to think about along these lines are that one should think that the guru who is teaching me the Dharma and guiding me in the practice is actually kinder than all the Buddhas, because the Buddhas have actually all gone.
For example, Śākyamūni Buddha lived two and a half thousand years ago, but he manifested leaving the body, going into the state of Parinirvana. He withdrew that presence from the earth. But my guru, if one has one, this is what we think if you have one, when you find one, connect with one, this is what one should think. That my guru is doing exactly what Śākyamūni Buddha did. But Śākyamūni Buddha left me.
He’s left. He left me behind, but my guru is with me teaching me the Dharma. So he’s kinder than all the Buddhas. And it is said that Śākyamūni Buddha is kinder than all the other Buddhas because he made the vow before he became a Buddha that in the really degenerate times he would appear in the world to guide the most degenerate sentient beings. All the other Buddhas made vows that they would help the less degenerate ones.
Śākyamūni Buddha made this vow because he was a super brave bodhisattva, that he would guide the really hopeless ones. Guess who that is? That’s us. So Śākyamūni Buddha is the kindest of all the Buddhas who have appeared, and yet he left, he’s gone, but my guru is with me, so he’s even kinder. He’s kinder than Śākyamūni Buddha, who’s kinder than all the other Buddhas.
So my guru is unbelievably kind. And so the guru is particularly kind because he gives teachings. My understanding of the path is completely due to the kindness of the guru. The Guru gives inspiration and blessings. The Guru gives vows and initiations.
There’s an expression among Tibetans. I don’t know. I think it started with a particular lama, I can’t remember exactly why it goes, but it says something like, it’s it’s only due to the kindness of the of the guru that I’ve become a human being, that that I know how to be a human being because of the guru, which is really true. Yeah. It’s through the kindness of the guru one learns to be really humane, to live as a genuine human being, to fulfill one’s purpose as a human being.
So there isn’t anything more kind than that, actually. It’s only ten past, isn’t it? Anyway, what? I did the time, but then I Oh, yeah. I did check on it before I came and checked.
That’s okay. Now just quickly, just to finish. These are some ways to develop devotion by remembering the kindness of the guru. But also having so one has to devote to the Guru in thought and action. The thought is seeing the Guru as Buddha and then remembering the kindness of the Guru, but then there is devoting oneself to the Guru in action.
So there are three ways to devote oneself in action, and first one is to make offerings to the guru as a way to repay that kindness. Because actually by making offerings to the guru, that accumulates enormous merit. This is one of the easiest ways to make merit, is by making offerings to the guru. I mean a genuine guru doesn’t want anything, doesn’t need anything, but from the side of the disciple, by making offerings, one accumulates merit. As I think I mentioned last week, if you offer a glass of water to the guru with the thought that my guru is the Buddha, then we make enormous merit.
Just giving a glass of water. And especially if you do it with the bodhicitta motivation, skies of merit. But another way of devoting to the Guru in action is to take care of the Guru and sort of help the Guru to accomplish the things that whatever one’s Guru is trying to do. If one’s Guru has certain projects, activities that he or she is involved in, then by helping the Guru, then again this brings about incredible purification and enormous merit is accumulated. So for example, Lama Yeshe, the founder of this organisation, his wish was for these dharma centers to be created and spread out through the world.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues this process because Lama Zopa Rinpoche was completely devoted to Lama Yeshe. And so from our side, if we help in these dharma centers with the thought that this is helping Lama Sopa Rinpoche, if Lama Sopa Rinpoche is our guru or even if he’s not, but we see him as a great dharma practitioner, a great bodhisattva, but particularly for those people who see Lama Zopa Rinpoche as their guru or one of their gurus, then by helping out in the dharma center, this is what Rinpoche wants, for the dharma centers to flourish and to be beneficial to sentient beings. So by helping in even the smallest way, like you clean the toilets or know, clean, you do the water bowls one day or clean the, you know, vacuum the carpet or anything you do at a dharma centre, you know, sky is a merit. Really incredible purification. If it’s done with that thought of offering this, this is what my Guru wants, this is what the Gurus wants, is to make our dharma centres attractive and beneficial for sentient beings.
There’s nothing better to do or, you know, whatever the guru is, you know, particularly trying to do. But just looking after the guru in any way, you know, making you know, cooking for the guru or whatever. There’s a famous story of with Lama Yeshe. He had three students always close to him. There was what was there?
He was there was his secretary, there was a cook, and then there was a meditator. And someone asked which one of them was the most realized and thinking that it would be the meditator. Lama Yeshe said, It’s my cook. That was the one most devoted, really looking after him, most devoted to him. So the cook was the most realized one.
The cook hadnt meditated, too busy cooking, but very busy accumulating lots of merit and purifying the mind by doing so, you know, with with great devotion. But the main way, main way to repay the kindness of the guru and to devote to the guru in action is, guess what? Study the Dharma. What? Study the Dharma.
