Looking in the Mirror

Quite recently our small sangha has been introduced to the meditation practice of ‘guru yoga’. One or two were perhaps initially alarmed when first hearing the term as it conjured up something like the blind worship of some power crazed spiritual psychopath surrounded by his crazed devotees. However, breath again, what we had in mind could not be further from this if it tried.

So guru yoga - the unification of our mind with the mind of the guru - is just another way of saying resting our mind in our buddha-nature, intrinsic awareness, which of course, being our own innate wisdom, is the greatest guru of all. This maybe takes a moment to land. It’s saying that right in this very moment there exists a source of wisdom and compassion that we may make contact with, draw upon, identify with, live within and act from, which has always been awakened. Nothing has even tainted it and it is always spontaneously present. It is the indivisibility of emptiness and clarity, the ground of reality itself. So, really quite a big deal!

The place in our meditation session for practising guru yoga is immediately after our taking refuge and making an aspiration that everyone will benefit from our practice. Having completed these, a very, very simple form may be completed by sounding the seed syllable A (pronounced as an extended ahhhhha) three times:

A - We sound the syllable and visualise before and a little above us a representation of our own awakened nature surrounded by rainbows and emanating light. Traditionally this may be a deity such as Vajrasattva (who is pictured here) but we have been teaching it so that each person may visualise whatever or whoever symbolises all that is wise and kind for them personally. So to that end it could be a wonderful grandparent or a tree.

A - Sound again. Now our wise person merges with ourselves. We become one with our buddha-nature. Or better still, we recognise our buddha-nature and rest within it. And remember, buddha-nature is simply non-dual awareness, in Tibetan, rigpa.

A - Sound again. Eyes open, soft focus, doing nothing, we continue to rest in this pristine and ever fresh awareness. Not trying to correct it, nor maintain it. Certainly not thinking about it or trying to use it, as an antidote,  to make things better. And then when it decays or is lost, (probably within a few moments), just starting again with an attitude of whatever the experience, it is good enough and not something to start grasping at or become exasperated by. It is just whatever it is.

And that’s it. If we slot this into what we have already learnt than this practice leads directly into the kind of ‘doing nothing’ meditation that we have frequently mentioned here. However, we who practice this know that this simplest of meditations is also the hardest and if we discover our minds and emotions are all over the place, scattered and distracted, then having completed our guru yoga we may decide to either continue with simple mindfulness of the breath or the felt sense. Then, when more settled, we might rest back into awareness itself. It’s a tool box of wonderful methods and really only we know which one to use at any given moment.

So have a go. It’s all a bit pretend at first but - ‘fake it till you make it’! Some years back when I started experimenting with this I had a dream in which my wisdom figure appeared and instructed me to feel them like my grandfather: a little more distant than my father but still very close. Personal and warm. A real and palpable presence that I was deeply connected to and loved by. This was the felt sense I was to unite with, recognising it was my own true nature.

NW. June 2nd 2025