His Holiness the Dalai Lama formally announced the existence of His Eminence the Ninth Khalkha Jetsun Dhampa, Jampal Namdrol Chokye Gyalsten, in September, 1991.

Khalkha Jetsun Dampa is considered to be one of the most revered teachers of the Kalachakra Tantra, the Tara Tantra, and Maitreya, the future Buddha. All of these lineage teachings descend directly to him from Taranatha, the great historian and Tantric practitioner (B. 1575 AD).

The 9th Jetsun Dhampa is the spiritual successor of the 8th Jetsun Dhampa, the Bogd Gegen or “Holy Shining One”, the Bogd Khan or last Holy Emperor of Mongolia. Because of this the Mongolian government has tried to keep the 9th incarnation at a distance for fear that his supporters would try to restore him as Khan, which would upset the neighbors, especially Communist China. He has been able to visit Mongolia as a tourist when he was formally enthroned by His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama.

Listen to the deep, resonant recitation of the Maitreya prayer conducted at Serpom Monastery in 2011. The recitation is accompanied by a beautiful photo slideshow of Serpom Monastery, the main altar and prayer hall.

Two pictures of the hermitage showing the way that buildings have been erected in tiers, conforming to the landscape. The two top tiers of the hermitage are now in ruins.

Location and Layout

Trashi Chöling – literally “The Place of Auspicious Dharma” – is located about three kilometers from Sera in the mountains northwest of the monastery. It takes about one hour to walk from Sera to Trashi Chöling. The hermitage also lies approximately halfway between two other important hermitages – Pabongka, which is about half a kilometer to the west and downhill, and Tags bstan sgrub phug, which is slightly less than half a kilometer to the east, across a gorge, and then uphill.

Trashi Chöling is, together with these latter two sites, one of the main stops on the famous Sera Mountain Circumambulation Circuit, a pilgrimage route that thousands of people from Lhasa and the surrounding area traverse as a merit-making activity on the “Sixth-Month Fourth-Day” religious festival.

The hermitage faces south. As is typical of many mountain monasteries, Trashi Chöling is built in a tiered fashion on terraces that conform to the landscape.

At the lowest level there is a large open courtyard surrounded by a perimeter wall. Proceeding north (uphill), one enters the main compound where one finds, from south to north (downhill to uphill), the following buildings at different levels:

• Monks’ quarters (presently two floors), and a kitchen, located just beneath the main temple and across from the monks’ living quarters
• The main temple (only two floors, but previously four)
• The former residence of Pabongka Rinpoche, with its ancillary chapels
• The temple of Dorje Shugden.

The first two tiers of the hermitage – the monks’ quarters and the main temple still exist today, although we know from old photos and informants’ accounts that they are only a fraction of their former size. The last two tiers – the private residence of the Lama and the Dorje Shugden temple – are in ruins, and have not been rebuilt. This is perhaps due to the fact that Dorje Shugden is a controversial deity whose propitiation has been banned by the present Dalai Lama.

An old photo of Trashi Chöling taken before 1959. It shows the original temple with all four of its floors intact. The set of three windows in the lowest portion of the picture belong to the second floor of the monks’ living quarters.

Prior to 1959, the main image on the altar of Trashi Chöling was a statue of Maitreya called the Maitreya as Lord of Men. There was also an important set of images of the Sixteen Arhats, and of Cakrasamvara. All of these have been destroyed or are missing. All of the images in the temple today are new, with the exception of one old statue of Cakrasamvara found on the altar in the northwestern corner of the temple, and this, in fact, may not have originally belonged to the hermitage.

The central figures on the main altar are Tsongkhapa (1357-1419) and his two disciples. To the left of these large (one-storey) statues are two smaller statues of the Buddha. To the right of the Tsongkhapa triad are life-size statues of Trijang Rinpoche (1901-1981), Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo (1878-1941), and Jetsun Lama Ngawang Namdrol, purportedly founder of the hermitage. To the right of these, along the eastern wall of the temple, are three funerary stūpas of these same three figures.

The top floor of the main temple contains, along its southern wing, (to the east) a reception room, where guests are received, and (to the west of the reception room) the private living quarters of Pabongka Rinpoche. It also contains a kitchen and monks’ quarters.

