Teaching guru devotion
I have elaborated quite a bit on the various ways of practicing guru devotion, the root of the whole path to enlightenment. I have also explained the four lamrim outlines of guru devotion, based on Pabongka Rinpoche’s Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, which has many details on these outlines, with extensive quotations and logical reasoning. Hearing and understanding them will deepen your guru devotion.
I think that even for a new student who hasn’t heard about guru devotion before, I have explained enough reasons as to why this practice is important. Even if you don’t use all these different techniques in your daily life, you can choose whichever meditations you find most effective in generating guru devotion within your mind. Some of the techniques might also be useful when you explain guru devotion to others.
In meditation courses, since there is usually a mixture of people, with always some new people, the subject of guru devotion is hardly ever mentioned. Usually just the outlines or essence of the practice is covered, without any real details about its benefits. Since you don’t generally hear much on this subject, I thought it extremely important to amplify a little, because it is the root of all realizations. If you are able to practice guru devotion well, success in all the rest of the realizations of the path, up to enlightenment, will come very easily.
It is the teacher’s responsibility to explain the advantages of guru devotion. The subject of guru devotion is extremely important and it is also extremely important to explain it with compassion. There needs to be a motivation of compassion, a wish to guide other sentient beings properly and to guard them from the heaviest negative karma and the heaviest suffering. I find it an uncomfortable subject to talk about because of the lack of compassion within my mind, but it is dangerous to leave it out.
In the past, during the early courses at Kopan, I found it quite easy and comfortable to talk on the subject of guru devotion, but now I find it more difficult. It might be a sign that my mind has degenerated, because now it makes me uncomfortable. I feel more self-conscious at the thought that it might appear as if I’m saying that I’m a buddha.
You might also feel uneasy talking about guru devotion if you yourself are engaged in teaching Dharma. However, the correct way to do it is with compassion for others. If you leave others in complete ignorance of this subject, they will make many mistakes all the way through their Dharma practice. No matter how much they learn about other Dharma teachings and no matter how much they try to meditate, because they don’t know about guru devotion they will constantly make mistakes in their practice. From the very beginning of their Dharma practice they will make many mistakes and collect many heavy negative karmas because of their lack of understanding of guru devotion.
For university studies, where someone is learning about a religion or culture to obtain a degree or get a job teaching others, it isn’t necessary to teach guru devotion because the student’s aim isn’t to practice Dharma. If the subject involves study of a lamrim text, you can just go over the text so that your students learn it. But the situation is different if a student’s motivation is to develop her mind because to do that she has to take care of her mind, which means clearing away obstacles and not creating further causes for obstacles.
Of course, you can’t always talk about guru devotion at the very beginning. It has to be taught at the right time, however, generally speaking, Lama Tsongkhapa was very wise when he put the subject of guru devotion at the very beginning of the lamrim. Before beginning any Dharma practice, people are then fully aware of the teachings on guru devotion; they are then careful from the very beginning. They know why they have to pay the most attention to and put the most effort into guru devotion; they also know what is their biggest obstacle to success. It is good to start your spiritual life with a pure practice rather than one full of mistakes. So with compassion, concern for others, you should explain guru devotion practice to guide your students, to make them fully aware, so that they don’t make mistakes from the very beginning.
If someone doesn’t have enough merit and has thick obscurations, there is no way you can prove reincarnation to him no matter what intelligent philosophical reasoning you use. Even if you are an expert in logic, like the ancient Indian pandits, even if you use the most intelligent reasoning, there is no way you will be able to prove reincarnation to that person. If the person has thick obscurations, he won’t understand or develop faith in reincarnation. Even though the reasons you give are correct and brilliant, they won’t work for that particular person. However, when someone has a lot of merit and has purified his negative karma, just from a very simple reason or a few simple words, nothing brilliant or profound, that person can understand and have faith in karma and reincarnation.
It is the same with guru devotion. If someone’s mind is not purified, no matter how many quotations and lines of reasoning you use, it will be like talking to a rock. It won’t go into his heart; it won’t affect him at all. But when his heavy negative karma becomes less and he has more merit, a few simple words, nothing deep, can click in his mind. Before, I mentioned the importance of purifying obscurations but here I also want to emphasize the importance of collecting merit. Developing such devotion depends on having collected extensive merit.
Basically it depends on the good heart. People who have a good heart, who are generous and sincere, do better with the subject of guru devotion than those who are selfish and have strong worldly concern. It seems that people who are less sincere generally find guru devotion more difficult to practice.
Of course, guru devotion shouldn’t be taught with the motivation to receive respect or some other advantage for yourself. It can be misused in that way. You should explain it out of your concern for the people who are relying on you, out of your concern to guide them to successfully attain realizations of the path. In short, you teach guru devotion so that disciples can be successful in achieving liberation and enlightenment, so that they can then achieve their goal of working perfectly for sentient beings. There will be no problem if you explain guru devotion with compassion, but without that motivation there can be difficulties.
Unlike before, nowadays there are many books available on the subject of guru devotion, which you can research for yourselves; many lamrim and tantric teachings that explain guru devotion practice according to sutra and tantra have been translated into English.127 However, one key way to teach guru devotion without many words is by you yourself being an inspiring example.
Studying guru devotion
Some Westerners who are trying to practice Dharma generate wrong views of guru devotion practice because they don’t really understand the philosophical points. And if you miss the point of guru devotion because you don’t have the root understanding, then no matter how many quotations or outlines you can talk about, guru devotion won’t mean much to you.
When we study the subject of guru devotion in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand and other texts, we have to follow the outlines, read the commentary slowly and really think about the points. Just as fog has to be cleared away before the sun can be seen, we have to clear away our obscurations. It’s a question of clarifying our mind. If we just skim through the whole text quickly, we’ll see nothing logical in it, even though many logical reasons are explained and many quotations given.
