Buddhist-Meditation-Systematic-and-Practical

merry! All this comes from skipping over the
preliminary practices wanting to get a dakini too quickly.
It is very dangerous.
C. Common and Special Preparations for Tantric
Practice
1. Common Preparations
The guru is a very important condition, and first it is
necessary to have one. Vajrayana is not like the
Hinayana and Mahayana, where the Dharma is more
important than the teacher (although in these yanas also,
personal instruction has a very high place; see Appendix
I, Part Two, C, 12). In esoteric Buddhism, one relies on
a guru, not only upon Dharma—the guru is essential in
the Vajrayana. In the other yanas, one may have a
Buddha-image and, if one does not want the ordinations
of bhiksu (upasampada) or bodhisattva (bodhisattva
samvara sila) one may consider the image as one's guru.
This is impossible in the Vajrayana, where personal
instruction and initiation are required.
There is a poem of fifty stanzas to teach students how to
serve their guru. The rules governing the relationship
between the teacher and pupil are naturally more
significant here than in Hinayana or Mahayana. In
exoteric Buddhism, after obtaining instruction from a
teacher, one may leave, but in the Vajrayana, a student
should never leave his guru without his permission.
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