Chapter 11Guru Yoga

Of all the inner preliminary practices we have explored so far, Guru Yoga stands as the very crown. Everything before it -- taking refuge, generating bodhicitta, purifying through Vajrasattva, offering the mandala -- has been leading toward this single, radiant point: the merging of your mind with the wisdom mind of your teacher. If the earlier practices laid the foundation and built the walls, Guru Yoga is the moment you open the doors and let sunlight flood in. It is the entrance-way for blessings, the ultimate method for awakening realization within you.

Why is Guru Yoga so essential? Because in the Vajrayana path, and especially in the heart-essence teaching of the Great Perfection, the teacher holds a place of unparalleled importance. You might meditate for a hundred thousand kalpas on a deity adorned with all the major and minor marks of perfection, but a single instant of thinking of your teacher with devotion surpasses even that. You might complete a million recitations of approach and accomplishment practices, but a single heartfelt prayer to the teacher outshines them all.

This is not mere poetic exaggeration. Atisa himself said plainly that until you attain enlightenment, you need a teacher. Until you realize the natural state of things, you need to hear instructions. And the happiness you experience along the way is nothing other than the teacher's blessing. So always remember his kindness.

The teaching of the Great Perfection does not establish its profound truth through analysis and logic, as the lower vehicles do. Nor does it rely on attaining common accomplishments first to reach the supreme accomplishment, as in the lower tantras. What is taught in this tradition is to pray with fervent devotion and complete faith to a supremely realized teacher whose lineage stretches back in an unbroken golden chain, to rely on that teacher alone, to consider him a real Buddha. When you do this, your mind merges completely with his. The power of his blessings transfers to you, and realization takes birth.

The great Longchenpa wrote that in practices such as the generation and perfection phases, it is not the nature of those paths alone that brings liberation -- it depends on how you bring them alive as a living experience. But in Guru Yoga, the path by its very nature awakens realization of the natural state and brings liberation. For that reason, Guru Yoga is the most profound of all paths.

Consider the story of Naropa. He was a pandita of towering intellect, guardian of the northern gate of the great university at Vikramasila, having defeated every philosophical challenger. Yet one day a wisdom dakini appeared and told him bluntly that he understood only the words, not their meaning. He still needed a teacher. And so, obeying her, he followed Tilopa through years of extraordinary trials and hardships. One day, after all of that, Tilopa said to him plainly that he still had not understood -- and struck him on the forehead with his sandal. In that single instant, Naropa's mind became one with his teacher's. Everything he had struggled to comprehend through intellect was suddenly, completely realized.

Or consider the old man Pang Mipham Gonpo, who received the teaching on taking the teacher's blessings as the path from the great translator Vairotsana during a time of exile. Mipham Gonpo was eighty years old, his body so stiff with age that Vairotsana had to tie him upright with a meditation band and prop up his head with a support. Yet through the practice of Guru Yoga alone, Mipham Gonpo experienced the realization of primordial purity. His body dissolved into infinitesimal particles and he attained Buddhahood.

You can compare this teaching with any other from all nine vehicles, Patrul Rinpoche tells us, but you will never find a path better or more profound. It may be called a preliminary practice, but in truth it is the ultimate key point of all main practices. This alone, if you always and in every situation make it the heart of your practice, is enough -- even if you practise nothing else.

How to Practise Guru Yoga

The actual practice of Guru Yoga unfolds in three stages: visualizing the field of merit, offering the seven branches, and praying with resolute trust.

Visualizing the Field of Merit

To begin, you transform your entire perception. Everything you can see, as far as your awareness extends, becomes the Palace of Lotus Light, perfect and complete in all its features. You are not merely imagining a picture -- you are shifting the ground of your experience. At the centre of this palace, you visualize yourself as having the nature of the dakini Yeshe Tsogyal, the great consort of Guru Rinpoche. This ensures you are a fit vessel for empowerment, arouses the wisdom of bliss and emptiness, and creates a connection with the guidance she received from her teacher. In form, you appear as Vajrayogini -- red in colour, with one face, two arms, and three eyes. She gazes up longingly toward the teacher's heart, that longing expressing an almost unbearable wish to be with the teacher, the only true source of joy. In her right hand she plays a small skull-drum held aloft, its sound awakening beings from the sleep of ignorance. In her left hand she holds a curved knife at her hip, the blade that cuts the very root of the three poisons. She is naked except for ornaments of bone and garlands of flowers -- visible but insubstantial, like a rainbow shining in the sky.

