[From a teaching by Bardor Tulku Rinpoche on the Seven-Line Supplication to Guru Rinpoche based on Mipham’s commentary, White Lotus. Translated by Lama Yeshe Gyamtso. Transcribed by Linda Lee. Edited by Basia Coulter. All right reserved. Please do not reprint without permission.]

Whether you are studying the biography of the Buddha or a guru, or an aspect of Buddhist history, whether you are listening to teachings on the principles of Dharma or practical instruction in the techniques of Dharma practice, the single most important thing in any of these cases is that it be of real use to you.

For example, if you receive detailed instruction in an elaborate ritual practice, what is most important is that you understand the point of the practice and that you thereby become able to do it in a useful and practical way. If you study a guru sadhana practice, it is especially important that you understand not only how to practice it, but the point of doing so. And this is equally true of any instruction, in any aspect of either the generation stage or the completion stage. If having received instruction, you get the point, then there has been real value in your hearing it. The problem is that sometimes we miss the point and we develop a narrow understanding whereby we think that the particular practice we are doing does not contain the essence of any other practice. And we feel that whatever choice we make in terms of practice, we are going to be missing something else. And this misunderstanding comes from not having understood the basic point.

In his commentary White Lotus, Mipham talks at length about the outer Guru Rinpoche, the inner Guru Rinpoche, and the secret Guru Rinpoche. And I think it is important to reduce all of the information contained in the text to a practical understanding of these three.

Through ignorance, we are already immersed in in samsara. It is too late to prevent that from happening; it has happened. Whether we believe in this or not, because we are in samsara, we are dualistic; we think in terms of self and other. All our interactions with others in the world are based upon dualism and this dualism is, in fact, the greatest impediment to our realization of the true nature of things. We cannot simply hope that it is going to go away or pretend that it is not there. So to begin with, we have to practice in a way that temporarily accommodates our dualism. And this is why meditation on the outer Guru Rinpoche is so useful and so powerful. It is actually the best way for us to pacify our dualism.

When we approach the idea of the sources of refuge or Guru Rinpoche, we very much feel that they are different from us. We think that we are afflicted, dirty, and inferior, whereas the sources of refuge are perfect. In that context it is valuable to think of Guru Rinpoche in an external sense, as an external source of refuge. And therefore, in the context of our dualism, there is great value in devotion to Guru Rinpoche based on an understanding of his life, qualities, and deeds as explained in this text by Mipham.

But when we focus on Guru Rinpoche as a particular being whose deeds we study, we should not think that meditating on Guru Rinpoche is only meditating on Guru Rinpoche. Sometimes, because of our dualism, we think in terms of either/or: “Either I am meditating on Guru Rinpoche or I am not. If I am meditating on Guru Rinpoche, then I am only meditating on Guru Rinpoche. And if I am not meditating on Guru Rinpoche, then it has nothing to do with Guru Rinpoche.” So we have the attitude that if we do a Guru Rinpoche practice, that is meditating on Guru Rinpoche; if we do not do a Guru Rinpoche practice, the we cannot be praying to Guru Rinpoche. If we do a Guru Rinpoche, it is only Guru Rinpoche that we are praying to. And we develop this sense of conflict. But it does not actually work that way.

In each of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism—Geluk, Sakya, Nyingma, and Kagyu—and within each branch of each of them, there are distinct practices of guru yoga and guru sadhana. But they are all all‑encompassing. For example, if you are a follower of the Gyalwang Karmapa, you might want to practice the guru yoga of the Gyalwang Karmapa. But you should not think that when you meditate on the Gyalwang Karmapa as your guru, this is only about the Gyalwang Karmapa and has nothing whatsoever to do with Guru Rinpoche or any other guru. If you are a follower of the Gyalwang Karmapa, and your greatest faith is in the Gyalwang Karmapa, then you would perform a guru yoga focused primarily on the Gyalwang Karmapa, but within that primary focus, you should also remember that all other buddhas and bodhisattvas are automatically included (Guru Rinpoche as well). It is not the case that by performing guru yoga focused on the Gyalwang Karmapa, you have dropped Guru Rinpoche or turned away from Guru Rinpoche because, as is said, “All buddhas are one in the expanse of wisdom.” Therefore, if you practice the guru yoga of the Gyalwang Karmapa thinking, “This Gyalwang Karmapa is the embodiment of all buddhas,” it automatically includes all buddhas. On the other hand, if you are a follower of the Gyalwang Karmapa, but have tremendous faith in Guru Rinpoche, then you could do a guru yoga practice focused on Guru Rinpoche. By doing so, you should not think that you are dropping the Gyalwang Karmapa because when you do the Guru Rinpoche practice, you think he is the embodiment of all buddhas, therefore, encompasses the Gyalwang Karmapa. Practicing it in that way you will receive the greatest blessing and be free from partiality or dualistic contradictions.

