Anonymous said...
I'm working with the "Short Daily Meditation" Practice" from a previous class and had some questions. They all relate to the concept of a "guru" as it appears in the practice.
(a) In the "Preliminary Motivation" it mentions "the virtuous friend"
(b) In the "Visualizaton" it mentions "your root guru"
(c) In the "Graded path to Enlightenment" it mentions "the kind and venerable guru"
Are all of these the same person ?
If I take teachings at the center are they the main teacher ?
Given the first verse of the "Graded Path" it seems I need a guru. What do I need to do to get one ?
Thank You.
August 22, 2010 5:13 PM
Drimay says....
This Fall we have been studying Guru Devotion in the Discovering Buddhism course called "The Spiritual Teacher." I was thinking that the answers to the above questions would surface during this course; I hope most of them did.
Let me first mention some things that I think are important. The way we think about our spiritual teachers is a factor in our own progress. If we are having mental blocks--not able to understand things, not able to get to classes or retreats, not able to meditate, etc.--it is to our own advantage to improve the way we are thinking about our spiritual teachers.
People seem to be scared of the idea of guru devotion. I think it is because it gets mixed up with giving your power away and becoming blindly obedient. My opinion is that guru devotion isn't so much about what we DO but about how we THINK, how we hold the guru in our mind. It's about the psychology of having a positive attitude, an attitude of gladness and inspiration. There is some kind of magic about that attitude and makes realizations happen quickly.
So my main point is that if you want to move forward to enlightenment, cultivate positive thoughts toward your gurus. And if you don't have positive thoughts about your gurus, go through the steps such as learning what the definition of a qualified guru is and then checking how many of those qualities your guru has. If you have qualified gurus, you will start to be amazed and very appreciative.
Now, for the questions:
Virtuous Friend is a translation of the Sanskrit Kalyana Mitra, which comes into Tibetan as Gewai Shenyen. Geshe, the title used for those who have completed a rigorous course of scriptural study at one of the major monastic univerities, is a contraction of Gewai Shenyen. When it says, "I have met the virtuous friend," that most certainly means the living teachers who guide us, the guru in human form.
The visualization actually gives us quite of bit of information where it says, "He [the Buddha] is the manifestation of the omniscient mind of all the buddhas, the ultimate guru," (there is the definition of 'ultimate guru') and, "He is inseparable from your root guru." Here are at least two of the elements of guru yoga--the inseparability of the Buddha (1) with your root guru (2).
The root guru is sometimes defined as the one who first turns your mind to the Dharma. Sometimes the root guru is described as the teacher who most inspires you. In class we learned that it is possible to have more than one root guru. Guru Atisha had five root gurus (amongst 152 gurus that he had in all) and Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche seems to have two (amongst about 30 gurus).
The fact that they are all being visualized in the form of just the one Shakyamuni Buddha and that this buddha is just a manifestation of the ultimate guru seems to resolve the problem of which guru to visualize.
In The Graded Path to Enlightenment verses, it actually says "Correct devotion to him is the root of the path," so we don't need to worry about how many gurus there. It's the devotion that we have toward however many gurus that counts.
As for the teachings that we get on a regular basis, those might be from a qualified guru, but in the case of the classes that I teach, I am not a qualified guru. I'm not offering to be anybody's guru. You would be better off to think that the Dharma center and all its activities are manifestations of the guru's enlightened activities--that it's all part of Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche's mandala, or His Holiness the Dalai Lama's mandala. We are just household servants in their mandala.
Do you need to get a guru? Yes, I think that would be a good idea, but just do it slowly, carefully. Get teachings from various gurus--open teachings that don't require any commitment--and check how you feel. Will you be able to hold that person with a pure attitude? Does that person have suitable qualifications to be called a guru. Then with the thought of wanting to take that person as a guru, you can go ahead and receive teachings or transmissions, and then they become one of your gurus.
May all the kind gurus stay with us until we are fully enlightened.
Thank you, Drimay. That was helpful.
ReplyDelete