The only remaining portion of the monks’ dormitory is that found in front (south) of the main temple, where two floors of rooms have been preserved. Dungkar Rinpoche tells us that there were twenty-one monks living at Trashi Chöling in 1959, though it seems clear from the number of monks’ rooms at the hermitage that this number does not include supporting staff. If one includes the entire staff of the Pabongka Lama’s estate (ladrang), there could have easily been three times that many men living at the hermitage.

Affiliation

Trashi Chöling has had a long and complex relationship to Sera. The hermitage did not become the property of Sera until the early eighteenth century, when it passed into the hands of the Sera Tantric College. In the 1920s or 1930s, the Tantric College donated the hermitage to Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo. From 1930 until 1959, then, the hermitage belonged to Pabongka Lama’s estate.

Since that time, it has therefore not belonged to Sera, although it has had informal ties both to the Mé College and to the Sera Tantric College, the two loci of Pabongka Rinpoche’s affiliations to Sera. From the 1990s, when the hermitage was rebuilt, up to the present time, Trashi Chöling has functioned as an autonomous institution with only minimal ties to Sera. The hermitage reverted to Pabongka Lama’s estate after the present incarnation’s recent return to Tibet.

History

The remaining wing of monks’ rooms on the left, and the kitchen on the right.

One contemporary Tibetan author states that according to oral tradition, Trashi Chöling may date to the time of the Buddhist king (of Tibet) Songtsen Gampo, that is, to the seventh century, being known at that time not under its present name, but rather as Gdugs yur dgon. The first real evidence we have of a monastic institution existing at the site, however, is much later.

According to one contemporary Tibetan historian, Trashi Chöling is the place where the Mongolian ruler of Tibet, Lhazang Khan, housed the monks of his private ritual college during the winter months. We know from different historical sources that Lhazang’s ritual college – the monks who were responsible for performing all of the necessary merit-making and protection rituals for the king – met in Northern Tibet during the summer months, and then moved to a site just north of Lhasa for the winter. Trashi Chöling, it seems, was that site.

Jetsun Ngawang Namdrol, seen by the monks who live here as the founder of the monastery.

Shortly after Lhazang came to power in 1705, he came to an agreement with the monks of Sera. Seeing that the Sera Assembly Hall – the place where all of the monks gathered for communal rituals – was too small to fit the entire monastic population, he offered to build the community a new assembly hall. The monks, from their side, had to surrender the old assembly hall to the king, who proposed to use it as the permanent home for his private ritual college.

An agreement was reached, and the king built what is the Sera Great Assembly Hall. The old assembly hall then became the headquarters for the ruler’s ritual college. After the death of Lhazang in 1717, his ritual college became the Sera Tantric College, an institution that continues to flourish to the present day.

Lhazang Khan (Lha bzang khāng), from a mural in the Sera Great Assembly Hall.

Although the monks of Lhazang’s ritual college moved to Sera permanently, it seems clear that they did not give up their rights to their old winter residence at Trashi Chöling in the mountains northwest of Sera. And when Lhazang’s ritual college became the Sera Tantric College, then, of course, ownership of Trashi Chöling passed on to the Sera Tantric College.

For 200 years – from the early eighteenth century until the early twentieth century – we know little about Trashi Chöling except for the fact that it was (or so it seems) the property of the Sera Tantric College. Dungkar Rinpoche informs us that there was a tradition that Sera Tantric College had to send twenty-one monks to Trashi Chöling to maintain the hermitage and to enact its ritual cycles, and this is certainly consistent with the facts as we know them.

In the early twentieth century, Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo did an extensive retreat in some caves close to Trashi Chöling at a site called Rtags bstan sgrub phug. This established Pabongka’s connection to this general area. Later, when Pabongka Rinpoche’s fame and reputation grew, Sera Tantric College offered the monastery of Trashi Chöling to him as his private hermitage or retreat.

