January, 2017 | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

Astrology for 1/6/2017

January 6, 2017 by Norma

1/6/2017 Friday by Norma

Someone with a big picture perspective is galvanizing and inspiring, but you should listen carefully and wait two or three days before implementing new ideas. Things keep changing: something that seemed brilliant yesterday is forgotten or obsolete today, and this trend will continue until Sunday.The Sun passes over Pluto today, bringing an intense experience that pulls you into darkness and then spits you out again. Buddha said, “There isn’t enough darkness in the world to snuff out the light of one little candle.” Stay light to antidote the darkness you just encountered, and move on. Prompt action solves everything. This is a great day for partnership, for enthusiasm that overcomes fear, and for compassion.

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

Looking for Happiness

January 5, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Faults of Cyclic Existence”

If we broaden our perspective, we look out from our own self-absorption into our immediate environment which is generally pretty easy for most of us. We have friends and relatives that we don’t mind increasing our space to include and we look at them and we consider them part of our lives. But let’s move out and see all the rest of humankind. They are all, in the same way as we are, striving to be happy. And then look out beyond that to the animal realm. Even though these animals don’t have a forehead, even though these animals cannot conceptualize in the same way that we do, still each one of them in their own way is trying to be happy according to their capacity. The predator is trying to be happy when it chases its prey. The prey is trying to be happy when it fixes itself or creates for itself a safe environment and develops coping mechanisms with the reality that the predator is always out there.

There are many different ways to view this, but we can see if we really study, that we all have that in common and so we become, in a sense one family with a fundamental genetic code. Even across species, even across the form and formless realms, we become one family with this particular underlying reality in common. Now if we were to really contemplate this issue in this way, we might come up with a new world view. Wouldn’t that be wonderful! We might come up with a new, more universal perspective. Wouldn’t it be delightful! We could use that tool as a way to end self-absorption, and to really open our eyes and look at everything around us with a new kind of vision, a new kind of empathy, a new kind of understanding, a new kind of willingness to put oneself in the place of others, a new kind of planetary human, you know, aware of life around itself, a new kind of cosmic perspective, a new understanding as to what life is all about.

Now how does this relate to refuge? Well, as we are turning our minds towards Dharma, that means softening them, preparing them, fertilizing them, plowing the field so that the mind is turned toward the path that leads to liberation and renouncing what does not lead to liberation.

Where does the idea of Bodhicitta actually come into play? Actually it comes into play as both a motivator and as a clarifier. As a motivator , we understand that part of the process of turning the mind towards Dharma is to truly look at the six realms of cyclic existence and all the conditions and situations of sentient beings. Having done that, we see that cyclic existence is faulted and that these sentient beings, although they do wish to be happy, have no understanding of the causes of happiness. That’s the main different between a Dharma practitioner, and the serial killer. The Dharma practitioner wants to be happy just like the serial killer, but they are engaging in method. Method means we are looking at cause and effect relationship. We see the faults. We look at cause and effect relationships and we are trying to work it out where we produce the causes that allow the desired effect.

The serial killer is also trying to do that. He perhaps feels some kind of need build up in him and then he goes and tries to satisfy that need. So in his way, this serial killer is doing the same thing. He is engaged in trying to create the causes that produce happiness. The difference is he does not understand. There is such heavy delusion that there is no understanding of what causes produce happiness, so the serial killer is in a way, like a completely ignorant, completely confused, completely hatred-oriented basket of misconstrued ideas acting in a knee-jerk way to get some kind of result. He is not able to think it through and has no guidance to think it through. So the serial killer is yes, engaging in method, but what method? The serial killer is engaging in the method of hatred, is engaging in the method of destruction, is engaging in the method of harm-doing, and is thinking that it will bring some sort of power or happiness or relief in some way. And yet what this person doesn’t understand is that the seed and the fruit cannot be unrelated. You cannot produce happiness from the fruit of hatred, destruction, ignorance and harm doing. You cannot produce happiness in the same way that a peach seed cannot produce a banana tree.

