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Lama Zopa Rinpoche at teachings organized by Gendun Drupa Center, Martigny, Switzerland, November 2018. Photo by Olivier Adam.
During the 2018 retreat in Australia, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explained how to find a guru, captured in this excerpt and video clip:
As I mentioned, even if you don’t have a guru but study, at least a short teaching, Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, it’s so clear. That is so important. Then you know what you have to do if you want to follow a guru, if you want to practice. Then you know what to do.
Otherwise it is like looking for a boyfriend or girlfriend. You do the same thing—you make looking for a guru like looking for boyfriend or girlfriend. You do some teachings or initiation, then if you don’t like it, you give up, you throw out—not in the garbage, you can’t do that—but it is like that. Then you do it many times like that in this life.
You’re basically following people you know, they guide you, “Go to this lama, go to that lama.” Then another lama comes along. You don’t know how to practice. You don’t try to study. You don’t know that there is something to study. It’s just a very short time. Then another lama comes, just short time, comes and goes, disappears in the sky, ha-ha. Kind of like that. …
So you must read and study. Generally, people don’t know there is something to study, that there is something to read. They don’t know that. Maybe other people don’t tell, so you don’t know. So it is like that.
If you read, then you know whether you can [have them as your guru] or not. Then you see. All the benefits you come to know and all the shortcomings if you make mistakes. You have to be careful, most careful.
Last night I mentioned that just being famous, or just because the guru has many disciples, that alone that doesn’t mean [that you should have them as your guru]. In the West and in Chinese countries, they are very attracted to that, very attracted. Immediately you follow that. Then one without reputation, without many disciples, you give up. Then one with many disciples, very famous, you follow. It is kind of like that.
Many people are like that, because they don’t understand Dharma. Also I’m not saying everyone like that you can’t trust. I’m not saying that. But that alone is not the reason that you can trust them.
Kyabje Zong Rinpoche used to say, “If they are famous, they should be famous in the monasteries,” not just in the West, but famous in the monasteries—Tibetan monasteries, large monasteries. Nyingma and Kagyu have large monasteries. Gelug has Sera, Ganden, Drepung. That many people there trust them, it should be like that.
That is what Kyabje Zong Rinpoche said. He was one lama from who I received many teachings. He was Lama Yeshe’s guru as well. Kyabe Zong Rinpoche himself, and of course many others like him, were very famous in the monasteries. And now many people have known them for many years. That you can understand.
But even in the monasteries, there are many lamas and geshes with many thousands of disciples, so learned in philosophy, still it doesn’t mean you should make a connection with them as a guru immediately to receive teachings and initiations.
Watch the complete teaching “How to Find the Guru” from Lama Zopa Rinpoche:
https://youtu.be/VL5_XcvnPVI
Colophon: Excerpted from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings at the Great Stupa of Universal Compassion, Bendigo, Victoria, Australia, April 19, 2018. Simultaneously transcribed by Ven. Joan Nicell. Lightly edited by Laura Miller, February 2019.
Find complete videos of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s recent teachings:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/teachings-of-lama-zopa-rinpoche/
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.