It is said to be a fast path because by traveling it, a student can achieve very quickly what otherwise may take a very long time, many lifetimes. On the other hand, it is said to be potentially dangerous, because unless the path is travelled just so, it is very easy to go astray and get nowhere or worse, to actually do harm to oneself. Both the speed and the safety of the vajrayana path depend entirely on one thing, and that is the relationship and bond between the teacher and the student. While many Buddhist paths do not require a teacher, the vajrayana path not only requires one, but the entire success of the path depends on the quality of the teacher and the trust in that teacher (bond) by the student.
In other words, vajrayana Buddhist teachings are meant to be practiced under the close supervision of a teacher. This tradition goes back many, many hundreds of years, and the question that comes up often is: what can I do if I am in a remote place and don’t have access to a qualified teacher? Or: what if I cannot find a suitable teacher?
A teacher, guide, guru, or vajra master serves to lend a hand while we attempt to stabilize our practice. The whole concept of vajrayana Buddhism (as distinct from other forms of Buddhism) is that it is a way to speed up your progress by having someone who already knows the way (and in whom you trust completely) guide you across what can otherwise be a very, very long and difficult journey to awareness.
The connection between student and master cannot be one of mistrust or even shakiness, because the essential part of the process is the complete trust on your part in the teacher to tell you correctly when you are, due to your own obscurations, getting it wrong and going off course. Otherwise your guess, as Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche used to say, is as good as mine. The teacher takes the guesswork out of it, but the success of it depends on our confidence in and devotion to the teacher to guide us correctly.
Since, as students, we don’t know what the true nature of the mind is (which is the path to enlightenment) and have not yet experienced it for ourselves, we can only guess and hypothesize. That kind of guesswork gets tough on the self confidence from time to time and that is why the guru is there: to provide stability and affirmation. Trust in and devotion to the vajra master can supplement a lack of assurance on our part and guide us across areas of practice where we otherwise might slow down to a crawl or come to a complete stop. A real teacher also inspires us to continue on until we achieve the results we are after and certifies that we have done so. Vajrayana Buddhism is not for everyone; there are many other paths that do not require having a teacher in the sense described above..
While there is no permanent substitute for a vajra master in vajrayana Buddhism and the samaya (bond) that is involved in that relationship, there is one temporary alternative that is worth considering, and it is available to almost anyone, and that is: Nature herself.
A prerequisite for almost all vajryana training is a deep familiarity with the “Four Thoughts That Turn the Mind to the Dharma,” the four thoughts being:
(1) The preciousness of a human life.
(2) Impermanence.
(3) Understanding Karma – cause and effect.
(4) Recognizing the undependability of Samsara.
These four thoughts (which are known as the Common Preliminaries) have long been considered essential to know and keep in mind for any serious dharma practice, and are especially recommended for those beginning the Mahamudra practices. Of course, you can read and study the four thoughts and do your best to keep them ever in mind. However, that is not always all that easy. We tend to be easily distracted by the daily goings on in our life. Waking up from a distraction can take moments, hours, days, or even years.
Observing nature up close is an easier way for many of us to be reminded of the four thoughts, in particular the first three thoughts, and all you need to do is get out there in the woods or fields and observe. In nature, the preciousness of life and impermanence are everywhere apparent, and you don’t even have to walk far.
Just sit quietly in a field or woods and wait. No need to trek all over; almost any place will do. Just sit and observe. Before long you will notice the life going on all around you. And nature does not pull her punches or sanitize the process of life and death. It is all laid out right before your eyes to see.
A good magnifying glass can be a help, as much to further slow you down as to enlarge things. You will soon find that there are a wide variety of insects, spiders, amphibians, and sentient life all around you, not to mention flowers and plants. And they all are eating and being eaten, being born and dying, fearlessly attacking other creatures, and at the same time struggling to escape being eaten themselves. It is all right there, and it is sobering. There is nothing like a whiff of impermanence to wake you up to the benefits of the dharma.
It is so easy to get distracted in the day-to-day hustle and bustle of modern life. We are swept away daily in a sea of distractions and it can be difficult to remember to remind ourselves of the Four Thoughts, much less manage to keep them in mind. Usually it takes a serious event in our lives, like the death of a friend or family member to awaken us from our distractions, and give us pause for thought about Dharma. Thankfully, for most of us, those kinds of events are rare.
However, an hour spent alone in nature can not only be refreshing in itself but, more important, it can bring home to us clearly how things really are. There is nothing quite like seeing a beautiful butterfly suddenly caught and eaten by a praying mantis or other predator right before our eyes. It is all right there, the surprise, the struggle, the dying – the whole thing.
Or walking along a hardtop roadway and seeing thousands of worms and slugs trying to cross the pavement as the Sun rises into view. No way they are going to make it and some are even crawling in the same direction as the roadway! Sad, and there is nothing you can do about it either. There is a very clear message here.
What happens on the small scale, in these mini worlds, also happens in our own world, and a quick trip to nature can help to remind us of how the world actually works and puncture some of our imaginary balloons. I don’t know who it was who said that most of us walk around as if we were immortal, with no thought to impermanence, but it is so true. Many of us have our lives set up so as to carefully avoid being reminded of our own mortality.
It can be hard to find a perfect teacher to work with, and yet that is what we each have to find to practice vajrayana Buddhism. Finding a teacher that does not fit you just won’t work out. However, Nature is always a perfect teacher and a good substitute until the human version comes along. You can’t get it all from books and you need the interaction that comes with a teacher. You can interact with Nature, and she is unerring in her lessons and more than good enough until the real thing comes along.
- The Dragon and the Four Pearls
- Dragon_redoutline.jpg (71 KiB) Viewed 211 times
P.S.
I was first introduced to the concept of the “Four Thoughts That Turn the Mind” and how important it is to keep them constantly in mind by the Ven. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. I had the good fortune to spend a few days in his presence in 1974, to act as his chauffeur, and to design a poster for a talk he gave in my home town of Ann Arbor, Michigan. The main image I chose for his poster was a flying dragon with four pearls, one pearl held in each claw:
When Trungpa Rinpoche saw the poster, he walked over to it and, turning to me, said: do you know the story behind this dragon? I sheepishly acknowledged that I had no idea of what it represented, and that I just liked the image.
He then went on to explain that as long as the dragon held on to the four pearls, one in each hand, it could fly. But if it dropped even one of them, it would fall to the ground. As I understood it, he was talking about the “Four Thoughts That Turn the Mind,” and the importance in dharma practice to somehow manage to hold all four of these thoughts in mind at the same time. If we could do that, we would progress in our practice. If we could not, we would sink. Nature is a very convenient and sure way to be reminded of these four thoughts.
