To understand why guru devotion is so important we first need to understand the power of the guru. Only when we have this fundamental understanding will we appreciate the importance of guru devotion practice. Otherwise, our guru devotion practice will be superficial; it won’t come from the very depths of our heart.

In regard to the power of objects, our parents of this life, the mother and father who gave us our present body, are more powerful objects than other ordinary people. If we show some minor disrespect to our parents, because they are powerful objects, the negative karma is heavy and we can start to experience the results of that karma as problems or difficulties even in this life, and the results continue in subsequent lives. We can create the cause and also experience the resultant suffering in this life.

There are three types of karma: the karma where we create the cause in one life and experience the result in the same life; the karma where we create the cause in one life and experience the result in the next life; and the karma where we create the cause in one life and experience the result after many lifetimes, even thousands or millions of lifetimes. The karma that is created and experienced in the same life, whether good or bad, is the karma we have created in relation to powerful objects, from our parents up to the guru.

If you verbally abuse your parents—calling them blind, for example—within one or two years, you can experience some problem with your eyes, if not blindness. One geshe did an observation¹⁶ for one of his students who had a problem with his arm; he told him that it was the result of hitting his mother. Such stories are common.

If we do some small good thing for our parents, the good karma is also powerful and we can start to experience its good result in this life. Some of us have already had such experiences, if we could only recognize them.

Ordinary ordained Sangha, those who haven’t realized emptiness, are more powerful objects than our parents, because of the power of their vows. More powerful than ordinary Sangha are absolute Sangha, which means the arhats, the arya beings of the Hinayana path, who have realized the wisdom that directly perceives emptiness.

One bodhisattva, even one who has only recently generated bodhicitta, is a much more powerful object than numberless arhats. Creating negative karma in relation to a bodhisattva—through criticism, disrespect or giving harm—is much heavier than doing those negative actions in relation to numberless arhats. It is mentioned by Pabongka Rinpoche in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand and also in other lamrim teachings that the negative karma of glaring or looking disrespectfully at one bodhisattva is much heavier than that of gouging out the eyes of all the sentient beings of the three realms.¹⁷ On the other hand, the merit of looking calmly and respectfully at one bodhisattva is much greater than that of making charity of our eyes to all the sentient beings of the three realms. We can see that one bodhisattva is an unbelievably powerful object, with the power coming from the mind of bodhicitta.

A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life says,

One moment of anger
Destroys the merit collected
By having made offerings to Those Gone to Bliss and charity
For one thousand eons.¹⁸

This verse is referring to someone who is not a bodhisattva getting angry at a bodhisattva. When such a person gets angry at a bodhisattva for one moment, that moment of anger destroys the merit the person had accumulated over one thousand eons and also postpones his realizations for one thousand eons.

Also, in The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, Lama Tsongkhapa explains that if someone who is not a bodhisattva gets angry at a bodhisattva, he destroys eons of merit equal in number to the number of moments of his anger and delays his realizations.

Since we don’t have omniscient mind or even clairvoyance, we can’t see the level of anyone’s mind. Because we can’t tell who is a bodhisattva, in our daily life we should be careful not to get angry at anyone; it is wise to practice patience with everyone. There is nothing certain about how a person appears externally. Because we have an impure mind with many hallucinations, it’s not certain that a person is actually what she appears to us to be.

Now, one buddha is a more powerful object than numberless bodhisattvas. Criticizing or harming one buddha is much heavier than criticizing or harming numberless bodhisattvas. And the good karma of showing respect to one buddha is much greater than that of showing respect to numberless bodhisattvas.

One guru is the most powerful object of all—much more powerful than numberless buddhas. This refers to your own personal guru, or lama—someone with whom you have established a Dharma connection, not just to anyone who carries the general title of “guru” or “lama.” Creating good or bad karma in relation to a guru is the most powerful of all; much more powerful than doing so in relation to numberless buddhas. By offering a small respect or service to your guru, you create great good karma—actually, the word great is not sufficient to describe the amount of merit you collect.

How does this power of the guru come about? It is a dependent arising; it comes about through causes and conditions. Phenomena exist in dependence upon many factors and each phenomenon has its own nature, power and function. The power created by the meeting of a guru and a disciple is a dependent arising, like two atoms meeting to produce nuclear power or two batteries meeting to produce a charge. For example, a flashlight needs two batteries to produce light; one battery is not enough but if we align the positive and negative ends of two batteries, light is produced.