Astrology for 1/5/2017

January 5, 2017 by Norma

1/5/2017 Thursday by Norma

The emphasis is on you today: how you feel, what you think, where you stand. And this is where the problem lies-your thinking opposes that of those in charge, and you must learn what is required before moving ahead. Ask around, it won’t be hard to find out, and you’ll save yourself a world of trouble. If you read the instructions and follow the rules it’ll be a great day. Tyron Edwards said, “People never improve unless they look to some standard or example higher and better than themselves.” This is an excellent day for creativity, medical procedures, film, music and visualization.

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

Do We Know How to Be Happy?

January 4, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Faults of Cyclic Existence”

When we broaden our view and look out, we see that this is happening to a greater or lesser degree to all sentient beings. All sentient beings are striving to be happy. They wish to be happy, but in varying degrees, they do not understand the causes of happiness. We see this also in our own lives. See, we’re the good guys, we’re the Dharma practitioners. But even in our lives we see that we engage in compulsive, neurotic habitual tendency time and time again. Cyclically actually. We’ve noticed this and we talk about this and we laugh about it. You know, women get together and we have girl talk. We know this one really well;. And men are in the same situation. We repeat patterns that are nonproductive. Is that a light-weight way to say it? We literally put ourselves through the lowest of the realms. We put ourselves through hell, literally. We are not our own best friends. And we only see it when we are coming out the other side of the compulsion and it didn’t bring us what we want. Then it’s like, “Well I knew that! Why didn’t I think of that! I knew that! How ridiculous!” And then you know, six months later there we are, going down the pike again.

In one way, then, our compassion is increased because we see that the serial killer is busy bumping off everybody else in order to get happy, and we are busy bumping off ourselves to get happy. And the confusion and habitual tendency is there. It’s there. We have that in common. So we look out and we say, “Wow, if this is the case for myself and I am a Dharma practitioner, how much more so the case for those beings who have had no information on what produces happiness? We are the children of a materialistic society. We were told that if you have two good cars, a chicken in your crock pot and several more in your freezer and a good husband or wife, good children, all these good things—everything that’s good has been labelled, you know, we already know what’s good—and an ongoing prescription of Prozac that we could be happy.Aand an occasional face lift. It gets more complicated as you get older. Did you notice that? I mean, at first it was just finding the right man andyou’re home free. Now it’s find the right man and make sure once you’ve got him, these things don’t drop. And it’s beat gravity and beat the clock and all that other stuff.

So we are, in our way, almost as clueless. We still engage in these funny things that we do. And every time that we do them, we think they’re going to make us happy. And then we come out the other side of it with open eyes—like whoops, that didn’t work! But you know, we’ve noticed for ourselves how limited our capacity is to learn. Is that not the most astonishing thing? How really intelligent people cannot learn? Is there a button we’re supposed to be pushing that we don’t know about.? I mean, where is the input button? We just don’t know. So this is the condition of sentient beings.

Now I know, as you must know, how much I want to be happy. You know how much you want to be happy, right? I mean, if push comes to shove, you’re pretty motivated by this. Isn’t that right? Of course you want to be happy. You’d be a maniac if you didn’t want to be happy. Are you a maniac? So we want to be happy. I certainly want to be happy. And there are days, are there not, when the yearning to be happy and the feeling that you are very distant from that happiness is so strong that there’s a lot of grief, isn’t there? A lot of upheaval and grief. There are times when it’s just so difficult and so very far away. It’s funny how it happens.

Now if we were to take that grief and that feeling and project it outward and think, “Here I am with all the understanding that I have about what makes happiness, and all the skill that I have and all the intelligence that I have and all the good fortune that I have that makes it possible for me to get a grip here and really see what’s going on, and still I can’t manage it. How much worse must be the condition of other sentient beings who are completely out to lunch about the subject?” Now if you think about the animal realm, they don’t even have the capacity to take in the information about cause and effect, an extraordinarily limited capacity to learn cause and effect. Have you ever watched a dog that has the habit of chasing cars? No matter what you do to them, they will chase the car. They are terrified because they are so close to getting killed and somehow they know it, but they can’t learn! They can’t learn that not chasing that car is going to make them feel much more relaxed. They simply can’t learn that.