Yeah, practise it, yeah, practise Which includes practising the Dharma. Practising the teachings that the guru gives and most important of all according to Lama Zopa Rinpoche is following the advice of the Guru. And then that most, most, most best, greatest practice of all, which brings about the greatest purification and the greatest accumulation of merit, is practising the difficult advice of the Guru. The difficult advice. Because some advice the Guru will give is very easy to do and we want to do it.
Oh yes, thanks, that’s terrific. But some of it is the very opposite to what we want to do. I think I’ve told this story by having this very good friend who was a monk, not a monk anymore, but a couple of years ago, he asked Lama Zopa Rinpoche for some advice about doing a retreat. So Rinpoche told him to go and do this retreat in Tibet, in a particular place in Tibet. But first, he had to go and see this Lama in Nepal to get advice about the retreat.
So Rinpoche gave all this advice to do, and every bit that he was given, that my friend was given by Lama Zopa Rinpoche was incredibly difficult to do. It was just a total disaster. He almost died. He was almost run over by a snowmobile in Tibet. The place where Lama Zopa Rinpoche advised him to go to do a retreat was completely out, you know, forbidden by the Chinese.
You know, no foreigners were allowed to go there. So when he got there after the, you know, incredible suffering and misery, the monks there refused to have anything to do with him. They stuck him overnight in collapsed cow shed in freezing weather, and he had to leave the next day because they wouldn’t look after him because they were too scared because, you know, he was a foreigner, they’d get in trouble with the Chinese. The whole thing was a complete, from an ordinary point of view, total disaster. But he said, miraculously, he did it with a happy mind, and someone told Lama Zopa Rinpoche that, and Rinpoche was really happy.
Because the point was not to do not not necessarily succeed, it’s just to try and do it. That’s what is important. Okay. That’s that’s it. That’s a little bit about guru devotion.
Finished. It is a very tricky subject, really. Not just a subject, it’s something to practise, it’s something one has to be very careful about. But it’s also incredibly important because if one can meet the qualified master and you make those connections and really devote oneself, that’s it. Yeah.
That’s it. And there are some amazing stories in the Tibetan tradition of people having such an amazing devotion to their teachers. There’s an expression in the tradition, something about how the guru’s name is difficult to say. What that’s referring to is that someone who has very, very deep guru devotion, they can hardly utter their guru’s name without falling to bits and crying and blubbering. And there’s a story when Lama Tsongkhapa started to become very famous.
Monk or lama from some other tradition wanted to meet Lama Tsongkhapa and just find out who was this big shot that everyone was praising so much, but he wasn’t particularly respectful in his attitude. Anyway, he got to the place where Lama Tsongkhapa was teaching and he met this nun and he asked this nun, Do you know where this famous lama with the big nose is? And nun apparently rushed off some some distance, started cleaning her teeth, washed her hands and face, lit a stick of incense and held it up and said, I don’t know who, you know, the what who you’re referring to by the, you know, the man with the big nose, you know, the glorious Tsongkhapa is over there. So in other words, she she couldn’t speak his name without cleaning her teeth and washing and lighting some incense. She was had such unbelievable devotion.
And I read a story quite a few years ago, but in a a Buddhist journal somewhere written by a Theravāda monk, not a Theravāda follower who said he he, to be quite honest, he he didn’t have much respect for Tibetan Buddhism. But then he met a Tibetan monk or Tibetan Geshe who suffered an enormous amount because of, you know, the Chinese invasion of Tibet and everything. He’d escaped to India. So he was an old man by that stage. You know, obviously a very tough guy who, you know, and like the the Tibetans really are very, very tough people, and they have endured, you know, just horrific thing, you know, the older generation at the hands of the Chinese is just really escaping from Tibet and what they had to endure in India is just unbelievable.
And this Theravāda man said, he was talking to this Geshe and the Geshe was telling him about his guru, and as he started to talk about his guru, he started crying. He just couldn’t help himself, the old Geshe. Then the man realized, Oh, there is really something to Tibetan Buddhism if it produces people like that who are so tough, who experience so much suffering. But when they talk about their guru, they, you know, start totally blubbering away. And then when you see some, like, Lama Zopa Rinpoche with his gurus, it’s just amazing.
It’s just incredible. You know? Rinpoche sort of tries to get under the carpet if possible. You know, he’s he kind of shrinks. He kind of makes himself as small as possible.
It’s just it’s just amazing. Just incredible. Just yeah. Anyway, a little bit of our guru devotion. Very important.
Questions? Complaints? When the Buddhas are are teaching people as in the guise of or in the manifestation of a human being Mhmm. Do they know that they’re a Buddha? Do they Yes.
Buddhas always do. Yeah. Going off, no question, is the reason that they, in a sense, act out flaws, is that in a sense of hiding there, would it put the back of people to flee? Yes. Yes.
