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In his Secret of the Vajra World Reginald Ray summarized the mind required of a disciple; and though Ray offered a number of qualifications it was difficult for me not to apply the five requirements listed by Ray to the long difficult struggle I endured with the master.

To wit:

1  One must respect one's teacher.
2  One must give up any attitude of criticism toward the teacher.
3  Any doubts must be regarded as one's own mistaken projections.
4  One must accept the master's version of reality.
5  Failure to regard the master in the right way will generate bad karma.

Touché!

The Four Reliances of the Buddha and Dosho Port these were most definitely not.

1  Submit.
2  Submit.
3  Submit.
4  Submit.
5  Or else.

In his exposition of the Tibetan way Ray caused me to reconsider my objection to what I had long considered the master's neglect of the third truth, the cessation of suffering, and his seeming obsession with the first and second truths, suffering and its origin. Ray explains that in Tibetan practice the bodhisattva renounces individual liberation.

This liberation involves realizing that the game of ego is a battle that can never be won. The practitioner comes to see that no matter how hard he or she tries, the image of the self carried around in one's head will never be actualized. In short, one will never achieve samsaric happiness. [It] is an experience of certainty—one sees and one knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that suffering touches every moment of phenomenal experience and that no amount of struggle is going to change that fact. This realization is devastating…. [T]here is no way out.

Understood.

Yet despite this impossibility of samsaric happiness and the inevitability of pain and suffering for the mahayana bodhisattva nonviolence and pacification are enlightened activity.

Ray:

From an enlightened perspective, things as they operate in the world work in an inherently peaceful way. This means that there is room for everything to occur in its own manner, apart from judgments or evaluations. The karma of pacifying accommodates everything, understands its appropriateness, and acknowledges its right to be—as an expression of karma. The karma of pacifying reveals that there is actually no such thing as problems, obstacles, or enemies, and that the aggression of ego against such supposed negativities is entirely beside the point and unnecessary.

Yes.