What is the “virtuous friend?” Rinpoche explains that the virtuous friend is all the holy actions of all the buddhas. These manifest in our own guru, therefore, to disrespect our guru—with anger, heresy, complaints, negative thoughts, and so forth—is to disrespect every single buddha. There is no suffering result heavier than this. Likewise, belittling our guru causes us to suffer for eons. On the other hand, without a guru, we cannot receive the blessings of the buddhas. Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha are embodied in the guru to whom we go for refuge. By pleasing our guru, we please all the buddhas. The more we correctly follow our virtuous friend with strong devotion, the less obstacles we will encounter and the more quickly we will achieve enlightenment. The teaching for this episode was recorded on April 06, 2018, at Great Stupa Of Universal Compassion, Australia.