That’s what I was saying. Yeah. Yeah, you have to, just like a good actor, have to appear like what you’re supposed to be. So a Buddha has to teach human beings as a human being, so he has to act like a human being. So human beings grow old, get sick, and they have faults.
All human beings have faults of some kind or other. Yeah? So there’s that aspect, also yeah. But then they adopt particular faults at particular times to teach people things. I I remember what one of the senior monks of the FPMT telling me when he traveled with Lama Yeshe, they I’m not sure where they were somewhere.
They went somewhere and they met these very, very rich, very posh people and who and they who took Lama Yeshe out to dinner. Lama Yeshe, who was someone who could be, when he wants to be, very elegant and very cool, just acted apparently really disgustingly like he was slobbering food all that. Just deliberately, you know, just to do something to the minds of these people. Because gurus can do it, know, they don’t care. Also, don’t you know, like Lama Zopa Rinpoche, On a number of occasions, you know, I was my teacher’s my teacher’s attendant for three years.
I was living with him all the time for three years. And once when he gave a teaching in one of our centres in Delhi in India, it was a teaching especially for Indians because Indian people rarely came to centre in India. It’s mostly foreigners. But anyway, he gave this teaching one night, so about fifty Indians came and Rinpoche started teaching about, I don’t know, eight thirty, nine o’clock. As it was his custom usually in those days, he would start teaching, close his eyes, and just talk and talk and talk.
And after forty five minutes, some Indian people stood up and left, and then a few more stood up and left, a few more. At midnight, when Rinpoche was still talking, there was one man left. But Rinpoche didn’t care. As long as one person gets his message, he will talk forever. Doesn’t care about his reputation, what people think.
When I you know, in one of the Copan courses, you know, he Rinpoche would see students who about things, and I happened to one day, Rinpoche was sitting outside to see some people, and these two young girls in the course had asked to see him, and I and they were sitting next to him outside. I I walked past, so I actually overheard them, and they were telling him that he really needed to improve his English, you know, it was really not very good, and if he wanted to be helpful to see people, he really had to learn to speak better English, he was, Oh yes, yes, you very much. Enough people have been telling this for years and years. People have no idea who they’re talking to. They have no idea.
Because Rinpoche can just seem so ordinary in some ways. You can’t judge a book by its cover, can you? Alright. Tea tea time? Thank you.
Right. That’s it. Finished. Three two years finished. Just fine by.
Fine by. I don’t know if there’s I can’t believe it’s two years. So who who here has done all of the courses? Three, four. Great.
You know, most of them have been closed. Closed. Sorry? Thirteen. This is the thirteenth one.
Oh, then there’s the fourteenth here, but that’s in private thing. Right. Okay. Any final question? Yeah.
So next Tuesday, there’s a Puja on, Lama Chopa Puja, and you’re most welcome, where we visualize the field of merit and make offerings. And then the next three weeks after that, we’re having DB snapshots starting with Mind and Its Potential, karma. All About karma. All About karma. And how to meditate.
How to meditate. So you’re most welcome to come along to those. Yeah. Do you have any rough idea on when these courses will actually start from one again, or are they gonna start from one? Yeah.
Yeah. It’s the twenty third of June, is it? Yeah. We’ll start again with Mind and Its Potential. Yeah.
Sixteenth. Of June. June. Right. Yeah.
The end of. Because that’s not far away at all. Yeah. No. There are many fun things in between.
Retreat. There’s a retreat in between as well. Okay. So we can dedicate our merit of of doing of being here tonight, attending this course, attending all the courses that you’ve done so far. So be happy that one has accumulated some merit, lots of merit, purified the mind, rejoice that other people have done these practices as well.
Dedicate the merits of these virtuous actions. May I quickly attain the state of a Guru Buddha and lead all living beings without exception into that enlightened state. May the precious bodhicitta not yet arisen arise and grow. May that arisen have no decline but increase forevermore. So thank you very much everyone.
It’s always a pleasure to blab away to you all. There’s the retreat day on Sunday. Yes, there’s the retreat this coming Sunday on this topic, so I highly encourage people, recommend people to come along to that if they can and bring a plate of nice veggie food to share with everyone, which is a really nice thing to do. Yes. I think that’s it.
Yeah. And then there’s the snapshots, which are videos. No? Are you talking? No.
Oh, Oh, no. Is that what I’m doing? I thought it was gonna be the DVDs with Richard Gere and Keanu Reeves and everyone. Yeah, I’m currently working with them as well. That’d be great.
Okay, alright. We’re gonna talk about this a month. I thought I was We can show the movies if we want. But live. Okay, so since we’ve finished, we will do some prostrations because according to the Tibetans it’s auspicious that in this way it’s kind of like not really ending, so it’s auspicious to meet again and continue our dharma studies.
So thank you very much everyone. Don’t forget to collect your homework and put your homework in.