Month: June 2016

Prayer to The Guru

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The following prayer is from “The Great Perfection: Buddha in the Palm of the Hand”

PAL DEN TSA WA’I LAMA RINPOCHE

Glorious, precious root guru,

DAG GI NYING GA PEMA’I ZE’U DRU LA

Upon the pollen heart of the lotus in my heart,

DREL WA MED PA TAG PAR ZHUG NE KYANG

Without ever separating, always remaining,

KA DRIN CHEN PO’I GO NE JE ZUNG NE

Hold me fast with your great kindness.

KU SUNG THUG KYI NGÖ DRUB TSAL DU SÖL

Pray, bestow the spiritual attainments of body, speech and mind.

PAL DEN LAMA’I NAM PAR THAR PA LA

Towards the way of life and activities of the glorious guru

KED CHIG TSAM YANG LOG TA MI KYE ZHING

May incorrect view never arise, not even for an instant.

CHI DZED CHÖ SU THONG WA’I MÖ GÜ KYI

With fervent regard, may I view all (the guru’s) actions as Dharma activity.

LAMA’I CHIN LAB SEM LA JUG PAR SHOG

May the guru’s blessings enter my mind!

KYE ZHING KYE WA DAG NI THAM CHED DU

In this and in all of my future lifetimes

RIG ZANG LO SEL NGA GYAL MED PA DANG

May I be born of excellent parents, with a clear mind,

free from pride,

NYING JE CHE ZHING LAMA LA GÜ DEN

Possessing great compassion and respectfully relying

upon the guru.

PAL DEN LAMA’I DAM TSHIG LA NE SHOG

May my samaya with the glorious guru always remain firm!

KYE WA KÜN TU YANG DAG LAMA DANG

In all lifetimes, may I never be separated from a perfectly

pure guru.

DREL MED CHÖ KYI PAL LA LONG CHÖD CHING

Utilizing the glorious Dharma to its utmost,

SA DANG LAM GYI YÖN TEN RAB DZOG NE

And by excellently perfecting all pure qualities on the stages

and paths,

DORJE CHANG GI GO PHANG NYUR THOB SHOG

May I swiftly achieve the state of Vajradharahood!

Astrology for 6/5/2016

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6/5/2016 Sunday by Norma

You’re still in a great mood and a pressing situation is coming to an end. Whew! An encounter with a woman or child opens a new door and enthusiasm brightens the picture! Learning is important today, keep your eyes and ears open for new ideas. A friend or group association is satisfying. Avoid the temptation to engage in escapist behavior, instead study what you’re trying to evade and work to find a solution: you can now. Voltaire said, “God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.” What’s good today? Pleasant conversation, finding the fun in things, short distance travel, good friends and a happy frame of mind.

The astrology post affects everyone differently, depending on individual horoscopes. Look to see how this message is reflected in your life today!

Refuge and Bodhicitta

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The following is respectfully quoted from the Namcho Daily Practice book published by Palyul Ling International:

OM AH HUNG

KHA NYAM SI ZHI KYAB KUN NYING PO CHU
Of all the refuges in samsara and nirvana present throughout space, the quintessence

WANG DRAG RIG DZIN PEMA TO TRENG SAL
Is the powerful and wrathful vidyadhara, Pema To Treng Tsal.

KHYOD KUR NANG SI GYAL WE KYILKHOR DZOG
The phenomenal world is totally perfected within his body as a Buddha mandala.

DRO KUN SI LE DRAL CHIR KYAB SUM CHI
We take refuge so all may cross over unenlightened existence.

Repeat three times

SANG CHOG YESHE OSAL TIG LE SHIR
We generate Bodhicitta on the fundamental ground (alaya) of the sphere (bindhu),

DRO KUN DRIB SUM DAG NE KU DANG SUNG
The supremely secret clear light and ultimate wisdom,

TUG CHI TIG LER LHUN DRUB NANG ZHI NGAG
So all beings may purify the three obscurations,

SHON NU BUM KUR DROL WAR SEM KYED DO
And attain the spontaneously self-perfected bindu of body, speech and mind, and through the four spontaneous visions, attain liberation in the youthful vase body.

Repeat three times

Astrology for 6/4/2016

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6/4/2016 Saturday by Norma

Now is the time to talk things over with a special person, you have the words and the spirit of cooperation to do so. Express yourself kindly and give the other party time to think it over; an immediate response is not required and not advisable. Wisdom is needed now- the ability to look beyond the immediate issues and see the big picture. If you’re in doubt, seek advice from someone who has been there before. Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “The young know the rules, but the old know the exceptions.” Give assurance of your affection even if you’re feeling peevish, somebody needs to know you care. What’s good? A cheery sense of humor that cuts through seriousness, reading, talking, going for a walk and staying in the information loop.

The astrology post affects everyone differently, depending on individual horoscopes. Look to see how this message is reflected in your life!

Your Guru

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Ven Gyaltrul Rinpoche

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

In Vajrayana Buddhism, the Teacher is the cornerstone of all practice. The Teacher is everything—the underlying strength and the means by which transmission and understanding occur.

