Bodhisattvas appear to us as if they were humans in order to make it possible for us to be in a relationship with them. The mere fact of that relationship will be the unfailing cause of our enlightenment. Traditionally it is said that a guru will purify karma by his or her kindness and power. By the skillful means of his or her conduct. This can take many forms. Dongun Sanpa Gyargye said:
When the guru is beating you, hitting you, you feel like you’re receiving great initiation. And you feel you’re blessed, totally blessed. When my guru is scolding at me, I feel like I’m receiving new mantra, and I’m receiving lung of transmission of new mantra, therefore all my obstacles on the path to enlightenment will immediately disappear.
And this is my own experience, having been on the “receiving end” so to speak. My own teacher was a formidable, tall man. A mountain, even when he was of advanced age. There is a film where he can be seen in the 1950s walking out of the gompa to lead a ceremony, towering over his attendants. Almost always, after the first high of having been picked by him to be his student, wore off, my next year under his tutelage was spent in a mixture of fear, resentment and anger. When he didn’t speak to me I was angry. When he did speak to me, or requested something from me, I felt afraid. Stories abound about how -once your commitment to a teacher is sealed- you need to do everything he or she asks you, or you break samaya. It took a long while, before I learned, that those commitments are a set-up. It’s not their presence but our reaction to them, that is the education. And you could say that the entire teacher - student relationship is a set-up, as Dongun Sanpa Gyargye says. In that relationship, the negative, the fear-inducing, often is the most educational. When we don’t yet dare trust our teacher entirely, the relationship can be one of intense suffering, side by side with deepest joy. This in itself is caused by our dualistic view. The most profound lesson to be learned in and through such a relationship is the notion that if the teacher is enlightened, all conduct within the teaching relationship, is skillful means, displayed by teacher and student both. It may well be that the initial attraction we feel towards a teacher is caused by the fact that we know him or her to be enlightened. Then, once our relationship with him or her stabilizes, it seems as if we have to give up our personal autonomy to surrender fully. And we know that it is this surrender that will allow our mind-stream to merge with that of the teacher and so reach enlightenment. For a long while, I rationalized my resistance against surrender by convincing myself that I needn’t give up my autonomy. I thought that my teacher was the cause of the fear I felt, and I resented him for it. He, of course, was the perfect mirror to see myself in, including my neurotic clinging to “independence”, my deep fear of abuse. What I received back was exactly the abuse I was afraid of, but as a resultant of my own actions, not as a victim of someone else, but by being my own assailant. This too I considered to be my teacher’s doing, until my stamina had finally worn itself out and the only thing left to recognize was my own despair and my teacher’s loving-kindness. At that moment, I could finally reach deep enough and let go of my fear, and surrender. After that, there was no way back.
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