On Gurus and Empowerments
Among the classes I teach is a course on Phurba, and several Arcane Audio’s that present Tantric Buddhist practices. Two questions that should come up for anyone who takes these are:
1. What about the Guru?
2. What about the Empowerment and Lineage?
Anyone taking the Phurba Course should read and understand the below.
ON THE GURU
In 1999 I had the extreme good fortune to live with Kunzang Dorje Rinpoche, one of the last great Ngakpa Lamas from pre-invasion Tibet, for about a month and a half. I slept in the room next to his in Pharping Nepal, the same area as the Asura Cave, the place where Padmasambhava received the Vajrakilaya texts before travelling to Tibet. I received many empowerments, and teachings from Rinpoche as well as the blessing to wear the robes and accessories of a Ngakpa.
When it came to the topic of having a traditional Guru Chela relationship with him, the kind Naropa had with Tilopa, he explained that I would first have to live with him for a year, so that we could evaluate each other. After that I would practice for three years living by his side, and then go on three year retreat under hos direction. I explained that my Visa would expire, and he assured me that there are ways around that. I said flat out that I didn’t have money to stay in Nepal for longer than the few more months I had scheduled, and he waved that concern away as well. In the end I think he knew that I would not take him up on it, but it was a perfect display of wisdom that taught me two important lessons.
The first lesson is that even though the way Tantric teachings are transmitted is changing drastically, there are still people doing it the traditional way.
The second lesson is that if you are going to really do the Root Guru thing, viewing your living teacher as inseparable from the Deity, and someone that you are bound to obey, there has to be a very serious and lengthy period of evaluation.
That’s how its supposed to work. Before you decide someone is your Guru, you live with them and evaluate them. That is unfortunately not how it usually works, yet weirdly both students and teachers often insist on this kind of infinite blind faith devotion for people that they barely know, or have only seen in ceremony. That is not how its supposed to work, and whatever you think is going on, its not what is supposed to be happening.
At the very first empowerment I ever took, Ratna Lingpa Vajrakilaya with Penor Rinpoche, a nun told me that if the Guru walked by and chopped a child’s head off, my reaction should be to think about how lucky that child is. I value my empowerments, and have a highest respect for Penor Rinpoche, but to be clear: that is bat-shit fucking crazy. I just met this guy 2 hours ago and participated in a ceremony with about 150 other people, and I am supposed to hold that view? NOPE.
That said, she was just echoing a sentiment in the Fifty Shades, er I mean Fifty Stanzas on Guru Devotion by Aryasura, but you know what? I don’t care. Sure, Naropa jumped off a cliff when Tilopa suggested it, but he had already seen Tilopa perform miracles. No religious or magical path is worth that level of blind faith. It can be corrupting for both the students and the teachers, even well-intentioned ones. Needless to say the potential for abuse by bad actors is rampant. Thankfully, the Lamas that I learned the most from never suggested this level of devotion, and a couple even warned against it. Those that did insist on this level of devotion, I walked away from immediately.
So when I teach on Dharma, please consider me an explanatory teacher. If you have a Guru that you feel you know well enough to do Guru Yoga for, that’s great, keep on doing what you are doing. Otherwise hold Padmasambhava or Milarepa or some great historical Buddha as the object of your devotion. Don’t see me as the meditational deity. Definitely don’t consider yourself bound to do what I say. Maybe be a little careful about who you do give that kind of power to.
ON EMPOWERMENT
For any Tantric Buddhist practice there are three things you should have:
- Wang, or Empowerment, which ritually introduces you to the deity directly.
- Lung, or Transmission, which gives the teaching and the authorization to access it.
- Trhi or Instruction in the meditations and practices.
Ideally you take a Tantric Empowerment, Transmission, and Instruction in person from a Guru that you have already built a relationship with. Whether you know this Guru because they head a monastery you are a monk in, or because they are a family member, or because they invited you to live with them at a gar or yogic encampment, this was the norm.
