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

THE SPIRITUAL PATH 133Recognizing who is and who is not a true master is a verysubtle and demanding business; and in an age like ours,addicted to entertainment, easy answers, and quick fixes, themore sober and untheatrical attributes of spiritual masterymight very well go unnoticed. Our ideas about what holinessis, that it is pious, bland, and meek, may make us blind to thedynamic and sometimes exuberantly playful manifestation ofthe enlightened mind.As Patrul Rinpoche wrote: "The extraordinary qualities ofgreat beings who hide their nature escapes ordinary people likeus, despite our best efforts in examining them. On the otherhand, even ordinary charlatans are expert at deceiving othersby behaving like saints." If Patrul Rinpoche could write that inthe nineteenth century in Tibet, how much more true must itbe in the chaos of our contemporary spiritual supermarket?So how are we today, in an extremely distrustful age, tofind the trust that is so necessary in following the spiritualpath? What criteria can we use to assess whether or not amaster is genuine?I remember vividly being with a master whom I knowwhen he asked his students what had drawn them to him,and why they had trusted him. One woman said: "I've cometo see how you really want, more than anything, for us tounderstand and apply the teachings, and how skillfully youdirect them to help us do so." A man in his fifties said: "It'snot what you know that moves me, but that you really dohave an altruistic and a good heart."A woman in her late thirties confessed: "I've tried to makeyou into my mother, my father, my therapist, my husband,my lover; you have calmly sat through the drama of all theseprojections and never ever turned away from me."An engineer in his twenties said: "What I have found inyou is that you are genuinely humble, that you really wish thevery best for all of us, that as well as being a teacher you havenever stopped being a student of your great masters." A younglawyer said: "For you it's the teachings that are the mostimportant thing. Sometimes I even think that your ideal wouldbe almost for you to become completely obsolete, simply topass on the teachings as selflessly as possible."Another student said shyly: "At first I was terrified at openingmyself up to you. I've been hurt so often. But as I beganto do so, I started to notice real changes in myself, and slowlyI became more and more grateful to you, because I realizedhow much you were helping me. And then I discovered in