Live Wire

Or how not to get burnt by your guru.

Gurus are dangerous. Some gurus are dangerous in the sense that they do not know what they are doing. They do not understand the real job. Then they enter into deviations—pawning themselves off as mystics, poets, siddhas, tertons, and so on—creating personality cults.

A qualified guru understands the job. What is the job? Aiding people to discover their own liberation without making big deal of themselves.

In Dzogchen in particular, realization depends on one’s devotion to a guru. Why? The principle of Dzogchen is not gathering the two accumulations and so on. The principle of Dzogchen is discovering one’s innate potential for liberation, the pristine aspect of consciousness that lies underneath the ordinary aspects of consciousness and is their source. Knowledge (rig pa) of this self-originated pristine consciousness (rang las byung ba’i ye shes) is the essence of the Dzogchen path, and this knowledge depends on one’s relation with a guru, and that requires trust and devotion.

An authentic guru is dangerous in the sense that they have no other goal than assisting us, the devotee, in discovering this knowledge for ourselves. They cannot be cajoled, bribed, or flattered into satisfying our fantasies of liberation. Our fantasies tend to be shipwrecked on the indomitable rock of their presence.

A real guru’s presence reminds one of how ordinary one is. Devotion to an authentic guru is an exercise in humbleness. Our vision of our gurus is always ordinary. We try to convince ourselves that we have pure vision when we see them picking their nose. We gaslight ourselves with Vajrayāna fantasies. But a real guru shows us that the state of Samantabhadra is right there, in front of us, immanent, like a live wire, even when they pick their nose.

One must be careful when picking up a live wire. Likewise, one needs to take care when choosing a guru. When one enters into a genuine relationship with an authentic guru, one cannot hide from oneself. And that’s the point. One is only going to get burnt by an authentic guru when one hides from oneself. If we hide from ourselves, we will never discover that the root guru’s message, the sanctuary of the great bliss of Samantabhadra, is no where else than in ourselves nor far away in a distant place.

The discovery of that place, however, depends on meeting someone who has already been there. That is why we need a guru, someone “heavy in qualities.” And devotion to such a person is a sublime gift.