So whatever particular practice you do, whatever type of guru yoga you practice, whether it is of the Geluk tradition, Sakya tradition, Nyingma tradition, or Kagyu tradition; and among the Nyingma traditions, whatever terma system you practice, understand that what you are practicing is never exclusive. It is never limited to the particular guru or particular deity who is overtly depicted in the iconography of that practice.

It is never wrong to do a particular practice because they are all all‑encompassing. It is never contradictory to do any one practice. By doing one practice, you are not turning against or dropping other practices. If you understand the point of the practice correctly, it is never missing anything; it is never incomplete, because each and every one practice is complete. For example, in some guru yogas there is a prayer, “I pray to the precious guru: Grant your blessing that my self fixation is eradicated or pacified, that I be free from neediness, that non‑Dharmic thoughts cease, that I realize that unborn mind itself,” and so forth. If you think about the meaning of such prayers, it is flawless. There is nothing missing from them, there is nothing wrong with them, they are worthy of rejoicing. Nevertheless, some people could practice such a prayer and achieve the opposite. As they pray, “Grant your blessing that my self‑fixation be pacified,” and they accumulate this prayer hundreds and thousands of times, their self‑fixation could be growing and growing continuously. As they pray, “Grant your blessing that I be free from neediness,” their neediness (attachment) could be growing and growing all the time. Even as they pray, “Grant your blessing that non‑Dharmic thoughts cease,” their non‑Dharmic thoughts could be multiplying. Then as they pray, “Grant your blessing that my delusion be pacified in its own place,” their delusion could be getting more and more reinforced. And as they pray, “Grant your blessing that I realize the nature of my unborn mind,” they could be so far from such a realization, that it would seems merely like a historical event that somebody at some point realized it. This is a case of medical treatment not working. Dharma is like medicine. If you take medicine, you should get better. If the more medicine you take the worse you get, then the medicine is not working. But in it is not the fault of the medicine or Dharma. It is not that there is something wrong with that prayer or something wrong with the Dharma we practice. It is that we, as individual practitioners, are the only people who have the power to make our practice work. We are the only people, as individuals, who can focus our minds, our practice, on what is important, and thereby make it actually work. Therefore you have to be sincere when you pray. And if you visualize, for example, Guru Rinpoche with his retinue and you sincerely pray to them, “Please grant your blessings of body, speech, and mind. Please pacify my kleshas. Please bring me to liberation,” and if you really mean it, it will really happen. But you really have to mean it. Therefore, there is great value in understanding the external form of Guru Rinpoche as explained in this text by Mipham, particularly as a way to overcome dualism.

Sometimes, because we have difficulty relating to a supplication or prayer in guru yoga, we become frustrated and we feel that the practice is not working, that things are getting worse. We become angry at ourselves, frustrated with the practice, and we may even regret doing it. In such instances, it is helpful to turn from the outer Guru Rinpoche to the inner Guru Rinpoche. There is an inner reason for Guru Rinpoche’s name, Lotus Born or Padmakara. Padma literally refers to a lotus flower. And as we observe in the natural world, lotus flowers tend to grow in very muddy, somewhat stinky swamps. But the beauty and purity of the flower, when it blooms, is completely unstained by the swamp from which it emerged. There is an inner meaning to this. The nature of our mind—that which we are attempting to recognize—is exactly like a lotus flower in that regard. No matter how swampy, no matter how dirty you may feel you have become, your nature—the inner Padmakara, the inner Guru Rinpoche—is always pure, always colorful, and always beautiful. This is what we really are. This is our true nature. This is what we seek to recognize. This is what we call absolute bodhichitta.

When teaching Dharma we [teachers] say [to students], “Your nature is perfectly pure. There is this perfectly pure nature within you.” We are not telling you a lie in order to encourage you. What we say is true. Each and every being of the six states, regardless of how swampy or filthy they may have temporarily become, has this same nature. And what we are trying to do is to get this metaphorical lotus to bloom. We are not going to be able to reveal it by getting angry. Getting angry is just spinning the wheels. It is not conducive to the blooming of this inner flower. Rather, consider how to cultivate relative and absolute bodhichitta, for example, as taught in the Thirty-Seven Practices of the Bodhisattvas. Resentment of our circumstances is not going to help us get better. If someone becomes angry with a physician, when the physician informs them that they have an illness, that is not conducive to their healing. And as far as anger toward others goes, if you see that others appear to be more and more afflicted, more and more fixated, more and more egotistical, even as they are accumulating prayers for the opposite, do not get angry at them. Feel compassion. And it has to be genuine compassion, not the kind of trumped‑up compassion that is merely what you tell yourself you should feel. Feel genuine compassion for them and understand the need to make an aspiration that they become free of what ever it is you perceive afflicts them and that you not engage in the same problem. Make the aspiration that you and all others generate relative bodhichitta and discover absolute bodhichitta. If you have that sincere aspiration, then you will be able to realize the inner Padmakara or inner Guru Rinpoche because it is always there within you, waiting to be realized.

