August, 2015 | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

The Challenges of the Contemporary Disciple

August 13, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is respectfully excerpted from “How to Follow a Spiritual Master” edited by the Ngagyur Nyingma Institute:

We have tried above to show the deeper meaning and role of a Spiritual Master, as well as the way in which he should be sought and followed, by first looking at what dharma means, how it came into this world and further in Tibet; we also looked at a summary of the extensive teachings given in both sutras and tantras about the Master and disciple relationship.

We saw that we do not only have to carefully examine a prospective Master, but we also have to fundamentally alter our outer and inner behavior to be able to benefit from his presence, Teachings and Blessings.

Today, moreover, we are living in what is known as the degenerate times, presenting us with additional challenges, as well as making the rare opportunities to meet and be guided by an authentic Teacher even more exceptional and precious.

Why is this period we live in called degenerate times? Prophecies abound about the particularity of our times and its struggles, yet it is very difficult for us to recognize or acknowledge this, because this degeneration of times is rooted in the thickening of our own obscuration and deepening of ignorance with the inevitably correlated narrowing of our mind’s horizon.

How can it be so, we may ask, when most people are talking about a general progress and improvement? Well, if we examine the nature of the so-called progress and the apparent increase in personal freedom, we will soon realize that these, indeed, only relate to the pursuit of external goals. By this we count on an increase of material wealth, improvement of facilities- albiet for some part of the world only; people are becoming more eager to speak their mind, believe in their own ability and strive for the betterment of their physical surroundings. This however does not occur without a cost, that we are not prepared to examine.

Improving material wealth happens at the cost of the environment both physical and social, whereby those in pursuit of this goal will sacrifice anything to achieve success, family, values and traditions which are reminding us of the impermanence of people and things, the need to remind ourselves of the cycle of suffering and death. Instead they put these considerations to the side and engage in a frenzied chase without ever seeing a satisfaction to their desires and perceived needs.

Young people are demanding more freedom and responsibility, refusing to listen to older generations experiences, believing they know better than their parents or teachers and thereby unleashing an unrestrained flow of conflict, suffering and quarrels among families and social groups. As such generations succeed each other, less moral values, understanding and compassion are to be found, since they are systematically uprooted from the children both at home and in school.

It is therefore very difficult for us these days, even if we have the fortunate karma to meet with an authentic Spiritual Master, to be able to follow him according to the advice we are hearing. The values of respect and service are alien to our western society and appear old fashioned and obsolete. The habits we have acquired from our social surroundings are so strong yet subtle that they reflect the narrowing of our ability to reflect on the benefit of such advice and form layers of obstacles we have to work hard to recognize and eliminate.

Furthermore, we have the innate tendency to want to see results there and then, even before understanding what the situation really is and what is needed to remedy to it. We listen superficially to a little bit of advice, may be, if we have time try to apply it over breakfast, and by lunch time complain that we have seen no improvement; by evening time we are demoralized and go to the pictures to console ourselves.

This certainly cannot work and does not reflect any understanding of how long habits have taken to form. Like ruts, we now unconsciously follow them and Masters warn us over again that overturning them is not an easy matter, which can be accomplished overnight. Methods to do so exist, but what we lack is the sustained determination to apply them at any cost and the real concentration to do so. This sustained determination, this unfailing courage we are exhorted to develop are the fruits of both inner reflections on the Teachings we receive from our Masters as well as the unshakable confidence in their validity, born out of faith and devotion.

So although the texts describe in great details the preciousness of our human life, the only form of existence, which allows us to free ourselves from the cycle of Samsara, through meeting with the dharma and authentic Masters, we act as if we could waste this life in trivial pursuits with impunity. Although we do not know when the moment of death will occur, we act as if eons are in front of us to enjoy, and when death strikes, we are just as helpless and lost as any other, wandering without realization in the bardo and rushing indiscriminately into the next samsaric rebirth.

To benefit from having sought, found and to follow an authentic Master correctly, we must therefore unfold vigilance and courage as never before.

Astrology for 8/13/2015

August 13, 2015 by Norma

Thursday by Norma

Freedom Now! This is is your mantra. Something you do today frees you from a burden that was weightier than you realized. As soon as it’s gone, you will understand. Men and women are happy together and making plans. There’s a tendency to take on a large chunk of work, but you can handle it. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by work, keep going and don’t worry. “Vincent van Gogh said, “Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.” Step back and you’ll realize all those details are creating a masterpiece. Pay close attention to a subtle feeling of sadness, a problem you tried to forget is being solved.

The daily astrology post affects everyone. Because individual charts vary, the circumstances outlined in the post will impact people differently. Some will feel this energy in the personal arena, some in finances, some with family or children, some in work, and so forth. There are many departments of life. Look to see where the dynamic affects you!

