Obstacles to Guru Devotion

My very dear one,
Please continue with the prostrations by reciting the names of the Thirty-five Buddhas, and whatever number of prostrations you can do, please continue.

If you have done Vajrayogini retreat, Yamantaka retreat, or any Highest Yoga Tantra retreat with a fire puja (where you completed the number of mantras, etc.), then it is important that you do self-initiation, the long or short one. If you can do the short one every day, that is best, otherwise once a week or once a month. Try that, it is very good. In this way, you purify negative karma and also broken pratimoksha, bodhisattva and tantric vows, especially bodhisattva vows. This purifies the negative karma.

If you can, try to finish the number of prostrations I suggested; that would be very good. If you can, do more. Even bodhisattvas who have very high realizations still do prostrations, so for us, who still have delusions, there is no question that we have to do them. 300,000 is nothing if you think of all the negative karma that we have collected during beginningless rebirths, which has not been purified and not yet experienced. 300,000 is nothing, and bodhisattvas often do seven, eight or nine million, even a zillion. If they can, they do more.

When bad thoughts come, think the lama is Buddha, Chenrezig, an enlightened being, because enlightened beings do exist. There are so many numberless buddhas, including Guru Shakyamuni Buddha, and numberless beings exist who have completed the path. Even now in this world there are many people who have experiences. Immediately try to think that all of this has happened because of the guru, because of the power of actually practicing guru yoga.

With much love and prayers...

You have to understand that what causes all the realizations of the path and all the limitless qualities of the Buddha, whether you get enlightened or not, is guru devotion. Whether you get enlightened, and whether you are able to free countless sentient beings who are experiencing the intense sufferings of the lower realms and cause them to achieve the peerless happiness of liberation and enlightenment: all this depends on guru devotion. Therefore, when you are practicing, obstacles will arise from outside and within. Evil beings try to harm you because they don’t want you to get enlightened. They create obstacles for you, so you must be aware of this and constantly be on guard, never letting up even for a moment.

You must always be watching the mind, without a second’s break, because these interferers try to prevent you from gaining realizations. When obstacles do arise, whether from outside or inside, it is very important to make an effort, and never give up.

You must put effort into it, and inspire yourself. Encourage yourself, thinking: “I have Buddha nature, so therefore I can do this. No matter how much my mind goes down, I can bring it up again, because I have Buddha nature. Countless buddhas and bodhisattvas were once just like me, with delusions and obstacles, but they put effort into it and were able to gradually overcome them. Therefore, I must do the same. No matter how difficult, I must try and try.”

No matter what happens, no matter how much the mind goes down, no matter how many obstacles arise, you must make an effort, and try and try to overcome them.

Your main goal in life is not just to study. Your main goal is to achieve enlightenment, to free all sentient beings from suffering and bring them to enlightenment. For that, you need realizations on the path to enlightenment. And for that, you need to purify your mind and collect merit. Therefore, study cannot be your only goal in life.

Everything depends on correctly devoting to the virtuous friend, so you might find a big difference once you change your motivation. The emphasis should be to do what most pleases the guru, and correctly devote yourself to the virtuous friend. Everything comes down to that, and that’s the essential practice. Study is not the main aim of life.

Afterward, Rinpoche commented that later it seemed the nun changed her idea about the goal of her life, and this opened a different view up for her. This made it easy, and released her from the difficult thoughts toward her guru and his not teaching her various subjects.

My very dear one,
Thank you for your kind letter. I understand your situation. Don’t worry at all about the thoughts that arose. They do happen. I was once doing prostrations some years ago, and the thought came that maybe the Buddha doesn’t exist. It didn’t last long, though. This comes from heresy from strong negative karma from past lives. You should practice Samayavajra during guru puja, at the section after the offerings and before the confession.

You can also offer tsog to the guru to purify that, and also a few malas of OM AH HUM.

It is also good to do prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas, particularly to the last Buddha. This purifies negative karma connected with the guru, and should be done three times or more.

Much love and prayer...

It is good that you haven’t said anything to others who are close to these lamas, as to have mentioned this to others would have been like a terrorist act, complete suicide, destroying yourself and others. It would have disturbed others’ minds in relation to their teacher, which would have been very heavy negative karma for all involved, causing a lot of destruction, just like a terrorist bomb.

I once went to translate for a group of Western students wanting to receive an oral transmission from the Panchen Lama in Tibet. At that time, I hadn’t yet decided whether or not to take the Panchen Lama as one of my teachers, as there seems to have been some politics involved with respect to the Panchen Lama and the Dalai Lama. If one actually receives the oral transmission, one must thenceforth regard the person giving it as one’s guru. I got all the way to the point of making the mandala offering—the last preliminary before the teacher would begin to offer the transmission—and then suddenly realized that, regardless of the politics, they are one. So I took the Panchen Lama as my teacher. There is no need to focus on politics.