Suspended in space above your head, about an arrow's length up, rests a many-petalled lotus of jewels in full bloom. Upon it sits a sun disc, and upon that a moon disc. On this throne sits your root teacher, that incomparable treasure of compassion, the embodiment of all Buddhas of past, present, and future, appearing in the form of Guru Rinpoche, the Great Guru of Oddiyana. His complexion is white tinged with red. He has one face, two arms, and two legs, and he is seated in the royal posture wearing a brocade cape, a monk's robe, a long-sleeved blue gown, and his famous lotus hat.

That hat itself carries a beautiful history. Three different hats are associated with Guru Rinpoche. The first was offered to him by the dakinis at the time of his miraculous birth on a lotus in the Lake of Milk. The second, called the Deerskin Hat, was presented when he practised extraordinary activity in the Eight Great Charnel Grounds and transcended all ordinary distinctions of good and bad. The third -- the one we visualize here -- was offered by King Arjadhara of Zahor. The king had tried to burn the Master alive, but discovered his vajra body sitting unharmed in the heart of a miraculous lotus, perfectly cool and fresh. Struck with wonder, faith surged in him, and he offered the Master not only this magnificent hat, but all his possessions, his retinue, and his entire kingdom.

In the Guru's right hand at his heart he holds a golden vajra in the threatening mudra. In his left hand, resting in the gesture of meditation, he holds a skull-cup filled with the nectar of immortality, containing a long-life vase topped with a sprig from the wish-granting tree. In the crook of his left arm, the Master holds his consort Mandarava, queen of dakinis, in hidden form as his khatvanga, the three-pronged trident whose prongs symbolize essential nature, natural expression, and compassion.

All around him, within a luminous rainbow sphere encircled by a lattice of five-coloured lights, you visualize the Eight Vidyadharas of India, the Twenty-five Disciples of Tibet, and the infinite deities of the Three Roots and faithful protectors. They should have such presence that your ordinary thoughts naturally cease.

As you recite the visualization text, imagine that all the deities and the Palace of Lotus Light of the Glorious Copper-Coloured Mountain come in reality and dissolve into whatever you have visualized, becoming one with it -- like water poured into water.

Offering the Seven Branches

The Vajrayana path includes many methods and is without great hardships. It is intended for those with sharp faculties. If we constantly train ourselves to accumulate merit and wisdom, everything that would otherwise take an entire great kalpa to gather through the six paramitas can be accomplished in an instant, and liberation can be attained in a single lifetime. The seven-branch offering includes all the innumerable methods for this accumulation. Its branches are: prostration, offering, confession, rejoicing, exhorting the Buddhas to teach, requesting them not to pass into nirvana, and dedication.

Prostration is the antidote to pride. You visualize emanating hundreds, then thousands, then innumerable bodies of yourself, as numerous as the particles of dust in the universe. All beings, infinite as space, prostrate alongside you. The key is to join body, speech, and mind together in the act. As your body bows, your speech recites the prayer, and your mind holds devotion and total reliance on the teacher. Otherwise you end up looking around, distracted, your hands drifting to one cheek or the other as your attention wanders. Patrul Rinpoche warns that such an outward show of prostrations, with your mind elsewhere while your body lurches up and down by itself, is merely a physical ordeal that serves no purpose.

He is particular about the form: your hands should be cupped together like a lotus bud about to blossom, with a hollow space in the middle. You place them at the crown of your head, then your throat, then your heart, then touch the ground at five points. And you must stand fully upright again each time. The story is told that when Jetsun Milarepa went to see Lama Ngokpa, he did prostrations from a distance. Lama Ngokpa was so delighted that he removed his own head-dress and prostrated in return, saying that the person over there was doing prostrations in the true style of the disciples of Marpa of Lhodrak. When someone follows a teacher, the change should be visible, like cloth being soaked in dye. These days, Patrul Rinpoche laments, some people do one almost-correct prostration and then just bend over twice more. This is an extremely poor way to practise. If the Dharma has taught you anything, it should be evident even in something as simple as a prostration.

