The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Bringing Virtue Into Life”
Whether you are contemplating teachings, offering, practicing, praying, meditating, whatever it is that you are doing, you’re doing it because you must. You are preparing for your next rebirth. I’m not a dope. I’m preparing for my next rebirth. Are you a dope? You have to prepare for your next rebirth. If I have to prepare, so do you.
That’s what is beautiful about your human existence right now. You have the capacity to prepare for your next rebirth. Other life forms cannot do that, but you can. So I am asking you please, at whatever level you practice, whether you are just sniffing around, kind of interested, whether you’re really getting with the program and you’re starting to practice, or whether you’re an old-time practitioner, the thoughts that turn the mind—those beginning thoughts that are in the beginning of your Ngondro practice—there is never a day in your life when you don’t need to practice them, because the day that you don’t practice those thoughts, the day that you don’t think about those thoughts is the day you’re going to start deluding yourself again, and basically drinking the alcohol or the drug of samsara which dupes you and tells you that there is no connection between cause and effect, and, in fact, you are not getting older every day, and your life is going to go for a very long time—these deluding thoughts.
Don’t wait until a life challenging catastrophe, to you or someone close to you, teaches you this hard lesson. Please don’t wait for that, because it will happen. Some day you’re going to find out that you’re dying, or someday you’re going to find out that someone near and dear to you is dying or has died. That is a life changing experience, and it will teach you Dharma. It will teach you to prepare for your next rebirth, if you’re listening at all.
On the other hand, there are even those that are so deluded—and this has happened to students of mine—that they have been diagnosed as terminal, have been at death’s door and have decided they didn’t want to spend their last months practicing Dharma. They wanted to spend their last months having fun. This is the kind of delusion that is within our hearts and our minds now. And if you don’t think that you have that in your mind, listen to your thoughts. Engage in some self-honesty and listen to how you think. This is what we’re doing every day, tossing it back, tossing it back—the drink of samsara. Keep it numb. Keep it numb, because when we’re numb we don’t have to face it.
There is another way, you see. You can be the kind of person that wants to keep it numb. You keep all the lights in your house off and try to walk around in there (if you can), and what is ultimately going to happen is you are going to hurt yourself. You’re going to fall over stuff. You’re going to trip and you’re going to bang into walls. You’re going to burn yourself. All kinds of things are going to happen if you try to live with the lights off. But on the other hand, if you go through the effort—and this is like practicing Dharma—if you go through the effort of getting the big picture and you switch on the lights, even though it’s effortful to go through the regimen of doing this and pay attention, and learn where the things are in your house, at least you know how it stands. And you can negotiate around in your house without bumping into walls and falling over the furniture. Our lives are like that. We have a choice.
We can live our lives as the walking dead, and then die, unprepared, like going to a continent filled with precious jewels and coming back empty-handed. Or, we can switch on the lights, face facts and do what it takes to negotiate the shoals of samsara as painlessly as possible.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo. All rights reserved