ACI01 Class 03 — Reading 3

Now a lama is extremely important at the outset of any attempts at a spiritual life. As Geshe Potowa said,

Therefore you're absolutely going to have to go and learn from a lama; just reading dharma books is not going to work. There has never been a single person in history who gained his spiritual goals without a lama, just by reading books on dharma. And it will never happen in the future either.

Now what kind of lama should he be? It takes a guide who knows every turn of the path just to get you somewhere you can reach in a single day. For a lama who's supposed to lead you on to freedom and the state of knowing all things, you're going to need one who has all the requisite qualities. It's important to find a really qualified lama; it's not something you shouldn't care much about, because you're going to end up like him—for better or for worse. The student comes out according to the mold, like those little clay tablets with holy images pressed into them.

What are the characteristics that make a lama qualified? According to the teachings on vowed morality he should be, as they say, a "source of all good qualities" and so on. This means that the lama should possess the two good qualities of being steady and wise. According to the secret teachings, he should fit the description that starts with the words "all three gateways well restrained." According to general tradition—that of both the open and the secret teachings—the lama should have ten fine qualities, as mentioned in the verse that begins with "You who have all ten..."

At the very least, your lama must absolutely be a person who has controlled his mind by practicing the three trainings, who possesses a knowledge of the scriptures, and who possesses actual realizations. As the Jewel of the Sutras states,

The prospective disciple on his part should familiarize himself with these descriptions of a proper lama's qualifications, and then seek out a lama who possesses them. Whether the disciple himself turns out to be more or less blessed with virtues depends on the degree to which his lama possesses high personal qualities. If the disciple enjoys a relationship with a lama who is capable of guiding him through the entire range of the open and secret paths, then the disciple will come to be one blessed, in the sense of having heard about and gained some understanding of the paths in their entirety. Even just gaining this general idea of the overall paths represents greater merit than any other good qualities that the student might possess.

Once the disciple does manage to locate a lama with the qualities described above, he must rely on him in the proper way. Here there are eight great benefits a person can gain through proper behavior towards his teacher, beginning with being "close to Buddhahood." There are also eight different dangers of improper behavior towards one's lama—these are the opposites of the benefits just mentioned.

As the great Lord Tsongkapa said himself,

Those of past days, people like Lord Atisha and the great Drom Tonpa, gained matchless levels of realization and were able to perform mighty deeds beyond equal—all of this came because each of them succeeded in maintaining the proper relationship with his own spiritual guide. And it doesn't end there—we can point to Lord Milarepa and others of olden days, and say exactly the same thing.

Proper behavior with one's spiritual guide has tremendous potential—both good and bad—in determining whether a person gets off to an auspicious start in his practice. Marpa slipped before Naropa and ruined his chances for an auspicious beginning. Milarepa offered Marpa a copper pot—empty, but absolutely clean. His start with his practice then was one both good and bad—in exact correspondence to the good and bad of the gift.

The great throneholder Tenpa Rabgye nursed the master tutor Ngawang Chujor most effectively during the latter's illness; as a result, he was able to gain a realization of the "middle view." The Sakya Pandita as well performed perfect service as the nurse of Venerable Drak-gyen. Everything that came to him later was because of this service: he was able to see his lama as the deity Gentle Voice; he gained a totally unimpeded knowledge of the five great sciences; a mass of human kind in all the lands of China, Tibet, Mongolia, and elsewhere raised him in honor to the very tip of their heads; and the list goes on and on.

We should speak here too of the dangers in improper behavior towards one's lama. A reference in Difficult Points to the Black Enemy puts it this way:

The root text of the secret teaching on the Wheel of Time states as well:

Now the length of time in the snap of a finger is itself made up of no less than sixty-five of what we call "instants of minimum action." If an emotion of anger towards your lama comes up in your mind for this period, for sixty-five of these split-seconds, then you will have to stay in hell for a period equal to sixty-five eons. This by the way is how the tradition of the lesser way describes it; according to the teachings of the greater way, the period is even longer.

And there are even more dangers; a person who behaves improperly towards his lama will, as the Fifty Verses on Lamas describes, suffer even more in this present life: spirits, various sicknesses, and other such problems will harass him constantly. In the hour of death, he is tormented by excruciating pain at the vital points and overwhelmed by terror. Moreover, he dies through one of the thirteen causes of a premature death—and so on.

There are even further examples of the dangers; we can recall the master Sangye Yeshe, whose eyes dropped out of their sockets, or the disciple of Geshe Neusurpa who met with an untimely death, among others. In short, it is stated that the result which ripens onto a person in his future lives once he has spoken ill of his lama is so horrible that even a Buddha would be incapable of describing it fully. The person takes his rebirth in the lowest of all hells, known as "Torment Without," where the pain goes on without stopping.

When we speak of "proper behavior towards your lama," it's necessary for the student to realize that we draw no distinction between the person who delivers him formal dharma teachings and the person who teaches him the alphabet and so on. Whatever a disciple undertakes in the service of his lama during the length of their relationship—whether it be attending to him, paying him respects, or so on, everything except those minor things like the personal daily recitations that the student does for himself—all of it counts as what we call "lama practice." As such it is unnecessary for a disciple in the service of his lama to go out and seek one of the other, formal meditative techniques that are known as "lama practice."

Each of the eight benefits and eight dangers comes up in exact accordance to how well or poorly one behaves with his lama. During the relationship the disciple should use what we call "analytical meditation." To do so, he first has to lay out in his mind each separate point in the teaching on how to behave towards a lama. For example, he could start with the fact that the Holder of the Diamond declared a person's lama to be the Buddha himself. Then the disciple should use various other cases of scriptural authority, together with logical reasoning, to satisfy himself of the truth of each point.

This type of analytical meditation is something that you absolutely can't do without. Despite this fact, here in Tibet the only person to recognize analytical meditation as a form of meditation was Lord Tsongkapa. There is a kind of meditation known as "running" meditation, where you set your mind to run along the concepts related to some words you are reciting. Then there is "reviewing," where you try to recall each point in a particular teaching and think to yourself simply "This one goes like this, and that one goes like that." Analytical meditation is something different; here, you approach each point as something you have to prove or disprove—you set it at center stage in your mind and analyze it using a great number of statements from accepted authorities, and various lines of reasoning.

As a matter of fact, it's "analytical meditation" for example when people like us direct our thoughts over and over to some object that we desire, or something similar. And because of this meditation our desire—or whatever other unhealthy emotion it might be—gets stronger and stronger until we can say we have gained some fluency in it. The idea here is to turn the process around: to perform analytical meditations, one by one, on points such as the fact that the Holder of the Diamond declared that one's lama is the Buddha himself. This way we quickly come to a different type of fluency—in the realization of truth.