The Medium of Intimacy

By matt | Published: July 7, 2014

[From Ngondro Instructions for Practices in the Termas of Terchen Barway Dorje by Lama Tashi Topgyal. Translated by Lama Yeshe Gyamtso.]

A key point to understand […] is that your root guru and Guru Rinpoche are responsive to prayer. Do not think that you are praying as a mental exercise with the sole purpose of cultivating devotion. You are also actually talking to them; they are actually listening. Guru Rinpoche said, “For those with faith, I have not gone anywhere. I sleep outside the door of everyone with faith in me.” For each person there is an individual emanation of Padmakara. Sometimes people think that Guru Rinpoche was in Tibet, but left. However, he essentially did not go anywhere, and those with with faith continue to see him face-to-face. Depending on the person’s faith, there is an emanation of Guru Rinpoche potentially available to everyone who prays to him. So never regard your root guru, inseparable from Guru Rinpoche, as distant; never think of him as far away. The closer you bring your root guru and the more you can mix your mind with the mind of your root guru, the more blessings you will receive and the more spontaneously both experience and realization will arise within you. If you think that the guru is distant or if you regard the guru as something out there and inherently separate from you, then it is very difficult for blessing to enter because you have actually split the medium of intimacy. But if you think of the guru and your mind as inseparable and if you think that the guru always resides in your heart and in your mind, then the blessings will automatically enter, and experience and realization will automatically blaze without the need for any other special technique or device.

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Unreserved Entrustment

By matt | Published: June 4, 2014

[From a teaching on The Song of the Young Bee by Bardor Tulku Rinpoche in Evansville, Indiana in 2012. Translated by Lama Yeshe Gyamtso.]

The next four lines of this song make a point that is of incredibly great importance for any vajrayana practitioner.

In the first line he says: Unbearably intense longing and devotion blazed. So, he [Terchen Barway Dorje] is indentifying the condition of his realization and experience. His realization and experience arose during the feast [vajrayana tsok practice]. Why? Because of his devotion. Longing here means longing for the presence of the guru.

In the second line he says: I knew that whatever appears and exists is my guru’s display. And this is the key line here. I knew means that he wasn’t imagining it, and whatever appears and exists is my guru’s display means he recognized the nature of everything to be inseparable from the guru. We would say “the face of the guru.”

Now, what do these two lines mean? They are describing the confidence and joy that are, in a sense, the characteristic of vajrayana practice. This confidence and joy come from unreserved entrustment of oneself to the root guru. And this unreserved entrustment to the root guru is based upon the simple understanding [that] even though I, the practitioner, have no blessing, have no power, have nothing special that makes me different from anyone else, the blessing of my root guru is unassailable, unquestionable. And that gives one confidence. One’s confidence and joy come from totally entrusting oneself to the root guru. Such an attitude of prayer or supplication, such an attitude of devoted entrustment to the guru causes you to experience the non-duality, the inseparability, of your mind and the mind of your guru. It makes no difference in this context whether your guru is living or has passed away because you experience their vivid presence at that moment. This will be overwhelming. You’ll break out in goose bumps and break out in tears and so on.

He further describes this in the third line where he says: I gained confidence in the inseparability of my mind and my guru. All the confidence associated with this type of practice comes from that — recognizing the inseparability of one’s mind and the guru. What is this recognition? It’s the experience of there being no difference, no boundary or border, between you and your guru. It’s the experience of all of the guru’s attributes — his body, speech, mind, his ability to benefit beings, his activity, his attainment – being present in your world, present within you, within your being.

Then he says: I knew it to be self-apparent and self-arisen; it was revealed. In other words, in the experience and through the experience of the inseparability of himself and his root guru, he experiences the self-appearing, self-arisen wisdom which is within the mind. It is revealed to him through devotion to his guru.

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Buddhahood is Not Distant

By matt | Published: May 8, 2014

[From a teaching on the song A Reply to Two Nephews by Bardor Tulku Rinpoche in Chicago, Illinois in 2011. Translated by Lama Yeshe Gyamtso.]

The process of moving from a deluded mind to the state of dharmakaya is not a process of replacing the one with the other. It is not exchanging one thing for another. It is simply causing the mind to see itself as it always was. In fact, all of the functions of mind are always the trikaya. The mind’s nature is dharmakaya; its attribute of cognitive lucidity is the sambhogakaya; and even the play of thoughts are themselves nirmankaya. However, as long as the mind turns away from itself and remains deluded we don’t see this as it is. Being deluded all we see is more and more delusion. But whenever the mind turns back in on itself – in that instant – it has the opportunity to recognize itself, and that recognition is instantaneous. As is said, “In a single instant, perfect buddhaood [is achieved]; in a single instant, the difference occurs.”

Understanding this we will understand that buddhahood is not distant. It is not a matter of going somewhere else or of acquiring something that is not already present within our mind. Everything we need is already present within our mind. However, although our minds in their nature are flawless and perfect, we don’t see them as they are. Why do we not see the nature of mind? We don’t see our minds because they are too close to us. It is not the case that buddhahood is distant; it is so close to us that we can’t see it, just as you can’t see your own back. That’s why we don’t see our mind. So all of the methods, means, and techniques that we practice, including the generation stage, are practiced in order to gradually remove the veils or obscurations that prevent our minds from seeing themselves as they are. And as we remove these, one after another, and diminish or decrease self-fixation as a result, we come closer and closer to the recognition of our mind’s nature, which is and always has been the dharmakaya. But fundamentally this depends on the attitude we take and on our motivation.

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