Let us compare the Teacher’s function with the function of various other objects of refuge. All people—not just Buddhists—have such objects. Try for a moment to determine your own. If you think that the accumulation of material wealth is the way to happiness, money has become your guru. The material things you treasure are your guru. If, on the other hand, you choose the beer-and-sports routine, watching ESPN every night until you fall asleep, you have accepted the TV as your guru. It pacifies you. It makes you temporarily happy. You betray yourself: these things are unreliable, impermanent, and deceptive. Yet you put your trust and faith in them. Nothing in our impermanent realm of phenomenal existence can lead to happiness. Nothing—even if it seems ideal, like the perfect job or the perfect relationship in a perfect split-level, with 2.5 perfect children surrounded by a perfect white picket fence. At the moment of death, you are alone.

According to Buddhist teaching, there is a lasting happiness: enlightenment. It is the only end to all forms of suffering, including impermanence. Enlightenment cannot be tainted; it cannot be eaten by moths. It cannot rust; it cannot be destroyed. Enlightenment is the true source of refuge, the only thing that will not allow you to be betrayed. True happiness cannot be taken away. It is permanent and unchanging—the steadfast, stable reality of the enlightened mind. When you achieve enlightenment, what is revealed is your own primordial-wisdom nature. Some people think that they must give birth to enlightenment or that they have to find it. Actually, the primordial-wisdom nature has never left you, nor is it unborn. It remains in the way that a crystal is still a crystal, even though covered by dirt and mud.

Once you accept enlightenment as your goal, you should understand that the Guru is someone who can get you there. What should you look for in a Guru? A Teacher should not be seeking power or personal gain. Your Guru should have profound compassion, profound awareness. Most important, your Teacher should be able to transmit to you a true path. Suppose you go to a psychiatrist who helps you to be happier, more effective. This is very useful, but it is only a temporary way to cope, whereas the Guru offers you supreme enlightenment. This has nothing to do with coping. In fact, it has nothing to do with satisfying the ego.

Do not be fooled by charisma, saying: “I can tell by my feelings. This is the Teacher for me!” Instead, ask: Does this person teach a path that has been proven, time and time again, to stabilize the mind to the extent that miraculous activity can occur? Does this Teacher offer a technology that can stabilize the mind during the death experience? Can this technology result in miraculous signs at the time of passing? Are there indications that others have had success with this path and can now return in an emanation form in order to benefit beings? Look at the people who have practiced before you. Look at their successes or failures. Examine the history of the path, including the accounts of any enlightenment it has produced. At their passing, practitioners may produce miraculous signs: rainless rainbows, sweet scents, the transformation of the body into a rainbow of light, leaving only the hair and nails, the mysterious formation of relics or other unusual substances. On the Vajrayana path, such miraculous signs have been witnessed and recorded by many. People have seen the rainbow body; they have smelled the sweet scents; they have seen these extraordinary events.

The Buddha Himself said that we should use logic in choosing a Teacher or a path. After that, however, you begin to rely on the Teacher for everything. Why? Because you make a god out of your Teacher? Do you lose your brains and become a drone or a bliss ninny? Not at all. We Americans like to think we are unique, important, the best in the world. We think that to be happy, we must develop our individuality, so the idea of following a Guru is unappealing. But a teacher should not be chosen with blind faith or rampant emotion. You should exercise both intelligence and surrender. They are not in conflict. They can coexist very comfortably within the same mind, the same heart.

Note that you do not surrender to a person. It is not about a person. Your Teacher represents the door to liberation, the path that leads to enlightenment. Your relationship with the Guru is the most precious of all relationships. This is you talking to you—and finding out that you are not you at all. This is a glimpse, a taste, of true nature. At last we have arrived at the correct way to understand the Teacher.

Cultivate the precious relationship with your Guru through devotion. Make sure, however, that it really is devotion—not merely the kow-towing to a physical being. Devotion is an understanding of refuge, an understanding of your goal, plus the courage to walk through the door you have chosen. Choose only once, and choose correctly. From then on, allow yourself the grace to love deeply and gently.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Astrology for 6/3/2016

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6/3/2016 Friday by Norma

You’re feeling happy, chipper and chatty, yet every communication you advance is met with dissent! (“It’s a beautiful day!” “Are you kidding? It’s raining!”). At issue is the currently prevailing grand square that blocks every avenue, like a four-way stop with all red lights. Retrograde Mars brings back old issues, things you thought you’d solved are back for review. Brings to mind the old jingle, “Women’s faults are many, men have only two: everything they say, and everything they do.” The way out lies in happiness, patience and no talking. You can’t be judged for words you don’t say. Do your level best to avoid being a critic, look for the good will in every situation and go shopping. The open door involves purchases, enjoyment of beauty and cheerfulness in spite of everything.

The astrology post affects everyone differently, depending on individual horoscopes. Look to see how this message is reflected in your life!

