Embodiment of devotion through guru yoga
Afternoon. Thank you for joining us today. I’m going to talk about a key term in Indian and Tibetan Buddhist literature. The Tibetan term mos gus for devotion is a compound of mos pa (Skt. adhimukta, adhimokśa) –Mos pa can be translated as belief,
imagination, faith, interest, or inclined towards – and gus pa (Skt. ādara, gaurava) – translated as respect, devotion, humility, or to be intent on. The Abhidharma – a significant influence on all Tibetan Buddhist traditions – categorizes mos pa as a mental state, (Skt. caitt) whereas gus pa is not part of that list but we can infer that whatever is gus-ing is focused on the object. We may then infer that mos gus or devotion is a mental state that focuses on something.
One specific focus that receives noticeable attention in the rNyingma tradition is the teacher (Skt. guru, Tib. bla ma). Patrul Rinpoche (rdza dpal sprul o rgyan ‘jigs med chos kyi dbang po, 1808 – 1887) states “in order to practice true Dharma, it is of great importance to find an authentic spiritual friend, a teacher who has all the necessary qualifications.” A direct student of
Patrul Rinpoche, the Third Dodrupchen Jigme Tenpai Nyima echoes his teacher’s sentiments in his Instructions for Practicing Guru Yoga (bla ma'i rnal 'byor nyams len khrid yig). The Third Dodrupchen says that, “the delighted lama is the actual accomplishment” meaning that the accomplishment of the secret mantra path relies upon a teacher.
It is called Guru Yoga (Tib. la ma’i rnal ‘byor) and is a meditation practice that is included in within the foundational practices (sngon ‘dro), which are a preparation for later rNyingma tantric (rgyud) and dzogchen (rdzogs chen) practices. Briefly, guru yoga
engages the mind so that you initially perceive your teacher as the Buddha and eventually perceive yourself as a Buddha. Anne Klein writes that “all these inner foundational practices are forms of deity yoga: they all provide opportunities to unify with the
enlightened mind of the Buddha-deity.” Patrul Rinpoche, Third Dodrupchen, and other rNyingma teachers who write on guru yoga explain that this particular meditation allows one to ‘realize absolute truth,’ or ‘attain the bhūmi of unexcelled wisdom.’
Yet practicing guru with a focus on your a teacher is not sufficient, and the Third Dodrupchen, along with other rNyingma lineage holders, stress the that this practice must be conjoined with devotion in guru yoga. So far, I have not found significant
explanations in guru yoga texts themselves for the reason why one must have devotion, which might implicate that devotion is so culturally widespread. Dr. Klein explains in Heart Essence of the Vast Expanse that devotion coupled with guru yoga develops
effortlessness, a crucial quality for dzogchen practitioners.
What is the relationship between guru yoga and the cultivation of devotion (mos gus) in this tantric meditation practice? I have found that looking at this question in the contest of what Lawrence Barsalou calls grounded cognition can help us understand some of the underpinnings of how guru yoga facilitates the devotion, that rNyingma Tibetan tradition finds necessary for
transformation. Following this, I explore one of the Third Dodrupchen’s guru yoga texts called Instructions for Practicing Guru Yoga as a thread to discuss the cultivation of devotion in guru yoga. Other than my own translation, this text has not been translated into English. I contextualize the Third Dodrupchen’s text with other rNying ma masters such as Patrul Rinpoche and commentary on Patrul Rinpoche’s text by Khetsun Sangpo to provide a network of nuances to our understanding of how devotion is cultivated in guru yoga.
The Third Dodrupchen Jigmé Tenpai Nyima’s Instructions for Practicing Guru Yoga
The Third Dodrupchen opens his Instructions for Practicing Guru Yoga (bla ma'i rnal 'byor nyams len khrid yig by clarifying the optimal conditions for successful tantric practice.
Firstly, he emphasizes that successful practice relies on an ‘authentic’ teacher. He clearly discusses the role of this teacher and the effects of practice when the meditator does not rely on a teacher. An authentic teacher is someone “who has all the necessary
qualifications.” The Third Dodrupchen’s instruction explains, “when the spiritual guide does not teach one merely goes to the higher realms because the actual path is not explained.” The instructions continue with warnings that reading books that are not received from the teacher creates ‘hell beings’. A student practicing tantra is strongly encouraged to accompany her practice with a teacher and the teacher’s instructions. This suggests that the student is unable to guide herself on the tantric path because the instructions may be misunderstood or even inappropriate.