Offering involves both physical and mental generosity. Set out as many offerings as your resources permit, with clean and pure materials, free of miserliness or ostentation. Then, more importantly, make a mental offering in the manner of the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra, filling the entire world and all of space with every conceivable offering of the human and celestial realms -- flowers, incense, lamps, perfumed water, palaces, landscapes, pleasure gardens, the seven attributes of royalty, and the eight auspicious symbols. By the power of his meditation, Samantabhadra emanated hundreds of millions of light rays from his heart, and at the end of each ray a form identical to himself appeared, each one offering to the Buddhas in an infinite, ever-expanding progression. You never need to think you have nothing to offer. Whatever beauty you encounter -- flowing water, fields of flowers -- let your first thought be to offer it to the Three Jewels and the lineage teachers.

Confession is the practice of openly acknowledging all your downfalls and harmful deeds with intense shame and regret -- not only those you remember, but all the negative actions accumulated across countless lifetimes. You gather them all together in the form of a black mass on your tongue, then visualize rays of light pouring from the body, speech, and mind of the deities in the field of merit, washing away all defilements, as if dirt were being cleansed completely.

Rejoicing is the antidote to jealousy, and it is remarkably simple and powerful. You sincerely rejoice at all positive actions, whether done by yourself or others, whether in the past, present, or future. There is a beautiful story here. Once King Prasenajit invited the Buddha and his followers to take their daily meal at his palace for four months, offering them everything he had. An old beggar woman passing by was filled with genuine joy at seeing this great act of generosity. Through her sincere and perfect rejoicing, she created boundless merit -- so much that when the Buddha came to dedicate the merit that evening, he dedicated it in her name, not the king's. This happened three days running. The king's ministers, exasperated, devised a scheme: they spilled food around the offering pots, and when the beggar woman came to gather it, they had her beaten. She became angry, destroying her source of merit, and that day the Buddha could dedicate in the king's name once more. The lesson is clear: intention alone determines whether actions are positive or negative, and the simple act of wholeheartedly rejoicing in another's goodness can generate merit equal to theirs.

Exhorting the Buddhas to turn the Wheel of Dharma means imagining yourself in the presence of all those able to teach, emanating hundreds and thousands of forms, offering wheels and jewels, and entreating them to teach the Dharma of the three vehicles -- the Sravakas, the Pratyekabuddhas, and the Bodhisattvas -- further divided into the nine vehicles that provide teachings suitable for every kind of being.

Requesting the Buddhas not to pass into nirvana means addressing your entreaty to the teachers and Buddhas who have completed their work for others and now wish to enter nirvana, begging them to stay with us and continue working for the good of beings until samsara itself is emptied.

Dedication is what seals everything. Following the example of Manjushri, you dedicate to all beings whatever merit has been, is being, and will be acquired by yourself and others. Without dedication, any source of merit bears fruit only once and is then exhausted. But whatever is dedicated to ultimate enlightenment is never exhausted -- it increases and grows like a drop of water that has fallen into the ocean, which will never disappear until the ocean itself runs dry. Patrul Rinpoche cautions that dedication sullied by clinging to concepts of a doer, a recipient, and a goal is called "poisoned dedication." Even if we cannot yet rest in perfect wisdom, simply thinking that we dedicate the merit in the same way as the Buddhas of the past is enough to purify the dedication.

There is a moving story told here of the inhabitants of Vaisali, who invited the Buddha for a meal. After they left, five hundred hungry ghosts arrived and asked the Buddha to dedicate the merit of that meal to them. They explained that they were the parents of those people, reborn in that wretched form because of their past miserliness. The Buddha agreed, but told them they would have to come in person to receive the dedication. They were ashamed of their ugly bodies, but the Buddha told them their shame was misplaced -- they should have felt shame when doing the wrong deeds, not now. They came, and the people of Vaisali were horrified. The Buddha reassured them and dedicated the merit, and the hungry ghosts died and were reborn in the higher heavens.

