Who is Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka?

Faith is what makes our intellectual knowledge of Buddhism come alive — it lets us put this knowledge into practice and get results. Faith is a naturally positive mind — with faith, we don’t need a good motivation, in itself it makes our mind peaceful, calm, and virtuous. And also with faith, we don’t need to wait – some inspiration comes immediately.

Which brings me to who and what exactly do I develop faith in? I’m going to tell you what I do based on my experiences in this tradition, but please remember that this article and all the articles on this blog don’t have anything official to do with the New Kadampa Tradition, but are the views of one Kadampa wannabee. I am only sharing some of what I’ve practiced in a conversational manner, not as a teaching; and so I always value your conversational feedback in the comments. If you want to receive actual teachings, please find your local Kadampa teacher — there is a helpful search button here.

Who is Je Tsonghapa? 

Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso said some years ago that if someone were to ask him, “Do you have any realizations?”, he would reply:

I can answer, yes. I have faith and confidence in Je Tsongkhapa. If we have faith in Je Tsongkhapa, then this is enough.

Once upon a time, visiting Geshe-la, I took him a framed picture of Je Tsongkhapa. I’m a wee bit embarrassed to say that I would normally take him a pretty lame gift, such as a jar of honey – I was not as imaginative about my offerings as a lot of other people, who put thought into it and gave him, for example, a beautiful statue (that he would still give away to the next person who came to see him, lol.) But, like I said, on this occasion I managed to give him a picture of Je Tsongkhapa – and, the moment I handed it to him, he took it with both hands, sat down on his sofa, and slowly raised it to his crown. He held it there for a good few moments with his head bowed and his eyes closed. Then he peered at it again, before raising it to his crown again – all the time with this look of happiness on his face. Then he did all that again a third time.

I realized my days of giving him just honey needed to be over. I’m kidding. But not really. That is what he did, and for me it was quite a teaching.

Geshe-la also said:

When I deeply contemplate Je Tsongkhapa’s kindness, tears fall from my eyes and without choice I am strongly thinking again and again: How can I repay his kindness? I made a strong determination to fulfill his wish to spread Kadam Dharma throughout this world and I am working very hard for this aim.

Generally the purpose of meeting Je Tsongkhapa in this life, living Je Tsongkhapa, our Spiritual Guide, is so that he can guide us through all the stages of the spiritual journey to the wisdom that realizes non-dual appearance and emptiness, which is the highest level of the correct view of emptiness and the quick path to enlightenment. If we develop the same faith in our own living Tsongkhapa that Venerable Geshe-la clearly had in his own Spiritual Guide, then we’re going to accomplish results very quickly — even attaining enlightenment in three years and three months. This is what Geshe-la describes, in The Mirror of Dharma, as “magical”.

On another occasion I was sitting in Venerable Geshe-la’s room – he had just nipped out for something and I was staring at his shrine, actually coveting a stylized image of Trijang Rinpoche in full Tantric regalia. I looked back at Geshe-la the moment he came through the door — he didn’t see me look at the shrine — but still, after sitting down, he leaned toward me and asked: “Is there anything on my shrine that you would like? You can have anything. Anything at all.” Taken by surprise, I replied, “Ermmm no, Geshe-la, thank you.” (silently “How did you know?!”) But as it happens, when we said our goodbyes, he gave me the picture anyway.

Who is Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka?

Venerable Geshe-la asked the question, “Who is Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka?” and helpfully answered his own question: “An enlightened being who is inseparably one with our root Guru, Je Tsongkhapa, Buddha Shakyamuni, and Heruka.” In the practice of The Hundreds of Deities of the Joyful Land According to Highest Yoga Tantra, he is the main figure we’re focusing on — Je Tsongkhapa with Buddha Shakyamuni at his heart and Heruka & Vajrayogini at his heart. We see them as inseparable from our Spiritual Guide, who is like an actor, as Geshe-la says, playing these different Buddha roles.

Geshe-la explains who Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka is all over the place, for example in The Oral Instructions of the Mahamudra:

Although Buddha Shakyamuni appears in a different aspect, in reality he is Conqueror Vajradhara Heruka. Although Je Tsongkhapa appears in a different aspect, in reality he is Buddha Shakyamuni. And although our Spiritual Guide appears in a different aspect, in reality he is Je Tsongkhapa.

We recite the Nine-line Migtsema Prayer at the end of a lot of sessions we do at Kadampa Centers, so the chances are you’ve already come across this way of viewing our Spiritual Guide. And any of you who’ve joined in Offering to the Spiritual Guide or read its commentary, Great Treasury of Merit, will have familiarity with this view. This is because Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka is the same as Lama Losang Tubwang Dorjechang – the difference being that instead of Vajradhara we visualize Heruka and Vajrayogini. Conqueror Vajradhara is the source of all Tantric practices, which makes it meaningful to envisage him. And we have a close connection with Heruka and Vajrayogini as our main Tantric Deities, not least because their emanations pervade this world, which makes it meaningful to envisage them. As Gen-la Dekyong said:

For us, our main Highest Yoga Tantric practice coming from the heart of Vajradhara is the practice of Heruka inseparable from Vajrayogini.

We may therefore already know the significance of our Guru appearing as Je Tsongkhapa embodying his renunciation, Buddha Shakyamuni embodying his great compassion and bodhichitta, and Vajradhara or Heruka embodying his realization of bliss and emptiness, the union of Heruka. If not, you might want to read the first few chapters of Great Treasury of Merit — it explains why all Buddhists practice relying upon a Spiritual Guide in the first place, and then how we can rely upon our Spiritual Guide in this way. You can also check out this article if you like: Je Tsongkhapa Day: thinking globally, acting locally.

One cool thing about this recognition is the worlds within worlds – Je Tsongkhapa is already a pretty cosmic Wisdom Buddha, but within him is Buddha Shakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism on this planet, and then within him is the bliss and emptiness of the countless Buddhas appearing as Heruka & Vajrayogini. Trying to pin our Guru down is like trying to pin down endless space — we can’t find him anywhere, he is just made of Buddhas.

The Founder of modern Buddhism

We can say that Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka appeared in our world as the Founder of the New Kadampa Tradition, Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, in which aspect or avatar he presented all of Buddha’s 84,000 teachings in a way that practitioners of the modern world could understand, practice, and get the same results from as practitioners since the time of Buddha. To my mind it is an astounding achievement to have presented the world with 23 totally life-changing books, the centers and study programs, the Sangha, the teachers, the temples all over the world, and so on. He has brought this presentation, this New Kadampa Tradition, into the world to help – hopefully — generations and generations to come. We are just the first generation, which in itself is mind-bogglingly like being alive at the time of Buddha Shakaymuni, or Je Tsongkhapa, or Atisha, or Gyalwa Ensapa, or any of the other great Mahasiddhas, Yogis, teachers, or Founders of yore.

Without Geshe-la appearing in my world, founding the New Kadampa Tradition and giving me all the books, teachers, programs, and Sangha, I wouldn’t be here practicing Dharma or writing this. It seems unlikely that I would have met the path to liberation and enlightenment — I might have found it in some other form, but there again I might well have not. In any event, this is where I find myself due to my karma.

We can say that Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka has appeared for many people in the modern world as OUR Buddha, our own Buddha. He was completely visible for a while and, even though his Emanation Body has now disappeared, still the results of everything he has done continue to appear — the centers, the teachers, the books, these are all still his emanations. He’s still everywhere. He said: “I visit every Center every day” and “The NKT is my heart.” He also said: “My books and me, Geshe Kelsang, have the same function.” He has not left the New Kadampa Tradition — everything that we are experiencing and enjoying is still coming from his heart.

Being amongst the first generation, we were able to actually see his body and communicate with him directly. This is our somewhat unusual good fortune; yet at the same time people from now on will have the same good fortune simply through meeting the teachings, the centers, the practitioners.

This helps me understand why our object of faith is Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka — we see our Founder and Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka as one and the same because he’s our Buddha who has done all these things for us.

The New Kadampa Tradition

I can just say from my own personal experience of meeting Geshe-la in 1981 that the New Kadampa Tradition was not what it is today — in fact it didn’t even exist yet. We had no idea back in the eighties that there was even going to be a New Kadampa Tradition. Sounds funny now, right? But Geshe-la only inaugurated the NKT in 1991, and before then it was like he was experimenting with us, trying out different iterations of the study programs for example.

There were only two books when I first showed up — Geshe-la had just started giving the oral teachings from which the books were going to be made. He didn’t speak English yet. He had maybe 50 to 100 disciples. He taught primarily at the big, old, drafty Manjushri Institute in the so-called North Wing Gompa, and sometimes to only 7 or 8 people. On one of my visits the North Wing Gompa was packed – with all of 100 people in there – and I still remember being youthfully excited: “Wow, there are so many of us now!!!” I mean I really had no idea of Geshe-la’s vision back then. He basically pulled us out of a hat.

Since then he has done that for hundreds of thousands of people, and we’re only just beginning. There’s no reason to think this tradition won’t continue to snowball, providing we all take advantage of it and the planet survives. If his thousands of disciples all start, or keep, getting realizations, that’s going to reach and affect millions of people, isn’t it? So Geshe-la did all this – he started with nothing, just a bedraggled bunch of hippies, and this is what he has manifested. For me, it feels amazing to have observed it from almost the beginning, just evolving year by year; and this has, naturally I suppose, given me great confidence that it will continue to evolve. I don’t see why not.

Passing on the lineage he received

Geshe-la’s own Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka, Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche, passed away in 1981, pretty much around the time I showed up, arguably not great timing on my part. But Geshe-la just showed the example of getting stronger. He has said this about his root Guru: “Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka is still in front of me.” He also said:

This Lama has created me, he is my life.

And in fact, Geshe-la then created the entire New Kadampa Tradition AFTER his Guru had passed away, see what I’m saying? It didn’t hold him back at all. He basically just became more of an emanation of his Spiritual Guide, able to share these teachings with an even wider global audience.

In his teachings in Portugal in 2009, Venerable Geshe-la told us:

“As you know, I am not young. In a few months I will be 84 years old. My root Guru Trijang Rinpoche, who is living Heruka, disappeared around 84 years old. Emanations of enlightened beings appear and disappear suddenly. They come into this world for our purpose. When our karmic connection or the time ends, they disappear. Maybe another one then appears as their emanation. In reality, my root Guru Trijang Rinpoche is Lama Tsongkhapa and Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka. When he disappeared, his emanations still appear everywhere.”

A lot of you have heard that when Geshe-la first came to the West he met with Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche (who was the one who had asked him to come to England) and said:

I have this one problem. It’s not working, the presentation according to the Tibetan tradition.

And, as Geshe-la explained many times at Festivals, “Trijang Rinpoche gave him one answer.” He told Geshe-la that his own students were Tibetans but Geshe-la’s students were Westerners, and he gave his permission for Geshe-la to change the presentation of Kadam Dharma to a NEW tradition, not the Tibetan tradition. Modern Kadampa Buddhism — the presentation of the Kadam Dharma of Je Tsongkhapa for the people of the modern world – has never existed before.

When Trijang Rinpoche granted him this permission, Geshe-la said he first thought: “Maybe this will be difficult;” but, as it turned out, it was “naturally coming”. And now it is our turn to pass it on — to be lamps carrying this lineage forward.

Last Will and Testament

Given that it was over 40 years ago that I met Venerable Geshe-la, evidently I must be getting long in the tooth; and yesterday I finally got around to writing my Will. It only took twenty minutes, but I very much enjoyed it, to be honest, thinking for example about all the people I could leave a little bequest to. (I’m not going to tell you who you are — you can wait till I’m dead. And be nice to me till then, just in case). This interesting practice of giving helped me remember that anything I possess is not truly mine — to stop holding onto my stuff, present or future, because within a few years or however long I’ve got, anything that I currently view as “mine” will be mine no longer. Therefore, I may as well mentally give it away now, just using what I need, in the knowledge that all of it is soon going to end up in other people’s bank accounts or shrines. (Of course, if we practice the teachings, we will have far more to give than material possessions.)

It was also just a helpful reminder of impermanence — whatever worries we might have today about jobs or money or relationships or the future are all pretty much a waste of thought given that this life is a mere stitch in the tapestry of time. In any case, as Geshe-la says, if all we’re trying to do is help others, what is there to worry about? Worry always comes because we’re wrapped up in ourselves, if you check – anyway, a subject for another day. LJ, whose mountain house I am staying in, said she recently discovered that her native language of Serbian uses the same word for caring about someone and worrying about someone! She found this fascinating, as do I. I think they need to come up with a new word.

Turn on, tune in, drop out

I suppose my personal hope is that within the next, say, one to three years, every Kadampa reading this, including me, will have a chance to collect 100,000 Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka mantras so that they turn on the faith, tune into the blessings, and drop out of samsara, as I mention here. That’s all, lol!

It’d be quite astounding, don’t you think, if we all did this? and I think it’s very doable, depending on our life circumstances of course. But it’d be nice to even have the thought that we’d like to do it soon. And it won’t be just us because there’s thousands of Kadampas all over the world who are getting instructions on how to do this practice at their Centers.

Over to you!