Well, we can go right back to the Buddha and ask,
what is the role of the Buddha in Buddhism?
And the role of the Buddha is as a guide, as a teacher.
Not a saviour, not a god, but as this extraordinary wise,
resourceful, and skillful guide who showed us the way
to become free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
So if Buddha is the primary teacher in Buddhism,
then the teachers we meet, our personal teachers,
obviously cannot be any more than guides.
So any temptation to think of them as saviour figures
and to lavish worship on them is entirely inappropriate.
In a sense, the lama is a skilled craftsman,
and we want to be learned in that craft,
the craft of awakening compassion and wisdom.
And he will impart to us, or she will impart to us,
she will share with us, the means of becoming learned,
becoming skilled masters ourselves.
So lama simply is a Tibetan term for guru.
And in the Buddhist sense, as I said a guru is not a saviour
or a god but a skilled craftsman.
But then one might say, but Buddha taught
and so his teachings are still present
in the form of the scriptures.
They'll be enough for me.
Well, one might try that but, practically speaking,
it doesn't seem to work so easily
precisely because one is unlearned as a beginner.
One doesn't know which of the Buddha's teachings,
and there's so many of them, Buddha being
such a resourceful teacher.
There's so many of them, as a beginner,
one doesn't know which ones to apply,
where to start on this path.
Which are most appropriate for somebody like myself,
and how to measure whether I'm
making effective progress or not.
For all these reasons, we need to rely upon somebody
who knows their way around the Buddhist teachings.
And by the way, knowing their way around the Buddhist
teachings doesn't just mean they have an intellectual
faculty and ability to have the right opinions
or the right amount of facts about Buddhism,
but it means they themselves have applied the teachings
in their own lives and developed some of those qualities,
which mean that we can feel the actual result
to at least some extent of the teachings in our teachers.
And that then gives us further confidence.
That means also they have,
in developing some of the qualities
of the teachings in themselves,
the teachers have become endowed with the flexibility
to respond to their students appropriately.
So wise and learned and compassionate teachers
are very necessary, one might say,
for all of us setting out on the path.
Now as we progress on the path,
as we hopefully progress along the path,
our knowledge becomes greater,
our experience becomes greater,
we might, in fact, meet and study with a number
of different teachers who are able to present
different aspects of the teaching or different
stages of the practice to us.
And that's fine,
there is no problem about that.
Generally speaking, one or two teachers will,
over the course of one's life, be the most significant ones,
the ones from whom one will probably
take most personal guidance.
But it's the way the traditions work,
that one usually meets not just one's
direct personal teacher, but his or her teachers,
and they also become part of the group of one's teachers.
So that's how it is.
What is the emotional attitude
we should have to the teacher?
Well, as we hear his teachings and test them
with our intelligence and then test them
by putting into practice, we develop a sense
of great respect and appreciation
for how he or she shares the teachings with us.
And beyond that, if it's really accomplished teacher,
the way in which the qualities of enlightenment begin
to radiate through their actions as well as their teachings.
So this is the meaning of the often misunderstood
concept of devotion in Buddhism.
It's not devotion to a saviour or a god.
It's that heartfelt recognition of the wonderful
path that is being shared with one by the teacher.
But as Sakya Pandita counsels, if somebody
with the title teacher does not teach or act in accord
with the teachings of the Buddha,
then we should simply ignore them.
No matter what their status or title is,
they're not for us.
We should look away and walk away.
So once again, it needs a kind of intelligent
appreciation of what is the purpose of the lama
to be able to develop a wise and wholesome and productive
relationship with one's lama or one's lamas.