Guru Yoga

Extraordinary Blessings

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The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Guru Yoga”

One of the main practices that we have to do in order to make progress on the path is Guru Yoga.  There are many ways to practice Guru Yoga. There is a tremendous focus on Guru Yoga in the preliminary practice or Ngondro phase, and then as you move into the different forms of practice in the intermediate and advanced stages, there is still a great deal of focus on Guru Rinpoche, and there is still a great deal of dependence on the Natural Blessing that is transmitted from his miraculous compassion.

Guru Rinpoche is considered to be the Nirmanakaya form, that is the body or the form that one sees in physical existence.  He incarnated into physical existence, and when he appeared on the earth, he was in solid form.  According to the history of his life, he was not born.  He did not have a mother.  He appeared in the middle of a lake on a lotus and he did not appear as an infant, but as a young child.  And when he left, he didn’t die; his body didn’t cease to function.  He was seen to rise up into the sky and leave.

So his activity, his display, is considered to be extraordinary, not  ordinary.  It isn’t like what we usually see.  We do not usually see that kind of event.  None of us has managed to be born on a lotus in the middle of the lake.  Most of us have mothers. I have a mother.  If any of you don’t have a mother, please let me know.  I’d like to meet you, get to know you.

Probably, when we die, our bodies will do the ordinary thing which is “die.”  Perhaps a few of us will do something wonderful, but my guess is that we’ll die.  It’s very rare to be born as a young child on a lotus, or rise up into the sky and leave.  We don’t usually see that kind of display.  And so from that, we can understand that he is, in fact, the physical display of enlightenment.

It’s so easy for us to look at Guru Rinpoche, to think about his teachings, to think about what he has accomplished and think, “Oh, there was a great man that was born sometime, and he did this thing”, to think of Guru Rinpoche in a superficial way.  So when we practice, our practice is deluded really, and it’s kind of confused or even defiled, if you will, by our thinking, “What kind of man was he?  What was he really like?  What did he look like?”  I look at his statue and I think, “Gee he had a funny little mustache.”  We have those kinds of thoughts.  We can’t help but think like that.  We think as ordinary people do.  We look at each other in ordinary ways.  We’ve learned to evaluate things in that way.

If we hold Guru Rinpoche in that regard, we miss the point.  We think of a being that’s much like an ordinary being.  We think of an event that is not so different from ordinary events.  Man goes to Tibet, man teaches. Well, that’s happened before!  So we don’t understand.  We’re very shallow in our perception.  And what happens then is that the transmission that comes to us, the blessing that comes to us through faith, the blessing that comes to us through practicing Guru Yoga is very minimal.  And in fact, it’s an ordinary blessing.  It is the ordinary blessing perhaps of having the opportunity to practice, and of actually having the practices in hand so that we can do them.  Well, you could say that’s not exactly ordinary.  Lot’s of people don’t have that blessing.  And you’re right about that.  But it’s a limited blessing.  What we need beyond this opportunity,  beyond the practice, is the ripening.  And in order to have that, we must begin to understand the Nature of the Lama in a more profound way.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Heart Samaya

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The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Keeping Heart Samaya”

We’ve talked about the commitment made by the teacher when accepting a new student. What about the commitment by the student to the teacher, the samaya between the student and the teacher?  What is that all about?  There must be some kind of reciprocal relationship.  Obviously the teacher cannot insist on the student’s progress without the student’s willingness.  The student has to be willing to follow Lord Buddha’s teachings, has to be willing to accept the objects of refuge as their true refuge from the sufferings of samsara.  So there is a reciprocal commitment that is required.

