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Lama Zopa Rinpoche making prayers to a Tara statue in a hotel in Pokhara, Nepal, December 2021. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
We can engage in many beneficial activities with our perfect human rebirth, including finding and correctly following a virtuous friend who can guide us to enlightenment. As Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaches, following the guru’s advice is the quickest way to become free from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and achieve enlightenment. Here is an excerpt on this topic from “The Time to Practice is Now,” a detailed summary of the 2020 Thought Transformation Teachings given by Rinpoche. A short Essential Extract video of Rinpoche teaching on following the guru comes after the excerpt.
With this perfect human rebirth we can find a guru, a virtuous friend, who can guide us to enlightenment. Once we have identified someone who possesses the necessary qualities, it is important to correctly follow that guru. To do this, we need to transform our ordinary thought that sees the guru as a normal being into a pure devotional thought that sees the guru as a buddha. This involves a total transformation of our mind that allows us to receive the blessings of the buddhas and gain the realizations of the path to enlightenment. As Rinpoche says, all the holy actions of the buddhas manifest in the guru and every atom of the guru is the numberless buddhas. Thus, correctly following the guru is the quickest way to become free from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and achieve enlightenment.
Unless we have omniscience or very high clairvoyance, we aren’t able to see others’ minds and we can’t tell who is enlightened. The buddhas take different forms to benefit sentient beings depending on the mind of the being. Because at the moment our mind is so obscured, we cannot see a buddha in the aspect of a buddha. The only way we can see the guru is in human form with an ordinary aspect—as having delusions and showing mistaken actions. This is currently the only way for the guru to guide us.
Therefore, when we see mistakes in our guru’s actions, we should think that the guru is purposely showing us the aspect of mistakes because our mind is so obscured and defiled that if the guru didn’t show themselves in this way, we wouldn’t be able to see or communicate with them, and therefore we wouldn’t be able to receive vows, teachings, and so forth from them. In this way, the guru is kinder than all the buddhas for manifesting in an ordinary aspect. Actually, we are fortunate even to have enough good karma to be able to see the guru in human form, rather than as a donkey or mouse! The guru’s kindness is like the limitless sky.
Rinpoche goes over the eight benefits of correctly following the virtuous friend and the eight shortcomings of not doing so. (See chapter 8 in Liberation of the Palm of Your Hand.) We need to understand these well because when our guru is sweet and speaks nice words to us, or gives us presents, we are happy and pleased with them. But if our guru scolds us or shows they are displeased with us, our tendency is to give them up, to throw them away like garbage. Rinpoche asks, How can we achieve enlightenment if we give up the guru when the guru does something that our self-cherishing thought doesn’t like? Instead, we should remember the eight benefits and shortcomings and keep our devotion strong and stable. We should also remember that when the guru scolds us, all the buddhas are scolding us.
A Buddha cannot have anger, it is not possible, so they do this to help purify our negative karma. Likewise, when the guru is praising us, we should rejoice thinking that all the buddhas are so pleased with us.
Rinpoche gives the example of Milarepa, who became enlightened, not only in one life, but in a brief lifetime of degenerate times through the extreme hardships he endured under the guidance of his teacher Marpa. To the outside it looked like he was the most unfortunate person: kicked out of teachings, scolded, and even beaten; but, internally, his bearing these difficulties caused the strongest purification and became the quickest way for him to achieve enlightenment. In fact, when we bear hardships by following our guru’s advice or to fulfill their wishes, it is equivalent to doing the preliminary practices many hundreds of thousands of times. Even if the work is very hard and fraught with problems and difficulties, it becomes something to enjoy the most because it creates the same purification as having done many hundreds of thousands of prostrations, Vajrasattva mantras, mandala offerings, and so forth. It is most amazing.
If we are following the guru’s advice and get sick or experience problems, this is a very good sign because it means many, many eons of suffering in the lower realms are now being purified. Every second that we fulfill the guru’s wishes and follow their advice, our negative karma is being burned up and we are collecting skies of good karma. How much purification happens and how much merit we collect depends entirely on how well we practice correctly following the virtuous friend.
Conversely, if we don’t know the practice of correctly following the guru, we will create the heaviest negative karma every minute. If we disrespect our guru, it becomes disrespect to all the buddhas. After we decide to become a disciple of the guru, if we then belittle the guru, we cannot achieve enlightenment in this life, Rinpoche explains. As such, it is a very heavy negative karma that results in the worst suffering. Therefore, a serious practitioner makes their mind strong and does not allow anything to distract them. No matter what happens they remain determined to fulfill the guru’s wishes and to follow the guru’s advice in order to achieve enlightenment for all sentient beings. Correctly following the virtuous friend becomes the most important thing in one’s life! This is why we must choose our guru very wisely.
To inspire us to correctly follow our guru, Rinpoche explains that by offering service to the guru, we receive more merit than if we were to make offerings to numberless buddhas, Dharma, and Sangha! Even a small gesture like offering a cup of water or a pair of shoes to the guru creates more merit than making offerings to numberless Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, and statues, stupas, and scriptures.
Also, by correctly following the guru, we create the cause to meet a qualified guru in this and all future lifetimes, and to receive the complete and unmistaken Dharma teachings from them. Every second we correctly follow the guru, we create the causes to receive a higher rebirth, and, ultimately, to put an end to the sufferings of samsara and achieve enlightenment. By depending on the guru, we can even achieve enlightenment in a brief lifetime of degenerate times. It is said that even the most foolish person can do this through strong and stable devotion. It is only our lazy mind that makes it difficult to follow the guru’s advice, Rinpoche explains. But by seeing the guru as all the buddhas, and by remembering the guru’s kindness, which is like the limitless sky, we become so happy to follow the advice because we see the incredible importance and the great benefits. So we must make good use of this opportunity!
In this short video Essential Extract, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains that when we experience difficulties in doing as our guru advised, such as keeping our vows, doing retreat, or working for a center or the FPMT organization, we should know that it is like doing hundreds of thousands of prostrations or mandala offerings. By bearing these hardships, we are purifying our negative karma and collecting extensive merits, which we need to do in order to achieve enlightenment. On the other hand, if we don’t continuously keep our mind in devotion and allow heresy to arise, our mind becomes suffering, like popcorn popping, tak, tak, tak, tak, and we are creating the cause of hell.
Read the transcript of this video extract from Rinpoche’s teaching:
https://fpmt.box.com/s/thhps12d38cky0be88feafj6mzd208fn
You can find more blogs with short video clips from Rinpoche’s teaching as well as the complete collection of these “Essential Extracts” videos on FPMT.org.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.