So how much less is the capacity for other sentient beings to be free of that kind of suffering? Now we look out and we really see that all around us is this terrible, terrible grief and suffering and disappointment that is masked in certain ways, is covered in certain ways, is disguised, is transmuted, is rearranged, is redirected, is re-routed, is lied about. And yet underneath it there is that grief, there is that loneliness, there is that difficulty that we have in understanding what makes us happy, and how to be happy.

So this then becomes a causative factor when we engage upon the path. It’s one of the reasons why we practice refuge so sincerely. We use this idea not only as a practice in itself, but as a way to motivate ourselves. Literally, as practitioners we should come to the point where we look around and we see for ourselves that all sentient beings are wandering in this confusion and we develop a profound sense of compassion. If we really were to study and look around and emphathize and see beyond ourselves how others are suffering even more than we are, that feeling of great love and great compassion would well up within our hearts, and this feeling that enough is enough! Enough! There has been enough suffering in the world. Enough!

So by that compassion and that love, we become motivated. And the times that we are feeling undisciplined or feeling dry or off-track on the path, we can rely on that love to come up and nurture us. It’s happened even on an ordinary level within our lives. We make a determination to take a more difficult route to accomplish something, even not so much concerning the path, but a difficult route to accomplish something in our lives. Then to accomplish that requires such a great herculean effort like changing, that after awhile, somewhere in the process, we lose focus. We ask ourselves, “Now why am I doing this again? I really can’t remember today!” Then we look at someone else near us who is suffering terribly, just suffering terribly, and we vow to organize everything around us to make it better so that the person next to us is not going to suffer so much. We’re motivated by that and it brings us back into focus.

The same kind of situation happens on the path. We utilize the suffering of others, the understanding of that suffering, to center us, to motivate us, to keep us nourished on the path. At the same time, and here’s where the double blessing comes in, at the same time, we are also giving rise to the Bodhicitta which is the awakening mind, the mind that is in its essence the very display of compassion.

The Dharma

January 3, 2018January 4, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:

The Dharma is as vast as samsara, and is also as stable, as long as there is samsara there will also be Dharma.

As long as there is Dharma there will also be Samsara, because the Dharma is natural, uncontrived and would not exist without Samsara.

Astrology for 1/4/2017

January 4, 2017 by Norma

1/4/2017 Wednesday by Norma

Wait out the uncertainty of the early morning hours when sluggish feelings make you wish you’d stayed in bed. You’ll know the minute the energy changes, you’ll be out of your seat like a shot, off to an exciting adventure. Slow down and make sure your information is accurate. You need to do what the boss wants, not what you want. Ben Johnson said, “Tis no shame to follow the better precedent.” Professional ambition and dreamy imagination combine with the retrograde Mercury today, warning that you can go astray unless you follow an established path, one offered by a genuine leader. Elsewhere, partnership is great and medical cures are wonderful.

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

All Sentient Beings Wish to Be Happy

January 3, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Faults of Cyclic Existence”

When we are considering the thoughts that turn the mind, we consider the teachings on the six realms. We consider the faults of cyclic existence. We consider teachings on cause and effect. We consider teachings on impermanence. But also we consider teachings on compassion, and they start with, and are absolutely related with, those teachings that you have just had on the six realms of cyclic existence and the faults of cyclic existence.

The idea of compassion, of Bodhicitta, is intimately related to that. The way that they are related is like this:When one is actually considering entering onto the path, or considering making one’s relationship with the path much more firm and solid, or if one is a more advanced practitioner, to deepen on the path, one always has to go back and re-examine the faults of cyclic existence. One of the main thoughts that we have concerning the faults of cyclic existence is that we look around and we see the Buddha’s first teaching in action. We see that all sentient beings wish to be happy. We all have that in common —we all wish to be happy. It is our motivating force. Whatever it is that we are doing, whatever form it takes, underneath that is the wish to be happy. Now each one of us has delusions. Each one of us has habitual tendencies. But underneath all of them is the wish to be happy

One way to understand this and to really broaden the perspective on it is that in some cases it is very easy to see that a person is striving to be happy. You might see one person, one particular type of personality, for instance, using every skill that they have to maintain happiness and joyfulness and equilibrium and that sort of thing. Maybe they go to psychotherapy in order to clear out neuroses, or maybe they do a lot of affirmations, you know, positive thought—thinking in affirmations about themselves in order to try to be happy. And for the people like that who are trying to maintain a certain kind of energy in their personality, it’s very obvious that they are trying to be happy. You can mark that and see it very easily.