The Buddha said, “Do not be abusive in response to abuse. Do not be violent in response to violence. Do not push other’s buttons in response to their pushing yours.” These are the rules for those who seek liberation.” It is really up to us whether we remain in samsara or not. We are not going, however, to get out of samsara by giving in to every temptation and every klesha, such as responding aggressively to the aggression of others. No one else can actually keep us in samsara. For each of you, the only person who has control over whether we stay in samsara or not, is yourself as an individual. So it is up to us. Each and every one of us already possesses absolute bodhichitta, the inner Padmakara. Like a lotus, our nature is stainless regardless of the obscurations that conceal it. And it is called akara or source or origin because that nature is the source or origin for the qualities of all buddhas. So our true nature is already Padmakara. Remember at all times that the inner Guru Rinpoche or inner Padmakara is within you. You are never without it. You are never separate from it. Therefore, you have good reason to sincerely try to reduce our kleshas and increase our qualities.

If you study the lives and teachings of all buddhas and bodhisattvas of the past, none of them had achieved what they achieved without learning to restrain their kleshas and increase their qualities. And none of them have taught that you can achieve awakening without this process. We need to be willing to change our minds and to develop love, compassion, and bodhichitta. And if we do develop these, then we will naturally and spontaneously be useful and beneficial to those around us because of our attitudes of mind and how we express them in our actions of body and speech.

When Jetsün Milarepa was advising his disciple, Lord Gampopa, he said to him, “Even when your view becomes as vast as space, still behave in accordance with human custom. And even though you may have achieved the final result, still assiduously accumulate merit even in the smallest things.” This means that regardless of one’s level, even if someone has actually reached the state of great no-meditation—the citadel of dharmakaya—according to the teachings of our tradition, they still need to pay attention to human customs, look at how people behave [in a good way] in the human world and behave in a good way accordingly. We find this taught consistently by all of our forbearers such as lords Marpa, Milarepa, and Gampopa in their realization songs and other teachings.

I attended the 16th Gwalwang Karmapa for sixteen years. Of course, it is very easy for us to say that the Gwalwang Karmapa is the embodiment of all buddhas of the three times and so on. But to actually be in his presence and experience the way he lived is very, very significant. In spite of the fact that the Gyalwang Karmapa is someone who achieved buddhahood countless eons ago, appearing among us as a human being, he still practiced every day. His Holiness the 16th Karmapa would, during the years that I attended him, begin his daily practice recitations—his “personal liturgy” if you will—as soon as he awoke in the morning and would recite it whenever he had a break from the sometimes endless stream of visitors who would come to see him throughout the day. And in spite of how busy he was, no matter how many people came to see him, even if it took him into the middle of the night to finish it, I never saw him not finish his recitation book every day. During the last two or three days of his life, I was attending him. And during those days, he had become so weak physically, as he was dying, that he could not even hold up his chant book. So I (in those days I had two hands that I could use)* would hold up the book with one hand and then turn the pages with the other. And sometimes if I turned it too soon and he had not quite finished it, I would have to turn it back. He went through the whole book every day, even when he was dying. On the last day of his life, he had me open the book, he chanted the first page, and then he told me to wrap it back up and he placed it on his head. So, if somebody who long ago achieved awakening, who is an undisputed nirmanakaya of all buddhas of the three times, lives like that, then what must we do?

Since I was brought up by the 16th Gyalwang Karmapa and because he was the greatest influence on me, the way he lived is the standard that I look to. This is simply what I am used to. I know nowadays there are many lamas who do no formal practice at all and are proud of the fact that they do not chant anything and are never seen to open a book. I have no disrespect for them, although, what they are doing does not really fit into my mind. There is no reason to get angry at such people, at their proud declaration that they are beyond practice. It is important to have a good attitude toward people even if they are doing something that we cannot understand. But because of the influence of the 16th Gyalwang Karmapa, I practice every day. I start my recitations in the morning, and I go through them all every day, no matter how long it takes me and no matter how busy I am.

When we use a liturgical practice, we are not simply using speech. It is not enough simply to recite the mantra OM MANI PEME HUNG. A parrot can do that. We have to experience something in our minds while we are doing that. The purpose in doing practice every day, including liturgical practice, is to gain familiarity in our mind with the meaning of the practice. So when you practice, there should be an experience in your mind that is recognizable to you. It will help you if you practice in that way and it will enable you to help others. The most important thing is to understand that this is the correct path; to understand that what you are doing is authentic, that what you are doing is how your root guru achieved awakening and how all other buddhas have done so. So even if you feel you have not attained anything extraordinary, if you have the confidence that the way you are practicing is genuine and authentic, that it is unmistaken, that is the most important thing. That is what will bring the greatest benefit. And regardless of what tradition a practitioner comes from, if they have that, then I think they have the most important thing.

*[Editor’s note: Since his stroke in 2010, the mobility of Bardor Tulku Rinpoche’s right hand has been compromised.]

To be continued.