It is extremely important that the teacher maintain their ethical and moral responsibility to the student.  That is to say, the teacher honors the student and thinks of the student with such high regard and such respect that actually it is said that a pure teacher will consider the student to be worth more than their own safety or comfort.  In a sense, they hold the student up in the same way that a parent holds up their child, not necessarily as superior, but as vitally important and cared for.  Any of you who have been parents know that in a dangerous situation, before you think of your own safety, if you have that bonding and love with your child, you’ll think about the safety of the child first. That is always the case.  And when the mother hears the cry of her baby child for food, she doesn’t say, “I am not ready to feed you now.  It’s not convenient for me to feed you now.  I have no wish to feed you now.” Instead, the mother wants to answer the child’s call as though the mother were filled with milk and the child were very hungry.  It is very instinctive and very natural.

So the relationship occurs in that way on the teacher’s side of the fence.  Now what about the student, what is the student’s part in the equation?

Well, there are certain teachings and certain rules that one must follow, but I don’t like to think of them as merely following dogmatic rules.  I like to think of this samaya, or this commitment, as a samaya of the heart.  Something that is deep and profound,  instead of like a cheap and gaudy display. It doesn’t burn hot like paper, quick and then gone.  It burns deep and slow like good strong hardwood or even better, good strong coal-something that burns hot for a long time, steadily without interruption.  This is how the relationship between the Guru and disciple should be.

When the student learns about the samaya they are keeping with the teacher, they should hold that samaya not so much as a duty and responsibility but more as a jewel, just as the teacher holds the student as a jewel.  So that relationship then is considered precious, valuable, from the heart.  Not a methodical thing, not a thing done by rote, not a thing done blindly without any understanding, but a deep and pervasive samaya or commitment that is a heart connection that ultimately enhances the practice and the level of accomplishment that comes from practicing Guru Yoga.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

When the Teacher Meets the Student

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The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Keeping Heart Samaya”

Guru Yoga is a very important, very fundamental aspect of the practice of Vajrayana. When a student and a teacher come together, following in the footsteps of Guru Rinpoche as he taught, the relationship between the student and the teacher is upheld by the teacher in a very profound way.  Once the teacher accepts the student as their very own and takes them into their heart and actually into their body, speech and mind, it is the teacher’s commitment to bring blessings and benefit to that student, not only in this lifetime but in every future lifetime.

The student then becomes extremely important to the teacher, in that the teacher, upon accepting the student fully once that relationship has been established, promises to return lifetime after lifetime in whatever form is necessary in order to be of benefit to that student.  So there is a heart commitment or heart “samaya.”  When the teacher looks into the face of the student, the teacher says to the student or thinks to the student in their heart and in their mind, “I will not abandon you.  I will not abandon you to remain alone in cyclic existence.”

So, the commitment is that the teacher promises to see the student through until supreme realization.  This then becomes a “samaya,” or commitment, that lasts life after life, from life to death, from life to death, from life to death.  Again and again and again this relationship returns. There are many stories about how lamas, recognizing their students or seeing their students from the time before, whatever that time might be, feel great joy at seeing the face of the student again, tremendous joy,  as though seeing and having the opportunity to nurture their beloved child once more.  And this is a very beautiful and happy thing.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

What Do You Reach For?

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There are three different levels on which you can recognize your Teacher.  One is an extremely poor level, a common, ordinary level.  One is an intermediate level in which you see that the teacher holds the teachings purely and gives the teachings purely and you really admire the Teacher and feel great respect for the Teacher.  That, however, is only an intermediate level of recognition.

The deepest and supreme level of recognition is recognizing the Teacher not as a person, but rather, as a door to liberation, as one’s own nature.  This supreme level recognizes the Teacher as one’s mind, recognizes the Teacher as the miraculous intention of the Buddha, appearing in a manifest way in order to benefit beings.  It recognizes the Teacher as that original longing, the longing to know that nature, to recognize the Teacher as the answer, to recognize the Teacher and primordial wisdom itself in some incarnate form, in the same way that your own relationship to the path becomes not an ordinary thing, but a very profound and mystical thing, a thing of truth, a thing able to bring about awakening.