This is not what happens anymore. Every summer Lama’s come to Europe and the US and bestow countless Tantric Empowerments, then leave town giving no instruction on how to do the practice. Other Lama’s give plenty of instruction, but just a transmission (lung) and no empowerment. Others give both empowerment and instruction, but do it online. None of this is ideal, but I don’t believe in letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Since the 1950’s Vajrayana has been changing as it spreads from Tibet over the globs. How, and how much, things change or stay the same is still being worked out.
I have the empowerments for anything I teach. In the case of Vajrakilaya, I have received all the empowerments, transmissions, and instructions from most Terma’s (treasure texts revealed by Tertons over the centuries) and the Kama (practices actually taught by Padmasambava during his lifetime).
In my courses I focus on instruction that incorporates a transmission as I read through the text. I do not give the Empowerment. How you handle that is up to you...
You may decide to seek out a Lama offering the empowerment and go and receive it. There are certainly no shortages of Lamas offering empowerments into different lineages of Kila at Dharma Centers all over the world.
You may decide to take one of the empowerments from Lamas that offer it online. Garchen Rinpoche was kind of groundbreaking when he offered a video of the Ratna Lingpa Vajrakilaya Empowerment online and said that anyone who watched it could consider themselves as having the empowerment. Other Lamas are now following that model as well and everything in between.
You may decide that you don’t want the empowerment, but are going to practice it as a magical practice anyway. That is on you. The information is already out there. When talking about Phurba, between Martin Boord’s incredibly detailed yet difficult series of books on Kilaya and Garchen Rinpoche’s very accessible volume, one could do this with or without my course.
Which begs the question: do you even need this course?
I dunno. That’s up to you. When I teach on Tantric Sorcery I tend to think of myself as serving a cross-walk. Some students are coming from an orthodox Tibetan Buddhist background and looking for someone that is less concerned with reciting Sadhanas and more concerned with the magic and yoga. I also have a different way of teaching than most Lamas, and am a little less bound by trying to stick closely to one lineage or another. On the other side of the street are students from a Western Occult or Witchcraft background looking to explore Tibetan Buddhism through the eyes of someone familiar with both.
BUT THE LAMA’S SAY….
The Lama’s don’t say anything. They are not of one mind. Turns out 1200 years of tradition split across multiple schools, lineages, and individuals have created diverse opinions.
I remember a weekend in New York I attended a course on Dzogchen by Lama Wangdor. Chagdud Tulku was teaching the same material on the west coast that same weekend. To attend Chagdud Tulku’s teaching you had to have completed Ngondro (large accumulations of practice, starting with 100,000 prostrations) and been practicing a major Tantra for a certain amount of time. To attend the talk I went to by Lama Wangdor you just had to … show up at a carpet shop in Chelsea.
When I wanted to learn Guhyasamaja, Lobsang Samten had me and a few others show up early at the center in West Philly and receive the instruction. I didn’t have the empowerment at the time, but he said “One day you will, till then you can still practice this.” And yes, BTW, I have the empowerment now. I have met other Lama’s that will even teach Tummo and Dream Yoga, usually classified as completion stage, to anyone that wants to practice, whether they have taken Tantrik empowerment or not.
My point is not to defend one position over another. I truly do not have any interest in being the Dharma Police or the Dharma Rebel. I am simply pointing out that there is a variety of opinion out there, both among Tibetans and Western teachers. Some say empowerments are necessary, some say transmission is fine. Some say that one empowerment for a deity will cover you for all lineages related to that deity, some say you must have the individual lineage transmission. Some say online empowerments don’t count. Some say they count only when attended live. Some say they count even if recorded. Etc, etc.
When dealing with the spread of Vajrayana from a closed theocratic country to the rest of the world, and now the radical changes brought by the possibilities of digital communications, its only natural that people are still figuring out this new spread of dharma.
I can offer no guidance here beyond this choice: If you already have a Root Lama that you have evaluated extensively and who you trust, then trust their judgement and follow it. If not, then use your own powers of discernment and logic and do the best you can.