Why should we regard our guru as a buddha? Basically, because we the disciples want profit and don’t want loss. That is the bottom line. We do it for our own sake, for our own mental development. There is no great advantage to the guru in the disciple looking at him as a buddha; it doesn’t make the guru become a buddha.
No matter how many quotations and lines of reasoning we use, this is the final conclusion as to why we should look at our guru as a buddha: we want profit and don’t want loss. We want the profit of all the realizations of the path to enlightenment, including the ultimate profit of full enlightenment, so that we can liberate other sentient beings from all their suffering and bring them to enlightenment. This profit, however, also includes all the happiness of this and future lives, as well as liberation from samsara. All these levels of happiness and all the various means of achieving them are contained in this profit.
The fundamental reason that we need to look at our guru as a buddha is connected with the purpose of our life, which is to benefit other sentient beings. Benefiting other sentient beings doesn’t mean bringing them just the happiness of this life by giving them money, food, shelter or medicine; it means bringing other sentient beings the happiness of all their coming future lives and the ultimate happiness of liberation from samsara and full enlightenment.
The only way we can achieve all this profit, all this success, is by transforming our mind into the devotion that sees our guru as a buddha. As a disciple, practicing guru devotion is our responsibility. If we have a certain disease and have been told which medicine to take, it is then up to us whether or not we take it. We are free to choose. In other words, we have to use our own wisdom to choose whether or not we practice guru devotion.
If we don’t concentrate on guru devotion, we have missed the most important preparation for all our future lives. Correct practice of guru devotion is the source of all our progress and incorrect practice is the source of all our problems in this life and from life to life. From our practice in this life, we receive all the benefits from life to life, up to enlightenment. This is the source of the greatest loss and the greatest profit. If we don’t understand this point well or don’t concentrate on it, we experience the greatest loss.
Each of us has the answer to achieving success in all our future lives. It is not that we don’t have freedom; it is not that God created everything and we just have to wait for whatever comes. It’s not up to God. We have the solution; we have the freedom to determine whether we are successful in this life and in all our future lives. It is in our hands. We know the root of all our failures from life to life, we know that we have the freedom to stop it, and we know that we can establish the root of all success, up to enlightenment.
If we don’t want all this profit for ourselves or all this benefit for all sentient beings, it’s a different matter. If we have no interest in all this but like to be in samsara and are happy to have a passport to the lower realms, where we have been resident during beginningless lives, it’s a different matter.
In simple terms, if we can’t correctly devote ourselves to the virtuous friend as explained by Guru Shakyamuni Buddha and Lama Tsongkhapa, it is our own loss. This loss can mean failing to achieve happiness or success in this and future lives and failing to achieve liberation and enlightenment. The greatest loss is failing to achieve enlightenment and thus being unable to liberate all sentient beings from all their suffering and obscurations and lead them to enlightenment.
Since our guru is the most powerful holy object, we can create the most merit and perform the greatest purification in relation to him. However, if we make mistakes in our practice, we then create the greatest obstacles to our enlightenment. To prevent this and to achieve all success up to enlightenment and then lead all sentient beings to enlightenment, we need to generate the devotion that sees our guru as a buddha.
As Padampa Sangye mentions,
You should regard the guru as more exalted than Buddha. If you do that, realization will come in this life, people of Tingri.
It is not so much a question of whether in reality our guru is a buddha. As Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo mentions,
Even if the guru is not a buddha, if the disciple looks at him as a buddha, such a practitioner of guru devotion experiences no loss, but only great profit.
The story of the old woman and the dog’s tooth supports this. An old woman wanted very much to have a relic of the Buddha, so she asked her son, a trader, to bring her one. Her son forgot, but on the way back home saw a dead dog by the side of the road, pulled out one of its teeth, and when he got back gave it to his mother, telling her it was a Buddha’s relic.
