Pema Chödrön: "... Rinpoche walked out of his door...We recognized each other, so I asked whether he would like to have a cup of tea. We had a very nice cup of tea, and I was so inspired by what he was talking about that I began to feel stronger physically than I had for some time. I felt a powerful connection... it reminded me very strongly of how I felt when I used to talk with Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, my root teacher.
About a year later...I asked to receive a certain set of Dzogchen teachings. Rinpoche refused. That was a bit of a shock, so I asked him to explain why. He cited several obstacles he felt I needed to take care of first. Later, when I had dealt with those and told him I felt confident that I could genuinely study these teachings with him, he agreed.
Eventually, I worked with him while in retreat over a hundred-day period. At that time, I realized I hadn’t met anyone since Trungpa Rinpoche who could sense where I was stuck. I was very good at conning everyone and talking about not getting hooked, but Rinpoche somehow had this great ability to hook me. I knew we must have a really old karmic connection. I felt so grateful to have met him, so I asked if he would take me as his student, and he accepted. And he’s continued to mess with me ever since."
“No one can tell you who your teacher is. It’s a completely personal thing based on karma. It’s like falling in love with someone."
Dzigar Kongtrül: "I quite often felt challenged by my teacher’s command or simple presence, or what I perceived as displeasure. Sometimes it was just silence, or the teacher looking at me with a certain deep penetration. Yet, I wonder whether it was actually the teacher’s intention to challenge. I think my own mind was projected onto the teacher. I would hold a judgment and project that onto the teacher. In fact, I was dealing with my own mind and its habits, including negative habits that I was not ready to give up, despite the fact that they were dragging me down. There was a dualism going on in my mind: I wanted to be good and then found myself not so good. I wanted to impress the teacher but was not able to because I could not be free of certain thoughts and emotions.
A few times I thought my teacher was quite upset with me, and when I looked into it further I found that he had no judgment whatsoever! Because I thought things were so bad and I was terrified of being confronted, when I found it wasn’t such a big deal, I felt a deep sense of the teacher’s acceptance and love and care, like you would feel from a mother..That was wonderful.
In the beginning of the relationship with the teacher, there is maybe a little bit of codependency. Later, when the codependency gets resolved, there is a sense of being a team, a sense of kinship. In my case, it was truly a delight to discuss the dharma, to learn more about how to practice the dharma. At that point, it’s not one person trying to teach another. It’s both parties trying to do the same thing.
When I saw so closely my teachers’ deep appreciation for dharma and their one-hundred-percent conviction in its ability to bring sentient beings to a state of liberation, I felt great joy in sharing that with them. When that happens, your love for dharma begins to equal their love of dharma, and that becomes the basis for deep kinship."
~ Let’s Be Honest ~ Pema Chödrön and Dzigar Kongtrül—a student and her teacher—talk straight about honesty, self-deception, and why the difference is the key to the dharma, Lion's Roar January 1, 2014
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