In Mahayana Buddhism it is not the teacher (sensei), Roshi, guru, or the Lama who is a key factor in the attainment of bodhicitta (a direct, face-to-face encounter with absolute Mind) but more properly the kalyana-mitra (lit. virtuous friend). In this sense, the kalyana-mitra cannot be a teacher or a guru since both can only transmit what is external to the Buddha's profound Dharma which, for the ordinary mind, is incomprehensible. For example, we might learn from a teacher a number of Sutras, going over the Sanskrit word for word, but this does not guarantee that for all we have learned in the way of Sutras and other practices that we will grasp bodhicitta from where the path of the Bodhisattva actually starts.
It is the kalyana-mita who will shape our spiritual character so we can, hopefully, attain bodhicitta. This shaping, I must add, can only come from a deep friendship in which there is a profound psychical link between the kalyana-mitra and the adept.
Above all the kalyana-mitra teaches us to be fearless, fearlessness being necessary for the production (utpada) of bodhicitta. Truth be told, a direct encounter with Mind (not the small psychological mind of which we are familiar) is a harrowing event insofar as the psychophysical body is surpassed which gives the feeling that one is dying when in truth it is death that is dying.
Who is opposed to the kalyana-mitra is the papa-mitra, i.e., the evil friend. The latter does all in his power to devalue the importance of the production of bodicitta (bodhicittotpada). We might even say that the papa-mita is like Bizarro Superman! (Oh do I remember as a kid in the 50s reading Superman comics then coming across Bizarro!). A papa-mitra Bizarro code might read "Us do opposite of all spiritual things! Us hate luminous Mind. Us love materialism! Is big crime to transcend Bizarro World of ignorance and suffering!"
The papa-mitra problem is overlooked in modern Buddhism because the important spiritual message of Buddhism has not resonated well with modern culture—modern culture being a veiled form of nihilism. Instead, the Buddha’s negative diagnosis of conditioned reality as resonated with many Buddhists—not transcendence in which immortality (amrita) is attained. There is only impermanence, suffering, and no self with no mention of the transcendent beyond (param) except, perhaps, that mystic death is the new nirvana.
To sum this up we can say that the kalyana-mitra always teaches transcendence while the papa-mitra teaches a veiled form of nihilism trying, at the same time to de-transcendentalize Buddhism stripping it of its spiritual content, especially, bodhicitta.
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