Month: February 2018

Undefiled Awareness

by

An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhists Think by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

As Buddhists, we are not as infatuated with the idea of gods and goddesses as people in some other religions.  Why not?  Because we think of them as part of cyclic existence.  Long-life gods can grant blessings.  But can they get anybody enlightened?  No!  They don’t have Enlightenment.  You can wait around for someone to give you a blessing––or you can practice Dharma.

Neither are Buddhists impressed by talk about going to heaven or going to God.  For us, all this is just part of perceptual experience––just phenomena.  I’m not saying that phenomena don’t exist, but the goal of a Buddhist is beyond all phenomena, beyond the fixation of being caught up in cyclic existence.  It is not a goal that can be externalized.  It is pure, awakened Awarenes.  We talk about being reborn in Dewachen (which can sound similar to “being reborn in heaven,” and in one sense it is), but what is actually meant by that is to be reborn in the Dharmakaya state––to be born in a state of pure, undefiled Awareness.  To shed ignorance and to be reborn in undefiled Awareness is the only goal of a Buddhist.  It is not a conceptual process.  It is liberation from all the components of suffering.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

To download the complete teaching, click here and scroll down to How Buddhists Think

Astrology for 02/28/2019

by

02/28/2019 Wednesday by Jampal & Wangmo

Theme: Dissolving boundaries

With the Sun moving closer to Neptune for the next several days it’s an for opportunity to explore the nature of reality as normal ego structures are softened. Take time out to explore within and ones spiritual aspects. Sometimes fear can coincide with the dissolving of our normal structures and there may be a desire to lose oneself. It’s important to have good anchors at this time. ‘I know only love is worth our time. Will we reach our bliss with a life sublime Or just continue to run blind?’~ Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo

Astrology for 02/27/2018

by

02/27/2018 Tuesday by Jampal & Wangmo

Theme: Steering a course and harnessing energy

There is an opportunity today to make practical advances today. Discipline helps give birth to concrete outcomes.  The challenge is to both understand and overcome unconscious emotional patterns. With the Moon in Leo there is a continuum of potential behaviors ranging from the generous and magnanimous through to pridefulness. However, the Moon is also close to the asteroid Ceres which favors environmental awareness, and care for the caretakers if the earth. ‘One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.’~William Shakespeare

 

Life is Fleeting

by

An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhists Think by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Have you ever seen someone made completely  miserable by neediness?  Some people are like a big gaping hole,   and all the love you could pour in there would not be enough.  Haven’t you ever gone through a phase like that yourself?  We’ve all had extremely needy, hungry-ghost-like phases.

Have you ever been prideful, arrogant?  Deludedly thinking that you’re better than other people?  Have you ever felt yourself so attractive that you thought you were hot stuff?  Do you ever think you smell better than other people?  I do.  I wear Estee Lauder.  Many people have that kind of pridefulness.  Haven’t you seen people being arrogant––while you wondered why they considered themselves so special?  It’s a kind of dream-like delusion from which they’re not able to wake up.

We have seed-like causes planted within our mindstream that we may be unaware of, among them our jealousy and competitiveness.  Have you ever been so angry that you were hell-bent to get someone’s goat?  That was all you could think about until you realized that you had put yourself in a kind of hell.  Have you ever seen other people living that way, continually frothing at the mouth and hell-bent on being right?  We can detect these things in our own mind––the impressions of them, like footprints in the sand.

The Buddha taught that these six realms exist and that we all have the karma to be reborn in any one of them.  He also taught that we have the right, the power, and the responsibility to produce the causes to ripen auspicious karma––to be reborn in an auspicious way.  In other words, there is no predestination.  No one is doomed.  No one is jinxed.  We all have both beneficial and unfortunate karmic potential in our mindstreams.  To the degree that we decide, we can engage in the ten virtuous activities which produce an auspicious rebirth.  No one is special, no one is flawed, no one is damaged, no one is brain-dead.  While you’re human, you have many options.

Having understood that rebirth in any of these realms is possible for each of us, we must make the best use of our time now.  There is an urgency in Buddhist thinking: you are asked, please, to make use of this fortunate human rebirth.  Don’t waste your time.  If you feel pushed to do as much as you can, the purpose isn’t to entrap you or to tell you that “there is only one right way.”  It is only to urge you to use your time effectively and courageously––because there is so little of it.

Buddhist teachings describe this human life as a waterfall.  Now, where is the drop of water that even a moment ago was at the top?  That’s how our lives are.  They appear stable, but they go by in a flash.  We need to use our opportunity.

