The importance of relying on a Spiritual Guide has become crystal clear to me. Practicing as a Kadampa Buddhist studying with Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso and one of his most long-standing, accomplished disciples, I’ve come to understand this through intellectual study, but also through experience and some insights, my precious, fledgling Dharma jewels. To me, now, there can be no greater practice. I have the great good fortune to have a Spiritual Guide and teacher who are exemplary in their outward or external good example, i.e. they seem to me to be flawless in their sincere devotion to the practice of Dharma, their kindness to all they are relating to, and their Dharma work in this world. So that made and makes it easy for me.
It was easy for me to get on board with the Kadampas at first, after studying Vipassana in New York for 9 years but never really finding a teacher in that tradition on whom I could rely. I strayed as that practice, although highly beneficial in leading me on a spiritual path, never really took. I see now that, for me, it was the absence of a local teacher, someone I could watch and listen to and spend time with and work with and have disagreements with and finally to practice with, really, after the initial exhilaration wore off, my father died, and I knew I’d better get down to business. Me, being one who is severely infested with the poison of attachment (just a mind, I know, but boy is it a sticky one), had to have a teacher in my life, one right there, present and central, to lead me out of this mess.
It’s Geshe Kelsang who, I see now, sets things up this way in his incomparably compassionate system of local centers and their qualified resident teachers, study programs, and annual festivals where we can all meet and compare notes. He sets it up, having that million mile into the future vision, knowing we need a spiritual guide, we need someone who can guide us, lead us, teach us, pacify us, increase us, control us and finally, if we’re really lucky, be wrathful with us, like a kind parent, wearing the mask of anger, but never giving into that distorted mind, refusing to put up with our childish, manipulative, whiny behavior.
So I speak personally here: If I don’t have someone in my life who has the compassionate courage to guide me in this way, I won’t make it out of samsara. No way. Because like so many others who seek spiritual knowledge, who seek a way out of suffering, I want it to be easy. I want it to be so easy. So easy that if someone tells me to do something I don’t want to do – like give up my mind of anger or jealousy because it’s not helping me – I’ll just look for another teacher to tell me something I want to hear – like, “don’t worry, you’ve got time, no need to change anytime soon.” Of course, teachings are like a doctor’s medicine: there are different medicines for different diseases which manifest differently in each and every person. The Dharma teachings I need may not be the ones my fellow Sangha members may need. The teacher is the one to decide this, depending on our dynamic, a dependent arising, based on what I am bringing to him at any given time (and what he is bringing to me).
Which brings me to Dorje Shugden and why I’m writing this blog. When I first came to Chakrasambara Buddhist Center seven years ago, I’d heard some stirrings of the controversy about the practice of Dorje Shugden, the Dharma Protector and the Dalai Lama’s ban of this practice in the Tibetan exiled communities in India and elsewhere. By then I’d already begun deeply enjoying my teacher’s classes and saw and felt his pure example. I didn’t at the time know much about Dorje Shugden, but I felt that if my teacher, who was so devoted and had been for 20 some odd years to his teacher, Geshe Kelsang, believed deeply in the benefits of this practice, then I was willing to “put it on the back burner” for now, give it the benefit of the doubt, give it room to grow in my mind until I could understand it better. I did this because I felt sure that whatever my teacher was doing had to be right. This was determined over a period of time in which I was skeptical, I was watching. I’d already been putting into practice some of his teachings (which are Geshe Kelsang’s teachings) and saw huge progress in my life – I was happier, more content, more willing to grow and recognize negative minds, wrestling with my delusions rather than giving them full course. I was changing.
I’d heard other, scarier stirrings of the New Kadampa Tradition being a cult and so forth. I examined this very thoroughly in my own heart, but I must say, I didn’t have to do this for too long. I just knew it was not a cult. No one was asking me for money, or to give up my friends and family. The people I was meeting at the center were artists, lawyers, doctors, students, dancers, mothers, fathers, architects, designers, clowns (yes, clowns), such with-it people who I felt kin to. I thought, “if these folks are involved, then this must be legit.” For one thing, the NKT is too big to be considered a cult. You just can’t have that many people, nearly 1000 centers worldwide, some with more than 100 students in any given class, in a cult. Cults are small and obscure and deceptive. They hide because they know they are wrong, that there’s something wrong going on. There is nothing wrong going on here, both conventionally and ultimately speaking.