How does that person become the most powerful in our life? It happens the moment we make a Dharma connection with him. The moment we establish Dharma contact with someone with the recognition of a guru-disciple relationship, that person becomes the most powerful object in our life, more powerful than numberless buddhas. Once we recognize that person as our guru, the one we will rely upon to guide us to the happiness of future lives, liberation and enlightenment, and ourselves as his disciple, that person—whether he is an enlightened or ordinary being, lay or ordained, Tibetan or Western, male or female—becomes the most powerful object for us. So, it’s a mental thing. The power is created by our making that decision to recognize someone as our guru and then making Dharma contact with that recognition. The power comes from the Dharma contact, not from whether or not the person is an enlightened being. The moment that person becomes our guru, he becomes the most powerful being in our life, even if he is not a buddha or even a bodhisattva but just a very ordinary being.

When you make the decision to form a guru-disciple relationship with someone, the Dharma connection can be established by your receiving from him a teaching, an initiation, vows or simply the oral transmission of OM MANI PADME HUM or a single verse of Dharma. The Dharma connection doesn’t come simply from hearing the teaching or being there for an initiation or vows, but from doing so with the recognition of the person as your guru and you as his disciple.

Basically, however, the power is created when you decide to form a guru-disciple relationship with someone, and it doesn’t depend on whether you immediately receive a teaching, initiation or vows from that person. It depends on your making the decision. For example, when Milarepa made this decision and requested teachings from his guru Marpa, Marpa didn’t give him teachings right away.

Before we form a guru-disciple relationship with someone, that person is not the most powerful object in relation to us but becomes so as soon as we establish the relationship. That person is not necessarily an enlightened being or powerful in relation to other people; he is not the most powerful object for those who don’t have a Dharma connection with him. He has power only in relation to the people who have made Dharma contact with him.

The meeting of two atoms to produce nuclear power can be constructive, as in medical treatment and the generation of electricity, or destructive, as in an atomic bomb. The meeting of a guru and disciple is similar. If we are careful and practice guru devotion well, we can accumulate the greatest merit in the shortest time, but if we are not careful and make even a small mistake in our practice of guru devotion, we can experience the heaviest suffering for the longest time.

The negative karma we create in relation to these objects, from our parents up to the guru, is very powerful; on top of that, even though the negative karma might be very small, because karma is expandable, we can experience the resultant problem many times, not just in one life but in hundreds or thousands of lifetimes. Any positive karma we create is also very powerful and we can experience the good results of that one good karma for many hundreds or thousands of lifetimes. The way in which karma is expandable is difficult for our ordinary minds to grasp; it is something that is beyond our imagination.

Any bad karma that we create gets heavier and heavier, from our parents up to the guru, and is heaviest in relation to the guru; similarly, any merit we create gets greater and greater, and is greatest in relation to the guru. In other words, we can experience the greatest profit and the greatest loss in relation to the guru.

It is in relation to the guru that we can purify the most obscurations and accumulate the most extensive merit. Doing a small positive action in relation to our guru brings inconceivable benefit, resulting in the experience of happiness from life to life, up to enlightenment. This is why the prayer of the graduated path in Guru Puja says,

Supreme field of merit, my perfect, pure Guru,
Through the power of having made offerings and respectful requests,
I seek your blessings, savior and the very root of happiness and goodness,
That I may come under your joyful guidance.¹⁹

However, if we are not careful, the guru, like electricity, can be dangerous. Even though electricity seems insignificant, if we are not careful with it, we can endanger our own life. Even though we can obtain the greatest benefit in relation to the guru, we can also create the greatest suffering. Even a small mistake made in relation to the guru becomes a great obstacle to developing our mind in the path to enlightenment, to achieving our own happiness from this life up to enlightenment. Negative thoughts and actions toward the guru create the heaviest negative karma and are the greatest obstacles to our achievement of realizations, as well as to our temporary and ultimate happiness.

Therefore, we need a method to protect us from these negative thoughts and actions, and that method is guru devotion. We have to transform our mind into the positive thought of devotion, seeing the guru as a buddha, free from all faults and possessing all qualities. We are in urgent need of this protection.

The pure thought of devotion that sees the guru as a buddha doesn’t allow negative thoughts toward the guru to arise, which means that we then don’t create the greatest obstacle to our enlightenment. By seeing the guru as a buddha, we create only the greatest merit with our body, speech and mind. This practice brings the greatest purification and the greatest merit.