The relationship with the Teacher is especially difficult for Westerners.  We have lots of training on authority figures, we have lots of training on mothers and fathers, but we have no training on to how to deal with this longing.  The way we have dealt with it in the past has hurt us.  It has brought us a great deal of pain and suffering.  It has made us act in ways that we do not understand.  We are people who had a particular karma and it did not quite fit in with the karma of the society in which we were brought up.  If that were not so, then more of the society in which we were brought up would be able to approach the idea of awakening, would be able to approach the idea of having a Teacher in order to follow a supreme path in order to achieve the great awakening.

So, if we can reprogram ourselves by looking back at that original longing and understanding its depth, understanding the ways in which we compensated and forgiving ourselves and confessing the lack of recognition, we will then be able to establish a relationship with the Teacher, the path, the Buddha and with the meditational deities that we practice.  If we can establish that relationship anew in that way, the quality of the path that we practice will be completely different.  The quality of the experience that we have will be completely different.  We will feel healed, and the need for that healing is very sharp and very strong.

It’s my job to watch over my students.  Some of you spend 75 percent of your energy blaming yourself for the way you are.  Some of you spend a lot of energy trying to act out things that will never bear fruit concerning the Dharma and concerning your Teacher.  Some of you spend 75 percent of your energy trying to pretend that you don’t feel or trying to take issue with one thing or another so you don’t have to feel that longing.

I look at you and I have a sense of how you’re managing that longing.  It’s like you come so far and you’re right here, almost to my heart, and then you turn away.  Some of you stand in the background and look from afar, look hungry, peek out from behind the door, close the door again, stand back there and be hungry for some more.  Then you open the door and do like that.  Each one of you has a particular and peculiar different way that you deal with this, but you are all living with this.

You were born with the longing to awaken.  You were born with a longing to know your own nature, to taste that nature.  You were born with a longing and a homing instinct to find your Teacher.  You were born with a longing to find a pure path and there were no words like that when you grew up.

You compensated by substituting other things and trying to make them the object of your longing.  You made lots of mistakes because of it.  That’s not the point, though.  There is nothing you can do in one lifetime that is as meaningful a miscalculation as simply reaching for that nature and trying to find it in something small.  That is the biggest miscalculation that any of us can make and we do it constantly.  That’s what keeps us revolving endlessly in cyclic existence.

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Longing for the Guru”

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Every Experience Is a Blessing

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We’re all sleeping until we reach supreme enlightenment, but most are really sleeping in a very profound way.  In that coma, they are not even able to say, “I want”.  They merely act out, and they act out in different ways.

While we are still asleep and until we achieve supreme realization, the fact that you are here listening to teachings is the evidence to know that you have felt that longing.  You should find it and relate to it purely.  You should encourage it in that it is a dynamo of energy by which to really touch the nature that you are seeking, that the bliss that you want, the union between the student and the teacher.

But you are so ashamed to feel that feeling directly, because you’re so macho, you’re so tough, or you’re so cool or you’re so advanced.  You are so ashamed to feel that feeling that you want to say, “Oh, the longing for the Teacher is only me longing for my own nature”.  Well, yes, it is that, but you should face directly the longing for the teacher on the deepest level.  You should not be ashamed of that.  You were ashamed of it as a child and you were taught not to feel it and this longing created a lot of mistakes for you.  You should not be ashamed of that now.

I have that longing.  I have it, it is the strongest longing, I cannot imagine another longing like it.  I live with that longing constantly.  I use that longing to provide the means by which I can accomplish Dharma, or I can accomplish kindness for all sentient beings.  I realize that the true longing is the longing for the Guru, it’s the longing for my Teacher, for the Guru on all of the different levels, on the apparent level as well as the deepest, most primordial level.  And I realize that I will only find that longing satisfied so long as I try to live the qualities that are my Guru.