But what about somebody like a criminal? What about someone who is a committed criminal? I mean a serious criminal, somebody who has done something unthinkable, such as even a serial killer? I don’t mean somebody that kills cheerios, I mean, kills people in a row—a serial killer. Let’s say somebody like that. We can’t even understand what the mind of a serial killer would be like. They are filled with obsession, filled with compulsion, filled with hatred. In many cases they are psychologically incapable of empathizing with other human beings. It’s like they have a microchip missing. They are all kinds of messed up. All kinds of messed up. To many of us their thinking, their world, may not even be recognizable. It may not have even the same landmarks. And internally, certainly, if we could go into their minds, it would not be recognizable as any kind of internal reality that we’ve ever experienced. So they would seem very different from us.

But there is one factor that we have in common with somebody like that, and that is that we are both equally, in our own way, trying to be happy. Believe it or not! This person who commits such a horrendous crime, and does so repeatedly, is compelled to continue doing so. If we were to really go within and try to slice and dice enough to find out what moves this person, what is happening here, we would find out that there would be a lot of jungle to go through. I’m sure that that’s the case. There are a lot of entanglements in there and a lot of mental confusion. However, underlying the dynamo that drives this engine is aperson who wishes to be happy and, in that way, is completely the same as you, completely the same as you.

Now I’m not recommending that because of that we should be nice and pat them on the head and let all the serial killers out on the street. I’m not saying that. I realize that this issue is far more complicated than I am presenting it, but the fact that I’m mentioning does not change, no matter how complicated the situation is. And that is that this person has something in common with you that is very strong and it is what drives both of you. You wish to be happy. Interestingly, neither one of you really knows how to be happy until, as a mature practitioner, you have really contemplated and studied the Buddha’s teaching and learned something about that, and then maybe had enough life experience, in terms of maturity, to go within and approach oneself honestly, to look at oneself and examine one’s habitual tendencies. These are the kinds of skills that we learn as life skills, and skills that we learn on the path in order to help us to begin to learn what comprises happiness, what actually makes it up, and to develop the skill of how to produce it.

But until that happens, we are the same as anyone else. All sentient beings are exactly the same in that way. Maybe not in too many other ways, you know, but in that way we are exactly the same. And this is true of all the beings in all the realms of cyclic existence, not only in the human realm.

Astrology for 1/3/2017

January 3, 2017 by Norma

1/3/2017 Tuesday by Norma

Pay special attention to your intuitive, imaginative thinking today. A hunch can send you up the ladder of professional success. If a small voice speaks in your ear, urging specific action, take it unless it’s patently unwise. You’ll know. You have until mid-afternoon to heed advice, after
which doubt replaces inspired thinking. William Shakespeare said, “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.” An especially pleasant message or manner of speaking wins hearts and offers encouragement. This is a good day to spend time with loved ones, to spend time alone in contemplation, and to succeed at work!

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

Polishing the Diamond

January 2, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Bodhicitta”

I have been aware that people in our age and people who are awakening to spirituality and meditation and these different philosophies have been exposed to the idea that we have lived only just a few times, whereas the Buddha teaches us that is not true. The Buddha teaches us that we have lived, we have revolved in cyclic existence over countless aeons. An aeon alone is a very long time. And countless aeons, that kind of terminology is inconceivable to us. In order to have revolved since beginningless time, in countless aeons of cyclic existence, we had to have parents every time unless we were born in a realm in which parents were not the way of birth. But whether we were animals or humans or some other form that we don’t recognize at this time, whether we were born in the form or formless realms, there is a great potential for all sentient beings to have been our parents endlessly. And the way in which to understand the kindness of all sentient beings, the way in which to understand their kindness to us so that we can begin to build Aspirational Bodhicitta, is to understand that at this moment we’re here. We are hearing the Buddha’s teaching and we are experiencing comfortable circumstances in which to practice. We have no defects of mind or body that would prevent us from practicing the Buddha’s teaching. We are capable and we are able and we have the leisure to accomplish practice. We have very auspicious circumstances.

