The first point in establishing a guru-disciple relationship with someone is that we should examine him well at the very beginning, before making Dharma contact. Since finding a guru means finding a person we are going to devote our life to from now on, we should check carefully to see whether we feel we can devote ourselves to this person as a virtuous teacher. After analyzing well, we then make the Dharma connection. Otherwise, there is a danger that we will later criticize or renounce the guru. If we are careful to check well before we establish a Dharma connection, we will make fewer mistakes and thus experience fewer of the shortcomings of incorrect devotion to the virtuous friend. If we are not careful at the beginning, we will experience these shortcomings many times. The degree of this danger is determined by how much merit and how much understanding of guru devotion we have.

Checking carefully before establishing a guru-disciple relationship is for your own safety, like using the seatbelt in a car or an airplane. The reason that I’m talking about checking the guru is so that your journey to enlightenment will be safe. 

We need to analyze at the beginning, before we establish a Dharma connection and form a guru-disciple relationship, because guru devotion involves great dedication and sacrifice from our side. It’s not a matter of choosing just anybody who can teach Dharma. We should make a guru-disciple connection only after checking for the qualities mentioned in the lamrim teachings (see chapter 4). We shouldn’t make a connection for ordinary reasons, especially not for reasons put forward by our delusions. We should make the choice out of wisdom gained through analysis. 

Panchen Losang Chökyi Gyaltsen, the learned, highly attained lama who composed Guru Puja, emphasized that it is important to first examine a person before following him as a guru. He said,

If you cherish yourself, don’t follow just anyone you happen to meet, like a dog seeking food in the street. Examine well the lama who reveals the holy Dharma, then follow him with respect.

If you cherish yourself—or, to use a Western expression, “if you love yourself”—and wish to achieve ultimate happiness, you need a guru. However, you shouldn’t seek one like a dog seeking food in the street. A street dog is always looking for food and when it finds some, immediately runs to it and gobbles it up. The dog doesn’t stop to check the food to see whether it is poisoned or even edible, or to chew it well, but simply gulps it down as quickly as possible.

Panchen Losang Chökyi Gyaltsen is saying that we shouldn’t act like this, taking teachings from anyone we happen to meet and immediately accepting that person as our guru without checking whether he will harm or benefit us. If we take teachings and initiations from just anybody who gives them, after some time we will become confused and will soon have a problem with every one of our teachers—it will simply be a question of whether the problem is big or small. Even though we might recite a lot of mantras and prayers every day, because we won’t have paid attention to the root of the path, not much will have happened in our mind—it might even have gotten worse.

If we regard everyone we meet as a virtuous friend without first checking, there is also a danger that we could meet a non-virtuous, rather than virtuous, teacher; one who will lead us away from our goal—to suffering rather than happiness. There is then a danger that we will waste not only our present precious and highly meaningful human life but many future lives as well. 

Since the way this life and our future lives will turn out depends on the qualities of our guru, we should first carefully examine the person to see whether he has the qualities described in the lamrim teachings. Even if the person is famous and has thousands of followers, we should still examine him well.

Remember the way that Lama Atisha checked Lama Suvarnadvipi before taking teachings from him. Lama Atisha was already a great scholar of the entire Buddhadharma before he went to Indonesia to receive teachings on bodhicitta from Lama Suvarnadvipi. At that time transport was very primitive, so the ship from India took more than twelve months to get to Sumatra, where Lama Suvarnadvipi lived.

Even after putting so much effort into the journey, taking many risks and encountering many obstacles, Lama Atisha and his many disciples, who were all great scholars expert in the five categories of knowledge,²⁰ did not immediately go to see Lama Suvarnadvipi when they arrived at the place where he lived. They rested for a few days, during which time Lama Atisha checked Lama Suvarnadvipi’s qualities and practices with some of Lama Suvarnadvipi’s close disciples. He inquired about Lama Suvarnadvipi’s daily life and practice. Even though Lama Suvarnadvipi, the holder of Maitreya Buddha’s teachings, was famous as a great bodhisattva and renowned for his learning, purity and good heart, Lama Atisha wasn’t satisfied simply by his great reputation. He still took the time to check and only after he had analyzed Lama Suvarnadvipi’s behavior did he take teachings from him.
 
Lama Atisha then spent twelve years with Lama Suvarnadvipi. After receiving the complete teachings on bodhicitta from Lama Suvarnadvipi, like one pot being filled from another, Lama Atisha then generated bodhicitta. 

Unless we analyze the qualities of the person and his teachings, instead of achieving liberation and enlightenment, we will achieve something else—samsara, and possibly even the lower realms. The teaching needs to be pure Buddhadharma. If the foundations of the path to enlightenment—renunciation of samsara, bodhicitta and emptiness—are not mentioned, there is no complete path to liberation and enlightenment. Even if the word “emptiness” is used, it won’t help us unless it is the unmistaken view of emptiness. Certain teachings and meditation techniques might be correct, but if they don’t reveal the whole path to liberation and enlightenment, we could spend our whole life concentrating on them and not reach anywhere. 

In order to practice Dharma, both guru and disciple should examine each other well. However, if we spend too much time looking for and checking the guru, there is also a danger that nothing will happen in this life. Our precious human life will finish with nothing accomplished. One disciple said to his teacher, “I want to check you as a lama for many years”; the lama replied, “I also want to check you as a disciple for many years.” Since their checking took almost their whole lifetime, nothing was accomplished.

Once we have examined someone well, found that he has the necessary qualities and accepted him as our guru, as Panchen Losang Chökyi Gyaltsen says, we should then follow him with respect. This means that we should hold him in high regard and devote ourselves to him by practicing what he advises us to do and avoiding what he advises us not to do, in accord with what Buddha has explained in the teachings.

With respect to seeking a guru, many past yogis tried to find the guru with whom they had had karmic contact in previous lives and were not satisfied even if they met other gurus. Getting a very strong feeling simply from seeing a guru and finding his teachings very effective for our mind are signs of contact with that guru in past lives. 

In the story of bodhisattva Sadaprarudita (see chapter 7), even though Sadaprarudita could see countless buddhas, he wasn’t satisfied. He still wanted to meet the guru with whom he had a karmic connection from his past lives. He was called Sadaprarudita, which means “always crying,” because he was inconsolable at not being able to find his guru. He kept searching until he found him. 

 Notes

²⁰ The five major fields of knowledge are arts and crafts, medicine, languages and grammar, logic and religious philosophy.  [Return to text]