So, if I were to turn away from students and say, “Oh, I don’t want to do this anymore, I’m tired,” or, “I’m lonely doing this.  I don’t want to do this anymore.”  If I were to do that, I would never find my Guru.  I would never be with my Guru, because those are the qualities of my Guru.  My Guru never leaves me.  He cannot turn his face from me.  And so, that being the case, if I were to turn my face away from anyone that had hopes of me, it would be hopeless.  I would never find the Guru.  The longing would never be satisfied, because I would have turned my face away.

You must begin to practice in such a way that the face of the Teacher is understood in everything that you do.  No matter what you experience, whether it is loss or whether it is having, whether it is joy or whether it is sadness, whether it is life or it is death, whether it is sickness or health, poverty or wealth, whatever you experience, you should think that everything you experience is a blessing from the root Guru.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Listen to Your Life

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The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Longing for the Guru”

One of the great difficulties we have as practitioners and people involved in a materialistic culture is that we have very little understanding of the longing we feel for the Guru.  In a culture that has a spiritual foundation, in a culture that recognizes the role of the Guru, that recognizes the role of the Teacher or that recognizes and approves of a tendency to long for spiritual fulfillment, it is much easier to put a name and a label on that longing.

But in our culture, in order for us to survive that kind of longing, we have to make believe that it’s something else.  We have to pretend that it has to do with human relationships.  We have to pretend that it has to do with prosperity.  We have to pretend that it has to do with a certain lifestyle.  We have to pretend that it has to do with intelligence or that it has to do with mental health.  We have to pretend all sorts of different things in order to put the longing into some slot that our society recognizes, because if not, as we grow up in the formative years, it’s crushing to know in your heart of hearts that you are very different from others.  No one seems to have quite the same feeling that you do.

And so, because it is so crushing, because it is such a lonely thing, often, the very people that longed the most are the ones that diverted that longing into, perhaps, promiscuity, or perhaps becoming almost fanatical about this thought or that thought or this idea or that idea.  They could have diverted that longing into drugs or alcohol.  They could have diverted that longing into making themselves into a way that they are not, such as a superficial way or a hard way or a tough way or a dull way or a dead way.  They might have pretended that they had no feelings in order to deal with the ones that they did have.

Now, it’s true that lots of people have these same feelings and lots of people have these same ways of dealing with feelings.  For instance, it’s very possible that someone whose mother or father didn’t love them could become promiscuous simply for that reason.  Yet, that does not preclude what I’m saying.  You should listen to your life.  You should listen to what you did and what was underneath it and you should come to understand that perhaps there was something a little different in your heart and in your mind. It was there and it was with you always.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Light of Recognition

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An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo on October 18, 1995

What would it be like for you if Guru Rinpoche himself, appearing in a way that you could understand, were to actually walk through every day with you?  In your mind, in your heart, seeing what’s in there?  Walk through all your efforts, and watch you when you turn away and say, AO.K. that’s enough of that.  I’m going to go and do what I want to do.  Enough of that high thinking.  Let me feel the way that I naturally feel, the hell with all of you.   You know, that kind of thing?

If we actually had the eyes of the Guru, if they could be felt watching us, you know what you would feel like if you had seen that happen.  If you had felt that even for one day.  There would never be an end to your grief.  There would never be an end to the sorrow that you would feel knowing that in the face of the Guru you had made such a stinking offering.

We remain content with our self-cherishing, content with our pride, content with our ego and our hatred and our bigotry and our bad qualities.  We remain content with these while the eyes of the Guru watch.  Because there is no moment that you exist, that you can have a thought, that you are alive in samsara that the eyes of the Guru are not watching. And I don’t mean this like you should think of yourself as a little kid thinking, “Oh no, Mommy’s watching.” It’s not like that.  The Guru doesn’t get mad at you. It isn’t an approval thing. It isn’t like your mother or your father.  It’s that these eyes are like a radiant connection through which we can see directly the primordial nature, which is free of any kind of contrivance and separation and ugliness and superficiality and any of the possibilities that make it likely that we are going to practice any kind of non-virtue.  This nature is so pure that it’s like having the eyes of supreme, unnamable, unspeakable sweetness looking at us always, looking at us with love and compassion.  And we are taking shit and throwing it against the wall and wiping it all over ourselves: scratching and burping and farting and hitting and killing and carrying on.  And yet, these eyes that hold us up, watch us always, even while we, like apes in a zoo, fling shit on them.

