Invocation

The first line of the Ngondro invokes the lama with “Namo,” which means “homage,” and continues, “O lama, infallible constant protector.” The title “lama” represents the attainment of specific spiritual qualities that infallibly protect and benefit sentient beings.

An authentic lama holds an unbroken lineage of the Buddha’s teachings. He or she has studied the teachings, contemplated them, and questioned them until all doubts have been thoroughly resolved and clear comprehension has dawned. Going beyond a scholarly, intellectual approach, the lama has meditated until the very essence of the teachings—particularly those concerning bodhicitta and the nature of mind—has wrought profound transformation. Bodhicitta motivation inspires the lama to lead beings out of the pit of samsara. With the lama’s realization of emptiness, compassion and love benefit beings spontaneously and the lama’s blessings penetrate their mindstreams. For this reason it is said that if we see, hear, remember, or touch the lama we can find liberation. The lama’s compassion always connects with our devotion, like the linking of a hook and an eye.

The intellectual understanding acquired through scholarly endeavors represents a necessary and valuable component of a lama’s training. However, we would not want to rely spiritually on someone who has studied books but not integrated their meaning through meditation any more than we would trust a surgeon who is a brilliant theoretician but has never performed an operation or a driving instructor who knows the rules of the road but does not in fact drive. We seek a lama who has attained the open perspective of a meditator, who can see beyond the ordinary patterns of phenomena, who can guide our meditation with his or her own.

Many experiences can arise in meditation, some positive and some disturbing. The lama has meditated until he or she has obtained confidence in all levels of practice, and can discriminate between mere transitory meditative phenomena and stable signs of attainment. From experience gained in meditation, the lama can guide us around pitfalls in our own meditation and inspire us to the highest spiritual accomplishment.

A qualified lama helps us develop the sequence of our training, enhancing current practices or changing emphasis when appropriate so we follow the most direct path to realization. A single type of meditation may not be the most effective way to train our mind, any more than a single medicine will cure all the illnesses that may afflict us over an extended period. Vajrayana methods vary according to the personality and capabilities of practitioners as well as the types of obstacles they encounter. The lama provides us with the skillful means to deal with our individual circumstances and mentalities.

The lama’s training also protects us because it refines our sense of what conduct of body, speech, and mind to accept and what to reject. We avoid planting karmic seeds for future suffering, and in this sense the lama offers us constant protection in this life and future lives. The lama’s prayers and guidance can also protect us from the obstacles arising from past karma. Though we may still be confronted by difficult situations, the lama shows us how to work with them through our practice.

Our connection with an infallible lama indicates great merit and strong prayers of aspiration in past lives.

However, a terrible spiritual tragedy results if we meet and follow a false teacher who distorts the teachings and does not base spiritual instruction on pure lineage transmission, who merely pretends to have realization, whose concern for followers is motivated by self-interest. Such teachers waste their followers’ opportunity for spiritual development in this life, betray them when they die, and undermine the merit they need to find a spiritual path in the future. If treated by an incompetent, fraudulent physician, a patient can expect declining health or a loss of life. If guided by a false teacher, a student can expect to lose spiritual well-being for this and many lifetimes to come.

Some enlightened lamas manifest wisdom in unconventional ways; some charlatan lamas seem serene and wise and have fine reputations. How can we know the difference? We check their lineage—true lamas revere their lineage and have served their own teachers with exemplary devotion. We check their motivation, their good heart. Is their intention really to benefit sentient beings? Can we feel compassion underlying their actions? Again, wrathful activity can be carried out with unconditional love and compassion; peacefulness can be hypocritical. We check back. Do we experience a greater clarity as a result of the lama’s words and actions? Are our mind’s workings illuminated? Do we gather impetus to practice and correct our conduct? A true lama can bring about moments of positive transformation through the skillful means of dharma. A false lama merely manipulates our spirituality and reinforces poisonous emotions and deluded tendencies. Someone posing as a lama, but devoid of pure lineage and pure motivation, devoid of the qualities that arise from authentic meditation, resembles something foul wrapped in brocade. The eye may be deceived, but the nose can smell it.

Once we have found an infallible lama, we should hold him or her as dear as our own breath. Now we have access to a treasury of spiritual attainment. In our interactions, we try to see the lama through less ordinary eyes, cultivating the pure view that the lama’s activities of body, speech, and mind remain inseparable from Guru Rinpoche. Although in a relative way we might find fault with the lama’s human foibles, this tendency to belittle and criticize undermines our own spiritual development. The lama has intentionally accepted the limitations and suffering of human rebirth, yet abides in the recognition of buddha nature. Outwardly, to guide us, the lama may act like one of us; actually, he or she is completely different. If our obscurations make us too nearsighted to perceive the buddha manifestation in the lama’s outer display, at least we must refrain from any immature, arrogant judgments. Otherwise we may block our avenue of liberation. …

The process of recognizing that our mind and the mind of our root lama are in essence inseparable constitutes the shortest path to enlightenment. This depends, however, on our overcoming all the barriers that our ego erects between us and our teacher. In ngondro, each time we visualize the teacher as inseparable from the deity—from Guru Rinpoche, Vajrasattva, Amitabha—and each time we dissolve the visualization into light, which is absorbed into our own form, and then rest nondually in the single absolute nature of our mind and the lama’s, we come closer to realization of the absolute lama. Any practice that brings us to this realization—whether it is in the context of ngondro, a deity practice, or Great Perfection—serves the highest purpose of Vajrayana Buddhism.

Source: Based on Ngondro Commentary: Instructions for the Concise Preliminary Practices of the New Treasure of Dudjom. Compiled from the Teachings of His Eminence Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche by Jane Tromge. Junction City, CA: Padma Publishing, 1995.

---