Month: March 2018

The Bodhisattvas

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An excerpt from a teaching called Compassion, Love, & Wisdom by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The great Bodhisattvas alive on the earth at this time, as well as all the Bodhisattvas that have been and all that are yet to come, are in that number.  They appear in order to be of benefit to beings.  They appear in order to come back and teach a pure vehicle that provides a way to achieve supreme realization.  They live lives that are an inspiration and an example to us. They act as catalysts and bring about causes that institute the result of enlightenment for other beings, and they do it in different ways.  But one of the primary and necessary things that must be accomplished is bringing to the world a pure path that can accomplish supreme enlightenment: the union of the pure natural state of pristine awareness, the realization of the primordial wisdom state, that realization of emptiness, united with pure compassionate intention and the skillful means that is the result of enlightenment.  This perfect union is the union that we must consider our own personal ideal as we practice this path, because the goal must be not only to accomplish enlightenment for our own sake but to have the skill and the miraculous pure intention to display or incarnate in emanation form in order to bring about the enlightenment and salvation of all sentient beings.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Astrology for 03/07/2018

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02/07/2018 Wednesday by Jampal & Wangmo

Theme: A fastening pace

With Venus moving into Aries, along with Mercury, there is some fiery and spontaneous energy in relationships for the next three weeks. Direct action is more common. However, depending on the situation, or the occupation, this is tempered by the need to attend to details. Avoid getting too critical or fixated. There is still a sense of expansiveness in emotionally connecting with yourself and others. ‘Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast.’~Shakespeare.

Today the Moon is Void of Course from 3.56 am EST USA until 5.04 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.

A Natural Purification

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An excerpt from a teaching called Compassion, Love, & Wisdom by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

One of the techniques commonly practiced on the Vajrayana path is generating oneself as the Deity. When generating as the Deity one actually arises in a pure form, a form that is free of desire, a pure and fully enlightened form.  Through mantra and visualization and recitation you allow yourself to arise naturally in a form that is an enlightened form and is considered a form of the Buddha.  Arising in that pure state the mind is free of all the impurities such as desire and conceptualization and of the things that it does, and all perception is then seen as pure as well.  We visualize the perception in a pure way and come to understand that the perception we have is innately pure. From that a natural purification takes place.

Many techniques are used and the result of these techniques is the wisdom we seek, not the techniques themselves.  We are not collecting techniques.  We are not collecting empowerments, we are not collecting things.  That is not the wisdom.  The wisdom we seek is the result of the pacification of constantly arising desire within the mindstream.  It is the pacification of the mind expressing itself in an impure form.  It is the pacification of the results that we constantly experience of erroneous belief.  That is pure wisdom.  Having obtained that wisdom one is actually liberated from cyclic death and rebirth.  How is that?

Well, we have this idea about what happens. You collect all this wisdom and then some guy shows up. It’s probably going to be a guy, because guys are big this year.  This guy shows up and is probably going to wear white.  Don’t you think that white is good?  I mean in this culture we think about white a lot so he is going to wear white. He is going to show up and he is going to say you have accumulated enough wisdom and now you are – sounds like Bill Cosby doesn’t it – and now you are fully enlightened.  I bet it is Bill Cosby.  So now you are fully enlightened and having been fully enlightened then I am going to take from you the need – now I am beginning to sound like an evangelist – now I am going to take from you the need to reincarnate in some future existence.  We have some kind of dream that something like that is going to happen:  we will be anointed and we will have stars on our crown and all this kind of thing.  According to the Buddha’s teaching that is not what is going to happen.  I am sorry.  The Hallelujah chorus is a beautiful piece of music, but they are not going to play it when your moment comes, so don’t be waiting for a sign like that.

When we talk about the kind of wisdom that is necessary to accomplish the awakening that is so treasured and so desired, we talk about the elimination and pacification of all things that produce the causes of cyclic existence.  The Buddha says that we actually take rebirth in a compulsive way and that compulsion is based on desire.  When that desire is eliminated and pacified because the nature, the true nature, is understood and the belief in self as being inherently real is done away with, that very cause for us to take rebirth in this compulsive way is gone. There is no necessity to take rebirth.  However, the Vajrayana path contains all of the Mahayana hopes and ideals; we achieve a state of realization that is ultimately of benefit to all sentient beings, not only ourselves.  Having achieved that stability of mind, the realization of the natural state through practice, having poised ourselves on that pristine moment of pure cognition, that which is called innate wakefulness and yet has within it no conceptualization, we then can choose to return again and again and again in an emanation form in order to be of benefit to sentient beings.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Astrology for 03/06/2018