His mother believed it actually was the holy tooth of Buddha and prayed to it with devotion. By praying and making offerings every day, she actually got Buddha’s relics from it. Tiny relic pills were born from that dog tooth. The Buddha’s blessings entered the tooth so that actual Buddha’s relics came from it. The dog’s tooth was merely the condition; the principal cause of the relics was her devotion. The relics were born from her devotion. Through her devotion, the old woman got what she wanted. In a similar way, we can achieve enlightenment through guru yoga practice. Even if the guru from his side is not an enlightened being, if we devote ourselves to him as a buddha, we receive the blessings of a buddha through the guru.
Relic pills can also come from statues or the holy bodies of great yogis, even before they pass away, as a result of the power of devotion and of attainments. When His Holiness Song Rinpoche went on pilgrimage to Tsari, a Chakrasamvara holy place in Tibet, Rinpoche came to a waterfall that is regarded as Chakrasamvara’s bodhicitta seed. When Rinpoche took off his robes and sat under the waterfall to receive blessings, relics appeared from the lower part of Rinpoche’s holy body.
Also, my kind root guru His Holiness Trijang Rinpoche would sometimes manifest relics. He would pick white relic pills from his face and give them to his disciples.
One great geshe from Sera Je College in Tibet, who has now reincarnated, didn’t need to go to a solitary cave in the mountains in order to meditate and achieve attainments; he did so while living in the monastery and following the full monastic schedule of debating, pujas and teaching disciples.
When not teaching his disciples, this geshe would always concentrate on one particular practice in his room and nobody entering his room would interrupt his practice. He had a Tara statue in front of him and many tiny relic pills came from the statue. Two of his disciples, the two Rongtha Rinpoches, saw the pills and later asked for some. Word spread, and more and more people came to ask the geshe for pills. As they began interrupting his meditation, the geshe then asked Rongtha Rinpoche to move the statue downstairs to the prayer hall.
This geshe was a learned, ascetic meditator, with great attainments. He had completely cut off all worldly concern. I heard that no matter how cold or wet it was, he never wore shoes; and he went everywhere very fast, almost running. Never looking around, he would go straight to the prayer hall or to the courtyard for debate. Sometimes his attendants would tease him by asking, “Who was sitting next to you today in the puja?” and he would reply, “Oh, a monk.” He would go straight into the prayer hall and do the prayers or meditation; as he would never even look at the monk sitting next to him, he couldn’t tell his attendants his name.
Even if our virtuous friend is not a bodhisattva but just an ordinary person—or even cruel, impatient or immoral—if we practice guru devotion by looking at him as a buddha, as in the story of the old woman and the dog’s tooth, Buddha’s blessings enter the virtuous friend, and we are able to develop our mind. In that way we receive the blessings that enable us to achieve enlightenment.
It is said in the teachings that even if the guru is later born in hell, if the disciple has practiced guru devotion correctly, the disciple will receive blessings and can still achieve realizations of the path; she is able to develop her mind and become enlightened. One pandit in the past even broke all the four root vows of a fully ordained monk62 but continued to give teachings and ordinations. Many of that pandit’s disciples entered the path and achieved liberation.
Geshe Potowa, speaking from his own experience, said,
Whether the guru’s blessings are great or small depends upon you, not upon the guru.
This means that if our devotion is small, the blessings we receive will be small, and if our devotion is great, the blessings we receive will also be great. Depending on whether we have great or small devotion to the guru, we receive great or small blessings. How much blessing we receive from the guru depends upon our own mind, upon how much devotion we have.
As Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo explains, the blessings we receive depend on the way we look at the guru. If we regard the guru simply as a bodhisattva, we receive the blessings of a bodhisattva. But if we look at the guru as a buddha, we receive the blessings of an actual buddha. And if we look at the guru as the embodiment of all the buddhas, we receive the blessings of all the buddhas.
Even if the guru is not a buddha, if a disciple practices guru yoga perfectly by not allowing any negative thoughts to arise, the disciple can become enlightened even before the guru, as happened with Kusali and Krishnacharya,63 and Lama Atisha and Suvarnadvipi. Suvarnadvipi’s view of emptiness was in accord with the Mind Only School, whereas Lama Atisha had realized the ultimate right view of the Prasangika Madhyamaka, as explained by Guru Shakyamuni Buddha and Nagarjuna. Even though this was the case, Suvarnadvipi was especially important to Lama Atisha because he enabled Lama Atisha to generate bodhicitta.