In return, Pabongka Rinpoche agreed to officially enter the Tantric College (an action that brought this institution a certain prestige, given the Lama’s reputation). From that point on, then, Pabongka had two affiliations at Sera: the Tantric College, and the Mé College. Informants tell us that from then on Pabongka Rinpoche lived at Trashi Chöling during the summer months, and in private rooms in a section of the Spo ’bo ra spyi khang at Sera during the winter months.

A statue of Pabongka Rinpoche in the main temple at Trashi Chöling.

Under Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo, the hermitage was extensively refurbished and expanded. It was perhaps under him as well that a very large temple to the protector deity Dorje Shugden was built on the topmost tier of the complex.
Today, as had been mentioned, this lies in ruins.

After the events of 1959, Trashi Chöling suffered the fate of all of Sera’s hermitages. Over thirty years of neglect brought the site to the brink of complete collapse. Restoration did not begin until a monk – a student of Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo – undertook the labor of renovating the hermitage as a personal project in the early 1990s. The hermitage is maintained today by two elder monks who serve as temple attendants and caretakers of the site. They also receive help from the nuns of Takten Hermitage (Rtags brten ri khrod), who live just up the hill.

Source: http://thlib.org/places/monasteries/sera/hermitages/pdf/
sera_herm_trashi_choling.pdf

Every one of us has universal responsibility. If you have a good heart, loving kindness-compassion, then in your daily life, numberless living beings, including the people around you, animals, insects, in fact, all other living beings, do not receive harm from you.

If you develop a good heart, loving kindness-compassion, not only do other sentient beings not receive harm from you, they also receive benefit and help.

That absence of harm means peace and happiness in this life, happiness in all the coming future lives, and the ultimate benefit of bringing all sentient beings into total liberation from the entire ocean of samsaric sufferings by ceasing its cause, delusion and the karma.

Not only that, but by having compassion, you benefit numberless other sentient beings by bringing them into great liberation, the non-abiding sorrowless state of full enlightenment, which is total cessation of not only the gross, but even the subtle mistakes of mind, the subtle defilements; the subtle negative imprints left by the disturbing thought, the simultaneously-born ignorance, grasping at the I, the aggregates and all other phenomena as inherently existent, the subtle negative imprint that projects the hallucination, the dual view, of inherently-existent appearances. The cessation of all this is the great liberation.

Thus, by developing compassion, you collect extensive merit, and through that you are also able to develop wisdom and cease all the defilements. In this way, you are able to bring all sentient beings into the peerless happiness of full enlightenment.

Thus, you can see how you can bring all these various levels of happiness to other sentient beings. So whether or not numberless sentient beings receive all this happiness from you is in your own hands; it depends upon what you do with your mind.

It’s up to what you do with your mind—whether you generate the good heart, loving kindness-compassion, towards all the sentient beings or not. Therefore, every one of us has complete responsibility for all the happiness of sentient beings from this life’s temporary happiness up to that of full enlightenment.

Fulfilling this responsibility to bring happiness and benefit to other sentient beings is the purpose of your life, the reason you are alive. In order to liberate the numberless sentient beings from all their suffering and its cause, and bring them all happiness up to that of full enlightenment; to accomplish such perfect work for all sentient beings, first you need to achieve full enlightenment yourself.

In order to be able to heal all the sicknesses of others, to give them the happiness of freedom from disease, you need to be a fully qualified doctor, knowing how to diagnose illness and what all the various treatments are.

In the same way, then, to free others from all suffering and its cause and lead them to the peerless happiness of enlightenment, first you need to become fully enlightened yourself. Of course, getting enlightened doesn’t happen without cause—you have to actualize the path to enlightenment.

Therefore, without creating the cause, completing the general path, you cannot achieve enlightenment. Also, the path you actualize has to be an unmistaken path; if it’s a mistaken path, you cannot achieve enlightenment.

Furthermore, you have to complete that unmistaken path. Just having a few realizations isn’t enough for you to achieve enlightenment. You have to complete all the realizations of the path to enlightenment.

Now, achieving full enlightenment depends on actualizing the graduated path of the being of greatest capacity. That depends on actualizing, as a preliminary, the path of the being of intermediate capacity and the common graduated path. And that depends on actualizing, as a preliminary, the path of the being of lowest capacity and the common graduated path.