And yet, we wonder why it is that we cannot awaken to the Buddha nature.  “When is ‘it’ going to happen? When is ‘it’ going to come from ‘out there?’  How old am I going to be when ‘it’ happens to me?” —  as though it were going to be visited upon you like something air-dropped;  as though it were going to come to you from another city, or another state or another world.  And all the time, we are turning away from those eyes, those loving, perfect pure eyes, that are actually like guiding beams of light, if you can imagine such a thing.

When we turn our face away from the Guru, we are only creating more suffering.  There is no other result that can come from that, no matter what it looks like.  You might say that there are extenuating circumstances.  All right, name them!  I’d like to see an extenuating circumstance that’s going to change what I’ve just said,  because it doesn’t exist.  You might say, “Well, I did my practice from this time to this time and I really tried very hard with my Guru Yoga.  I worked very hard at that and I kept it mindful as much as I could and then, well, you know, you have other things to do.  You have to go work, and you have to go do this, and you have to go do that.” This is the kind of thinking that we have.  Basically, what we have done is, while we were in the state of devotional practice, while we were aware of being in the presence of the Guru, while we were practicing that kind of view, we have only created causes of future bliss and happiness.  The moment we turned away, that act of saying, “Okay, that’s that.  Now on to this” — the moment we said that, we have practiced that non-virtue which has caused us unthinkable suffering in this and every life that we have experienced up until this point. The moment we turn away from the face of the Guru and find “something else”: in that moment we have turned away from the primordial nature that is our nature, and found suffering. The moment that we go on to the next thing, is the moment that we go on to our suffering.  The moment that we move away from our practice into another state, at that moment we have moved away from what causes bliss and moved into what will only bring about more suffering.  This is true even if our activity is just as pure and clean as apple pie.  Let’s say we ended our practice to go feed the baby.  You can’t argue with that.  You got to feed babies, right?  Of course, you’ve got to go feed the baby, but the problem is that you had to turn away from the Guru in order to do it.

Now you haven’t actually figured all of this out yet, but now it’s time to practice so deeply that you understand that it is possible not to turn away ever.  It is possible to be in that space, to be with that face and of that face, to be inseparable, to be constantly in union with that which is union itself, to be inseparable with the Guru. This is the goal!

Why wouldn’t it be the goal?  Is it samsara that you wish to be inseparable from?  Is it suffering?  Is it non-virtue?  Do you like to turn away?  Maybe you like the result, the suffering that comes after!  Of course, now that I say it this way, it seems ridiculous!  Of course, you don’t want that!  Yet, in our practice, in our lives, what do we do?  We offer the five cups of poison.  This is our standard offering, every day. And then we read the text and the text says if we could just offer one butter lamp, we would remain in unmovable samadhi.  And we wonder, “I’ve offered lots of butter lamps!  What is the hold up? What’s the problem?”  I’ll tell you what the problem is.  It’s those five other cups that you offer so much more of than that butter lamp.

Maybe the butter lamp needs to be understood as a symbol, not only as a literal butter lamp on an altar, but like a light in the window, a constant reminder.  When you know that a loved one is nearby and you’re trying to create the connection whereby the loved one would be guided home. In this case, we’re trying to create the connection.  You would keep a lamp in the window, wouldn’t you?  Keep a light on?  Maybe that’s what we need to do. Maybe the butter lamp we need to offer, the one that brings us to immovable samadhi is the light that never extinguishes: the light of recognition.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Bliss Happens

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An excerpt from a teaching called Awakening from Non-Recognition by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