Moreover, a student who “merely receives transmission from the teacher” does not have the necessary conditions for the tantric path. The presence of a teacher is not enough, and the Third Dodrupchen continues in explaining, “tantra is the path of blessings.” While he does not elucidate what he means by ‘path of blessings,’ he does begin to describe how the student perceives/feels about
her teacher in that you perceive your teacher as the form of the Buddha from the highest love. The Third Dodrupchen suggests that a successful practice incorporates a particular attitude towards one’s teacher that allows her to accomplish the tantric path of blessings.
This way of pleasing (rab byams) towards one teacher, according to the Third Dodrupchen, is for the practitioner to effortlessly practice the ‘actual accomplishment’ . He later states that the teacher is the ‘actual accomplishment for all practitioners’
meaning that one is able to actualize ‘absolute truth’ as described by Patrul Rinpoche in Words. Another interpretation is that recognizing your teacher as Guru Rinpoche is to recognize one’s mind nature. The Third Dodrupchen summarizes the instructions of
guru yoga when he quotes an un-named tantra, “With greatest effort, offer to (your) teacher [who is] a deity. The form bodies that
are like suchness, through the cause itself, takes care of the world.” This quote reflects that the teacher is perceived to be a Buddha for all tantra. A tantric practitioner who correctly? perceives her teacher as a Buddha is on the genuine path and is able to continue to practice because of her devotion.
The Third Dodrupchen continues to instruct that devotion must be accompanied with perceiving one’s teacher as the Buddha. “From the beginning, when you are delighted with unwavering devotion, which actually perceives your teacher as the Buddha and the ability of
the heart…” He continues with stating that one practices guru yoga if devotion does not arise as stated above. So it is a method for devotion as well as a practice that engages devotion. “It is certainly necessary to practice guru yoga, in which you meditate
through focusing for the sake of the session and the method for [practice] this appears in every old and new kama and terma of the rNying ma tradition.” This passage makes clear that through guru yoga one cultivates devotion. To explore this, we can now consider a particular type of grounded cognition that helps us clarify the relationship between guru yoga, and devotion, so that we better understand how guru yoga helps cultivates devotion.
Merging Tantra with Grounded Cognition
As we have noted, the Third Dodrupchen does not explain how guru yoga cultivates devotion, he simply says that either one has unwavering devotion or that it is necessary to practice guru yoga when devotion does not arise like that. Studies in grounded
cognition explore a relationship between bodily states and conceptual frameworks and we can apply what is learned there to the relationship between guru yoga and devotion. A short introduction to grounded cognition and how it categorizes these elements helps us understand how this can work.
Grounded cognition is a concept derived from in a group of studies that focus on the role of the body in cognition. Lawrence Barsalou in his “Grounded Cognition” defines these studies as “… accounts of grounded cognition [that] focus on roles of the body
in cognition, based on widespread findings that bodily states can cause cognitive states and be effects of them.” He notes further that cognition can be grounded in the body, meaning they are affected by the body - in several ways, including simulations,
situated action, and, on occasion, bodily states. “Simulation is the reenactment of perceptual, motor, and introspective states acquired during experience with the world, body, and mind.” Situated action “proposes that the environment plays central roles in
shaping cognitive mechanisms.” Guru yoga is a bodily state as situated action and simulation, which also effects cognition when the practitioner is not actively practicing this meditation.
The bodily state – guru yoga – affects cognition in two ways, which researchers describe as online and offline, “The term online embodiment, and the related term, situated cognition, refer to the understanding that much cognitive activity is a response to
real-world environments. Moreover, the environment that surrounds a person during a particular experience plays an influential role on cognition. Often we think of ‘muscle memory’ in that we want to replicate the motion when we want to recall a specific type of feeling, thought, or memory. This refers to the time when one is doing the action or integrating the attitude or emotion.
