Lama Zopa Rinpoche

A key element of guru devotion practice is the understanding that the guru shows the aspect
of having faults while actually having none. The guru has no delusions, no obscurations, but
he shows that aspect for us sentient beings. Ordinary bodhisattvas are able to see a buddha’s
nirmanakaya aspect; higher bodhisattvas can see the sambhogakaya aspect, but for us
ordinary sentient beings, whose minds are so unenlightened, so obscured, so thick skulled, a
buddha must show the ordinary aspect, which has faults. It is unbelievably important that
they show us this ordinary aspect.
We have to bring this understanding—being without mistakes but showing mistakes—into
our guru devotion practice. We have to use that phrase, “showing mistakes,” while thinking
that they have no mistakes. If we say they have mistakes then they are not buddhas, they are
ordinary beings. Then the whole thing changes.
Seeing apparent mistakes in the guru need not become the cause for us to lose our devotion
but instead it can become the cause to develop it, to make our devotion stronger. I would
also suggest when problems arise that you use the nine thoughts on guru devotion called
Practicing Guru Devotion with the Nine Attitudes by the great Nyingma lama, Shabkar Tsogdruk
Rangdrol. 46 He was non-sectarian and taught lam-rim on the basis of Lama Atisha’s teaching,
Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment, which explains the graduated paths of the lower capable
being, the middle capable being and the higher capable being. Lama Tsongkhapa explained
the nine attitudes but Lama Shabkar made them into verses.
We have put it into the new FPMT prayer book in the Guru Puja lam-rim section. First there
is the verse on guru devotion, correctly following the guru, then the prayer Practicing Guru
Devotion with the Nine Attitudes. I have translated it so it can be recited during the Guru
Puja.
When you have a negative thought in relation to the guru, one solution is to recite that
prayer. If you do so, it cuts that negative thought off immediately, clearing it away just like a
horrible black fog that fills whole sky suddenly dispersing.
The need to renounce Dolgyal practice
Kyabje Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo practiced Most Secret Hayagriva, the Circle of Dharma,
from the pure appearance of the Fifth Dalai Lama and many other things. One day he made
a prediction to his attendant that the next day a fat monk would come to see him. He told
the attendant, “Don’t allow him into my room.”
But, as I mentioned, the karma of us present-day sentient beings is to deal with this problem,
to get involved with the Dolgyal problem. So the next day, when the fat monk arrived, the
attendant forgot Pabongka’s instruction and admitted him. I think he spent quite a long time
in the room and when the attendant entered after the fat monk had left it seemed that
Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo’s aspect was not well, like something had entered, had occupied
him. Pabongka seemed changed and the thangkas of Most Secret Hayagriva, the deity he had
practiced before, which were hanging behind him, had been taken down. So this is the start.
If we understand the beginning, this is what happened. Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo was a
great bodhisattva and a great tantric practitioner, a great yogi, Heruka. Because of that, his
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