 

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

To download the complete teaching, click here and scroll down to How Buddhists Think

Astrology for 02/26/2018

by

02/26/2018 Monday by Jampal & Wangmo

Theme: Healing past relationships

With the Moon trine Jupiter there are blessings today. In addition there is an opportunity to day to heal from past hurts including relationships. Only you heal yourself in these circumstances. On a deeper unconscious level your feelings run deep today. How to let go of the past and our tendencies to want to control and be jealous. ‘In the end I think it will be the small things that keep us from completely giving ourselves.’~Anonymous

Today the Moon is Void of Course from 4.52pm EST USA until 11.43pm. If you’re in another country check what that means for you time-wise. It’s best to avoid making major decisions or signing contracts during this time.

We Made It Up

by

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

Look at a cup. Find cup in there. Take it apart. Grind it up, find cup. Cup is the idea of cup. And you can continue with everything – your house, your family. Let’s take your house and examine it. Let’s take your house apart. We’ll put it all under the microscope. Then find family. We’ll examine the people that you are calling family. Which one of them is family? We’re going take them all apart, just the way we took you apart. Where are we going to find family? Family is a concept. Who made it up? You did. Where are you? I haven’t found me yet!

It’s crazy, but it’s a good way to start practicing, because we’re going to find that everything we live by – the things that make us suffer, the things that we bust our tails trying to do, everything that we do – is based upon an idea that we made up. We did! We made it up, and it has affected us for all this time. We can begin there. It’s true that it would take some time to achieve realization by meditating in that way, but it’s a good place to start. Meditating on the emptiness of self and phenomena can give us the foundation and the strength to live the extraordinary life of compassion that I have been talking about. It’s that kind of extraordinary life of compassion, coupled with profound prayers, which will allow us to return in whatever form necessary in order to benefit beings. Even now, we will be able to benefit beings if we consider this is the most important thing in our entire lives, and we yearn for it.

Peters cup3

We will have a little side benefit if we do this. The side benefit is that, in the process, we will be purifying our mind of the garbage associated with self and desire we have gathered around it. We will move closer to successfully meditating on and knowing that profound, uncontrived, natural state of mind, just through the virtue of considering ourselves to be only important in as much as we can benefit beings, and beginning to function in that way.

But, I tell you, the more we get on an ego trip about this, the more we are creating the causes of suffering and the further away we get from perceiving the natural state. Because the natural state is, as it is – unpolluted, untarnished, untainted. The only thing that makes us perceive something else is that we have stuck blue in the back of the crystal, and the blue, symbolically, is conceptualization. The way to liberate the mind from the belief in the phenomena of blueness as being inherently real is to meditate on the emptiness of phenomena, the emptiness of self-nature, and to live a life that causes the purification of the mind and actually cleanses discursive thought. That is the ticket.

No matter who your teacher is, if you really could talk heart to heart with any profoundly realized teacher of any religion – and I’m willing to say this publicly, any teacher, any time if they are profoundly realized, no matter what religion they started – will tell you that the answer is the end of ego, all of its desire, and the conceptual proliferations that come with it. The realization of the natural state is the answer. That state is uncontrived, unchanging, unborn and infinite.

That’s your Kellogg’s cereal box-top, nature of mind teaching for today.  Whether you go the traditional Buddhist route, or whether you want to continue in a more general, yet profound route, I hope you will consider the tremendous opportunity and rewards of an extraordinary life. For you to even have the karma to come to this point where you might consider such a thing is tremendous. I urge you not waste this precious human rebirth. It’s an extraordinary opportunity. You have the opportunity to see things and to hear teachings that will change your mind forever, so that in some future time, you will surely be able to benefit beings in some extraordinary way.

I urge you to continue, and don’t waste your time. The expression, ‘don’t throw your pearls before swine,’ really does apply here. This is an extraordinary life, and if you were to spend it on ordinary things, it would be a shame. I hope that you will cultivate your excellent qualities and let them grow so that they will nurture all beings.

