augmented illusions

Establishing a bond with a vajra master means we need to discern the difference between obedience and surrender. It is a leap of faith; we certainly have to move into space in one way or another. In the vajrayana, teachers are ascribed absolute power in the relationship with their students. Yet we also say that teachers are powerless. The teaching relationship is one in which the student is continuously invited to the brink. The vows and commitments that define the teaching relationship are how students grant themselves the freedom to commit themselves to the Teaching. There is the internal application of this, and the practical, external application. Instead of using the term obedience and surrender, we might want to speak of “becoming open to”, “becoming intimate with”. Although the romanticized stories from the tradition speak of teachers requesting the impossible, it is the directive, “not to rebel against vows” that students find hardest to practice. Quite often, the impossible leap is one into a space where we have to deal with our own samsaric behaviour and lack of compassion. This, then, is the core of guru yoga: the cliffs we have to leap off are always self-created. There’s much romance associated with the vajrayana, just like there may be a romantic view of war, romantic, that is, until one has seen battle. So it is with the vajrayana, and the most romanticized is the teacher-student relationship, or rather, Teachers. As we evolve, the assault on our ego becomes stronger, and the pain we feel becomes more intense. If we then flee into behaviour that has Self as its main reference, that reference point will become our battle field in the vajrayana, and our teacher will appear there as our enemy.
There is a difference between obedience because we think that our practice will make us “better” and surrender to the view of the Teacher because we know that view to be true. Surrender is a deeply informed stance. It is a position we have reached through deep, critical investigation and research. We understand that the barriers we keep hitting again and again, over the course of many lifetimes, are part of a closed loop in our life. We realize that only the vajra master can help us escape from that loop. That is the beginning of our practice. We start to establish the ground of trust, but this is also a vulnerability, and there’s our first paradox. Surrender has to be the evolved knowledge that Emptiness is the Ground. If we have that knowledge, we can enter into a relationship with a vajra master. It is a relationship we are opening up to. Obedience gives way to true surrender and devotion.
Recognition from the teacher is one of the gears that accelerates our progress as practitioners. This recognition is one of ever increasing openness and intimacy, a sense of being fully understood by our teachers. For that to occur, we have to enter fully into the very nature of the practice. Loyalty to our teachers does not come as a “deal”. Often the teaching relationship is described as “riding the tiger”: once you’ve started riding a tiger, you can never get off or you will be eaten. The trust we need to possess is immense, because eventually we must be able to say to ourselves: “This fear is not real. I am not going to take my delusions seriously. Everything is as it was before I set myself spinning to avoid my own pain. I am not going to blame my teacher for my pain, because I know that this response is a fabrication of my dualistic clinging. This is actually a pure mandala in which I have been nurtured. I am the creator of my own nightmare, and if I start to attack the mandala of my Teacher, the lama-buddha in my own heart, I will destroy myself.”
From a vajrayana point of view, we are as enlightened as our teachers are. Teachers are ordinary human beings, but we must also envision our teachers as the fruitional manifestation of the Path. We are as infallible, as students as our teachers are and in that sense, samaya is completely mutual, a common bond. A real tantrika panics every second, because as practitioners, we are always on the razor’s edge, are always in immediate danger of falling. And so the teacher has to be incredibly cautious and careful. A teacher must be prepared to die for every word he or she utters, every action he or she undertakes. Advice given at the level of teaching has to be seen at the level of direct experience. The role of the teacher is merely to manifest the Goal. The “danger” of the vajrayana is that we are exposed more, that we become more open, and more intimate, with our teacher and with life. As a result, we become increasingly “alone” and self-reliant. The crutches are taken away, and our teachers are there to reduce the risk of our feeling ourselves alone, and naked, in the universe in terms of our experience. This is the inherent danger of the vajrayana path, and the reason for the injunctions not to practice without a teacher. Because, precisely at the point of greatest openness, we run the risk of losing our teacher. As our intimacy with our teacher increases, and as we become more equal with regard to outer circumstances, the fewer signs there may be of the teacher being the teacher. If our teacher takes the high seat, there is a clear demarcation line between ourselves and our teacher: that person in robes and brocade is the Teacher, and we are not. But as we develop a growing unity with the mind of our teachers, the difference between “me” and what my enlightened state would be, becomes smaller and smaller. The teaching relationship becomes ever more subtle, and therefore, ever more dangerous to our ego, because “I” could be this enlightened being. At that point, the Self is set free, but having been deprived of the mind of compassion of our teacher, we are freed to embody the demonic. The nature of the teaching and of teaching at this advanced stage is one of ordinariness, instead of extraordinariness, and that is precisely the danger, and the challenge.