There are so many amazing ways that you can practice. I’ve seen it again and again in the greatest practitioners, but only in the greatest, so we aspire to this. I think about stories I’ve heard about the Tibetan Bodhisattvas. For instance, during the tragedy when Tibet fell, literally 20,000 Tibetans (my teachers among them) tried to cross the Himalayas to get to India to safety, and only 20 arrived. These people endured incredible amounts of death, killing, all kinds of terrible sufferings. And then you think about great Lamas like His Holiness the Dalai Lama and my teachers who have said that instead of hating the Chinese who caused them so much loss and so much suffering, they feel almost worshipful in a sense, recognizing that the Chinese are their gurus. Now how does that happen? Are you thinking, “Well, this is maybe more than I can swallow? You know, if anybody is going to destroy me and my culture, I think I’d rather not like them, thank you very much!”

What has happened here is that these great Bodhisattvas recognize that everything is the mandala of the guru. With faith, everything is the display of the guru. So this tragic event is understood as a wrathful display that gives us the opportunity to cut off ego clinging at the root. Whatever they decided to do with this information, Tibet fell. Those things happened, so you basically have two ways to go with this. You can use this as an excuse to fall deeper and deeper into samsara with hatred and prejudice, or you can use it as a ladder to climb out of samsara through practicing renunciation and the cessation of ego clinging. It’s already happened. Those are the only two choices you have! Now, if we were a good practitioner and broke a leg, we’d say, “This is truly the display of the mandala of the guru. This is the guru’s blessing because now I can’t hop around the way I normally do. I have to sit my butt down and pray.” You can use that opportunity or you can sit that same butt down in front of the TV and watch soap operas all day long and wail and gnash your teeth about it.

In my situation I think like this. Many of you know I came from an alcoholic and abusive home. To me that is my most precious gift, my most precious empowerment. I have received until this date no more precious empowerment than that. It’s not to say I want to do it over again. It was a nightmare. It was horrible. The days of suffering were endless, but I understand what I could not have understood any other way: that samsara is something to be reckoned with, that all sentient beings are suffering, that I wish to see suffering end. I don’t think I could ever have understood this as well if I had not experienced what I experienced. So that has become my empowerment, and I feel that this is the guru’s blessing. Hopefully, I have come to a point in my practice where I can say this without resentment. I feel that I can look to the face of my guru and say, “Thank you for this skillful means that you have offered me so that I will benefit sentient beings. Thank you for this.” Without resentment I can truly say that. In the next breath I’m also likely to say, “Please let’s not do this again by the way, if you don’t mind.” But the recognition is there. So it has become for me an empowerment.

The bottom line message of Guru Yoga isn’t about subservience or about losing power or losing strength. If anything, it’s about recognizing that the ball is in your court. You have and will have the experiences of samsara. What are you going to do about that? Even if you lay down and die, you still have to go through the bardo and then you do it all over again.

You have choices, but they’re not the kind you’d like to have. You’d like to choose to be either here or not be here, choose to be happy or be sad, choose to have one experience or another happen to you. What you can choose is what you do with what happens to you. If you were to enter into the practice of Guru Yoga deeply and be truly empowered by that, this entire life could be an empowerment. We can transform all of the whining and moping and gnashing of teeth that we do into strength.

Often students will come to me and say, “I have this particular problem. This particular problem makes me unusual and unfit. My mind is stuck on it. So let’s make a big deal about my particular problem so that we can talk about it together and then we don’t have to practice. We can just have this particular problem.” Well, my answer to that is great, because if you have that particular problem, when you solve that problem, you’re going to have that particular strength. That’s what you’re going to have. This is golden. This is gravy. So we take this problem and we transform adversity into bliss, and the bliss occurs when we move into a state of recognition. We understand that we are not victims anymore. We understand that this kind of dualistic thinking is unreasonable and unwarranted and pointless, and we begin to understand “I am here. I am that. And the capacity to display this nature is something holy, a gem, a jewel that I possess.”