Success from the beginning of the path—the graduated path shared in common with the being of least capacity, which starts with realization of the perfect human rebirth, this precious human body qualified by eight freedom and ten richnesses—all the way up to the end, enlightenment, depends on the root of the path to enlightenment, first analyzing prospective gurus and, having found the right one, correctly devoting yourself to him through thought and action.

In his commentary to the Fifty Verses of Guru Devotion, Lama Tsongkhapa explained the different qualities of the guru according to the various teachings he quotes (see The Fulfillment of All Hopes, Wisdom Publications, 1999, p. 41 ff. See also Geshe Ngawang Dhargye’s commentary here: http://www.lamayeshe.com/otherteachers/dhargyey/index.shtml).

According to one explanation, the guru should [1] have stable devotion in the Mahayana teachings, [2] be learned in the different levels of the teachings—the Lesser Vehicle, Paramitayana and tantra—[3] be skillful and wise in guiding disciples along the path to enlightenment, [4] have strong compassion for others and [5] be subdued in his three doors of body, speech and mind. One set of five qualities is explained like that.

Then, in his Mahayanasutralamkarakarika, Maitreya Buddha explained the ten qualities of a Mahayana guru. The first three he mentioned were having his three doors [1] subdued, [2] pacified and [3] highly pacified.

The first one means the higher training in morality—abstaining from vice, protecting himself from creating negative karma. The second one, pacified, means having controlled his mind, his disturbing thoughts, through having developed shamatha, the realization of calm abiding; in other words, having the higher training in concentration. The third one, highly pacified, means having the realization of great insight, emptiness; the higher training in wisdom.

The fourth of the ten qualities is [4] having greater knowledge and higher qualities than the disciple. He should also [5] have perseverance and [6] his holy mind should be enriched with scriptural understanding and the lineage of the teachings. He should [7] have realized emptiness.

Even though this realization has already been mentioned as the third quality, here it specifically means having the realization of emptiness according to the view of the Prasangika, the highest of the four schools of Buddhist philosophy. The previous mention of great insight meant the realization of emptiness according to any of the Buddhist schools; here it means specifically the Prasangika view.

The remaining three qualities are [8] skill in explaining Dharma, [9] compassion for the students and [10] never feeling too discouraged or upset to explain Dharma, to guide and benefit the disciples. Anyway, if there’s strong compassion, there’s no way a mind feeling lazy or too tired to guide the disciples can arise.

Also, as it is mentioned in the Guru Puja (Lama Chöpa) and other texts, there are further qualities of the guru who reveals the tantric teachings—the ten outer qualities of the guru who teaches the lower tantras and the ten inner qualities of the guru who teaches Highest Yoga Tantra.

However, the very essence of all these qualities is that the guru should emphasize cherishing others. If the guru does not exhort the students to cherish others, it becomes an obstacle to their developing a good heart and actualizing bodhicitta, the realization required to enter the Mahayana path to enlightenment.

But if the guru does not emphasize that, at least he should emphasize liberation from samsara, attainment of ultimate, everlasting happiness. And if not that, at the very least he should emphasize that the happiness of future lives is more important than the happiness this life. That is the very bottom line—it is more important to work for happiness of future lives than for the happiness of this life.

If the teacher does not emphasize this, the disciples’ attitude for practicing Dharma will not become Dharma. Whatever they do—meditation, retreat, any other activity—there’s danger that they will waste their whole life.

Whatever they do will not become Dharma, will not become virtue. Everything they do will be done with pure attachment, pure non-virtue, seeking only happiness of this life. Whatever the student does—meditation, prayer, all twenty-four hours’ activities—becomes non-virtue, negative karma.

That’s the danger of having a guru who does not teach the importance of working more for future lives than this. You can waste your entire life if your teacher doesn’t emphasize detachment from the pleasures of this life and to work for long-run happiness, the happiness of all the coming future lives; not just one future life’s happiness but that of all future lives.

So, whether the teacher is ordained or lay, the very essence is who emphasizes these things, especially bodhicitta. In that way, the teacher is able to bring the disciple to enlightenment.

