April 11, 2024
Text: Jikten Sumgön, The Great Drikung Teachings to the Assembly

Practice (Not recorded)

Teaching
The Principle and Method of Relating to the Guru
Think of the Guru first as a principle. This is not an abstract or distant principle, but the principle of the awakened state that is real and accessible to us right now. The two aspects of this principle are that it is awake (free from confusion), and it is able to guide others.

6:25 In the Secret Mantra path, the reason for samsaric appearances is ignorance/confusion in seeing beings as ordinary/mundane when in fact they are buddhas, seeing our environment/reality as mundane, and seeing ourselves as mundane. To overcome this, we have to develop pure vision that sees the pristine nature of all people, things, and phenomena.

10:10 Just as in metta meditation we start with someone who has been kind to us, in pure perception we choose someone to relate to. The choice that makes sense is our source of Dharma, our Guru. This person is our reference point to what an awakened being could be like, and an expression of the pristine buddha state.

21:30 Now the Guru principle has become the person and method we relate to as the Guru. This person should point us to the third type of Guru, which is all appearances and all experiences as Guru. This leads to the point that our own nature is Guru: our ability to see, trust, and actualize our own mind as Guru. When we are able to do that, all beings are buddhas.

25:50 Finding and relating to persons as our Gurus, including Buddha Shakyamuni and Jikten Sumgon.

From the Sixth Teaching
30:26 (p.77) It is important to understand how relinquishing the ten non-virtues and cultivating the ten virtues directly relates to our ability to steady the heart and stabilize the mind. Without steadying the heart, wisdom cannot be cultivated.

The Ten Wholesome Deeds and the Generation Stage
Cultivating the ten virtues frees the mind from regret, and stability in the generation stage will be achieved. In this state of buddha, the four buddha activities (pacifying, increasing, magnetizing, and destroying) will be accomplished.

40:22 We are primordially buddha, so the generation stage is not about pretending or imagining ourselves to be buddha. We are working on actualizing the fact that we are buddha.

50:55 The method of generation stage works only if we have material to work with. The material we need to have, before we do profound practices such as generation stage, is a conscience free from regret. Then, visualizing ourselves as deity becomes very effective, and steadying ourselves in the pride of the deity is easy. At that point, the four activities come easily and naturally.

[Notes by Mei Mah]