The normal way we talk about devotion is devotion to our boyfriend, devotion to our mother, devotion to our baby – nothing wrong, this is wonderful, it’s a lovely, lovely quality. Devotion is a very sweet quality of your heart being open, being close to somebody, seeing their good qualities, and you can say it’s definitely based on love – and love is a delight in a person’s happiness.
If we’re talking here about devotion in spiritual terms, it’s a bit different. I was a Catholic, and I was devoted to God: the openness is certainly the same, but the love is not – God doesn’t need you to want him to be happy! You’re devoted to God as your creator.
Here we’re talking Buddhism, and of course there’s no creator. Here our devotion is to the Buddha, in particular manifesting as the human being called your “guru”: the person you have chosen to be the Buddha for you, to show you what you can become. And here, too, there is reverence: you revere this manifestation of Buddha!
I’ll use Lama Yeshe here as my example. When I met Lama Yeshe, I wasn’t looking for a guru, I wasn’t looking for someone to be devoted to, I didn’t think those words, you know? But I fell into the lap of my lamas at my very first teaching, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa. Lama Yeshe was the first one to kind of hook me.
I remember when I first met Lama – I didn’t know I wanted a path, I didn’t know I wanted to be a Buddhist, I didn’t know I wanted a teacher – but I felt a strong connection straight away.
Just think of it normally: you meet a boyfriend, there’s a connection there, you feel close to this person, you feel like you know this person, and you talk to each other, you get to know each other, you laugh at each other’s jokes – there’s a nice connection.
Well, the same with Lama Yeshe: when he spoke, his words resonated for me, they made sense to me: I really liked how I heard him talk, I listened to his teachings, I found him very appealing. I didn’t think, “He is my guru” – I didn’t have devotion yet – but it was a beginning, it was beginning.
And because the relationship here was a spiritual teacher relationship – it wasn’t a boyfriend relationship, it wasn’t a tennis coach relationship, it wasn’t a music teacher relationship – and because I was beginning to want to go on this path of becoming a buddha myself, it resonated for me. He was this person in front of me who resonated for me, and then after a few months back at home in Melbourne the penny dropped and I realized he is my guru.
I’d been growing this devotion to Lama – not devotion in wanting to sleep with him, not devotion wanting to hold his hand every day, but devotion in the sense of seeing his qualities, wanting to be like him, which is the goal in this case, and wanting his instructions.
Then after a year I went back and I met him, and I informed him he was my teacher – I didn’t know you’re supposed to ask! – and I became his disciple. And so then over those years my devotion in him continued to grow – not just based on a gooey feeling, but based on seeing his qualities.
The more I studied with him, the more I studied with Lama Zopa, the more I study with the Dalai Lama, the more qualities I see in them: their qualities grow in my mind because as I continue to practice, as I continue to see them as a buddha, so I become more devoted to them, more close to them, more wanting to be like them – it’s like that.
But we’ve got to practice it – it won’t come just sitting on our cushion. We’ve got to activate and do it: seeing the good qualities, wanting to be like them. Then every time I see their qualities over these years now, their qualities become more and more evident to me – and that’s reasonable, because if I’m practicing a little bit, then obviously I keep seeing more qualities in them, it’s obvious.
Devotion is such a simple, wonderful quality to have. If we’re overwhelmed by attachment and anger and depression and low self-esteem, it’s really clear our heart is completely closed: we can’t see or hear anything nice, we’re just overwhelmed by our misery and can’t see past our own nose.
Actually, even with attachment to somebody, your heart opens. The trouble is we choose peanuts to be attached to and then wonder why we get abused by people. At least, as Pabongka Rinpoche says, when it comes to the teacher, choose your teacher, choose your guru, choose your object of devotion very carefully, because you will end up like them.
What I’m getting at is that devotion is an open heart, so choose the object of your devotion carefully, and then open your heart – because when the door is open, all the good things come flooding in. This is the logic of why guru devotion is the basis of success.
They talk about the benefits of guru devotion in all these medieval ways and you can’t understand them, but it’s so logical: when the heart is open, it’s pure, and we’ll receive the teachings easily.
So choose your teachers carefully! And they’re all there! Don’t just sit there, twiddling your thumbs, waiting for them to come to you. They’re already there – but we have to actively search them out, go to them, open our hearts to them.
That’s why every day you aspire, like His Holiness says, “May I do what’s most beneficial.” You make it proactive. And then, “May I meet my teacher.” Don’t just wait for them to turn up. “May I meet my lama, may I recognize my path, may I become clear.” This is aspiration, this is intention: everything exists on the tip of the wish. Play an active role in all this with your mind: “May I, I want”: that will lead you.
And then open your heart. When you’ve chosen your teachers, open your heart wide open and their blessings, just naturally – will come flooding in – it’s not mystical.
And you do the work. They’ve already done the job, they’re already Buddha, they’re done. Now we have to do the work, people!