In the Guru Puja, the merit field comes from the primordial mind. It is all one, all a manifestation of one’s own mind of indivisible bliss and voidness. All the lamas are the same. They are all one.

Further, to see the lama as having mistakes should only bring to mind the kindness of that lama. The moment one sees mistakes (Rinpoche snapped his fingers), in that same moment, one should think “so kind.” Why? Because Shakyamuni Buddha said that during this degenerate time, this is how he would guide sentient beings, by taking an ordinary form. “Ordinary form” means having mistakes, so seeing the lama as having mistakes should only remind one of the kindness of the lama, who is taking an ordinary form in order to benefit one’s mind.

Heruka with consort is a form that is taken to benefit the minds of sentient beings. The guru having mistakes is the same. It is just another form that the primordial enlightened mind is taking to benefit sentient beings.

One can only see the guru according to the level of one’s own mind. We are so lucky that we are able to relate to the guru in human form, even with mistakes, and not as an animal that we can’t even talk to. Just being able to relate to the guru in human form, we are so lucky, so unbelievably fortunate. So, again, seeing the guru as having mistakes should only bring to mind how incredibly lucky we are that the guru is in human form and not an animal.

You must make a strong determination to have a new mind toward this person from now on. You must make a complete determination to see that person as a buddha, all the time. Making yourself see the person as a buddha is extremely important for practicing guru devotion with that person.

It is also very important in everyday life not to expect a pure view to come from the side of other people. If you have that expectation, when it doesn’t happen, your mind gets into trouble. So, in everyday life, you must always remain aware that the pure view must come from your own mind. From your own side, you must try to generate this view. In this way, it will happen that you see that person as being as pure as a buddha. This is very good.

This is a question of transforming the mind. For example, if you look at yourself as a buddha, visualizing that you are transformed into a deity and placing yourself in the mandala, then that will happen immediately when you want it to, without effort.

This happens when you attain the realization of the gross generation stage of the highest tantra. Similarly, during the subtle generation stage, you see yourself as a deity in a mandala that is very, very tiny, small enough to fit inside a drop the size of a mustard seed. This pure appearance comes from your own mind training, from being able to see yourself this way. Later, during the completion stage, your subtle-wind mind transforms into the deity in the mandala. Then you are able to do many practices with that. At that point, you can actually travel. Finally, when you become enlightened, no impurity appears to you at all. Your senses perceive only infinitely pure appearances.

All this comes from your own mind training. Seeing the guru in an ordinary form and making mistakes came from your own obscured, ordinary mind. You should always be aware also that seeing the guru as buddha has to come from your own mind.

Once you understand this, you still need to stabilize the thought of seeing the guru as a buddha. This thought becomes stabilized in your mind by using quotations and logic and your own personal experience with the guru. You should also read subjects on guru devotion from Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand.

I advise you to confess to whichever gurus with whom you feel you have made mistakes. Specifically, you should make a verbal confession to the guru toward whom you had negative thoughts.

Then the student asked for advice on a different topic. She said that when she thought about Dharma or listened to teachings, some very heavy thoughts came into her head, making her sleepy, unable to concentrate, and distracted. She thought maybe this was due to the negative thoughts she had toward the guru.

This heavy thought that makes the mind sleepy and unclear could be due to negative karma resulting from having abandoned Dharma in the past or having polluted holy objects or holy beings.

Here I will suggest some solutions. You should confess to the gurus who you thought made mistakes. In particular, you should confess verbally to the one toward whom you had negative thoughts, and you should practice offering a bath to the buddhas, to the merit field.

This actual practice involves washing and offering water to clean the guru’s holy body, to wash it yourself, massage it, ornament it, offer robes to it, and dress the guru. You do all this directly with your own hands. If there is no opportunity to do it directly, you can visualize this practice of offering a bath. I advise you to perform this practice, called trutor, 800 times.

Trutor is a particular practice for purifying pollutions, such as these kinds of obstacles to reading Dharma books or listening to teachings. Being unable to understand, falling asleep, or being unable to follow Dharma teachings are not external pollutions. They are inner pollution, mental pollution. Trutor is very good for similar sorts of pollution, such as from selling statues, scriptures, or other holy objects, and buying food with that money, and for many other types of pollutions.

I also suggest you do a Compassion Buddha retreat.