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

THE SPIRITUAL PATH 147
their masters all their lives. Even at the age of eighty-two, when
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche spoke of his master Jamyang Khyentse,
tears of gratitude and devotion came to his eyes. In his last letter
to me before he died, he signed himself "the worst disciple."
That showed me how endless true devotion is, how with the
greatest possible realization comes the greatest devotion and the
most complete, because the most humble, gratitude.
GURU YOGA: MERGING WITH
THE WISDOM MIND OF THE MASTER
All the buddhas, bodhisattvas, and enlightened beings are
present at all moments to help us, and it is through the presence
of the master that all of their blessings are focused
directly at us. Those who know Padmasambhava know the
living truth of the promise he made over a thousand years
ago: "I am never far from those with faith, or even from those
without it, though they do not see me. My children will
always, always, be protected by my compassion."
All we need to do to receive direct help is to ask. Didn't
Christ also say: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and ye
shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you. Everyone
that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth"? 6 And yet
asking is what we find hardest. Many of us, I feel, hardly
know how to ask. Sometimes it is because we are arrogant,
sometimes because we are unwilling to seek help, sometimes
because we are lazy, sometimes our minds are so busy with
questions, distractions, and confusion that the simplicity of
asking does not occur to us. The turning point in any healing
of alcoholics or drug addicts is when they admit their illness
and ask for aid. In one way or another, we are all addicts of
samsara; the moment when help can come for us is when we
admit our addiction and simply ask.
What most of us need, almost more than anything, is the
courage and humility really to ask for help, from the depths of
our hearts: to ask for the compassion of the enlightened
beings, to ask for purification and healing, to ask for the
power to understand the meaning of our suffering and transform
it; at a relative level to ask for the growth in our lives of
clarity, of peace, of discernment, and to ask for the realization
of the absolute nature of mind that comes from merging with
the deathless wisdom mind of the master.
There is no swifter, more moving, or more powerful practice
for invoking the help of the enlightened beings, for arousing