After we have met a guru, we should then correctly devote ourselves to him by practicing what he says to do and avoiding what he says not to do. However, a question can arise as to whether we should do every single thing that our guru tells us to do. His Holiness the Dalai Lama always emphasizes that we should refer to the teachings rather than to the person. This means that we have to check the guru’s advice in relation to the reliable sources of Guru Shakyamuni Buddha’s teachings and the teachings of Nagarjuna, Asanga and the other great pandits and yogis. These authentic scriptures are more important than the guru’s advice.
If the guru’s advice accords with the teachings of Guru Shakyamuni Buddha and the scriptures written by the pandits, or at least doesn’t contradict them, we can follow it. If the guru’s advice isn’t mentioned in those scriptures, or contradicts them, we don’t need to follow it. Since the advice doesn’t have a pure reference, it is better to leave it in equanimity, which means that we don’t need to criticize or complain about our guru.
The teachings of the Nyingma and Kagyü traditions generally advise that any time we see a contradiction between the guru’s advice and the Buddha’s teachings, we should think that there is an underlying meaning in the guru’s advice. In his commentary to The Thirty-seven Practices of a Bodhisattva, Rongpu Sangye, the Nyingma lama who was the root guru of Trulshik Rinpoche and Gomchen Khampala, says that even if our guru asks us to do what looks like a non-virtuous action, we should do it immediately, without any doubt or hesitation. If our mind isn’t capable of understanding the purpose, we simply think, “There must be some great meaning in what he is telling me” or “I’m sure that doing this must have some great benefit for me,” then do the action without any hesitation.
However, His Holiness the Dalai Lama often advises in his teachings that it is when a special guru and a special disciple meet, as in the cases of Tilopa and Naropa and Marpa and Milarepa, that the disciple does every single thing that the guru says. For special disciples, doing every single thing the guru says to do only becomes the path to enlightenment.
Naropa, Milarepa and many other great yogis had special guru-disciple relationships in which they did every single thing their guru told them to do. However, it is different for ordinary beings. As ordinary disciples, it is more skillful for us to devote ourselves to the virtuous friend in accordance with the teachings. While some lamas emphasize that the disciples should see every action that the guru does as pure, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has a slightly different emphasis. I think that His Holiness, as the holder of the whole Buddhadharma, takes many factors into account. His Holiness emphasizes very much that we should not simply see everything the guru does as pure but that we should check the guru’s advice well to see that it accords with Guru Shakyamuni Buddha’s sutra and tantra teachings before practicing it.
His Holiness is not saying that we should allow negative thoughts toward the guru to arise; His Holiness does emphasize the importance of stopping such negative thoughts. The whole point of seeing the guru’s actions as pure is to stop the arising of negative thoughts toward the guru so that we can successfully achieve all the realizations of the path to enlightenment. However, I think His Holiness and Rongpu Sangye Rinpoche reach the same conclusion: we do what benefits our achievement of enlightenment.
If our guru asks us to do something that contradicts the Buddha’s teachings and would result in our committing a heavy negative karma and we aren’t capable of transforming that action into virtue, into the path to enlightenment and bringing great benefit to sentient beings, we should skillfully and respectfully try to get the guru’s permission not to do that action. Remember the advice of the Fifth Dalai Lama, who said,
Without generating anger or heresy and thus creating obstacles that destroy your own liberation and enlightenment and with guru devotion, skillfully try to get permission from the guru not to do the heavy negative actions that you cannot transform into virtue.
Generating anger or heresy toward the virtuous friend can cause us to be born in the lower realms for a long time, destroy eons of merit equal in number to the moments of our anger and delay all realizations. Avoiding these dangers, we skillfully try to get permission not to do anything that is not in the Buddha’s teachings or that we don’t have the present capacity to do.
The sutras and the vinaya advise that if our guru asks us to do something that contradicts the Buddha’s teachings, we can choose not to do it. The vinaya says that we don’t need to do anything that is against the Dharma or against our vows. Fifty Verses of Guru Devotion also explains that if our guru tells us to do something that is opposite to the Dharma or that we cannot do because of our level of mind, we can respectfully explain that we can’t do it or that we don’t have the capacity to do it. However, we should still correctly devote ourselves to that guru as explained by Guru Shakyamuni Buddha and Lama Tsongkhapa. In other words, without losing our guru devotion or criticizing our guru but at the same time protecting ourselves, we respectfully try to get permission to excuse ourselves by explaining that we are incapable of following the guru’s advice.