By emphasizing liberation from samsara, the teacher can bring the disciple to liberation. By emphasizing letting go of attachment, not clinging to this life, and emphasizing to work for happiness of all the coming future lives, the teacher allows the disciple to achieve happiness in future lives. This is how various teachers guide their disciples.

The other fundamental quality that a teacher needs is to emphasize ethics, morality. In that way, the teacher is able to guide the disciple away from negative karma and protect the disciple from creating negative karma, the main obstacle to achieving enlightenment, liberation from samsara and the happiness of future lives.

It is important, therefore, at the beginning, before making a Dharma connection with a teacher, to analyze that person well. After thinking well, then establish a Dharma connection. The tantric teachings explain that in degenerate times such as these, it is difficult to find a teacher that has all the qualities as they are explained in the teachings.

If that is so, still, your teacher should have eight of them, or five, or at least four. At least the teacher should possess the basic qualities that I mentioned before. This will help you avoid trouble in future, avoid creating very heavy negative karma, such as rising heresy, anger, many negative thoughts, and also, after having made a connection, giving up. Checking carefully will help you avoid all these dangers.

The Meaning of Guru

The holy mind of all the buddhas, the Dharmakaya, the transcendent wisdom of non-dual bliss and void, which is eternal, which has neither beginning nor end, which pervades all existence—that is the real meaning of guru.

When you think of your guru, when you visualize your guru, when you see your guru, when you hear you guru, this is what we should come into your heart and mind. When, in your daily life, you see, hear, visualize or remember your guru, the real meaning, or understanding, should come into your heart. The word is guru, but the real meaning is that.

When you have a stable realization of guru devotion, always in your heart, your recognition of guru is that. From the side of the disciple who has a stable realization of guru devotion, when you see or think of Buddha, it’s your guru.

There’s no other Buddha; there’s no Buddha separate from your guru. You don’t see that. Your realization is the oneness of guru and Buddha. Even when you visualize yourself as Buddha, it’s guru. Because you’re the deity, the guru. Even when you visualize the deity in front of you, it’s the guru. This understanding is in your heart.

Even when you see statues and thangkas, you think, “My guru has manifested in these forms to allow me to purify my mind and collect merit.”

Also, this is such an easy way of purifying and creating merit. It does not depend on your generating virtuous motivation; it happens without your mind becoming Dharma.

Even if your motivation is not Dharma, just by seeing, circumambulating, prostrating to, making offering to these holy objects, immediately your actions become the cause of enlightenment, liberation from samsara, happiness for hundreds of thousands of future lives.

If that’s so, then there’s no question that that powerful merit also affects this life. Since you purify so much negative karma, of course it reduces the problems of this life—relationship problems, sicknesses, cancer; all such things.

However, simply by existing, these holy objects make it so easy for us sentient beings to create merit and purify our minds. With most other activities, first we have to put great much effort into making our minds Dharma — pure, unstained by ignorance and attachment and, in particular, the self-cherishing thought. Only after we make a great effort can our actions become virtue and result in happiness. In that way, we have to work hard for happiness.

But the existence of holy objects makes it easy for us sentient beings to purify our heavy negative karmas and collect extensive merit, creating the space in our mind that enables us to gain the realizations of the path to enlightenment.

The thing to understand or realize here is that all these holy objects exist through the kindness of the guru. That they make it so easy to purify negative karma and defilements, gain realizations and freedom from the ocean of samsaric suffering and achieve enlightenment is due to the kindness of the guru manifesting in this way.

You can understanding or realize this by understanding that the meaning of the guru is Dharmakaya, the holy mind of all the buddhas—all these holy objects happened through the kindness of guru manifesting in these aspects to liberate you from samsara and bring you to enlightenment.

If the absolute guru, the Dharmakaya, all the buddhas’ holy mind, manifests in an aspect more pure than I am able to see, in an aspect more pure than my karma allows me to see, I cannot see that aspect until I make my mind purer than it now is.