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03/06/2018 Tuesday by Jampal & Wangmo

Theme: Direct speech

With Mercury in Aries communications become a lot more direct and sometimes blunt. Avoid hasty communications – think before you speak. If you’re on the receiving end take a deep breath and pause. You can always count to 10! On another tack you may experience a sense of emotional expansiveness which enables you to connect more with others today. Deepening your understand of philosophy and religion is emphasized. ‘The door of the heart opens from within.’~ Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo

The Coffeepot Thoughts

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An excerpt from a teaching called Compassion, Love, & Wisdom by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Practice takes a long period of time.  You will be practicing till the end of your life.  In order to be successful you must be consistent in your practice, you must keep your commitments, you must cultivate the mind of pure intention, and you must cultivate the purest kind of love to keep the fires burning and to keep yourself motivated. After practicing for a good long period of time the mind itself will change and will become more and more stable.  Those momentary feelings or experiences that you have in your meditation will become longer and longer.  They will become more and more normal.  When they become longer and longer it isn’t just that they become longer and longer in time but they become deeper and wider in their intensity and in their content.  They become more a part of the way that your mind naturally functions. The goal of course is for that process to continue, because true realization is not a momentary ‘aha’, true realization is not something that you realize, that is knowledge.  True realization is not an experience. That is a ‘something.’  True realization is awakening to the natural state that is free of all conceptualization. The mind needs to become stabilized in that state.  How does that happen?

You must practice a technology or a path that causes your mind not to constantly run away with you, not to constantly run after things.  It is desire that causes you to run after things.  If you have ever tried just sitting and meditating you will discover that at first it is extremely difficult. Actually for a long time it is quite difficult. When you try to think of nothing or you try to remain poised or balanced in that natural state, try to simply let your mind be relaxed and to realize emptiness or to not think of anything, whatever it is that your technique happens to be, pretty soon, as in a split-second, your mind will be running down the block and you have to go run after it to catch up with it.  You will find that you have thought of something that bubbled up out of the pool of your mind and that you followed it. You follow it by making all kinds of conclusions from what came up in your mind – judgments, opinions, developments. For instance, perhaps when you first sit down to meditate you may come up with, “Oh I left the coffee pot on.”  And then immediately you are going to come up with, “That’s going to stink up the whole kitchen.”  Then you are going to come up with, “Then it’s going to boil over.”  Then you are going to say, “Well that wasn’t a very good coffee pot anyway, and well I always leave it on, I don’t know why I leave it on, there is something wrong with me, I’m kind of worried about it,” and then, “It’s just like me I sit down to meditate and here I am thinking about the coffee pot.  Doggone it, I am not thinking about the coffee pot again.”  By the time you find yourself you are in the next county, probably the next city.  You are way down the road. That is what will happen in the beginning of your meditation.

When you get a little bit further in your practice you will learn a technique of letting go of those things, of just dropping them.  You are not making a judgment about it, but just dropping it.  Like if coffee pot comes up you let coffee pot go.  You don’t run down the block thinking about coffee pot thinking this about myself and that about myself and this about coffee pot and that about coffee pot.  You learn the technique of simply dropping it.  Coffee pot comes up and coffee pot goes.  The next thing that will begin to happen as you practice is that your mind will say, “Hey, I am not getting away with this anymore so I am going to try harder,”  and the talker in your head, the one that never shuts up, is going to pop up and say, “We’ll get dramatic then, I’ll get her attention.”  And so it jumps up and says, “Axe murder, Axe murder.”

Well immediately you run away with that thinking, “I thought about an axe murder. I’m not a very spiritual person.  I thought about this in my meditation.  This meditation is bad for me, but maybe not, maybe there is just something wrong with me.” There again you are off in the next county and of course you have to learn the same technique of dropping the axe murder.  When that doesn’t work it will try something even more fun.  It will say, “You are really a good person, you’re meditating now.”  Or it will say, “You just had a good experience.” And you will think, “Yeah, that was a great experience, if fact I think that was like the nature of emptiness she is talking about because I didn’t think about myself at all for a minute, in fact I’m not thinking about myself at all right now I’m just thinking about that experience that I had.” And then you think about what a nice person you are and that comes up and, “I have not missed my meditation, not once for weeks and weeks now, I am so good I can’t believe it.  Can you believe it? I am just so good.  I’m so pleased with how this is going.  A year ago I never thought this could happen to me, that I could sit here and mediate on emptiness as I am doing now.”  Your mind begins to sound a little bit like Lilly Tomlin.  You are sort of down the road and that begins to happen.