We explain with external and internal respect and don’t allow wrong conceptions to arise even for a moment. We should constantly respect the guru: mental respect is devotion, and there are also verbal and physical respect. Without disturbing the guru’s mind, we should try to get permission not to do the action. Instead of allowing anger and other wrong thoughts to arise, we should humbly and respectfully explain to the guru how we are not capable of doing what he asks, whether because it is a non-virtue or because our own capacity is limited. The essential point is not to hurt or displease the guru’s holy mind. We should use whatever skills we have not to displease the guru as this is the greatest obstacle to developing our mind in the path to enlightenment.
If our guru says something that contradicts the Dharma, we shouldn’t respond with irritation or anger, saying something like, “This is stupid! You don’t know anything about Dharma!” We shouldn’t allow our pride to become bigger than Mount Everest and arrogantly indicate that the guru is ignorant of the teachings and knows less about Dharma than we do. Even if we can’t feel devotion, we shouldn’t criticize the guru. We shouldn’t allow anger or disrespect to enter our mind; we also shouldn’t look at the guru with an angry face or speak rudely to him. Besides not having the slightest benefit, such behavior completely destroys the root of all our happiness. We should remember the eight shortcomings of incorrectly following the guru, which we will experience if we act in this way, and not allow anger or heresy to arise. We should think of our own profit and loss.
If our guru tells us to transform a mountain into gold within ten years, we can’t do it. We couldn’t even cover a mountain with gold leaf in ten years. There are certain things that we don’t have the ability to do. It’s not that we can’t do them because they are negative karmas; we are simply incapable of doing them. In such cases, again we skillfully explain to our guru that we are incapable of doing what he asks.
Of course, there are also things that our guru tells us to do that aren’t necessarily wrong but we don’t want to do them because we’re following our self-cherishing thought and other delusions. It also depends on what we like and what we don’t. Our guru might make us work or study hard day and night, without giving us a break or any free time. In reality this is not a wrong path, like the guru asking us to kill someone, steal something or commit some other negative karma. When something is done that we don’t like or we are told to do something that we don’t want to do, even though it is not a non-virtuous action, we can generate negative thoughts toward the virtuous friend.
When our guru advises us to do something and we fail to do it, we have to explain why. Let’s say that our guru tells us to be in India within a week. If our plane crashed so that we couldn’t arrive in time we’d have to send him an apology from the intermediate state—I’m joking! If we couldn’t make it to India within a week we would have to explain that we had the intention of going but experienced sickness or some other external hindrance; it wasn’t that we were lazy. As long as we haven’t purposely failed to follow the guru’s advice we don’t receive the negative karma of disregarding the guru’s advice.
How do we explain to our guru that we can’t follow his advice without losing our guru devotion? Remember what the Fifth Dalai Lama advised,
In the view of your hallucinated mind, your own faults appear in the guru’s actions. All this shows is that your own heart is rotten to the core. Recognizing them as your own faults, abandon them as poison.
We should abandon as poison seeing faults in the virtuous friend and believing those faults to be there in reality. In other words, even if our guru is doing or advising us to do something that is opposite to Buddha’s teachings, we should continuously be mindful that this is a manifestation of our own faults, our own obscured, hallucinated, impure mind. In this way we won’t lose our guru devotion, the root of the path to enlightenment.
We have to constantly watch our mind and think, “What I am hearing and seeing is the projection of my own impure mind and karma. In essence, the holy mind of the guru is dharmakaya.” We should have constant awareness that our guru’s holy mind is dharmakaya, free of all faults and complete in all realizations. What appears to be wrong advice is the result of our own negative karma and impure mind. While our mind has this recognition of dharmakaya, with our speech we respectfully explain why we aren’t capable of doing what has been asked.
