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relate to your guru as a Buddha, you get the blessings with any degree of confidence that our guru is not in fact
of a Buddha. If you relate to your guru as somebody the Buddha. This means that it is not just a question of
ordinary, you will get the blessings of an ordinary being. training our mind in seeing our guru as an enlightened
That’s what the Tibetan masters say. And they say that if being; maybe s/he actually is the Buddha himself.
you relate to your guru as an ordinary being, then even
Can you share what are the qualities that a student
if in fact s/he were the Buddha himself, there would not
should look for in one’s search for an authentic Guru?
be that much benefit.

In Tibet the tradition of Buddhism that was followed For this I strongly recommend to you two wonderful
was not just Mahāyāna. Within Mahāyāna it was classical sources by two fairly recent great masters.
Vajrayāna, in which there is the same emphasis on First, there is a book by Geshe Lhundup Sopa, who was
seeing your guru as an enlightened being. Yet it is one of my own teachers, called “Steps on the Path to
in the Vajrayāna that you have the idea that a good Enlightenment: Volume 1”, which talks about the ten
relationship with your guru is the life of the path, and qualities of a Mahāyāna Guru that Maitreya taught. His
in Panchen Chökyi Gyaltsen’s Guru Puja he states that series of books comment on the Great Stages of the Path
making offerings to the guru you create far more merit to Enlightenment teachings of Lama Tsong Khapa, the
than offering to all the enlightened beings of the past, founder of the Gelugpa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.
present, and future. So I think it is mainly because of And to Part 1 of Pabongka Rinpoche’s “Liberation in
the source of the great Tibetan traditions in such great Our Hands”, which also explains those and much more.
Indian masters as Saraha, Nagarjuna, Naropa, Maitripa, These are really good sources. They are fantastic.
Padmasambhava, Jowo Atisha, and others.
Masters subsequent to Maitreya recognized that it is
It is common to hear of Buddhists taking refuge in quite difficult to find someone with all ten qualities, and
the Three Jewels. But Tibetan Buddhists also take singled out a set of five key qualities among those ten.
refuge in the guru. Is the guru equated with that of Pabongka Rinpoche goes on to speak of three qualities
Śakyamuni Buddha? that are the very minimum: to have more qualities than
faults, to emphasize future lives over this one, and to
That’s true, and you can see from my answers above care more for others than him or herself.
that in some real sense the guru is indeed seen as
Buddha Śakyamuni, simply in the guise of an ordinary I want to mention here that there is some very practical
being. Did you know that when the British first came advice, very relevant to these questions, to be found in
across what we have come to think of as Tibetan the teaching on the Four Reliances. Particularly relevant
Buddhism, they had no idea that it was Buddhism, even, here are the first two: 1) don’t rely on the person, rely
and referred to it as Lamaism! Clearly the guru is very on the dharma, which means don’t get carried away by
central for Tibetan Buddhists. Though it is perhaps the person’s fancy name and titles, the fact that they
more precise and to the point if we say it is a huge thing teach from a high throne in splendid robes. You may
in the Nalanda tradition. That is to say, it is a Tibetan think that having the title Geshe or Lama guarantees
tradition derived from the earlier Indian traditions. Just all the spiritual qualities and knowledge that are
like in all the various traditions of Buddhism, in Tibetan needed. I’m afraid this is just not so. What is important
Buddhism we only have three jewels of refuge. All is what they teach. 2) Don’t rely on the words, rely on
objects of refuge are included in those three. the meaning. This means that flowery language and
impressive jargon and so forth are not the point. The
One very important point is that Vajradhara---the form real point is the substance of what they say. You may
taken by Buddha Śakyamuni to teach the Vajrayāna --- really enjoy listening to someone who seems to have a
said that in the future he would appear again in the world bit of charisma, tells lots of funny jokes, but if you ask
in the form of spiritual masters. Thus, we cannot say yourself at the end of the talk what you got out of it that