Astrology for 8/12/2015

August 12, 2015 by Norma

Wednesday by Norma

Good news stabilizes an emotional situation. Worry no more! Magnetic leaders, health professionals and specialists in any occupation are on a roll, doing the job with panache. A group comes together harmoniously and recognizes its strength. Avoid the tendency to over-work today. If you notice yourself forgetting details, misplacing things, and getting lost, relax and take a break. Lighten up. Dame Edna Everage said, “Never be afraid to laugh at yourself. After all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.” What’s good today? A feeling of disappointment is dissolving, enthusiasm is rising and confidence is everywhere! Work, engage in sports, theater and group activities, and you’ll be happy today.

Astrology for 8/11/2015

August 11, 2015 by Norma

Tuesday by Norma

Health just walked in the door, evicting sickness and dominating the scene! Work goes well, and you are able to fix anything and have fun while you’re at it. Today you’ll whistle while you work. A growing sense of power and purpose attracts others to your cause. Pinnochio said, “Miracles are made in the heart.” If you’re taking your emotional temperature 24/7, a surprise is in store but it is fixable. Rob Gilbert said, “It’s all right to have butterflies in your stomach. Just get them to fly in formation.” What’s good today? Definitive action, increasing confidence and magnetism, happy times with others and good health! A leader appears and puts things in order.

Astrology for 8/10/2015

August 10, 2015 by Norma

Monday by Norma

Domestic or family matters represent the focus of attention. A small object or service offered has the ability to change another person’s life, so step up if you detect a need. Ask yourself “How can I help?” and listen to the answer. A renewed sense of confidence, power and authority is steadily growing. If you’ve been missing in action or sidelined by an injury, you are back in the game! W. Beran Wolfe said, “If you observe a truly happy person, you will find that person building a boat, writing a symphony, educating children.” Nevertheless a slight feeling of lack persists, and a worry about the future lingers. What’s good today? Organizing, analyzing, cooking, decorating, cleaning and working!

A Mind of Compassion

August 9, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series

If you’ve never practiced the Buddhadharma before, or if you’re interested in practicing, or if you have practiced some general meditation and you feel it’s time to move on to a path that is more stable or well known, then you’re in a perfect place for this teaching. You can start practicing one of the most important teachings of the Buddha right now. You can begin to cultivate the mind of compassion. How might you do this? First of all, you might look around and examine physical existence.

In America, we hide our suffering. We have very little knowledge of real suffering, and I think that’s one reason why it’s very difficult for Westerners to practice a pure and disciplined path. We think we understand suffering because we have experienced loneliness, or because when we were kids we had the measles, or because we have gone through marriages and divorces. Or maybe we’ve seen some sickness or poverty. For these reasons, we think we understand suffering, and we do to some extent. These are valid sufferings.

But there’s a funny thing about our culture that we must understand. We are actually hidden from the sufferings of our culture. When people are deformed, handicapped, mentally or terminally ill, they are taken away from the mainstream of society and they are hidden. Or if we are considered unpresentable to most people, we have plastic surgery or we have some kind of therapy that makes us like everyone else. In fact, if we examine the healing process in American medicine, part of that process is to become like other people. We are made to look like other people.

In other countries around the world suffering is more evident, for many different reasons: those countries may not be as technologically advanced as our country, or their culture may be an older society in which suffering has become more the norm and it is not such a shock to see it. Or perhaps poverty is a factor.

I will describe how I felt when I first went to India. I couldn’t bear it. I don’t claim to be so compassionate; I too have to cultivate the idea of compassion every day. But I remember seeing people walking the streets with arms and legs missing, eaten up by leprosy. I saw mothers and fathers maim their children, not because they hated them or because they were cruel to them, but because that would give them a deformity they could use for begging. That would be the only way they could ensure their survival. There was no other way for them to get food. What do we do for our children? We might send ours to school. In the streets of India, they have to prepare them in a different way.

Suffering is a part of the fabric of the society in India, and it’s very evident. I remember walking down the street in Delhi. There was a young boy who must have been twelve; it was hard to tell, he was so small. He was lying on a rag, a tattered blanket, and he was dying. He was so thin that he looked like the pictures of starvation we see from Ethiopia. He was beyond thin. His bones were sticking out, his belly swollen, his tongue hanging out. And next to him were a few coins and a candy bar. Someone had thrown them down for him.

We don’t see that in our culture. We don’t understand it. We think that the things we’ve gone through – the divorces, not being able to pay the light bill, the heartbreak of psoriasis, the things we consider so awesome – are the real sufferings of the world. But they are not all the world has to endure.

Look at the animal realm. We know what our animals are like. They get fed everyday and they have it pretty good. But not all animals are like them. If we go to different countries, we see beasts of burden that are treated in horrible ways. We see animals that are denied their natural environment.

Humans and animals are only two life forms. According to the Buddha’s teachings, there are many different life forms, many of which are non-physical. How we appear, how we manifest, what form we take has to do with the qualities of our mind. If we are filled with hate, we are reborn in a hell realm. Why is that so hard to understand? When you are filled with hate now, even as a human being, aren’t you in your own private hell? Have you ever gone through a period where you were so filled with anger that everything you saw became ugly and you managed to distort it somehow? Each of us has lived in a private hell. Why is it so hard to believe that we are capable of living in or creating a situation like that? If your mind is capable of having a nightmare, then rebirth in a hell realm is a possibility.

Have you ever been needy? Have you ever gone through a period in your life when you needed approval, or love, or some kind of nourishment so badly, that you were in a state of despair? When people did reach out to you, they couldn’t get through? Each of us, for at least one moment in our lives, has experienced this. Why then is it so hard to understand that these kinds of existences really do exist?

Having understood that this is logical, having examined your own mind truthfully – and truthfully is the key – and found the residue of these experiences in your mind, you can allow yourself to go more deeply into the recognition that the Buddha was right. There is suffering in cyclic existence.

We have to think also of our own suffering. We must think that even if we have a TV, a car, a house, and all of the things that we are taught to desire, there will be a point at which we cannot take them with us. There will be a point at which they will do us no good. That point, of course, is death. All of the efforts that we’ve gone through to get those things will have been wasted.

Long-time Dharma practitioners may think, “I really wish she’d get on with it. I know this.” I have to tell you, if you really knew the truth of suffering, there would not be one moment that you did not practice with the utmost compassion. There would not be one moment when you thought only of yourself and your needs, and of the temporary gratifications you think you must have. Yet you still have many of those moments.

Astrology for 8/9/2015

August 9, 2015 by Norma

8/9/2015 Sunday by Norma

This is a wonderful day to go for a drive, visit others and engage in communication. Answer every phone call, text and email and you’ll be happy. Do, however, be discrete in what you say. Sydney Biddle Barrows said, “Never say anything on the phone that you wouldn’t want your mother to hear at the trial.” Be aware that hidden forces are listening, watching. Good behavior protects you and bad behavior is not forgotten. A generous gesture now is rewarded in September. What’s good today?
Chatty times with others, parades, parties, driving around and a new beginning!

Seeing As The Buddha Sees

August 8, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

From The Spiritual Path: A Compilation of Teachings by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

You do not see as the Buddha sees, with a mind that is natural, uncontrived, and relaxed. You do not know the natural state—your own Nature that is beneath the conceptualizations you force upon it. In essence you are the same as the Buddha. Why does He see Buddhas and Bodhisattvas without number, and you do not? Why is the Buddha’s mind free of action and reaction? The difference is one thing only: the concept of self to which you cling.

The concept of self is the effortful contrivance that results in all forms of suffering. Once your “self” is established, it is vulnerable to termination. It now has a beginning; therefore it will die. A tension arises. As a baby, you cried when you were hungry, and your mother probably responded. If she did not do so immediately, you sensed a threat to your survival. If you smiled and cooed, perhaps your mother paid more attention. You tried to protect the fabric of self. You began the long process of learning to attract, to have power over, other people. You developed tendencies to dominate, to be submissive, or to survive in other ways.

These habitual tendencies take time and effort to perfect. They become part of the fabric of our being. We call them our individuality and take pride in them. These subtle, habitual tendencies will stay with us over many lifetimes—unless they are somehow purified from the mindstream. In fact, the longer we accumulate assumptions about the self, the more deep-seated and complicated these subtle tendencies become. Ironically, those who pride themselves on their uniqueness and individuality are often in the most trouble. For even though the brain and the personality end at death, the karma remains. In fact, every moment of the perception of self has within it enough seeds for eons of cyclic existence. And these seeds have only to be watered by certain kinds of activity to ripen.

The original tightness or tension that accompanies the concept of “I-ness” is desire. This is why the Buddha taught that the basic cause for all suffering is desire. Some think that because they have learned not to desire a mate or a car or money or beauty, they have become true renunciates. They think they have overcome desire. They could not be further from the truth. Desire is simply too pervasive. It is what holds the concept of “I-ness” together. This concept becomes as invisible and familiar as the air we breathe. Everything we do supports and maintains our ego. It is only in the enlightened, realized state, with natural, uncontrived view, that activity is spontaneous, free of conceptualization, and therefore free of tension.

You, however, cling to your contrived thoughts, and the odd thing is—you love them. You are fascinated with the activity of your brain. You enjoy being opinionated. You love the excitement—so you think—of the tension that surrounds conceptualization. Every perception you have is made of tension born of desire.