We learn this within the context of Guru Yoga, through the friendship of our teacher, through recognizing what is not ordinary. But try to remember, if we insist on maintaining the same habitual tendency and interact with that which is holy as though it were ordinary, and are not able to make that bridge or that transformation, it’s like taking a precious jewel—the most precious in the world, in all worlds, that could buy you anything that you want, a wish-fulfilling jewel—and making, as a six-year-old would make, a play pretty out of it.

It’s not that one way of being would make you a bad person and the other not. It’s that one is a terrible tragedy, a terrible waste, a terrible loss, and the other is empowerment. That’s the difference.

As we hold in our mind the intention to awaken as the Buddha is awake, as we hold in our minds the information about the difference between what is ordinary and what is extraordinary, as we begin to move into a state of recognition through the practice of Guru Yoga, this will facilitate every happiness, every result of the path. Gradually, over time, we will prepare for the opportunity of recognition, and it will occur. This is the truth. I would not lie to you. I have no reason to lie to you. These are the Buddha’s teachings. Again you have the opportunity to pit your ordinary process of conceptualization, as it arises from samsaric tendencies and samsaric means, against what the Buddha speaks, which is the truth of your own nature. This the Buddha has taught, “I will appear as your root teacher.” This Guru Rinpoche has taught, again, “I will appear as your root teacher.”

Perhaps this teaching will give you some beginning understanding of how to approach the practice of Guru Yoga. I hope that it is helpful to you, and I hope that it helps you to move across certain stuck places that we as practitioners find ourselves arriving at again and again. Thank you very much.

© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The Student-Teacher Relationship

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An excerpt from a teaching called Awakening from Non-Recognition by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

This relationship between the student and teacher absolutely depends on the connection between what appears to be two things. On the part of the teacher, the relationship requires the capability to express, display and communicate Dharma, and certainly the intention of Bodhicitta first and foremost. The student’s well-being and realization, recognition, awakening, enlightenment is the goal of the relationship. The teacher’s responsibility is to connect with the student in order to bring about that result and to provide all of the necessary components on the path in order to achieve that result.

What is the student’s responsibility? The student’s responsibility is not to treat this relationship as an ordinary thing, once you have determined that it is not of the world. That would be inappropriate. Have you ever seen children make collages? They take a piece of construction paper and they glue pretty sparkled things on that piece of paper and then they give it to mom. They just make a play-pretty. That’s their artistic endeavor because they can paste and glue. You don’t think students do that with their teacher? The equivalent would be to take a most precious jewel, like the Hope Diamond, exquisitely precious, immeasurable in worldly and monetary terms, put some Elmer’s glue on it and stick it on a piece of paper right next to all the fuzzy things and play-pretties and sparkles and colored macaronis and all the things kids use to make collages, and say “Because I can paste and glue. Because I’m six years old now and I can do this.” That would be the equivalent. You would take that precious jewel and paste it on that piece of paper and just throw it around with the other things you make because you can, because you’re smart, because you’re human, because you’re American. Can you see what I’m saying here?

This precious relationship should not be dealt with in that way. It’s absurd. You cringe when you think of a diamond—that’s worth so much money that it could probably feed all the homeless in our entire country for at least a period of time—used as a play thing, pasted on construction paper with colored macaroni and stuff.  It’s exactly the equivalent of practicing Guru Yoga in the way that we practice it.

That precious relationship provides a format in which we practice recognizing. When we are born in samsara we have a certain experience. As a human being we are born of a mother and a father. You can’t get away from that. As far as I know, no one has just appeared somewhere. If you have, please tell me. I want to see that you’re missing a belly button. We pass through the birth canal and we experience the world as infants and then we grow into consciousness. There seems to be this continuum that expresses itself in time. Why does that happen? Well, it’s because we believe self-nature to be inherently real. Self-nature is not the same as the Buddha nature. It has a certain kind of limitation, and the format seems to be that it moves through space. It takes place in space. To take place in space you need to take place in time also. So we have this experience and we take it for granted. That’s simply the way it is.

