Spiritual Teachers

Basis, Pathway, and Resultant Viewpoints Most Tibetan texts that discuss tantric masters' being Buddhas explain the topic of impure and pure appearances from a specific viewpoint. Often, however, the texts neglect to state their point of view. This may cause confusion. In...

In A Precious Ornament for Liberation, Gampopa cited three analogies from the sutras to elucidate the need for a spiritual mentor. Just as a traveler needs a navigator for traversing an unknown route, an escort for making a dangerous journey, and an oarsman for crossing a...

Recognizing Our Mental Blocks The mahamudra teachings also emphasize the importance and need for extensive preliminary practice. The point of such practice, for example making hundreds of thousands of prostrations, is to purify ourselves of the grossest levels of obstacles...

Translating Trust and Respect for a Mentor into Actions The more convinced we are of our mentors' good qualities, the more confidently we trust them and their ability to guide us correctly. Similarly, the more deeply we appreciate our mentors' kindness, the more respect we...

Review of the Qualities of a Spiritual Teacher A guru is a great teacher, a great spiritual master or mentor, someone who is not only able to teach from knowledge of the texts but is also able to teach us by his or her own example. A living example of what Buddha has taught, a...

The Special Role of Oral Transmission in Tantra Oral transmission and inspiration from spiritual mentors play an even larger role in tantra than they do in sutra practice. This is evident from the structure of the tantric texts themselves and from the indispensable role of...

Brief Review We have been discussing the fundamental elements that we need before taking the bodhisattva vows. We spoke about the foundations in the lam-rim, the graded stages of the path, and we spoke about the process and meditation for building up a bodhichitta motivation....

Visualizing the Spiritual Master When it comes to visualizing the objects of safe direction, of refuge, then we visualize the spiritual master in the form of the yidam (the Buddha-figure) or in the form of Shakyamuni Buddha. But more comfortable here would be in the form of...

Categories in Tantra Conceptual thought involves categories. How is that relevant in tantra? There are categories with these Buddha-figures. So there is the category Chenrezig, Avalokiteshvara. There can be many different forms of that deity: with four arms, with two arms,...

To purify ourselves of the various negative potentials that we have built up, it is necessary to do Vajrasattva meditation. To build up a great store of positive potential, there are the practices of guru-yoga, the methods to integrate with our spiritual master. These are the...