What is Guru Yoga in Buddhism?
Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia is now 14 years old
Our Encyclopedia recently received a wonderful opportunity for a major renewal on its 14th birthday . After many years of growing our Encyclopedia had become bit slow and sometimes even decided not to answer when people knocked on the door.
A very big thank you and blessings to Dmytro Rudiy (rudiy.nl) for his great work in upgrading the server, website and all of the infrastructure and helping make TBE fast and reliable again for everyone!
We kindly ask our readers to help us cover the cost of this important upgrade and also help with the ongoing costs of keeping the Encyclopedia alive and freely available.
or card
Every little donation helps and every one is deeply appreciated. 🙏🙏🙏
OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM 🙏🙏🙏
May blessings shower down on all of yous 🙏🙏🙏
Guru yoga literally means Uniting with the guru. It is the practice in which we try to merge our pure mind/consciousness with the guru's pure mind.
Philosophically, our pure mind is the buddha mind, and so is everyone's and every living beings’ pure mind, including the gurus'. Because every individual's pure mind is the same in nature then there is no separation/distinction between them. So, it is easy to merge them together in inseparable union. Just like when we merge (pour) a glass of water with (to) the water in a pond, once it merge together they are also become inseparable, it is impossible to pull out back the exact water from the glass.
With that said, this practice is very beneficial for the practitioner to recognize his/her buddha natutre, simply by familiarizing themselve of it using idol (guru) and try to merge their mind with the perfect mind of the idol.
Guru in this case, can be a physical guru which the practitioner admire for his/her attainment, or it can also be non-physical guru, such as The Buddha, Dieites, passed away gurus, etc. As long as the practitioner believes that the idol embodies the mind of the buddha, then this idol qualifies for the practitioner to practice the guru yoga.
[[1]]