Let me tell you a secret. The real reason we have a Guru is for him to scold us, to tell us off, to point out our weaknesses, to tell us ugly things, to tell us things we don't like to hear, to push us to do things we do not want to do, to make us achieve something we did not think we could and to give us something inside that he can perhaps see through experience, divination, dreams and revelations, which we did not know we could do. A real Guru is not someone who praises us, gives us gifts and tells us nice things. It is the person who scolds us, tells us off and tells us what is wrong.

We should not fight back or make excuses. We should achieve whatever our teacher tells us to do - no matter how impossible and difficult it may seem. That is what a Guru is for.

Think about our teachers at school. They made us do everything we did not want to do and they gave us all those difficult, ugly assignments! Think about our parents. They made us do everything we did not want to - eat vegetables, take vitamins, go to sleep early, wash up, brush our teeth, not watch bad television shows, not to be rude to our neighbours or not to fight. Everything that we have now comes from being made to do what we did not want to do.

A Guru is not someone who is supposed to be kind, nice, gentle, easy and all smiling to us. That is not a Guru, that is a big Shangri-la man who comes once every three years, gives initiations, pats us on the head, throws some flowers and tells us how wonderful we are. Of course if we see these Gurus once every few years for just a few days, we will think he is holy and wonderful, and we will cry when someone just mentions his name.

A real Guru is not someone who is nice to us. He might do that in the beginning to train us and prepare us. But a real Guru is someone who challenges us, pushes us, tells us ugly and nasty things, and tells us things about ourselves that are both true and untrue. When we are challenged, we will see where our mind is. A Guru will press all our buttons to help us see our minds; and to help him see our minds so he can help us. We want a Guru to bring us to Enlightenment and we achieve Enlightenment by destroying the qualities in our mind that block us from Enlightenment. We destroy those negative qualities by recognising them; and we are led to recognise them when our Guru brings them forth to us.

When we reach a higher level of practice, when our minds are more stable, our Guru may even accuse us of things that are not true. How we react, what kind of face we show to the Guru and behind the Guru shows us our level of practice. Ultimately, through this training, we will get to a point where nothing disturbs us.

When nothing disturbs us, we have acquired a wish-fulfilling jewel just like what Avalokiteshvara holds in his hands. This wish-fulfilling jewel is a mind that creates no negative karma, a mind that fulfils all our wishes. That mind arises when nothing disturbs it anymore.

Tsem Tulku Rinpoche