Why is it so difficult to annihilate desire from your mindstream? You desire desire. Otherwise, you could snap your fingers and say, “I am through with it.” Why do you desire? Because you have so much investment, such a strong belief in your “I-ness” that your primary religion is not Buddhism but the preservation of your ego. That is your gut-level religion. You make offerings to it every moment. You take refuge in it every moment. The preservation of your ego and all the assumptions that go with it have been the love of your life, your soul mate.

How then can you even conceive of being free of desire, much less manage it? You may hear the teachings of the Buddha and want to be free, but another part of you is absolutely in love with yourself. And you love to be in love, so you are helpless. This is why the powerful Vajrayana path is so necessary and efficient. It would take extremely long to purify your mindstream by progressively renouncing every thought, every activity that increases desire, until you are basically doing nothing but watching your breath and annihilating every assumption and tension as it comes up in your mind. The Vajrayana path will do that, but it has another dimension: you purify your entire view. The five senses are purified through generation-stage practice. In it, you are not imagining a deity; you are not pretending it is there; you are not even visualizing. Certainly that may be where you start, but when it is done correctly and the skill of concentration is fully developed, you are actually disassembling and re-manufacturing the incorrect perceptions that permeate your every thought, word, and deed.

Astrology for 8/8/2015

August 8, 2015 by Norma

8/8/2015 Saturday by Norma

A last minute burst of emotionalism appears and then transforms into happy conversation. Talk with everybody about everything, especially how great they are and how well they’re doing. Compliment everyone you see. Trouble is receding slowly and surely, and fun comes with kids, parties and sports. Attention to detail is important, and a careful analysis of a situation is helpful. The urge to escape grows powerful as the day progresses. Escape if you wish, but beware of driving after partying. Phil Jackson said, “Your problems never cease. They just change.” Old loves return, and a problem you didn’t solve before is handled now. Avoid ruminating about sad things from the past.

Examining Cause and Effect in Real Life

August 7, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Bringing Virtue Into Life”

You may have been born rich, or perhaps during the course of your life it has been relatively easy for you to make money, gain riches. Or perhaps during the course of your life, at some point you have inherited riches. And you wonder to yourself, “How is it that I hear about the starving poor and yet I, who wasn’t even hungry in the first place, have inherited this money, or I have this money? How is it? It would seem as though I am completely undeserving. How has that happened?” You wonder about that. “Why is it easy for me to make money?” Well, the reason why it is easy for you to inherit that money or to make that money is because some time in the past you have earned it; and the way that you have earned it is by engaging in virtuous activity concerned with generosity toward others. If you have given food to others, in this life you always have enough to eat, and more. In fact, the problem is not eating too much.

So then, if you have a lot of money and things have been pretty comfortable for you, then sometime in the past you must have been very generous toward others, and your big problem in this lifetime is not how to make money but how to spend it, or not spend it. In that case, you deserve everything that you get. You deserve all of it.

Now, in this lifetime, if you just take that money and express through it no acts of generosity,… Let’s say maybe you keep it in your family to make sure that your children are provided for. Well, that’s a kind of generosity. You did give some to your children, but that isn’t real generosity, because children are kind of like an extension of our own ego. We think of them as part of us. We don’t think of them as being separate from us. We like our children to be rich because it’s a good reflection on us and it makes us die happy.

But let’s say in this lifetime, although you have lots of money, you haven’t really given any to benefit others. You haven’t helped others not to be hungry. You haven’t given it to children that don’t get any toys as Christmas. You haven’t made any offerings to the temple where you receive all your spiritual benefit. You haven’t done anything with your money. If you think then that you’re going to somehow be able to legally make it happen that they’ll find you in your next incarnation and give you back that money,… Au contraire, monsieur. You can’t take it with you. It’s not going to appear again in your next life. Forget it! It’s not going to happen. But in your next life you will probably be born much poorer because, even though you had the money before, you were not very generous.

So it’s very, very clear that cause and effect are interconnected. In fact, the Buddha teaches us that they arise interdependently: When the cause arises, the effect arises at the same time, but in seed form. Think about that. Think about that the next time you have non-virtuous behavior. One of the reasons why it’s so easy to be non-virtuous is because you think, “Well, O.K., I’m being non-virtuous now, but I don’t see the effect rising yet. So maybe they…(Who are they anyway? We don’t know.) they’ll forget about it. “ You know, the guys with the x’s and the checks. They’re up there. They’re sitting on the throne. You know, the guy with long beard. Maybe he’ll forget about it by then. But in fact the Buddha teaches that, number one, there is nobody with a book up there, or a beard. And number two, when you give rise to the cause, the effect is already born, and you will experience it. You will experience it.