Question asked by Desperate
How does one take refuge in a guru/lama exactly? I have found a guru, except he lives very faraway from me. How does one take refuge in him? Like, take if someone were to take refuge in Lama Zopa Rinpoche or Tsem Rinpoche. How does one do that is they live faraway? Not only that, but how can one find a root guru from a past life if there is in any case?
Dear Desperate,
There are two ways of taking refuge with a lama. The first is undergoing a short ceremony with your guru, and the second is taking refuge in you guru from your heart. In fact, even when undergoing the ceremony, the student has to accept the guru from their heart. If you would like to formally take refuge with the guru, you should contact the guru through his Dharma centre and make a formal request, together with an offering. This is the traditional procedure of formally requesting refuge.
However, if it is not possible for you to meet the guru in person, if you take the guru to be your teacher sincerely, from the depths of your heart, this means you have taken refuge. In fact this is the real definition of having taken refuge with your guru. It is not about an external ceremony, but about an internal conviction, that this person is your guru. Once you have done this, you should follow your guru’s teachings and advice, and practice devotion to your guru. This is because for you, the guru is the Buddha and all the other enlightened beings, as he/she teaches you the Dharma which is the method to overcome samsara and therefore suffering you may be facing.
You can formalise doing this by setting up an altar if you don’t have one already, make extensive offerings to the best of your ability, make strong aspirations for your spiritual path, and generate the strong feeling that you have taken refuge with your Guru. You can do this, and then consider that particular teacher to be your guru.
This internal act of taking refuge however, is not one off. It should be engaged in again and again. In fact, as part of the formal refuge commitment, practitioners are supposed to take refuge at least three times during the day and three times during the night, meaning at least six times every day. When doing so, the first refuge is actually your guru. For example in the short refuge prayer: Namo Guru Beh, Namo Buddhaya, Namo Dharmaya, Namo Sanghaya, it is the guru that comes first. So every time we recite this, we should think strongly that we are takin refuge in the guru and the three jewels. In fact the three jewels themselves are embodied in your guru.
As for finding out and meeting your root guru from a previous life, this would depend on how close of a connection you had created with your previous life’s guru. In the case that the connection was strong, and that the conditions in this life were conducive for the connection to open up, you would meet your guru again in this life. This however is rare. Another way to find out who your root guru was, if your intention is to re-connect with that guru in this life, is to consult someone with clairvoyance based on their enlightened attainments. For example through consulting a lama who is known for their clairvoyant ability, consulting a lama known for their divination practices, or even consulting a Dharma protector in trance of an oracle such as Dorje Shugden. However if the conditions are right, and the connections you made with the guru in previous lives is strong enough, one will naturally be drawn back the particular lama. I hope this short explanation helps. Thank you.