Mar 22

Kalu Rinpoche | Preliminary Ngöndro or Guru Yoga (Part 1)

Q: Which one is better? Doing preliminary Ngöndro several times, or just do a single, or do a Guru Yoga?

A: Okay, first of all, I will explain the meaning of the Guru Yoga, okay?

Many people when they think about the Guru Yoga, they think something to do with the worshipping the guru only. Blind faith. So the blind faith is not the terms, or neither the method that we use as a Buddhist practitioner. That’s the very, the reason of the birth and the attraction about the Buddhism is not about blind faith.

You don’t have to be academic about it, but in order to understand the meaning of the pure devotion, the pure devotion has nothing to do with tears and crying and being emotionally unstable, I mean I did that many times, you can do that many times, if you like to feel that way, why not. You read some biography, makes you feel very emotionally moved, like an example, the history of the 100,000 songs of Milarepa, it’s a very beautifully written and I read several times. And then, like an example Khyungpo Naljor’s biography has an incredible stories, the way they dedicate themselves to the Dharma, the amount of hardships they had to endure to bring the Dharma to Tibet, and that slowly spread to Mongolia, China, and India throughout the time, and nowadays we are practicing around the world, right?

So, but going back to the meaning of devotion, the meaning of the devotion is developing a sense of clarity in mind. Meaning of the devotion means having a clarity in mind. Okay? It does not mean prayer. True meaning of devotion, means a clarity. Why the clarity is devotion? Or the devotion is clarity? Is because the very reason that we are praying with the devotion is to be awakened from the cycle of illusion.

Otherwise why we are making a prayer to the Buddha? We’re becoming a Buddhist practitioner to break the cycle of suffering. The existence of the suffering and the cycle of suffering is because we believe in oneself, in terms of identity, and object and materials, whether it’s external or internal, and we become fixated and we have an imagination, we have an illusion, so on and on.

So when you have the cycle of illusion, and then the cycle of suffering exists. Without the cycle of illusion, there’s no cycle of suffering. Without the cycle of suffering, there’s no unhappiness, or lack of content, and all the search for Buddhism, and so on.

So the meaning of the devotion, the true meaning of devotion means having a sense of clarity in mind and genuine appreciation to the Buddhadharma’s teaching. And the genuine appreciation to the Buddhadharma’s teaching comes down to how much you understand the meaning of suffering. If you don’t understand the meaning of suffering, doesn’t mean you have to suffer yourself, doesn’t mean that you have to suffer yourself in order to understand the Dharma, it’s just in general, observe, observation, observing the reality of the suffering, and the cause of the suffering, the cycle of life, the impermanence of life, the preciousness of life, understanding these few things.

And you don’t have to be, cry and sad about it. Just examine the reality of the suffering. The more you examine the reality of suffering, appreciation to the Dharma increases by itself. As the appreciation increases by itself, motivation increases by itself, practicing and commitment of the, willingness to practice Dharma, that increases by itself. As that increases by itself, then the genuine sense of pure bliss and experience, and understanding “all the Buddhas and bodhisattvas, and my state of consciousness, in that state we are all equal” and with a sense of bliss and with a sense of clarity, wisdom and understanding, all combined together, and that is the meaning of devotion. You know?

So making a prayer is just a symbolic. The true meaning of devotion, absent of illusion is devotion. Okay?

 

Kalu Rinpoche
FB Livestream – 7 February 2022 (15’30”)

To be continued …