"Me whole significance or purpose of practicing dharma is to perfect a transformation in one's own mind," said His Holiness the Dalai Lama in March 1986. He was presenting oral teachings, published here, on an ancient Tibetan meditational text on Guru Yoga at the Second Enlightenment Experience Celebration in Dharamsala, India---the official office of Tibet-in-exile. The Lama Choepa Guru Yoga practice, which combines aspects of sutra recitation and tantric visualization, has been preserved in an uninterrupted lineage from Shakyarnuni Buddha 2,500 years ago in India through Lama Tsongkhapa in Tibet, a key figure in the Dalai Lama's own Gelugpa tradition.Me practice itself is a complex, lengthy, and formidable meditative visualization of numerous Buddhas, deities, and iconographical images. The guru is indispensable for achieving "highest enlightenment" and is "the only door through which we benefit from the activities of the Buddhas." The practitioner identifies his own teacher with the Buddha, enshrines both in the heart, and seeks to transfer the guru's realizations into "one's own mental continuum." The intention is always enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient (and suffering) beings in the six realms from Hell to Heaven. "What is meant by the enlightened state is a state free Erom all obstructions to omniscience and liberation. The Dalai Lama, as all spiritual teachers, hopes this sounds worth the effort, because humans have a unique opportunity. Buddhism stresses the rare and precious human birth as "something almost impossible to achieve." The extreme privilege of human form, says the Dalai Lama, requires us to "not waste even the shortest moment of human life" and to attain the enlightened state. In the course of our efforts on the Guru Yoga path, we must bring a strong force of heartfelt regret to purify all our negative actions, we must relinquish self-cherishing attitudes, and we must dedicate the merits of our practices to all sentient beings. Admittedly, most of the Dalai Lama's commentary is couched in the aracana of Tibetan Buddhism. What makes his teaching immediately transcend sectarian parameters is his compassion, intelligence, modesty, and wit-that wonderful, unarguable quality of clarity and love that radiates through the Dalai Lama's words. A formidable scholar himself, a realized, enlightened human, a self-effacing monk in maroon robes, Head of State for Tibet, the Dalai Lama is practically impish in his delight with inserting little jokes and wisecracks in the midst of his high tantric commentary-little twinkles from the Dharmakaya of the happy Buddhas. Whether one browses, peruses, or studies this text, it's certain some degree of transmission will twinkle its way from the heart of the Dalai Lama into our own precious mental continuums.
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