Even if our guru advises us to do something that is wrong, such as to kill someone, we should never at any time in any situation allow the thought of faults to arise. There shouldn’t be any change in our devotion. Seeing faults in the guru is the greatest hindrance to realizations of the path to enlightenment. No matter what fault we see, the most important thing, especially when we are with our guru, is to always watch our own mind so that we never allow negative thoughts toward the guru to arise. In this way we can quickly accomplish our work of generating realizations of the path to enlightenment. Whether or not the guru is in fact a buddha, for our own sake we should be as careful as possible. If negative thoughts do arise, we should try to recognize them right away and quickly stop them. We should then confess and purify them (see appendix 6).
We should always remember that there is nothing to trust in our own view. Things don’t actually exist in the way that they appear to us: things that are impermanent in nature appear to us to be permanent; things that are empty of true existence appear to us to be truly existent. We live in hallucination upon hallucination. We don’t have the least clairvoyance. Since we can’t even tell what is going to happen to us tomorrow, how can we judge anything? How can we judge the level of our guru’s mind? We have to remember that what we see is the projection of our own impure mind.
If our guru tells us to do something that involves just a small negativity, however, if it will please the guru, it is better to do what he says. In the past I once wrote to my root guru, His Holiness Trijang Rinpoche, with a question about not eating in the evening. I don’t keep that precept now but at that time I had been fasting in the evening for a long time, while I was building the monastery at Lawudo in Solu Khumbu and also while I was at Kopan. However, Lama Yeshe was concerned about my health and was insisting that I eat in the evening. I wrote to ask His Holiness Trijang Rinpoche what I should do and how I should think. As a monk I was not supposed to eat in the evening but my guru was telling me to do so.
His Holiness Trijang Rinpoche replied in a letter that if the guru asks you to do some heavy negative action that is against the Dharma, such as killing, it is wiser not to do it. Without losing faith, you skillfully try to get the guru’s permission not to do the action. But Rinpoche said that if it is a matter of a small non-virtuous act, it is better to follow the guru’s advice if not to do so would displease the guru, because there would be more harm from disturbing the guru’s holy mind, which is a great obstacle to realization. Our main aim should be not to disturb our guru’s holy mind.
Rinpoche said that in small matters it is better to listen to the guru’s advice because we then don’t displease the guru, a great obstacle that is much more dangerous than breaking the monk’s vow about eating. Displeasing the guru is the greatest obstacle to attainment; it brings great harm in terms of long-term suffering in the hell realms and of blocking attainments of the graduated path to enlightenment.
This meant that it was better for me to accept to eat in the evening, even though it was opposite to a monk’s vow, because it would please Lama Yeshe. Pleasing the holy mind of the guru is more skillful because by doing so we collect much merit and become closer to enlightenment. Pleasing the guru’s holy mind is also one of the most powerful purification practices, purifying heavy negative karma from many, many lifetimes. Many tantric teachings mention that attainment comes only by pleasing the virtuous friend.
If we become too concrete about small vices, rejecting our guru’s advice might disturb his holy mind, which becomes a great hindrance to our accomplishment of temporary and ultimate happiness. It is as if we incur a big wound in order to avoid a small one. There is more harm from disturbing our guru’s holy mind than from incurring a small vice. We have to check which action is more harmful; we have to think of what is more profitable. Making a skillful decision depends on understanding the complete teachings on guru devotion.
We might also get confused if two different gurus give what looks to us like different advice. If our gurus appear to contradict each other, it is our own impure karmic view. Guru Shakyamuni Buddha taught that we should do what accords with the Dharma and what has more benefit. We can use our own intelligence and our own understanding of Dharma to analyze this. Without disturbing either guru’s mind, we follow whichever advice benefits other sentient beings more.
Of course, because of our own karma, our own lack of merit, it is also possible to receive wrong answers.
We need to correctly devote ourselves to the virtuous friend and we do so in accordance with what Guru Shakyamuni Buddha, Lama Tsongkhapa and the valid lineage lamas explained in the teachings. We decide whether to do what the guru tells us to do by checking his advice against the scriptures of Guru Shakyamuni Buddha and the Indian pandits. The teaching of Buddha is the main reference for how we should practice. If we act in accordance with the teachings of Buddha, we will be in no danger.
