Buddhism teaches us that there are three masters in life.
The first master, the Buddha, is the Ultimate Root Master. He shows a way, a method.
Many people in the West equate the Buddha with a god and Buddhism with a religion. This is a totally erroneous vision. Buddhism is an inner practice of transformation of the mind and our emotions through :
knowledge,
meditative practice,
and understanding.
Understanding is generated through the union of knowledge and meditative practice.
Buddha means "the awakened one". The awakened one is a person who has found a path to freedom, free from the sufferings of life, that is, the sufferings generated by our emotions.
Once he found the path, he taught it for several decades, delivering many teachings, those 84 000 teachings which are only variants of the main teaching, thus offering through these multiple variants, an understanding to different types of individuals and mental states.
However, for some people, the Buddha may seem far away, from another time, and it may be difficult to relate the teachings to the reality of our lives today.
Closer to home, then, are the masters, the Rinpoches, the Lamas, the Teachers, who transmit these teachings directly from "them to us. They are the Root Masters. They are closer to us, we can meet them, ask them questions, discuss.
Their presence allows us to obtain a more concrete guidance in order to understand the teachings of the Buddha on the path to awakening.
This path to enlightenment, all these teachings, are what we call the Dharma. The Dharma manifests itself in the form of teachings transmitted uninterruptedly from the Buddha to us through the masters, but also through the Universal Master.
The Universal Master represents all the problems and obstacles in our lives. The Root Master will thus guide us by showing us the links between our lives, our states of mind, and the teaching. The Root Master points to the Universal Master.
The Universal Master teaches us that our problems become teachers and obstacles become opportunities. Thus, step by step, we understand that nothing is negative because what is initially perceived as negative is only a misinterpretation of the situation, and that in reality, difficulties are the best supports for meditation to put the teachings into action, to apply the antidotes, and thus transform ourselves.
This transformation is manifested through the wisdom of the Inner Master. The Inner Master is the self-manifesting wisdom generated in meditation practice through the acceptance of hardships, through the observance and understanding of the mechanisms that trigger emotions, and through a transformation of our behaviors from thoughts generated from an unstable mind agitated by negative emotions to thoughts generated from a base of purity, calm, and wisdom.
This pure wisdom is our deep, clear, pure, knowing and compassionate consciousness.
The Root Master therefore introduces us to the Inner Master through the integration of the Universal Master.
