Tantric Ethics

There are limitless things the unwise see as contradictory and the wise know to
lack contradiction.
~ Tsongkhapa, Lamrim Chenmo

Morality does not become pure unless darkness is dispelled by the light of wisdom.
~ Āryaśūra,
Pāramitāsamāsa 6.5

“As for why the guru is such a central feature in tantric Buddhism, I think we should rather turn the question on its head and ask why a guru is not a central feature of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Clearly the religious teachers — the rabbis, the preachers, and the mullahs — are just as important institutionally in the day-to-day lives of followers of Semitic religions as are the gurus of tantric Buddhism. But it appears that the strong belief in God in those religions channels the stream of devotion awakened in the believer to the creator deity as the cultic center, rather than to the religious teacher him or herself.

Practically speaking, there is little difference — without the stream of devotion, a person’s religious life is a mere shell. If directing that stream of devotion to a creator god has the benefit of more easily awakening full admiration for the divine with all its infinite qualities, directing it toward an actual religious teacher, a guru, has the benefit of avoiding superstition.

Devotion to the guru, then, is a given for Tsongkhapa, as much as devotion to God is a given for Maimonides, Aquinas, or Muhammad. In the Fruit Clusters, as in his other works, Tsongkhapa stresses that the cultivation of devotion to a guru (or gurus) is particularly important not because deliverance is found through a power inhering in a deity or teacher, but because the path to deliverance and perfection is realized, in the first instance, by listening to and learning from experienced teachers, and then by practicing under their guidance. Tantric practice is esoteric and difficult, and thus the teacher plays a particularly vital role…”

~ Introduction to ‘Tantric Ethics: An Explanation of the Precepts for Buddhist Vajrayana Practice’,
by Je Tsongkhapa

Photo ~ His Holiness the Dalai Lama looking at copies of Je Tsongkhapa's texts reprinted for release during inaugural session of the conference at Gyuto Tantric College in Sidhbari, HP, India on November 29, 2014. Photo/Tenzin Choejor/OHHDL