Praying with Resolute Trust

With the field of merit vividly present and the seven branches offered, you now turn to the heart of the practice: praying with resolute trust. You reflect on all the qualities of your teacher. His realization is as vast as the sky. His knowledge and love are as limitless as the ocean. His compassion flows as powerfully as a great river. His nature stands as firm as Mount Meru. He is like a father and mother to all beings, his heart going out equally to everyone. He is like a wish-granting jewel -- you need only trust in him and pray to him, and whatever accomplishments you seek will arise without effort.

With tears of devotion, thinking that you rely entirely on the teacher, that all your hopes rest in him, that you pledge yourself to him alone, you recite the prayer for receiving accomplishments and then concentrate on the Vajra Guru mantra as an invocation. After every hundred repetitions, you recite the prayer again. Halfway through your session, you add the deeper invocation prayer with each full round of your mala.

Taking the Four Empowerments

When the time comes for requesting accomplishments, you receive the four empowerments. A white syllable between the Guru's eyebrows, shining like moon-crystal, emanates rays of light that penetrate the crown of your head. This purifies the effects of all harmful physical actions and the obscurations of the channels from which the body develops. You think that the potential to attain the level of the nirmanakaya has been established within you.

Then a red syllable blazing like a ruby in the Guru's throat emanates light that enters your throat, purifying the effects of all harmful verbal actions and the obscurations of the energies from which speech develops. The potential for the sambhogakaya is established.

A deep blue syllable in the Guru's heart emanates light that penetrates your heart, purifying the effects of all harmful mental actions and the obscurations of the essence from which mental processes develop. The potential for the dharmakaya is established.

Then, from the syllable in the teacher's heart, a second syllable streaks down like a shooting star and mixes completely with your mind, purifying all karmic and conceptual obscurations, the ground of all that underlies body, speech, and mind. The potential to reach the ultimate fruit, the level of the svabhavikakaya, is established within you.

Finally, you merge your mind completely with the teacher's mind and rest in that state. At the close of the session, you recite the concluding prayer with devotion and longing. Guru Rinpoche smiles, his eyes filled with compassion. From his heart, a ray of warm red light beams out. The moment it touches you, you are transformed into a small sphere of red light that shoots upward and dissolves into his heart. Rest in that state.

Then, seeing everything that exists as the manifestation of the teacher, you conclude with the dedication.

In daily life, too, the practice continues. When walking, visualize your teacher in the sky above your right shoulder and imagine you are circumambulating him. When sitting, visualize him above your head as the focus of your prayers. When eating and drinking, visualize him inside your throat and offer him the first part of your food and drink. When going to sleep, visualize him in the centre of your heart. Whatever arises -- sickness, obstacles, misfortune -- be glad, recognizing it as the teacher's compassion helping you exhaust past negative karma. Whatever happiness and comfort appear, recognize that too as the teacher's compassion, and do not be proud. During meditation, when discouragement or dullness arise, merge your awareness inseparably with the teacher's mind and rest in the natural state.

The Lineage of the Early Translation Teachings

At this point, Patrul Rinpoche pauses to recount the history of how the teachings came down to us -- not as an academic exercise, but to inspire confidence and faith. There are three lineages of transmission: the mind lineage of the Conquerors, the symbol lineage of the Vidyadharas, and the hearing lineage of ordinary beings.

In the mind lineage, the Buddha Samantabhadra is enlightened from the very beginning. His compassion displays itself as the pure fields of all Buddhas. He teaches without teaching, transmitting all the doctrines without words or symbols, through the natural and effortless clarity of primordial awareness. His disciples realize the meaning of this absolute teaching without any mistake, and their realization becomes one with his.

For those who cannot receive this transmission directly, there are the progressive paths. The Buddha Sakyamuni turned the wheel of Dharma on three levels, teaching the Vinaya as the antidote to attachment, the Sutras as the antidote to hatred, and the Abhidharma as the antidote to bewilderment. Together with the Fourth Pitaka, which subdues all three poisons, these form the causal vehicle of characteristics.

In the symbol lineage of the Vidyadharas, the story unfolds through miraculous events. Twenty-eight years after the Buddha's parinirvana, King Ja found golden volumes of Secret Mantra tantras on the roof of his palace. After six months of practice using these texts and a small statue of Vajrapani as support, he had a vision of Vajrasattva and understood their meaning perfectly.

