The Profound Yogācāra Meaning of the Diamond Sutra (31)

When sentient beings have not yet opened the eye of the Path, they often take the wrong as right and the right as wrong, confused and inverted. Or they only recognize famous teachers, not knowing that there is a great difference between a famous teacher and an enlightened teacher: one may possess the Way without fame, and one may possess fame without the Way. Only by distinguishing a famous teacher from an enlightened teacher can one rely on the Dharma and not on the person. The merit of propagating the true Dharma is very great, but if one propagates it wrongly, the erroneous seeds planted in the minds of sentient beings will sprout badly and bear bad fruit life after life; even when a good teacher (kalyāṇamitra) comes, it is very difficult to correct them, because sentient beings are all governed by first impressions. Moreover, the true Buddha-Dharma is hard to accord with sentient beings: when it differs from the habitual things and principles that sentient beings generally recognize, they will develop resistance, and their minds are very hard to turn around. One cannot be too careful in propagating the Dharma.