The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Longing for the Guru”
If you feel that you have become deadened to that longing you once felt, if you think that you don’t long for your Teacher or long for the Buddha, if you think that you don’t long with a heartfelt longing for that awakening, then you should try to remember your childhood and the different feelings that you had.
What are some of the things that you did? Were you promiscuous? Did you become involved in drugs or alcohol? Did you become very materialistic in certain ways? And if you can remember the beginning of that, was it based on longing? Was it based on something that you could hardly remember, but remember that it was sharp and poignant? Was it really based on that?
If you can remember a time like that, you should spend time becoming reacquainted with the purity of that urging. Cultivate that longing. Not cultivate it in a false way or in a contrived way, but search for what was already there. Feel what was felt. Don’t make up a feeling. That’s important, because then you’ll blame yourself again. Instead, try to remember that feeling, even if it just numbs you to think that you have gone so far astray, you should not be ashamed because your karma is that you were born into a culture where what you felt was not acceptable and you tried to fit it into ways that were acceptable. Those ways did not work for you and then you shut down. You should try to go back to that original feeling and find a way to forgive yourself. You have to confess in order to be able to fully forgive yourself. Don’t confess: Oh, I’ve been a bad girl, or I’ve been a bad boy, I’ve done this and I’ve done that.
The confession that you should make to the primordial root Guru is: You were everywhere, and I tried to find you here. The true confession is the lack of understanding the nature of the Guru. The true confession is the lack of understanding as to what you are. That’s the real confession, and that’s the real sin that was committed. Yes, karma happened. But that core confession and purification can bring about the end of all the karma that arose from that, truly. It can bring about the end of all sufferings that came from that point. You should allow yourself to remember the longing that you felt and learn to live with it.
In learning to live with it and having it be the warmth in your heart, allowing yourself to be with that and to live with that, then that longing will bring the proper result. So long as it is diverted, so long as you refuse to feel it, so long as you do not allow yourself to be pure and then constantly cover up with feelings of impurity, so long as that condition continues, the longing cannot be satisfied.
That longing, if it’s felt in its pure way and if you can manage to get your ego out of the way, can be the very bread by which you are nurtured to continue in a firm way on your path. That longing can be the way that provides the actual, undeniable connection with one’s own root Guru. It perfects that relationship so that one can realize the nature of the primordial Guru and realize that they are the same. You can understand that what you see in front of you is the miraculous touch of Lord Buddha, that the relationship with the Teacher, the relationship with the path, the relationship with all of the teaching, the relationship with your own practice can only be a result of the miraculous intention of the Buddha. So long as we continue to understand our teaching and our path as something external, we will never understand the nature of it. We will never be able to truly drink of the taste of that nature. Instead, we will continue to feel separate from the mandala.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved
