The-Tibetan-Book-of-Living-and-Dying

THE SPIRITUAL PATH 141
Chiefly we must always remember the excellent qualities of the
teacher, especially his kindness to us. By repeatedly generating
confidence, appreciation to the guru, and devotion toward him, a
time will come when the mere mention of his name or the thought
of him will stop all our ordinary perceptions, and we will see him
as the Buddha himself 2
To see the master not as a human being, but as the
Buddha himself, is the source of the highest blessing. As
Padmasambhava says: "Complete devotion brings complete
blessing; absence of doubts brings complete success." The
Tibetans know that if you relate to your teacher as a buddha,
you will receive the blessing of a buddha, but if you relate to
your master as a human being, you will only get the blessing
of a human being. So to receive the full transformative power
of the blessing of his or her teaching, the complete unfolding
of its glory, you must try and unfold in yourself the richest
possible kind of devotion. Only if you come to see your master
as a buddha can a buddha-like teaching come through to
you from your master's wisdom mind. If you cannot recognize
your master as a buddha, but see him or her as a human
being, the full blessing can never be there, and even the greatest
teaching will leave you somewhere unreceptive.
The more I come to reflect on devotion and its place and
role in the overall vision of the teachings, the more deeply I
realize that it is essentially a skillful and powerful means of
making us more receptive to the truth of the master's teaching.
Masters themselves do not need our adoration, but seeing
them as living buddhas will enable us to listen to and hear
their message and to follow their instructions with the greatest
possible fidelity. Devotion, then, is in one sense the most practical
way of ensuring a total respect for, and therefore openness
to, the teachings, as embodied by the master and
transmitted through him or her. The more devoted you are,
the more open you are to the teachings; the more open you
are to the teachings, the more chance there is for them to penetrate
your heart and mind, and so bring about a complete
spiritual transformation.
So it is only by seeing your master as a living buddha that
the process of transformation of yourself into a living buddha
can be truly begun and truly accomplished. When your mind
and heart are fully open in joy and wonder and recognition
and gratitude to the mystery of the living presence of
enlightenment in the master, then slowly, over many years,