We can also understand that if we look at our guru as an ordinary being, as someone with delusions, he will appear ordinary to us and we will receive no blessings at all. Looking at the guru as ordinary itself blocks the blessings. If we look at our guru as an ordinary person it will be difficult for us to transform our mind; it won’t give us any interest in becoming like him.
As I mentioned earlier, in the guru devotion section of The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, Lama Tsongkhapa says that even having the thought that the guru is an ordinary person will cause us to lose realizations; it will degenerate our mind. Here we’re not talking about generating anger or heresy but simply the thought that the guru is ordinary.
Dromtönpa once asked Lama Atisha, “Why is it that in Tibet there are many people who practice meditation but there is no one who has attained special qualities?” Lama Atisha replied, “Generating the great or small qualities of the Mahayana path happens in dependence upon the guru. Since you Tibetans only recognize the guru as an ordinary person, how could it be possible for you to generate realizations?”
Even if the guru is an enlightened being, if the disciple doesn’t practice guru devotion and look at him as a buddha, she will not see him as a buddha and nothing will happen in her mind. Because the disciple does not receive any blessings, her mind will stay the same and she will not be liberated from her wrong conceptions.
As Geshe Potowa said in Commentary to the Blue Manual,
Even if the actual Manjushri or Chenrezig came to you, it would not fulfill that purpose. You would not receive blessings, so there would be no profit and only loss, as with Devadatta and Sunakshatra.
This means that even if Manjushri or Chenrezig actually came to you as a guru, you wouldn’t receive blessings because you wouldn’t see them as a buddha. Fulfilling that purpose has to come from the side of the disciple.
Take the examples of Sunakshatra, the fully ordained monk who served Guru Shakyamuni Buddha for twenty-two years, and Devadatta, who hated and always tried to harm Buddha. During all the time Sunakshatra was Buddha’s attendant, he didn’t look at Guru Shakyamuni Buddha as a buddha; he didn’t find a single good quality in Buddha. He only found him to be a liar, even though Buddha had become enlightened inconceivable eons before.
As proved by the stories of Devadatta, Sunakshatra and others, even if your guru is a buddha, if you don’t look at him as a buddha, you don’t receive the blessings; you don’t receive profit, only loss. And even if your guru is not an actual buddha, if you look at him as a buddha, you don’t receive loss but only profit.
As I have already explained, the bottom line is that if we want profit and don’t want loss, we have to practice seeing the guru as a buddha. There is no way to achieve the profit of all the realizations of the path to enlightenment other than on the basis of guru devotion. Guru devotion, seeing the guru as a buddha, causes us to receive blessings, which then cause us to achieve realizations of the path. If this is what we want, this is what we have to do.
Many people, even those who have been Dharma students for many years and studied a lot of philosophy, miss this essential point in the guru devotion meditation. If we somehow miss this underlying reason for practicing guru devotion, we will then doubt all the other reasons. We will feel unsure when we hear the other reasons, then use wrong lines of reasoning.
Take the example of meditating on how all sentient beings have been our mother and kind. The whole point of the meditation is to change our attitude from one of renouncing others and cherishing only ourselves, which is the source of suffering, into one of cherishing others and renouncing ourselves, which is the source of all happiness. However, if we’re not aware of what we are trying to achieve in meditating on the kindness of the mother, we will bring in lines of reasoning that aren’t useful. For example, we might argue, “I have also been mother to other sentient beings. I have also been kind to others.” This is of no benefit. It doesn’t help to achieve the point but only interferes with the realization.
It is similar here. We have to know the point of practicing guru devotion, which is that we want profit and don’t want loss. There is no other way to achieve realizations; there is no other way to achieve enlightenment and bring all sentient beings to enlightenment.
Notes
62 The four root vows are not to kill, not to steal, not to lie and not to engage in sexual intercourse. [Return to text]
63 See p. 146–47. [Return to text]
