Spiritual Friend

Spiritual Friend (dge ba'i bshes gsnyen/ dge bshes)

• The term spiritual friend (Skt. kalyāṇmitra) refers to a spiritual teacher (Skt. guru) who can contribute to an individual's progress on the spiritual path to enlightenment and who acts wholeheartedly for the welfare of his or her students, adopting a renunciate lifestyle. In Tibet, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the term became synonymous with the great masters of the bKa'-gdams-pa school, who combined a scrupulously renunciate lifestyle and deep humility with profound scholarship and meditative resolve. In later centuries, the Tibetan abbreviation geshe came to have an academic usage in the dGe-lugs-pa school, where it now identifies a scholar- monk with a doctorate title in traditional Buddhist studies, and is almost equivalent to the modern usage of the term mkhan po in other traditions. On the importance of finding a suitable " spiritual friend", see dPal-sprul Rin-po-che, The Words of My Perfect Teacher, pp. 25-37. GD (from the Glossary to Tibetan Elemental Divination Paintings)