Unconditional Love

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

When we consider the student’s relationship with the teacher on this path, we are talking about very high stakes.  We are not talking about a student-teacher relationship in order to get through a six week course.  We are not talking about a student-teacher relationship with which to graduate with so many credits from college.  We are talking about a student-teacher relationship wherein the end result is the ultimate fruit or jewel, the crown of cyclic existence, that is, the potential or capacity to enter into the door of liberation and be free of suffering at last.  These are enormous stakes.

So both parties in the student-teacher relationship have to take that relationship very seriously, very seriously.  I know for a fact that the teachers regard the students with great seriousness.  Their love for the students is unconditional.  Once that student-teacher relationship has taken place, the teacher has become, for the student, Guru Rinpoche’s appearance in the world, Lord Buddha’s appearance in the world.  Once that happens, there is a love there or a bonding that cannot be undone by anything in the world.  There is nothing in the world that can take Lord Buddha’s blessing, Guru Rinpoche’s blessing out of your heart.  Nothing can do that.

Even if the students themselves were to act in a very inappropriate way, breaking the samaya bond, acting out of accordance with what the teacher has taught, even committing really negative actions like harming the teacher in some way, it is always the truth that if the student were to make restitution, were to turn their face towards Dharma again and truly wish to accomplish Dharma, and wish to separate themselves from their previous non-virtuous acts, the teacher would immediately respond to that.  There is no question.

As parents we do that with our children, don’t we?  Sometimes children will do pretty bad things, throw baseballs through windows, knock the cookie jars over, and really much worse things. So even though these acts may occur, the parent will always accept the child again.  The parent will not stop loving the child.  It may be true that there is a difficulty there, a burden, a strain, a suffering, but that is your child.  A good parent would never turn their face away from their child just because their child made a mistake.  Parents know that children are immature with very little discrimination.  They are learning, and it’s the parents’ job to teach them.  Exactly the same with the student and the teacher.

The teacher knows that students are sentient beings.  According to the Buddha’s teaching, all sentient beings are suffering.  They all wish to be happy, but they do not know how to make the causes of happiness occur.  They don’t understand cause-and-effect relationships.  So isn’t it to be expected that mistakes will be made?  Of course mistakes will be made. It’s only reasonable and logical.  So the teacher would never hold it against the student.  That relationship is like the Buddha’s compassion, all pervasive, beginningless, conditionless, without end.  That is the nature of that love.

So when we look to the student’s commitment, or samaya, to the teacher, we should look to see the same depth, the same bonding, the same beauty in that commitment as well.  And that commitment should be a joy on both parts.  Less the flavor of duty and responsibility than the flavor of love.  The love between the student and teacher is like the Buddha’s compassion.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved