Kathok Rigzin Chenpo Rinpoche
The rules established by the lineage masters and their habits in their daily lives are all very important. Through listening, contemplation, and practice, they discovered that certain ways of doing things are effective—beneficial to sentient beings, beneficial to the practitioners themselves and helpful for liberation.
Of course, within the rules of a monastery, there are also many superfluous things. Some arise from societal influence. For example, in Tibet, where religion and politics were combined, many traditions arose due to social needs rather than the needs of the monastery.
The Guru did not wish to do things in a particular way (referring to mixing Dharma with worldly desires). Many masters did not actually want to engage in these but had not much choice because these were the prevailing customs in society. In such cases, they had to accord with the demands of sentient beings.
To accord with sentient beings is like adding water to milk. Although it is milk, sometimes we add more water, sometimes less. Yet as long as there is still the taste and color of milk, it can indirectly benefit sentient beings.
Similarly, when we perform a virtuous action, how much of it truly contains the authentic Dharma? Sometimes only a portion, sometimes quite a lot—it varies in each case. As long as there is an element of genuine Dharma within it, it becomes an indirect method of liberation.
If we were to insist on completely pure Dharma, it is hard to benefit sentient beings. This is because sentient beings seek worldly benefits. What we sentient beings like are teachings related to desire, aversion and ignorance… the five poisons or afflictions. Practices that separate us from the five poisons are generally less appealing to everyone.
Although Lama Atisha once said that the best Dharma is completely free of worldly concerns, this is very difficult to carry out in practice. What we are doing now are skilful means that both accord with the inclinations of sentient beings and benefit them. But the highest practice, as mentioned in the teachings of Atisha and Padmasambhava, is to be completely free of all worldly concerns; this means to be completely opposite of worldly people, to be entirely different from them.
If you can accomplish that, you are a truly excellent practitioner. For example, if we look at Milarepa, he is a good example of a Dharma practitioner. From a worldly perspective however, he appeared to be a completely useless and unsuccessful person.