Therefore, in terms of our discussion, online embodiment is the time spent practicing guru yoga in order to make the connection with devotion.
Niedenthal et al. state that “offline embodiment refers to just thinking about an object produces embodied states as if the object were actually there.” Post meditation is in this context an example of offline embodiment” because the student is not practicing
guru yoga but her cognition is still being affected.
The cognitive activity that we are concerned with here is devotion. One difficult maneuver between Western science and Tibetan Buddhism is align the different categories of what constitutes an emotion, thought, or feeling because both systems provide
detailed descriptions. For this paper, I categorize devotion as an abstract concept, which is then further categorized into 1) an attitude, 2) a social perception, or 3) an emotion. Devotion is an attitude as defined by Niedenthal et al. “Charles Darwin (1904)
defined attitude as a collection of motor behaviors – especially posture – that convey an organism’s affective response toward an object.” Attitude is the feeling or posturing that one has towards an object. Devotion, especially for guru yoga and tantra, is the feeling one has towards her teacher and is defined as an attitude.
While the studies presented by Niedenthal et al. do not include devotion or guru yoga, we can carefully, selectively, and without forgetting the different cultural context from which they emerge, apply their findings from other research because guru yoga and
devotion, as suggested by the Third Dodrupchen, fits within similar enough frameworks. In the case of guru yoga, the focus would be the teacher being perceived as a Buddha and later perceptions, which are not addressed in this paper, and the later-reported attitude is devotion.
Devotion: Before, During, & After
The Third Dodrupchen explains that unwavering devotion allows one to perceive her teacher as the actual Buddha, or you can cultivate devotion through guru yoga. This attitude is the basis of accomplishing the tantric path. Additionally, Patrül Rinpoche
in Instructions on the Preliminaries to the Great Perfection Teaching Called ‘Heart Essence of Vast Openness’, the Sacred Word of Lama Gun-sang says that “unless you have faith in him (the endowed lama) and a sense of his pure appearance, the ultimate cannot be
cognized.” Guru yoga cultivates devotion when someone lacks this unwavering devotion through reminding the student to generate devotion to her lama such as, “with the thought that Guru Rin-bo-chay is the very essence of the compassion and blessings of all
Buddhas, request his empowerment with such strong feeling that your hairs stir.” .Another example found in Patrul Rinpoche’s instructions is “this prayer requesting Guru Rin-bo-chay’s blessed empowerment should arise not just from your mouth but from the
orb of the heart itself.” So far, I have not found extensive instructions on how to generate devotion in the practice but the simple statement as stated above. Yet, if we apply how situated bodily action is able to affect the attitude of devotion, we
understand that guru yoga continually changes one’s attitude not only during but after the time the practice itself. Perhaps the continuous cultivation of devotion allows for the gradual transformation from tantra to dzogchen.
The body’s role in guru yoga allows for the meditator to affiliate a particular attitude, devotion, with situated action: imagination, subtle body, and sense perceptions. Studies in grounded cognition as explained by Barsalou and Niedenthal et al. apply
to the devotion, at least as understood in Western terms, can be cultivated partly through bodily engagement. And indeed, through guru yoga because it is an embodied practice, that is different which the practitioner affiliates devotion towards her teacher and particular bodily practices. Afterwards, the practitioner’s devotion continues to evolve because the practitioner thinks about her lama and devotion arises.
Conclusion
The Third Dodrupchen explains that either one has devotion, which allows one to perceive her teacher as the Buddha or one practices guru yoga to cultivation devotion. Guru yoga allows for a relationship between student and teacher to deepen because it cultivates
devotion in the student but also the practice greatly benefits from devotion itself. Like a good friendship or falling in love, there is reciprocation between the student’s devotion and the meditation practice – the student has a little bit of devotion, practices guru yoga, more devotion develops, and the practice cultivates a particular fruition in the student.
Guru yoga has this power of transforming experience—both somatic and cognitive, in which we see reflected in the Third Dodrupchen
and Patrul Rinpoche’s instructions such as offering with one’s heart or request empowerments from your teachers with the feeling that your hairs stir. The practice also continues to affect the practitioner between meditations so we may infer that one continuously cultivates devotion, even when not practicing guru yoga.
