I Found My Guru in Las Vegas

I Found my Guru in Las Vegas

By Paul Edward Kendall

When I was in my early teens growing up in Alaska, I began to have spontaneous out of body experiences. I was usually very surprised and quite scared when it happened, but it also left me convinced that there was much more to reality than the appearances of things in this world. I had been raised in a Mormon family so I was brought up to believe in the soul and an afterlife. However, one’s actual experience can shake up all the ideas that one has learned intellectually, to the point that they all fall away. I was left wondering about this spirit, or awareness that existed beyond the body, wondering about what would really happen to it when my body eventually died. Some people would say that nobody knows. I never believed that, I was sure that somebody out there really did know, and they weren’t just reading it out of a book.

In 1999 when I was 22, I moved to Las Vegas to live with my older brother, and he introduced me to a martial arts school in Las Vegas called the Lohan School of Shaolin, it was and is a very spiritually oriented school. This is where I met my first spiritual teacher, Sifu Steven Baugh, who would shortly after introduce me to my guru. Sifu Baugh was an accomplished martial artist, a Buddhist priest and also a Sun Dancer who looked after his students as if they were his own children. I began to attend Qi Gong, Tai Qi and Kung Fu sessions and immediately felt that this kind of cultivation practice was very beneficial to me. Not only did I feel I needed the discipline, but I wanted to understand more about consciousness and reality through my own awareness. I also really liked the eastern philosophy I was slowly being introduced to. There was no judgment from the teacher here, you came, you practiced, it was a nourishing environment and everyone was just training and cultivating.

Not long after I began attending this school, Sifu Baugh announced that a Buddhist master was coming to visit. His name was Master Yu Tianjian. Master Yu had just come to the US for the first time from China to give a presentation to the International Association for Integrated Medicine at the University of Southern California where he won the golden award for his thesis on Calcium Enrichment. Master Yu was just beginning to teach in the US and we would be some of the first people to learn about this lineage of Buddhism which had not been taught openly for over 1200 years.

At that time I didn’t know anything about Buddhism at all, I just had this impression from some movies that I’d seen that it was a very peaceful practice, Buddhist monks seemed very kind, yet it seemed a little boring. I was not interested in anything that seemed too dogmatic or strict in a religious way. I wanted to discipline myself with a cultivation that I could actively practice to see spiritual progress. I wanted something that wasn’t just to believe in, but could actually lead one to directly experience higher states of consciousness. I felt that I had found this with the martial arts practice. However, Sifu Baugh was very impressed with Master Yu and encouraged us all to come by the Kung Fu school on a Saturday afternoon to meet him.

I remember that there were at least 50 people there filling up the training room sitting on chairs and on the floor, my brother and I sat down against the side wall on some folded up gym mats. This rather large middle-aged Chinese man sat at one end of the room. He had long black hair and a long beard, both with a touch of gray, and he wore a long red silk Tang dynasty style robe that had beautifully embroidered edges and designs in white and gold on it, wrapped around his waist was a green silk sash tied with an interesting looking knot. He smiled warmly all the time and his eyes twinkled with joy that was both tranquil and playful. He didn’t look like the stereotypical monk that I had imagined, but I had this feeling when I looked at him that he was not an ordinary person, there was something mystical about the way he moved and talked, he was always at ease, and he often stroked his long beard thoughtfully. I had certainly never met anyone like that before. There was a younger Chinese man who was interpreting, as the master did not speak English.

It’s difficult to remember now exactly what he talked about that day, but there is one thing that I will always remember clearly. I had this idea from some books I had been reading at that time about spiritual teachers and practices. I didn’t really understand it very well, but it seemed that some of these cultivators in the books would seek an audience with a great master and try to “receive” something from them, like an empowerment or transmission. So I thought to myself, “Well, here’s this Buddhist master, I guess I should try to absorb some energy or something from him.” In a split second, as I had this idea and at the same time imagined that inside my body was this peaceful natural scene with the intention of receptiveness, I felt an intense blast of sensory perception, as if a river was flowing into the top of my head. I had always wanted to feel “energy” flow if that’s what this was, but I never expected anything this powerful, it felt like a raging torrent pouring continuously into me. I was as shocked as if someone had just walked up and slapped me hard across the face.

Sifu Baugh was sitting across the room from me. A split second after I had begun to have this intense experience, he also whipped his head around in one quick movement and looked directly at me, his eyes opened wide with a slightly startled but observant gaze. This “flow” was so powerful and like nothing I had ever imagined could happen, I asked for it to stop after a few moments, and it did. Master Yu kept on talking and smiling, Sifu Baugh turned his head back towards the front and kept listening to the talk, and I just sat there, shocked and intrigued about what I had just actually experienced. Not only did this master seem to know what I had been thinking, but had responded effortlessly, AND a third party also felt it, so I could not rationalize that I had imagined it.

About five minutes later I got up my courage to try it again, and in an instant the same thing happened, a ragging torrent of sensory perception as if a river flowing into my body through my head, Sifu Baugh again whipped his head around and looked at me, and again it was too intense for me to deal with and I asked for it to stop, which it did immediately.