Copyright ©  Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Astrology for 02/25/2018

by

02/25/2018 Sunday by Jampal & Wangmo

Theme: Patience in relationships

With Mars square Venus exactly all relationships are challenged today so don’t sweat the small stuff.  Beware of criticism given or received. It might be overdone today. On the plus side there is harmony within one’s own purpose and emotions.With the Moon in Cancer it’s a good time to nurture yourself and others. ‘No relationship is all sunshine, but two people can share one umbrella and survive the storm together.’~unknown

 

The Search for I

by

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

All conceptualization, all phenomena arise from the belief in self-nature and from the compulsion, at that point, to make self appear separate from other, making a reactive relationship necessary. Your entire mind consists of the phenomena of hope and fear, of discrimination in a subtle and dense way. But the nature of mind itself remains steadfast, clear, uncontrived. When there is no concept of self.  It is pure, perfect.  It is only suchness. Only that. It cannot be altered. It remains unchanged. And the weird thing about it is, the minute that you start talking about it, you’ve removed yourself from the potential to understand it.

When you look at a crystal, it might be understood as a symbol of suchness. Now, if you were wearing a blue shirt and you put your arm behind the crystal, you would then see blue. Has the crystal become blue? Well, you have to look at it on two levels. With your arm behind it, the crystal looks blue. So, in that sense, the crystal appears to have become blue. But if you move your arm away does the crystal change? Is it still blue? So what is blue? Who perceives blue? The crystal is the same. It is the same. It is completely unaltered. What is this appearance of blue? What is this appearance of phenomena in general? This appearance of phenomena, in general, is merely conceptualization. Who perceives it?

Here is a very crude example, but then I told you I was born in Brooklyn. I’m not making any apologies. That’s it. Let’s take two objects: we have chocolate, and we have shit. Yes, shit, you heard it right! We have chocolate and we have shit. Okay, they’re both brown. I’m sorry, but we have to do this. They’re both brown, right? They both have a creamy consistency. So sorry! They both have a strong aroma. What makes one chocolate and the other one shit? Who determines the difference? Who is the taster? Who sees this? Who sees that? What is happening here?

How do you get free then of distinction between shit and chocolate? How do you stop seeing the blue in the crystal? How do you perceive that true nature? Little by little, you have to disengage the idea of self, and you have to meditate on that. I recommend that you begin in this way, whether you are a dyed-in-the-wool Buddhist, or whether you are a person that has never even heard of any of this before. I don’t recommend that you taste both shit and chocolate, but you can try, let’s say, honey and lemon juice. Look for yourself and ask, “Who is the taster?” You say, “I taste.” Then, “Where am ‘I’?” Well, “I’m right here.” Okay, where are you here? Let’s take you apart. Let’s find out where ‘I’ is. We’ll look first in the feet. We’ll start low and work up. Did you find ‘I’ in your feet? Take them apart. Really, you have to make slides of everything. You have to buy yourself a microscope and make slides and see if you can find ‘I,’ okay? Go all the way up. Look everywhere that you can, examine every single molecule. Go all the way up to the heart. Everybody thinks hearts are big these days. Let’s look in the heart and see if we can find ‘I.’ Then, we’ll look in the throat. What part do you identify with the most? Do you have great legs? We’ll look at your legs. Do you have a beautiful figure? We’ll look at every part of it. Look at everything! Let’s look in the brain. Everybody thinks they come from their head, right? So we’ll look in the brain. Where is ‘I’? You can even look in your eye, in your eyeball. See if you can find ‘I’ there.

No matter how hard you look, even if you make microscopic slides of every single part, you will not find ‘I’ in this body. You will not find it! Well, you say there must exist an ‘I,’ because how else can I go from lifetime to lifetime? And, I’m telling you that the idea of ‘I’ is only that. It is a conceptualization that has built around it so much karmic flatulence that the profundity of it has managed to exist for lo these many eons. At that point, you can begin to understand that, essentially, nothing has happened. In truth, nothing has happened. And you can begin to meditate on the emptiness of all phenomena.

Copyright ©  Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Astrology for 02/24/2018

by

02/24/2018 Saturday by Jampal & Wangmo

Theme: Ethereal communication!

It’s emotional discovery time, especially around mid-day.  This may include deep insights into how you operate today including your habits. With Mercury, the planet of communication so close to Neptune, the planet of dissolution of the ego, you may not finish your sentences or have memory lapses! There is a lot of subtle aspects to communication at this time and you might be better of contemplating the nature of the universe and expressing yourself artistically. As Dory said in the movie ‘Finding Nemo’, ‘I suffer from short-term memory loss. It runs in my family…at least I think it does…hmm, where are they?’

Today the Moon is Void of Course from 2.59 pm EST USA until 10.07 pm. If you’re in another country check what that means for you time-wise. It’s best to avoid making major decisions or signing contracts during this time.

WP2Social Auto Publish Powered By : XYZScripts.com