Lesson 5 from A Comprehensive Commentary on the Words of My Perfect Teacher continues the Vajrayana teaching on pure perception, then transitions into the proper conduct for listening to Dharma.
The lesson establishes that the teacher is simultaneously the union of the Three Jewels, the union of the Three Roots, and the union of the three kayas — not by imaginative projection, but because this is reality obscured only by the student's impure mind. The story of Rechungpa's dream, in which assembly members in Oḍḍiyāna confirm that Milarepa dwells in a pure buddha-field while his disciples in Tibet perceive only an ordinary man, illustrates this vividly. The same logic applies to the assembly: each member possesses buddha-nature and is therefore a future buddha in essence.
The lesson then opens the section on proper conduct, introducing the three defects of the vessel — the upside-down pot (not listening), the leaking pot (not retaining), and the poisoned pot (mixed motivation) — each one obstructing the wisdoms of hearing, contemplating, and meditating respectively. Throughout, the teacher anchors the teaching in the practitioner's own daily experience, from a schoolteacher pulling a student's ear, to cherry-picking teachings like a picky eater.
