The Guru

The following is respectfully quoted from “Reborn in the West” by Vicki Mackenzie. This section begins with Jetsunma discussing the role of the guru:

She went on to talk a little about the place of the guru in Buddhism. ‘The guru is an emanation of enlightened compassion, and that compassion is like a hook or a piece of Velcro,’ she explained, slipping into her hallmark mode of putting Eastern concepts into Western terminology. ‘Now Velcro has to have a corresponding piece, otherwise it won’t connect–which means that at some time in the past you have already had a relationship with the guru. It is not as though the teacher will know your name, or something like that. But the power, the intention of compassion and loving kindness sets up a vibration, almost like a sound, and students begin responding to that vibration. And the student will be called.

‘That sound is so subtle, yet so powerful, that it changes the student’s life–like that,’ she said, clicking her fingers. At this point I realized she was talking about herself as ‘guru’ too. ‘And it can sustain that change. It can change the world. That sound is the greatest, most gossamer force there is–bodhicitta, the force of compassion. That’s the sound that is being vibrationally cloaked to suit the student’s mind,’ she explained.

At Washington Airport, however, Jetsunma had no idea that the small, rotund man who was making her weep was her guru; that was to come. Instead she was contemplating how to get him back home and what to give him for lunch. He eventually scrambled into her old car and was driven back to Poolesville, where the group fed him hot dogs and potato crisps on the back porch. For an auspicious meeting it was, like Jetsunma herself, highly irregular.

‘We didn’t know what to do with him,’ she confided. ‘We had a barbecue going and were sitting down next to him, being friendly and chatty. I had no idea one doesn’t do this. Be he seemed really happy to be with us and said he wanted to meet all my students and ask them questions. I was amazed. He added that we could ask him questions too. Now that I could understand,’ continued Jetsunma.

All week long Penor Rinpoche interviewed all of Jetsunma’s students in great depth, probing to find out exactly what she had been teaching them. When eventually Jetsunma herself managed to get some time with Penor Rinpoche, she acknowledged him as the teacher and confessed her ‘sin’ of teaching without any real qualifications.

‘Forgive me, but I did not feel I could sit and do nothing,’ she said. ‘But the authority under which I’ve been teaching is twofold. First of all, I look around me and see there is suffering, and I have to do something. The other is that I’ve tried my own practices and I know that they work. But I don’t really know why these teachings come to my mind. Can you please tell me where it comes from?

Penor Rinpoche looked her straight in the eye and broke the news–at least, part of it. ‘In the past you were a great bodhisattva, a person who works throughout all time to liberate sentient beings. You have attained your practice to the degree that in every future lifetime you will not forget it. You will always know it, it will always come back to you. It is in your mind and will not be forgotten.’ He gave her no name, no clue as to what kind of bodhisattva she had been. He just advised her to keep on doing precisely what she was doing, in the way she was doing it, and confirmed that her teachings were exactly what her students needed. That was all. It seemed that no great demands were to be made of her–until he dropped the bombshell.

‘He told me I had to buy a centre, a real temple, that I shouldn’t be afraid. He said I was going to see several different places but I had to buy the one with the white pillars in the front. “You’re going to think you can’t afford it,” he said–and oh, we can’t!–“but you will find a way. Have faith, it will be all right. Eventually,” he added, “you will have places all over the world.” The last part of the prophecy is still to come about.