The Importance Of  Spiritual Practice

by Khöndung Gyana Vajra Sakya Rinpoche

Vajrakilaya is the main practice of Sakya monasteries – it is the main annual puja held at our Sakya Monastery in Tibet as well as at our Sakya Centre in Rajpur, Northern India, where I grew up.

Today we are receiving the Vajrakilaya initiation, which carries with it an enormous amount of blessings. I would like to pass these blessings on to you. I don’t consider myself a teacher, or a master by any matter of means, but I did receive this precious initiation from very great masters, and it is through them that I have received the blessings of the Vajrakilaya initiation, and now I’m very happy that I can pass on these very same blessings to you.

One of the reasons why Vajrakilaya is such an important practice in our tradition is that it is one of the very few ancient lineages that have survived the centuries right down to today. In the past, there were many lineages, but most of them disappeared, only very few survived. And so Vajrakilaya belongs to an unbroken lineage that goes back hundreds and hundreds of years. This means that hundreds of years of dedication, hundreds of years of practice, have gone into this Vajrakilaya blessing. And so I’m truly happy that I can pass it on to you.

At the same time, it’s very important to realise that although we place so much emphasis on the practice of Vajrakilaya, all the other deities are equally as important. Whether it be Vajrakilaya, Mahakala, Hevajra, Vajrayogini, Tara, Padmasambhava or Avalokiteshvara, they’re all the same. There is no difference between them in terms of importance. All these deities are the Buddha. And so it’s important that we don’t become attached to one deity above the others.

Many practitioners are attached to a particular deity and say “Oh, my deity is Wrathful Mahakala, or Hevajra, or Vajrakilaya”. This is not right, it’s almost like taking sides. There are no sides to be taken in the practice of deities. They are all equal, they are all the Buddha.

We should understand this and rectify our attitude. We often have misconceptions about different aspects of the spiritual path. As humans we make mistakes, and it’s important that we realise our mistakes. This is the first step that leads us in the right direction. The first step towards enlightenment is to realise our mistakes. Once we know right from wrong, we can progress steadily along the path. 

When we receive an initiation or a teaching, it is very important to put it into practice, to practise diligently. Whenever they give initiations or teachings, many lamas give their students commitments that they have to abide by if they want to continue receiving the blessings. For my part, I’m just happy to pass on this teaching to you. The only commitment that I would ask from students is that they practise, whatever their practice is. It doesn’t have to be Vajrakilaya. 

But whatever practice we do, we need to do it diligently. We need to strive to bring the practice of the Buddha’s teachings into our daily lives, into our relationships, with our family, our friends, our neighbours. If it turns out that we haven’t changed for the better, that our relationships haven’t improved, then it means that we haven’t fully assimilated the meaning of the Buddha’s teachings. It is very important to use the full effect of the Buddha’s teachings, to listen to them, and to make them our own.

In the same way that we should not consider one deity superior to the others, the same applies to our lamas. Practitioners sometimes say for example “Oh, my master is the best, he’s the highest. He’s a tulku, or a khenpo”. This seems to me a wrong way to see things, a wrong kind of reasoning. If we have a guru, then he is our guru, and there is no such consideration as to whether he’s high or not. He’s our guru, and our relationship with him has nothing to do with his title or his position.

If we’re learning martial arts, then we can say that our guru has more muscle or more efficient techniques. But when it comes to practising Buddhism, there’s no such thing as higher or lower. It won’t be because a teacher has a higher throne that he will be giving us better teaching. 

What really matters is how it affects our lives when we receive teaching from our guru, how much we open ourselves up to him. If the guru’s teaching is not reaching us deeply, it means that the guru/disciple relationship is not working. If we don’t understand how he is trying to help us, then it means that we need to rethink the relationship. It doesn’t mean that the guru is not a good guru, but it might be a question of karmic connection.

There has to be a karmic connection between a guru and a disciple. Even to be a Buddhist, we need a karmic connection. To meet our guru, we need a karmic connection. Even in normal life, sometimes when we meet new people or go to new places, we feel naturally happy, without any reason. Sometimes when we meet someone for the first time, we also feel very happy, very close. Even if we’ve never met them before, we feel as if we’d known them for years and years. This is called karmic connection.

This is what happens when we meet our guru. We feel deep emotions, we feel strong reactions in our body, we feel very close as if we’d known him or her forever. These are the signs. It’s not absolutely necessary that this happens, but these are the signs that we’ve met our karmic guru. 

And when we have met our karmic guru, it becomes especially important that we commit ourselves to our spiritual practice. I always request disciples, sangha members, vajra brothers and sisters, to practise diligently. This is because our guru is here for us. The gurus are not here because they want to be here. They are the Buddha himself, and the only reason why they are here is to help us.

We call this age the Fortunate Eon because so many Buddhas are taking birth in our world. And we need the Buddhas to stay as long as possible in our world. The only way we can do this is by practising. Neither medicine, nor money, nor luxury can help to prolong our guru’s life. Only our practice can we offer to the guru, the most valuable offering of all.

And so, we need to practise diligently. This is not to say that we have to go into retreat, we don’t have to cast everything away and become a sort of Citizen Kane or anything of the sort. What this means is that even if we do five minutes of practice every day, or even two minutes, or even one, we have to make it count. We have to do it with a pure heart, with pure devotion. Then our gurus will live long. 

Without our gurus we are nothing, we’re just like a baby. When we’re born, without the help of our parents, of those who love us, we would die within a few hours, because we don’t know how to eat, how to drink, how to do anything. We’re just like a crawling piece of meat! In a way, we are still like that. Without the help of our gurus, we are completely helpless.

The Buddhas are everywhere, inside us, outside us, everywhere. But because of our karma, we cannot see them. Thankfully, they show themselves to us in the form of our gurus. We mustn’t think that when we are not physically in front of our guru, he cannot see us. With this kind of thinking, we do whatever we want, and then when we go to the guru, we wear nice clothes and tell him how well we’re doing. It doesn’t work this way. We cannot trick our guru. And if we act in this manner, we are disrespecting the guru and it means we don’t trust him.

Actually, when we take a guru, it means that he knows everything about us, our inside, our outside, our past life, this life, our future life. He knows everything. This is what we have to understand and believe. If we’re not one hundred per cent transparent with our guru, then the relationship is not as effective as it should be. You may get a certain amount of blessing, but not a full amount of blessing. 

And so, if we want our guru to live long, then we need to practice. This is my only request, this is the only commitment that I’m giving to you.