Over the next few months Master Yu came back to visit us and teach a couple of times, and sometimes a group of us from the Kung Fu school would make a trip to Los Angeles to visit Master Yu at his newly founded Dari Rulai temple, which was in Alhambra at that time. I was always a little nervous around Master Yu because I knew he could see right through me, but he would just smile at me kindly. He always seemed very pleased to see me, and had encouraging words. It was so surreal to me at the time that we would meet with this strange master, and he would teach powerful esoteric practices like he was passing out candy. Later I realized that some people search everywhere to find a teacher like this, and we had just sort of stumbled across him. 

About six months after my first experience with the Chinese master, Sifu Baugh announced that he was to become initiated into Master Yu’s lineage as his disciple. A large group of people from the Kung Fu school were also thinking about doing it. Master Yu had come to the school and talked about what it meant to “take refuge with a master,” but I had missed it. People were talking about what a serious commitment it was, and how it could change your entire destiny. I didn’t know much, but I knew that this master was the real deal, he was no ordinary person, and I was not going to pass up a chance to learn directly from him.

Soon afterwards I found myself kneeling with about 30 other people, we made our offerings and bowed to our new guru, tapping our foreheads on the ground with hands stretched out palms faced up. We knelt there as our guru explained again that we had been initiated into the esoteric school, that this is the school for attaining Buddha-hood, or enlightenment in this lifetime with this body, and to become a Buddha one must become a person of great merit. He told us that a Buddha sees every living being as his own mother and father, and is willing to forgive everyone and be receptive of everyone, only so would we begin to develop patience and tolerance, and this would be the foundation of becoming a person of great merit. He told us that we must practice with great diligence, and that he hoped we would all strive on and attain quickly.

Nine days later we once again knelt down and bowed to our guru, we lined up in the order of our ages to receive our dharma names, an important part of the process of becoming initiated into a lineage. A dharma name is like a signature on your soul linking you to the lineage of awakened masters. My brother likes to use the analogy of a visa stamped in your passport, and this is the passport not to other countries, but to higher realms. Each disciple picked their name randomly from a pile of 49 little pieces of paper with Chinese characters written on them. They were the 49 characters of a poem written during the Tang dynasty by the founder of Hanmi Buddhism in China, master Amoghavajra who came from what is now called Sri Lanka. Master Yu went to each person in turn, starting with the oldest, he held a special dharma instrument, a small bell that I later learned was thousands of years old, he placed it on each person’s crown, performed a mudra and spoke the dharma name out loud. My older brother received his dharma name moments before me, and only one person there was younger than I was.

I didn’t fully realize how special this school was that I had been initiated into, and I think none of us really understood the status of our guru at that time. I just knew that he taught techniques that could really be used to affect a change, and promote rapid spiritual progress. I didn’t know what it meant at that time that he was the Maha Vairocana Dharma King, lineage bearer of the Chinese Esoteric School, I couldn’t even pronounce his dharma name, Dechan Jueren.

Over the next few years my life completely changed. When one takes refuge with a teacher in the esoteric school, they become connected to and supported by every enlightened master in the dharma lineage. The guru gives empowerments to their student every day, no matter where they are, his commitment is to prop up the student and help them bear their karmic obstacles. The student’s commitment is to ask the most of themselves at all times and cultivate their dharma with great diligence for the benefit of all sentient beings. A student who truly does this, and respects their guru will find their karmic obstacles clearing quickly.

Sometimes it’s difficult to see, but I noticed that often the people who would help me and provide the conditions for my success would show up out of nowhere, and sometimes I noticed that those who would try to cause obstacles for me would just no longer be a part of my life. Many fantastic changes happened, but the challenges were always there as well, and I learned painfully sometimes that the only way forward was to be receptive of everyone as my guru taught, and to let go of my selfish habits, which I always seem to have an abundance of. The more I practiced the more I would become aware of and have to face the reality of how my actions were affecting others.

I have made many mistakes, but my guru always points out that there is not one person alive who is without transgressions, and making mistakes is nothing to be afraid of, what we should be afraid of is that we may make a mistake and not learn from it. A guru will always forgive their students. We make our mistakes out of ignorance, because if we truly knew the consequences of our actions, we would not dare to commit evil karmas. A guru will patiently pick up his students and dust them off, and once again point in the direction of wisdom, and encourage them to walk there. He knows that wisdom is not that which can be given to another, it can only come out of one’s own efforts, and from one’s own awareness. The guru points the way, and he also provides the correct methods for cultivation.

The relationship between the guru and the student is very special, and one of mutual respect. The guru will provide the student with opportunity to truly learn the dharma, to teach each method fully so the student has every chance to attain. The student must always endeavor to realize the essence of the dharma and not just the form, and they must never give up. To do so would be folly, because the guru will never give up on the student.

The esoteric path is the shortest route to awakening, to attaining in this lifetime with this body, but it is not easy. In the past, a real teacher of the esoteric school was never easy to find, in the east they say that to meet your guru even once in a lifetime is more precious than anything. Seekers would walk thousands of miles over mountains and deserts, and risk everything just for that chance. However, in these turbulent times, the world is changing fast, and you just might be surprised at where you could bump into one. After all, I found my guru in Las Vegas.