At present, your mind is so heavily obscured that even though Guru Shakyamuni Buddha, Nagarjuna, Lama Tsongkhapa and all the other great enlightened beings have explained the complete path and that there’s no inherently existent I — there’s no real I, in the sense existing from its own side, there’s no such thing; that such a thing is totally non-existent; that I is totally non-existent, empty, right there, from where it is appearing, from where it is appearing as a real one, existing from its own side, it is totally non-existent; it is totally non-existent right there, totally empty right there — even though all those great enlightened beings explained that by analyzing you cannot find that I, it is totally empty, still you cannot see, cannot realize, the truth of this. Even though that’s the reality, your mind cannot see it; you are unable to see that is totally empty.

Similarly, all these sense objects do not have the slightest even atom of inherent existence either. They, too, are totally empty. But you cannot see even that emptiness.

Even though all causative phenomena are in the nature of impermanence, they do not last for even a minute or a second, are in a constant state of decay, you cannot see or realize them as such. You are so obscured that you cannot see what’s going to happen tomorrow, in an hour’s time hour, even in a minute’s time. With respect to such things, your mind is totally dark.

Even if you have some sickness in the body, you have to go to hospital to get x-rayed to see it. You can’t even see the back of your own body. As His Holiness Song Rinpoche often used to say when talking about reincarnation, just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. You cannot use your not seeing something as a reason for its not existing. For example, he would say,

You can’t see the back of your head. Does that mean it doesn’t exist?

Anyway, your mind is heavily obscured. There are numberless phenomena that exist but you can’t see. Therefore, all the buddhas’ holy mind, the absolute guru, bound with infinite compassion that embraces you and all other sentient beings, manifests in an ordinary aspect, which by definition has delusions, a suffering body, mistaken actions and so forth.

The Dharmakaya manifests like this and through this aspect gives commentaries, oral transmissions, vows — pratimoksha, bodhisattva and tantric — initiations and tantric teachings. In Tibet, we used to say that if you are learning the alphabet order to study Dharma, the person who teaches you the alphabet is also a guru, a manifestation of the Dharmakaya.

Even one verse of oral transmission, one stanza of teaching, can definitely brings you to enlightenment. By leaving a positive imprint, it can cause you to understand the teachings and realize the aspect of the path it contains; that verse can cease certain defilements and bring you to enlightenment. That one verse of oral transmission given by that guru definitely brings you to enlightenment. Therefore, there’s no question that other, more extensive teachings do so too.

Therefore, the meditation to do at this point is to think, If these are not the actions of Buddha, guiding me to enlightenment, then there’s no other action I could point to as that of Buddha liberating me from suffering and bringing me to enlightenment.

So, these are definitely Buddha’s activities; activities of the Dharmakaya. This is one reason to use in meditation, to realize that these actions are those of the Buddha; for you to realize from your own side, from the side of the disciple, that these are Buddha’s actions.

Also think, “If any of these gurus are not Buddha, because I see them as ordinary, because I see faults in them” — you might see small faults in some and great faults in others, but you see faults in all of them. Then, if none of these gurus are buddha, if they are ordinary beings, if these are ordinary beings who are bringing me to enlightenment, what are the buddhas doing?

They’re not doing anything; the buddhas are just keeping quiet. The buddhas not doing anything for me but these ordinary beings are being so beneficial by doing all these activities, such as giving teachings, vows and so forth, all those things that definitely bring me to enlightenment. These ordinary beings are bringing me to enlightenment but the buddhas are doing nothing to bring me to enlightenment. That’s the conclusion you have to come to.

Then you make the mistake of thinking, What’s up with the buddhas? What’s wrong with them? If none of these teachers are buddha and their activities are not buddha activities, what’s happened to the buddhas? They don’t have omniscient mind? They don’t have the perfect power to bring me to enlightenment? They don’t have compassion?

This is the way to meditate and analyze. In this way, you actually come to the conclusion that every one of your gurus is buddha. From your own side, you make that determination.

Therefore, they are extremely kind, manifesting in an ordinary aspect, having all the delusions, suffering and mistaken actions that exactly fit my mistaken mind, so that I can see and communicate with them; that they can do all the various activities, such as giving me guidance, teachings, initiations and so forth. They can do this for me only in an ordinary aspect.

They are extremely kind; so precious, manifesting like this, in an aspect having faults. This aspect showing faults is most precious in my life, because through this aspect, all the buddhas can communicate with me and guide me to enlightenment. This ordinary aspect is the most precious thing in my life.

