Here we request that the guru mix his mind with our very subtle mind.  We are striving for a mind transplant with him.

We imagine that our mind is in the aspect of an orange-coloured letter DHI, which is standing on an eight-petalled lotus and moon cushion inside the central channel at the centre of our heart.

O Glorious and precious root Guru,
Please sit on the lotus and moon seat at my heart.
Please care for me with your great kindness,
And grant me the blessings of your body, speech, and mind.

We imagine that the field of merit dissolves into our root guru, who then comes to our crown and diminishes to the size of a thumb bestowing the blessings of his body.

O Glorious and precious root Guru,
Please sit on the lotus and moon seat at my heart.
Please care for me with your great kindness,
And bestow the common and supreme attainments.

He descends through our central channel to our throat chakra bestowing the blessings of all his speech.

O Glorious and precious root Guru,
Please sit on the lotus and moon seat at my heart.
Please care for me with your great kindness,
And remain firm until I attain the essence of enlightenment.

He descends through our central channel to our heart where he mixes inseparably with our root mind in the aspect of a letter DHI.  The most important thing is to really feel like our guru is at our heart, his mind is now our mind.  We have made a mind transplant.  We can now use his mind as our own.  I will talk more about this in later posts.

We then imagine that the eight petaled lotus closes around the letter DHI in the shape of the heart, and we feel this as a protection circle keeping our mind mixed inseparably with our guru’s.  We can recite the mantra OM AH RA PA TSA NA DHI SU MA TI KIR TI SHI RI BHA DRA AH THI TA NA AH THI TI TE KUR BEN TU a few times to keep things secure.

It is important to always remember the string of clouds that goes from Guru Tsongkhapa to the heart of Maitreya.  If we can always remember this, then when we die, we can follow these clouds all the way to Tushita Pure Land.  Remembering this is a method of transference of consciousness.  The guru is like an elevator that has come down for us.

If we check, we shall see that dissolving the guru into our heart and mixing our mind with his is the very heart of every single practice.  Gen-la Losang once told me in reality, there is only one practice on the path, namely the mixing of our mind with our guru’s mind.  Why reinvent the wheel when we can just use one that has already been made?  Why blaze a new trail when you can travel a superhighway.  Sure, there is a certain romantic appeal to doing it all on our own, but such a spiritual strategy is arrogant, dangerous and indeed cruel.  It is arrogant because it assumes a lost being such as ourself is capable of forging a path to such an exalted state as enlightenment.  It is dangerous because if we fail, we fall and become lost again.  And it is cruel because even if we are successful, it will surely take longer that following a well-trodden path and all the beings who we otherwise would have helped if we had attained enlightenment sooner are left to languish in samsara while we selfishly bumble around our spiritual life. 

Ultimately, the spiritual guide is not some being that exists outside of us.  Rather, he is in reality that part of our mind which has already attained all good qualities.  He is both a being and a part of our own mind, with no contradiction between the two.  The world is our karmic dream, but who is the director?  Right now, the director is our self-cherishing mind.  It has created a world of suffering without end.  It has blinded us to even an awareness of the existence of freedom.  But there is part of our mind that is an exit out of the dream.  The spiritual guide is a being who has come into our mind to lead us out.  In the beginning, we follow his advice but remain ourselves.  Later, we come to realize who we think we are, namely the self of our self-cherishing and self-grasping, actually doesn’t exist at all.  We have been chasing mirages or shadows since beginningless time.  So who are we really?  The completely purified version of ourself is our Spiritual Guide.  By mixing our mind with him, we are not surrendering ourself to some outside force, rather we are centering ourself within who we really are. 

When we mix our mind with the guru, he becomes the new director.  If we learn to have our every action of body, speech and mind be him working within us and through us, overtime not only will we be lead to freedom but so too will all those we love and care about.  We clearly at present have no idea how to help anyone, but he knows exactly what needs to be done.  All we need to do is hand over the keys and allow him to use us as, in the famous words of St. Francis of Assisi, “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.”  When there is no longer any “us” getting in the way, and all of our actions are his actions working through us, there is no longer a distinction between him and ourself.  We become the guru deity and by doing so we realize he was the real us all along.