Chenrezig wrote: ↑Tue Sep 14, 2021 8:34 am
Yes! Again. His Holiness is correct! " One can follow a book, not a teacher." Yes. A book or many books combined with travel and meeting extraordinary men without being led by any teacher one becomes one's own teacher.
A book allows more than a teacher can recite and offers one the ability to seek and find without following an endless recitation of book found facts but skip to that which is pertinent. Some, however, need a teacher not having the ability to seek knowledge on their own or when books are not available. .
Books are nice, but you cannot practice Vajrayana Buddhism without an empowerment. No Empowerment without a teacher. Tibetan Buddhism is all Vajrayana,
An excellent example is with Milarepa , first when seeking dark magic from two different gurus (sorcerer/magi masters) he had to pay tribute or forced labor before the first lesson and then the greater one for enlightenment being Marpa Keys in Milarepa was forced for years to carry stones up and down the mountain for no reason other than Mapa being unwilling to reveal what lessonsin Milarepa came to learn. "Why should I reveal to you all I know after all the suffering and time it took me to learn of these things?" claims Marpa to Milarepa.
What an ordeal when finally Marpa reveals the simplistic information that he knows from books he read in his laborious travels Milarepa finds he already knew from birth and retreats to a remote mountain cave on My. Kailash away from all human existence and unwilling to allow anyone access
Marpa knew what he was doing. But that story may be somewhat apocryphal. In any case, Marpa's transmission to Milarepa was not just "simplistic information that he knows from books." It was Vajrayana transmission.
If you want to know something of the value of books in Tibetan Vajrayana, you should learn about Rechungpa and what Mila did with his books, when Rechungpa returned from India with a bunch of books.
It is often repeated: a school or teacher is only as good as the books read as the student is often more knowledgeable than either the school or the teacher and is able to teach the teacher.
It also parallels the fact that:
A servant is his best king whereas a king is his best, servant.
In Vajrayana, the teacher is the ultimate arbiter. Books are nice. Vajrayana is an aural tradition, and a visual one. You can read, but some things must be learned by hearing or by seeing. Without a teacher, there is no Tibetan Buddhism.