Without this ordinary aspect manifesting suffering, faults and so forth, my life would be totally lost; I’d be totally lost; guideless, like a baby left alone in a hot desert or left in a dark, moonless jungle filled with wild, vicious animals.

Imagine being a baby left alone like that; how much fear and danger there would be. Just like that, without this aspect manifesting faults, I’d be completely lost, guideless.

Appearing in the aspect of having faults is the only way my gurus, all buddhas, can communicate with me. This is the only way that I can communicate with them. So, they are extremely kind to me, manifesting in this aspect of having faults.

This is Lama Tsongkhapa’s technique, where you use even the faults you see in your guru to develop guru devotion. You look at your guru as buddha and you see your guru as buddha.

Pabongka Rinpoche refers to this special technique of Lama Tsongkhapa in his extensive commentary on guru devotion, where you not only reflect on the qualities of the guru to develop guru devotion, the root of path to enlightenment, but also use the faults you see in the guru to develop your mind in guru devotion and receive the blessings of guru devotion. The blessings you receive help you gain realizations of the path to enlightenment.

One lama said in his teachings, Until you are free of defilements and negative karma, even if all the buddhas were to descend directly in front of you, you will not have the fortune to see the supreme holy body adorned the holy signs and exemplifications; you will have only your present view.” “Present view, or perception, means the view that comes from your ordinary, impure mind.

The logic here is illustrated by the story of Devadatta (Legpa’i Karma), Buddha’s disciple, who served Guru Shakyamuni Buddha for twenty-two years. Despite helping Buddha for twenty-two years, he never saw Shakyamuni Buddha as Buddha; he never looked at him from the side of his qualities. He always saw Buddha as a liar, he saw him only as having faults.

Because Devadatta didn’t have an omniscient mind or clairvoyance, whenever Lord Buddha would make prophesies, he’d think he was lying. Once, when the Buddha was on his alms round, one girl out food in his begging bowl and the Buddha predicted, “Due to the karma of this offering, in future you will become such and such Buddha.” I’m not sure which buddha was predicted, but one of the thousand buddhas of this fortunate age.

But Devadatta thought Lord Buddha was making a huge deal out of this little offering and praising her with some kind of ulterior motivation. But this was Lord Buddha often did, because he had an omniscient mind and could see even the far-distant future results of karma.

But Devadatta didn’t know that and for all the years he served him, didn’t see any good qualities and simply labeled Lord Buddha a liar. Even though Lord Buddha was enlightened inconceivable eons ago, Devadatta didn’t see him as an enlightened being, only an ordinary being riddled with faults.

Therefore, in the first stanza of his Foundation of All Good Qualities, Lama Tsongkhapa says,

The foundation of all good qualities is the kind and venerable guru;
Correct devotion to him is the root of the path.
By clearly seeing this and applying great effort,
Please bless me to rely upon him with great respect.

The reason that Lama Tsong Khapa stresses great effort is that seeing the guru as buddha doesn’t come from side of the object, the guru; it has to come from your own mind, and that takes great effort.

Also, in the lam-rim text Essential Nectar, it says [verse 122],

Therefore, all these apparently faulty aspects
Of my gurus’ actions must be either
Just my mistaken perception from negative karma,
Or alternatively, a deliberate manifestation.

As it says, the faults you see are either a projection of your own ordinary, mistaken mind or intentional manifestations for the benefit of yourself and other sentient beings. So, that’s another way to think; that your gurus manifest faults on purpose.

So, now, after this lengthy explanation, this is where you bring in those other gurus who practice the protector; then it’s easy to understand. One way—it’s the view of your mistaken mind—one way to think is like that. The other way to think is that they have purposely manifested in that way, showing faults, because it’s the only way they can communicate with you, guide you to enlightenment. So you can think either way.

Therefore, if you think like this, you’ll have no problem. You don’t have to criticize the gurus with whom you already have a Dharma connection and who practice the protector. In this way you’ll avoid conflict in your mind and will protect yourself from destroying your devotion.

Source: http://www.lamayeshe.com/index.php?sect=article&id=227