Part 1: Guru Rinpoche's Principle

Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche opens by describing Guru Rinpoche’s place in Bhutan: his footprints and sacred sites, his image in every temple, his role for both the Nyingma and Kagyu traditions, and the festival dances. He notes that the word guru has become overused, then retells an Upanishad story of a son sent back to his master to learn what cannot be taught, which he learns alone in the forest with the master’s cows. He discusses the historical figure from Oddiyana (the Swat region) and the criticism of the lotus birth and long life as unscientific, answering that lotus birth is a poetic way to point to what cannot be taught: devotion is the blossoming of the lotus. He ends by setting the Buddha of 2,500 years ago, known through a long chain of retelling, against the Buddha within. The recording stops partway through; part 2 continues.