Since those earlier days I’ve come to rely deeply on my practice of Dorje Shugden. For me, he is the deity who protects me, who protects my Dharma jewels, who protects my practice, who helps me remember how to do this, where to go, what to do; he is the one who teaches me protection and how to be a protector to others. He is a Buddha, my Dorje Shugden. And for me he is deeply personal. He is the same mind as my Guru. I have progressed because of him, because of Geshe Kelsang, and his Gurus, Trijang Rinpoche, and Je Phabonkhapa, and of course, because of the Holy Guru, Je Tsongkhapa, who in turn relied upon his Root Gurus going back to Buddha Shakyamuni. I have progressed because of Geshe Kelsang’s local representative, my teacher. I could go further than that, but for now you get the point. Without a Guide (and I’m assuming you’re on a spiritual path if you are reading this now) we are nowhere.
Without a Guide, we aren’t practicing Buddhism in this tradition. I’m not saying anyone else has to follow this tradition. I’m simply asking that others not try to change my tradition by calling it evil, by calling me a devil worshipper, as the Dalai Lama has.
Up until now, I’ve managed to, in my own hiding ways, ignore the Dalai Lama’s ban on Dorje Shugden. I didn’t think his reasons made any sense and I didn’t think it mattered so much. I didn’t have enough compassion to see that it would matter so significantly and so disastrously to future generations, to the future mental continuum that is “me” and now, to the hundreds of Tibetans in India, and in other exiled communities (even in Queens, New York, Tibetans are being pegged as traitors and ostracized), who have been thrown out of their homes, their monasteries, who have been denied basic rights and needs such as the ability to buy food and other crucial resources for survival. Suffice it to say, there’s been a fire lit under my compassionate, ah, streak and it’s starting to rage.
What the Dalai Lama is doing is starting a civil war among his already weakened people. This is the external appearance. But what is happening internally to us, to them and to future generations of practitioners who fall under the influence of the Dalai Lama’s advice, is a deeper weakening and an even greater spiritual disaster.
I believe that if our practices are diluted (please confuse that with “deluded”), we won’t have insights, we won’t have realizations, we won’t be able to receive blessings to achieve these much needed entries to our Guru, to our own deepest heart, we will be prevented from doing this. We will be prevented from achieving enlightenment, finally, not because of Dorje Shugden, like he has anything to do with it, as if he were some malevolent, jealous “spirit” who can wreak havoc on our daily blessing infusion just because we’re deciding not to worship him or because we’re hanging out with and in other traditions or reading “other” books.
It will happen because we won’t be relying on our Spiritual Guides anymore. We will have half-heartedly decided that the Dalai Lama, who is at best, confused by politics and worldly concern for celebrity, is our leader. We will give up our own Gurus (who we’ve developed a relationship over a long period of time and who is mixed with our own wisdom, who is our own wisdom, who we live with, sometimes physically in the same town, the same city, the same world). We will have decided that they or he/she is wrong, has gotten it wrong, has been duped. It’s very difficult once you’ve decided that an integral teaching or practice given and practiced by your own Spiritual Guide is misguided or flat wrong, to then have faith in everything else he or she is teaching.
I believe that if we can’t stick with our Spiritual Guides (of course, after many years of watching, of testing, of overcoming our doubts, of reasoning, of trying, of tasting, of practicing), then we are nowhere. We are out on our own and might as well, in my case, go back to reading one self-help book per week and hoping that things will work out in samsara.
I want to tell you with a lot of non-deluded pride that I am a practicing Kadampa. I follow the teachings of Geshe Kelsang Gyatso who follows the teachings of Buddha. I am so grateful and damn lucky to be here. I live in New York City and am a songwriter, a musician, a teacher, a healer, a freelance this and that and I’ve got many friends, both in my center and out of it. I love to talk about spirituality and discuss at great length with all of my friends who follow different spiritual paths: born-again Christians, Zen Buddhists, atheists, alcoholics, and so on and so on. My main intention is to love as best as I can. But don’t confuse love with emotional silliness. If someone is doing something that I feel is wrong like my niece trying to eat an entire bag of Sour Patch candies for breakfast or much more terrifying, the Dalai Lama, enforcing and encouraging the practice of relying on a Spiritual Guide to degenerate, I will stand up and protest. I will demonstrate with a lot of passion and commitment, most likely while smiling because I can’t help myself – I’m happy and secure and confident in this family with firm faith in my teachers and Spiritual Guides and what we are all doing to keep our tradition powerful and strong for us and others.