Meanwhile, in the Heaven of the Thirty-Three, a god named Devaputra Adhicitta received four symbolic dreams -- dreams of light rays from all the Buddhas dissolving into him, of swallowing the three Hindu deities, of the sun and moon appearing in his hands, and of a rain of ambrosia from jewel-coloured clouds. Vajrapani transmitted to him the entire teaching of Atiyoga by means of symbols, in a single instant.

The teaching then descended to the human realm through Garab Dorje, who was born miraculously from a princess in the land of Oddiyana after Vajrapani, in the form of a swan, touched her heart three times with his beak. A radiant syllable melted into her heart, and when the child was born, he emerged bearing the marks of Buddhahood and holding a vajra in his hand.

The great pandita Manjushrimitra, initially coming to defeat Garab Dorje in debate, found instead that he could not overcome the master's teaching. He confessed his disrespect and intended to cut off his own tongue as penance. But Garab Dorje stopped him, telling him that he could never purify his actions by cutting off his tongue. Instead, Garab Dorje instructed him to compose a teaching surpassing those dependent on cause and effect. Manjushrimitra received the complete transmission and attained instantaneous realization merely by seeing a gesture from the master.

From Manjushrimitra the teachings passed to Sri Simha, then to the Second Buddha of Oddiyana -- Padmasambhava -- and to the scholar Jnanasutra, the pandita Vimalamitra, and the great translator Vairotsana.

The hearing lineage began when Padmasambhava and Vimalamitra taught in Tibet. The abbot Santaraksita had been invited by King Trisong Detsen to consecrate the site of a temple, but the local spirits destroyed by night whatever was built during the day. Santaraksita explained that only wrathful methods would work, and that in Bodh Gaya there was a teacher known as the Lotus-Born of Oddiyana who had mastered the five sciences and harnessed the power of the absolute, who crushes demons and makes all spirits tremble. The king sent emissaries with gold, and Guru Rinpoche agreed to come. Along the way he bound all the gods and spirits of Tibet to firm oaths, and the great temple of Samye was built at last.

At Samye, the teachings of the three inner yogas -- Mahayoga, Anuyoga, and Atiyoga -- were transmitted to the twenty-five heart disciples, each receiving whichever teaching was destined for them by their karma. The tantric texts were put into writing on yellow scrolls and hidden as spiritual treasures, to be revealed at the prophesied times by emanations of those accomplished practitioners.

Of the countless treasure-discoverers, the one most central to this lineage is Rigdzin Jigme Lingpa, who was truly the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara come in human form. He received the complete transmission of all three lineages together from Padmasambhava, Vimalamitra, and the omniscient Longchenpa. Patrul Rinpoche's own teacher, Jigme Gyalwai Nyugu, was a principal disciple of Jigme Lingpa, and he used to say that his teacher was truly a perfect Buddha in ordinary human form, and that the golden chain of this lineage was utterly untarnished by any breach of samaya.

The Essential Point

Patrul Rinpoche concludes with an urgent reminder. Some people fail to complete the ten million recitations of the Vajra Guru mantra, thinking these preliminary practices are not very important. Others, filled with excitement after hearing about the main practice, want to rush ahead to the generation and perfection phases without having properly completed the preliminaries. This is, as the proverb goes, sticking your tongue out before the head is cooked. To practise the preliminaries without going all the way through to the end makes no sense. Even if some small signs of warmth appear, they will be unstable, like a building without foundations.

Equally mistaken is the idea of dropping the preliminaries once you start the main practice, as though they were merely a stepping-stone you no longer need. If you give up the preliminaries, you cut off the very root of the Dharma. It is like trying to paint a fresco where there is not even a wall.

Always keep working until genuine conviction arises in the preliminary practices. Concentrate especially on Guru Yoga, the entrance-way for blessings, and make it the very foundation of your practice. This is the essential point. Anyone whose devotion and samaya are completely pure and who completes the path up to Guru Yoga, even without doing the main practice, will be reborn in the Glorious Copper-Coloured Mountain. In that pure Buddhafield they will travel the path of the four Vidyadhara levels with extraordinary swiftness and reach the level of Samantabhadra.

This, then, is the crowning practice of the inner preliminaries -- not merely preliminary, but the very heart of the path itself.