Purifying One’s Intention

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An excerpt from the Mindfulness workshop given by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo in 1999

Another aspect of our Ngöndro practice is purification, the prayers to Vajrasattva. How would it be if we were to sit for maybe an hour and practice the purification and confession of Vajrasattva and accumulate the mantra and then just put our books aside and consider it’s over?  That’s it.  I confessed.  I said all the prayers, the short ones and the long ones, short confession, long confession.  Remember, if you practice like that, you never have to revisit it again.  It’s a lazy, cop-out way to practice.

Instead, we should think, “I’m deeply involved in the practice of purification and confession which does not stop at the end of my practice.”  There are so many ways to practice that kind of purification: by being mindful, by making offerings in the way that I’ve described, by moving into a state of better recognition about what is precious and what is ordinary, and ultimately moving into the state of Recognition of the nature of all phenomena.  Automatically one is constantly purifying the senses, constantly purifying one’s intention, which is the very thing that needs purifying even more than everything else.  If we practice in that way as we’re walking around, it complements any confessional prayers that we make.

In most of the confessional prayers, if you really read the meaning and content of the prayers, there is talk about broken samaya in the confessional prayers.  Nobody really knows what that means.  Does that mean you didn’t do your mantra today?  Well, maybe on one level it means that, but on a deeper level, it is referring to the state of non-recognition.  So in everything that we do, if we continually make offerings, as we continually give rise to a deeper Recognition, then the five senses are being purified constantly. The habit that I’m suggesting you develop will antidote the automatic reaction that is so natural for us, so habitual.   Remember, we can insert this way of thinking or this way of practicing because we are human.

I really like animals, but one thing I’ve noticed about animals, even if they are trainable and very smart, they cannot change or alter the way they perceive their environment.  They can’t do that.  The dog can’t say, “Wait a minute, before I lift that leg, let’s think about the nature of that fire hydrant.”  The dog is not capable of this.  You are.  That is one of the great blessings of being a human being, and yet the habits that we tend to cultivate are the habits that you don’t even need to be a human being to do: that habit of automatically reacting, not taking oneself in hand, not creating any kind of space or a moment where we can Recognize the nature of reality, not making any offerings.  We tend to just automatically move through life like an automaton, like a robot.

However, being human, we can develop a little bit of space in our minds to antidote that constant clinging and reactivity, and yet we’re all about collecting things.  Well, you know, crows collect things.  We’re all about having relationships.  Well, even animals can bond for life.  We’re all about having children.  Well, dogs and cats do that, too.  Isn’t it wonderful that here in Dharma practice, if we choose to, if we practice sincerely, we can do that which only humans can do?  How amazing!

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Astrology for 6/2/2016

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6/2/2016 Thursday by Norma

Peace at last. You can settle down on the couch, put on your favorite slippers, read the newspaper, watch television and relax. Home comforts are appealing along with happy messages to and from others. Adjustments must be made for three more days before you spring into action, but nothing’s stopping you from doing a bit of thinking and relaxing as you do. A discouraging message comes from afar, but in a couple of days the situation will change. It’s time to wait cheerfully and in good spirits for the right time to implement your project. Doug Larson said, “The real secret of patience is to find something to do in the meantime.”

The astrology post affects everyone differently, depending on individual horoscopes. Look to see how this message is reflected in your life today!

Requesting the Turning of the Dharma Wheel

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[Adapted from an oral commentary given by His Holiness Penor Rinpoche in conjunction with a ceremony wherein he bestowed the bodhisattva vow upon a gathering of disciples at Namdroling in Bozeman, Montana, November 1999. —Ed.]

Because of the negative karmic accumulations of sentient beings, from time to time, somewhere in the ten directions, the ten directional buddhas cease to turn the dharma wheel. It is important that we always request that the wheel of dharma be turned, so that beings can always hear the dharma. Requesting the unceasing turning of the dharma wheel is the antidote for [having] delusion. Some people have the attitude, “Oh, dharma teaching is not so important and not of any real benefit to anyone.” Holding such an attitude is exactly why such people are still suffering in cyclic existence. No matter what, we must continuously request that dharma teachings be present in the world in order to dispel delusion in the minds of others.

From “THE PATH of the Bodhisattva: A Collection of the Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva and Related Prayers” with a commentary by Kyabje Pema Norbu Rinpoche on the Prayer for Excellent Conduct

Compiled under the direction of Venerable Gyatrul Rinpoche Vimala Publishing 2008

Astrology for 6/1/2016

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6/1/2016 Wednesday by Norma

An encounter with a magnetic person leaves you inspired and looking forward to more! A generalized sense of happiness and enthusiasm is palpable, but proceed with care: you may not understand everything that’s required in the current situation. Clarify information and wait at least four days before
taking definitive action, which will give you time to iron out all the kinks. It’s possible to discover a hidden treasure or bring forth a masterpiece of some sort in what you’re doing. Samuel Johnson said, “The future is purchased by the present.” What’s good today? A happy sense of fun, receiving definitive instructions from an authority, enthusiasm and short distance travel.

The astrology post affects everyone differently, depending on individual horoscopes. Look to see how this message reflects your life today!

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