QUESTION
Hello again dearest Venerable,
Just briefly following on from my previous email regarding seeing the guru as a buddha, I feel strongly and very assuredly that my teacher possesses the qualities I should identify in a teacher – I can follow their instructions with full confidence, no question there at all– but I’m struggling with seeing them as a buddha.
I’m not sure what to do with this moving forward other than my practice, my purification, my online study and making effort to apply my learning for the benefit of others in as many ways as I can think of.
Please bless me and stay healthy. I feel some urgency to progress as much as I can because I’m old now and have squandered so much of this insanely rare chance.
Deepest respect and love.
S
ANSWER
Dear S,
You’re doing okay, I’d say!
This business of seeing our guru, our spiritual teacher, as a buddha is not easy, but it has some logic to it, and the beneficiary of this approach is oneself.
The essence of it is this: the more open my mind is to my teacher having all the qualities of an enlightened being, the more I’ll listen to the teachings, have confidence in them, and therefore practice them and get the results.
But of course, I need to check on their qualities first. Pabongka Rinpoche says that we’d better choose our gurus very carefully because we will end up like them.
Then, having checked on them, and based on growing confidence in their qualities – remember, it’s we who choose our teacher: it’s an intentional decision – we cultivate an attitude of utter openness to that person: that’s what devotion is. It’s from the heart, but it’s based in clarity and confidence. Very simply, that’s the quickest, the smartest way to learn.
I remember Lama Yeshe saying something like: Buddha is dead, he’s no longer here, so the only time the Four Noble Truths will mean anything to me is when I hear the teachings from the mouth of the person in front of me right now: the guru, the teacher. Basically, he’s Buddha for me.
I am the beneficiary of this process.
I like to use ordinary examples to make sense of it. My mother was a classical musician and she taught me music. Essentially she was Bach for me. Bach is dead! So the person I had to rely on to pass on Bach’s music to me was my music guru. The more I thought of her in that way, the more I’d learn!
What do you think?
Love,
Robina
QUESTION
Dearest Venerable,
Thank you so much for your explanation, guidance and simple examples that de-mystify the idea of guru devotion. I will attempt with effort to apply the ideas.
Again, I’m so grateful to have direct access to you and being able to reach out and have you clarify and simplify, it’s a huge blessing.
I remain humbly grateful to you and your generosity in sharing all you’ve learnt and for your patience with a newbie like me.
Please bless my mind and stay safe and healthy.
Deepest respect and gratitude to you for your love, wisdom and guidance.
S