The Buddha is able to look at you and see everything about you, every single condition that brought you to this present moment. What kind of perception is that? When the Buddha looks at this experience, the Buddha sees in awareness, in the awakened state. In that recognition there is something else. There is an appearance of this nature in a display form, like the sun’s rays coming from the sun. The Buddha understands this nature and does not distinguish between this and that, between empty and full, between high and low, between hot and cold, between solid and non-solid. The Buddha recognizes that face, that nature, that ground-of-being simply in emanation form.

When we meet with our teacher, there is a different relationship, and this is how we have to understand the necessity and power of Guru Yoga. If you have chosen your teacher correctly, the teacher is a Bodhisattva with enough wisdom, enough awareness, and enough accomplishment in meditation so that there is recognition, so that the teacher knows your nature. The teacher recognizes this potential, this seed, and the teacher/student relationship is completely based on that recognition. Even though the teacher may occasionally interface with a student in a way that appears to be ordinary, it’s always about bringing the relationship full circle until the student’s recognition occurs. That is the basis of the relationship. Don’t make it ordinary. It’s not about a warm fuzzy. It’s not about being comfy cozy. It’s not about feeling good. It’s not about whether we both like to ice skate or have the same color skin. It’s not about any of that.

It’s about the appearance and the recognition of that appearance. The student has an incredible opportunity and that is to begin to practice entering into a state of recognition, utilizing the Guru Yoga, utilizing the teacher. Why should we utilize the teacher rather than sit down and chant “Om” and just meditate and see if we can recognize our natural state? Well, because it’s not likely to happen that way, that’s why.

We are ordinary sentient beings lost in samsara. We have been conceptualizing self-nature since time out of mind. We have unbelievably strong habitual tendencies. If you think addiction is strong, as it appears in the world now with drugs and alcohol, it’s nothing compared to the level of addiction to a habitual tendency that we have in our clinging to ego as being inherently real. It doesn’t even come close!

In this relationship we are going to conceive of something different. We are going to determine what is ordinary and what is extraordinary. We are going to go through this whole process we’ve outlined. We determine that this relationship is extraordinary. It arises from the Buddha nature. It results in the Buddha nature. In the middle is the path or the method. This being the case, we begin to understand that if this relationship arises from the Buddha nature and it is the Buddha nature and that is our nature, when we see the teacher, we have at last seen our own face. That precious moment—when that face that is our nature arises in some way that we can recognize—is the beginning of recognition.

Now it seems external. It seems like the teacher is out there. It is the student’s responsibility to practice in such a way that they begin to recognize this appearance as the most precious, holy experience. It’s not like worshiping a statue. It’s not like that. It’s recognition of the nature. What is the nature? It is the Buddha nature, indistinguishable from our own nature, therefore the recognition of our true face.

We talk about how to see our teacher when we meet him or her for the first time during the day. There are practices and beautiful writings—I myself have even written things about this and spoken about this, but it’s not my particular talent. In our heart without pride, with surrender, with beauty, with gentleness, with regard, without rigidity, without ideas, without taking that jewel and putting it on that collage, on that piece of paper, we behold the teacher and we say, “This is my heart, my mind, my breath. All that is precious and holy to me, all that is beautiful in this world.” And we place the teacher in our practice above the crown of our head. Are we stupid people worshiping something else? Are we kind of limp or weird? Are we maybe not American anymore? Try to understand. This is not about a personality cult. This is not about putting one being or body or personality above any other. It’s not like that. This is about recognition. The same pride, confusion and preconceived ideas that cause us to say, “Well, I just don’t know. This person is just an ordinary person and maybe I should just be friendly and try to do some practice and some reading.” That kind of holding oneself back from recognition is the exact same holding oneself back from recognition that is occurring right now to you and causes you to remain suffering in samsara. If you insist upon putting the teacher in the ordinary category, you insist upon putting the nature in an ordinary category.  It’s the same problem, the same habit, the same disease.

© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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