When we study lamrim texts, especially the section on guru devotion, we have to understand that any block we encounter is not in the text but in our own mental continuum. These are valid teachings written from the experiences of numberless beings, including Guru Shakyamuni Buddha himself. They describe the realizations of numberless past yogis and pandits from various countries and present living meditators, who have practiced as Buddha taught, as Lama Tsongkhapa taught, as Marpa taught, as Milarepa taught. The problem is not from the side of the texts but from our own side.
We have to gather all the necessary conditions together: intensive purification, accumulation of extensive merit, and especially training in guru devotion. Strong purification especially clears away our karmic obscurations, the fogginess of our mind. And when our obscurations are cleared away, the quotations and logical reasons that didn’t make much sense before or didn’t give us much feeling suddenly make a lot of sense. Suddenly we are able to see the truth of what is being said. Before receiving teachings on guru devotion we may find the idea uncom¬fortable and difficult to relate to but as we come to understand the teachings and practice guru devotion, our way of thinking completely changes.
On top of that, I think that if you develop strong guru devotion, your mind will naturally become more compassionate and less egotistic, less selfish. Your motivation will naturally become more compassionate and more renounced.
When teachers talk about the advantages of guru devotion, the thought could arise, especially for beginners who haven’t heard anything about the subject of guru devotion, that the gurus are praising themselves or inflating their own importance, asking disciples to look at them as a buddha and make offerings to them. To the ear of somebody with a certain type of mind, somebody who hasn’t accumulated much merit or planted many seeds of the teachings, it can sound a little strange to say that you need guru devotion to achieve realizations of the path to enlightenment; it can look like Dharma politics, like the guru is taking advantage of you by telling you this. It looks as if the guru is talking about these advantages in order to get more followers or receive more offerings.
However, the practice of guru devotion is not something that Tibetan lamas made up for their own benefit. There is a whole sutra taught by Buddha on this subject, Laying Out of Stalks, and you find many references to it when you read lamrim teachings on guru devotion. In these teachings, there are many quotations from Guru Shakyamuni Buddha’s teachings, especially from the sutras Laying Out of Stalks and Essence of the Earth, as well as from many Indian and Tibetan pandits and yogis. It may appear as if guru devotion is some kind of Tibetan lamas’ trip, something they made up for their own benefit, but it’s not like that. There are pure references to Buddha’s teachings.
Those who have heard guru devotion teachings many times and have been practicing guru devotion understand how the guru really is the root of their own happiness and perfections, as mentioned in Guru Puja,
Supreme field of merit, my perfect, pure Guru,
Through the power of having made offerings and respectful requests,
I seek your blessings, savior and the very root of happiness and goodness,
That I may come under your joyful guidance.128
No matter how much someone who practices guru devotion hears the guru speak about the advantages of guru devotion, the thought that the guru is praising himself won’t arise at all; that person knows that the guru is speaking purely for the disciples’ benefit, for their happiness and profit. The thought that the guru is praising himself can arise, however, if we don’t understand how to listen to the teachings.
Another factor is karma. If you don’t have much understanding of or faith in Buddha’s teachings on karma, the subject of guru devotion won’t make much sense to you. If your understanding of karma is weak—and I don’t mean your intellectual understanding but the understanding that comes with feeling, with faith—you will find the subject of guru devotion difficult and your faith in it will be weak. If your understanding of karma isn’t very deep, your faith in the guru will also be superficial, like tsampa thrown on water. Understanding karma and having faith in it from the depths of your heart will also help your guru devotion practice a great deal. The more care you take of karma, the more care you will take of your practice of guru devotion.
The guru devotion outlines are presented in accordance with the experiences of great yogis who achieved enlightenment by perfectly following their gurus, by cherishing their gurus more than their own body and life. They themselves practiced guru yoga in this way and accomplished every goal that they had. As you have heard in the life stories of the lineage lamas, starting with Guru Shakyamuni Buddha and including all the great Indian pandits and Tibetan yogis, guru yoga practice was presented to them by their gurus in this way and they then practiced it exactly as they were advised. They tried to understand the meaning of what they had heard, reflected and meditated on the correct meaning that they had understood, and then achieved infallible realizations. From their own experiences of how to practice and find realization they then presented the teachings on guru devotion in the same way, according to the outlines of the graduated practice. Their becoming enlightened is the proof of their practice. If we follow their example, we will have the same result.
From the biographies of the lineage lamas you can understand how they practiced Dharma and had realizations. By hearing and reading about the life of Milarepa, for example, you can understand that his incredible practice of guru devotion enabled him, in that brief life, to achieve realizations equal to space, including enlightenment. If you read the life stories of the past pandits and yogis and even those of the present high lamas from all four traditions, you will understand that there hasn’t been anyone who achieved enlightenment without practicing guru devotion.
What happens in this life is the result of past lives. Whether we are able to meet a virtuous friend, what kind of virtuous friend we find and how well we are able to practice guru devotion are the results of our practice of guru devotion in past lives. And how much success we will have in future lives depends on how well we practice guru devotion in this life. This present life holds the responsibility for the success of all our future lives, for the development of our mind in the path to enlightenment.
Even if we find the most qualified virtuous friend in the world, our success depends on how much we, as disciples, are able to correctly devote ourselves to that virtuous friend. If we are able to practice correctly with a pure mind of devotion we will continuously receive blessings and continuously develop our mind in the path to enlightenment. From the biographies of the lineage lamas we can understand the importance of guru devotion, but the actual proof comes from our own experiences of meditating on the path.
NOTES
127 See Suggested Further Reading, p. 461 ff. [Return to text]
128 V. 84. [Return to text]
