Demanda del agua

For 2,500 years Buddhists have considered with awe the achievement of Siddhartha Gautama. What induces such tremendous respect in them is not just that he gained Enlightenment, but that he did so without a teacher. (He learned meditation from Arada Kalama and Udraka Rama- putra, but neither of them could show him the way to escape from suffering - that he had to discover unaided.) Contemplating the diffi- culties that the Buddha had to overcome has given Buddhism a very great appreciation of the value of a spiritual teacher.

As Buddhism developed, and the three yanas unfolded, the role and significance of the spiritual teacher changed. In the first two yanas the teacher may act as a preceptor, responsible for introducing you to the Buddha way, or as a kalyana mitra - a spiritual friend. T h e kalyana mitra is like an older brother or sister in the Dharma, w h o helps, advises, and encourages.

In the Vajrayana, the teacher transforms into the vajraguru. T h e relation- ship with a Tantric teacher is a samaya, or bond, at least as binding as that between the meditator and the Buddha or Bodhisattva that he or she visualizes. In Tantra it is said that all blessings spring from the guru. T h e relationship is more like that of a doctor with a patient w h o desperately wants a cure and has total belief in the doctor's method.

The guru is a vajraguru partly because everything in the Tantra is vajra - everything is seen as an expression of the ineffable Reality of which the vajra is the chief Tantric symbol. T h e vajra prefix implies that the guru

A Guide to the Deities of the Tantra

embodies Reality. He may formally teach the Dharma or he may not. However, just what he is expresses Reality. His being and mode of living are themselves a teaching. For his disciple, the communication of the Tantric guru may come as a thunderbolt. T h e vajraguru is spiritually ruthless. He is the teacher w h o will stop at nothing to awaken his disciple from the slumber of samsara. There are many stories in the Tantra, as in Zen, of gurus using drastic methods to get through to their disciples. For the Tantric disciple, the guru's kindness can never be repaid. T h r o u g h initiation the guru bestows practices which can propel the stu- dent rapidly to Buddhahood. T h e guru is the source, the fountainhead, of all his or her development. In fact, for the Tantra, particularly Highest Tantra, the guru is a Buddha.

Ideally the guru should be Enlightened. Tantric initiation partly symbol- izes the empowering of a far-advanced Bodhisattva with the full qualities of an Awakened O n e . Most gurus fall a long way short of full Enlighten- ment. Nonetheless, the Tantra is concerned with finding correlates in actual experience for the highest values of the spiritual path. As we saw in Chapter O n e , it says, in effect, 'If you are not in direct contact with a Buddha, w h o in your present experience comes closest to that level?' T h e answer is, of course, your guru. So the guru becomes what is called the 'esoteric' Buddha Refuge. It is esoteric not in the sense of secret, but because it is not an experience that everyone can share. It is only if you enter into a close, devoted relationship with a teacher that he begins to function as a Buddha Refuge for you.

It is also esoteric in the sense that it depends on an inner mental effort to see the guru in this way. Having received Tantric initiation from a teacher, the initiate is urged to make every effort to see the teacher as a fully Enlightened Buddha. He or she must disregard any apparent faults they may perceive in him or, rather, should attribute them to the im- purity of their own mind.25

T h e Tantra holds firmly to the view that mind is king. If you see the guru as an ordinary person, you will receive the blessing of an ordinary person. If you see him as a Buddha, for you he will act as a Buddha, and your rela- tionship with him will lead you quickly to Enlightenment.

The Esoteric Buddha and the Lotus-Born Guru

Each school of Tibetan Buddhism has certain teachers w h o m it particu- larly reveres as the founders of its school, or for starting a particular lineage of teaching or initiation. Although they are historical figures, over the course of time they have taken on an archetypal significance. These teachers are frequently visualized, either during the practice of Guru Yoga or as part of the Refuge assemblies that we shall be looking at in Chapter Eight.

We shall now look briefly at a few of the most important of these gurus. (As usual, the number of figures one could describe is enormous.) We are going to begin by returning to the earliest sources of Tibetan Buddhism, to meet a figure w h o perhaps established an image of the vajraguru in the Tibetan mind, an image that helped to condition their understanding of the role of the Tantric guru in general. This is Padma- sambhava ('lotus-born one'), known generally in Tibet as G u r u Rimpoche ('precious guru'), and regarded as the founder of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. We shall take him as an example of a vajraguru, describe some of his many forms, and say a little about how he can be meditated upon. This should convey something of the immense richness of symbolism and association surrounding these guru figures, built up over centuries of devotion. Padmasambhava is a particu- larly complex 'spiritual personality', but in principle I could have taken almost any of the other gurus described in this chapter as examples of the multifaceted nature of the guru in the Vajrayana.