In Tibetan we have the expression thukyid chikdre: thuk is an honorific term for the guru’s mind, yid is your mind, chik means “one,” and dre means “merged.” This is the quintessence of the quintessence of the guru yoga practice. The whole point is to accomplish this merging with the guru’s mind.

Once the student has matured, the student will begin to realize that the guru is not bound by gender, nationality, or history. In fact, everything that is seen, heard, tasted, or felt is an expression of the guru. So there will be a time when there is no centimeter that is not the guru, not a moment that is not the guru, and at that time you will actualize the phenomenon of nonduality.

In order to understand these things, intellectual speculation is not going to help much. You have to put them into practice to begin to comprehend a different set of logic. At the moment, we don’t have that set of logic. To cultivate it, supplication, beseeching, and praying to the guru are necessary for deluded, ordinary beings like us.

Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

from the book The Guru Drinks Bourbon?

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• Examining the Guru
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• Guru
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