To have come to this point, we must think of the kindness of all of the situations that have brought us to this point. We shouldn’t think that our parents had any capability to prevent us from coming to this point, because they haven’t prevented us from coming to this point. So we shouldn’t think of their cruelty. We should think of their kindness because somehow, having birthed us, they have given us this precious opportunity to accomplish enlightenment. This is true for all of the circumstances that we have ever experienced, all of the births that we have ever experienced. Having come to this point, we should be thankful and grateful and happy, filled with joy realizing that this auspicious moment has occurred at last. And like finding a precious jewel while sifting through garbage, here we are and we have found the Dharma.

So having experienced this joy, we can begin to understand that all sentient beings have been our kind mothers and fathers, and that we owe them a great debt. We can remember once again that cyclic existence is just that, it is cyclic and endless, and that they are struggling night and day working very hard to make themselves happy and have no way to do it. We should think again and again that they are lost. Although they have given us birth in such a way that we can accomplish Dharma, and that all of these many parents who have birthed us over these many lives in order to help us to create the causes by which we might meet with this perfect Dharma, that even while they have participated in that, they themselves have not done it. It reminds me of a form of animal that I read about. It’s actually an insect called the midge. It conceives its young within itself and the young, as they begin to grow, actually eat the inside of the mother; and consume the mother. By the time they are ready to come out, the mother is dead, and they simply break out of her body as though it were an egg. We should think of that, and we should think that perhaps all sentient beings have done that for us. If they remain in a condition of suffering and we have now found the perfect path by which to alleviate their suffering, then perhaps it’s time to begin to develop the kindness that will liberate them from their unbearable suffering and their continued involvement in cyclic existence.

So when we hear about this Aspirational Bodhicitta, we become confused as to how to think of it. Time and time again students have said to me, “What practice will help me develop Bodhicitta? Isn’t it true that once I begin to practice, I will develop Bodhicitta?” or, “How can I best develop Bodhicitta?” They talk about Bodhicitta or compassion as though it were something separate from themselves because we think of all phenomena, both internal and external, as separate from ourselves. That is part of the basic delusion of believing in self-nature as being inherently real. It seems to come with the package. Yet, we need to take a hold of ourselves and begin to understand that Aspirational Bodhicitta is potentially the way we are. It is not a reality separate from ourselves. It is not a mystery that we should approach in a linear way, perhaps in the way that we used to think of spiritual mastery. It used to be that, before we studied the Buddha’s teachings, we began to think of spiritual mastery as accumulating this wisdom and that wisdom and this wisdom and that wisdom and this wisdom and suddenly, you would become a great master. And that’s it. Now you’re a master. Well that isn’t really how the Buddha considers realization. The Buddha considers that you cannot collect wisdoms or knowledges and that they in a sum total will create mastery. The Buddha considers that true wisdom is the realization of the emptiness of all phenomena and the emptiness of self-nature, the illusory nature of phenomena, the illusory nature of self. This is the true wisdom, and it is not something that you can collect or gather.

In the same way, when Bodhicitta is fully realized, it is none other than the Primordial Wisdom state. It is none other than supreme awakening. Bodhicitta then, ultimately, when it is fully realized, is our own nature, and we should not treat it as though it were something separate from ourselves. We should not treat it as though it were a thing that we could collect by doing this practice or that practice. Instead, we should take a hold of ourselves and begin to uncover the diamond of Bodhichitta, the jewel of Bodhicitta. We should begin to uncover it by polishing away the delusion that occurs through the selfish concerns which are born of a lack of understanding of what awakening truly is.

Astrology for 1/2/2017

January 2, 2017 by Norma

1/2/2017 Monday by Norma

01/02/2017 Monday by Norma

This is the perfect day to say something you didn’t say in the past. Has someone helped you, supported you, cheered your efforts? Now is the time to say thanks. Mercury retrograde allows you to fix an old omission, to circle back and cover your bases. It’ll feel temporarily awkward but watch
what happens to your life afterwards! Henry Ward Beecher said, “A helping word to one in trouble is often like a switch in a railroad track..an inch between a wreck and smooth, rolling prosperity.” This is a good day to relax, to enjoy a friendly interlude, and to get back to work!

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