Guru Drinks Vodka?

"Milarepa, for example, probably didn’t do one hundred thousand prostrations. Instead, his teacher, Marpa, refused to teach him even one word of Dharma until he had built a stone tower. As soon as the tower was completed, Marpa instructed Milarepa to tear it down and start again, not just once but many times. This unreasonable treatment, the noncommonsensical construction, the forced penance, not to mention the verbal, physical, and emotional abuse endured by Milarepa, were all Marpa’s methods intended specifically for his disciple.

The account of Marpa’s demands and Mila’s willingness to obey has inspired countless people ever since. The story itself is a pith instruction on “no questions asked,” but this doesn’t mean unaccomplished, immature teachers should start ordering their students to build towers. Wishing to help cut delusion once and for all, an accomplished guru may instruct a successful Hong Kong student to quit his dream job at Morgan Stanley and sell hand-painted postcards in Goa for a living. Or wishing that a student actualize the truth in this lifetime, a guru may instruct a lazy, idealistic, leftist hippie from Byron Bay to get a job at Sotheby’s auction house in New York City. Doing prostrations, letting go of comforts, and going against principles all aim at the same result: dismantling the perfectly engineered machine of illusion.

All these methods work. Don’t get fixated on the idea that all Vajrayana students who aspire to raze the walls of duality must follow the Tibetan tradition of doing one hundred thousand prostrations. That would be like thinking that every driver must drink a cup of coffee before they get in the car. Then again, if you avoid doing prostrations because you think they are just for Tibetans or because the very idea of lying down and standing up one hundred thousand times exhausts you, you are deceiving yourself. In that case, you shouldn’t do one hundred thousand prostrations—you should do two hundred thousand. Never opt for the easy way out. Be ruthless toward the desires of the mind. Guru"

-- dzongsar khyentse rinpoche, "The Guru Drinks Vodka?"