The techniques the Buddha advises you need to master are those that will eliminate the whole walkie-talkie scene. To eliminate that particular kind of thing you have to learn how to disengage from the desire that causes you constantly to define yourself.  What is happening in that kind of state is the thoughts that come up in your mind as a result of your belief in self-nature as being inherently real. They are a result of your need to constantly redefine and cause yourself to be, because you think that is what you are.  You are actually shoring up all around yourself.  It’s like you take concepts and create a nice receptacle for you to live in so that you understand yourself.  There is a funny kind of mechanism that happens when you do that. You really think that is what you are, this receptacle that you have built, this four squared thing that you have built with your bricks of conceptualization. That’s what you think you are. The Buddha teaches us that that isn’t our nature at all.  The phenomena that arise within our mind, as well as the phenomena that we experience as external, which are not different from the phenomena that arise within our mind, and the belief in self-nature, these things are all inherently empty. They are puff-balls.  I don’t know that Lord Buddha used the word puff-balls, but I think it is a good word.  You can argue with me if you want.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Astrology for 03/05/2018

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03/05/2018 Monday by Jampal & Wangmo

Theme: Imagine!

Any disruption from the day before settles by the afternoon. With the Moon entering Scorpio deep feelings are emphasized. Deep feelings can be problematic when expression and repression are not transcended. It’s a time with the waning moon to complete tasks. Artistic expression continues to be favored for the next week. This could manifest as creative solutions. Use your imagination to create a better world within and without. ‘Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.’~Albert Einstein

Today the Moon is Void of Course from 1.20 am EST USA until 8.24 am. 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.

Astrology for 03/04/2018

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03/04/2018 Sunday by Jampal & Wangmo

Theme: Harmonious communications

It’s a good day to negotiate and achieve positive outcomes in your communications which are more likely to be harmonious.  You appreciate the beauty you can see in the world today more and express your love for others too. Today old wounds really can be healed. In that spirit you may feel more confident in your communications. Later in the day/evening there could be some emotional disruption. ‘There are two ways of spreading light…to be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it.’~ Edith Wharton

 

Being True To Our Nature

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An excerpt from a teaching called Compassion, Love, & Wisdom by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The Buddha considers that the point is to turn the mind to such a degree that you will not be shaken from your determination to practice pure Dharma that leads to the ultimate goal.  You have a choice to practice in different ways.  There is the Theravadin point of view, there is the Mahayana point of view and there is the Vajrayana point of view.  In this Vajrayana point of view the path is difficult. You have to have a great deal of courage. But it is swift and it is certain, and we have an amazing history of beings who obtained realization in a very visible and provable way.  Stories of Lamas who achieved truly miraculous signs through the power of their practice, who were able to perform in ways that were not ordinary, to accomplish things that were not ordinary and who also were able to display for our benefit extraordinary signs at the time of their death so that we would have faith.

Thinking that we should accomplish this ultimate goal, then we have to determine how we intend to accomplish that goal. We have to stay on that goal and we have to be true to that goal, in the same way that we can learn to be true to ourselves.  When I say ‘to ourselves’ I don’t mean the self that we think we are, I mean the self that we really are, which is no self at all.  The truth of our nature isn’t about ‘selfness’ at all.  Our nature is that which is free and uncontrived, that which is awake and to which we have never been true, dancing around with phenomena as we do. Learning to be true to ourselves in that way, learning to be true to that nature, is the first time that we love.

I think that in one way it is the Mahayana view that we love ourselves too much and we are always trying to get something for ourselves. We are always trying to do what’s right for us and be gratified in some way.  And that is true that is the Mahayana view.  That is absolutely the truth.  We should instead think of others.  But I think there is another way to understand it; we seem to be running around constantly trying to destroy ourselves rather than loving that nature enough to allow ourselves to realize it, to be true to it.  I think it is important to understand that in order to obtain true wisdom we have to learn to love that nature, we have to learn to love that nature in such a way that we can be true to that which we really are.

Having reached some awareness of that nature and having practiced sincerely, remaining stable within that nature and within that awareness is the next thing to be considered.  It is common that during experiences of meditation you will have momentary experiences that can seem very blissful.  They can seem very exciting, they can seem very peaceful, they can seem for one moment as though you had forgotten yourself and there was a sense of liberation because of that.  These are all things that happen as you practice, but if they become the place where you stop or if you desire them or grasp them to you in such a way that you can go no further, you lose it immediately. Why? Because the minute you try to do that you are no longer with it.  The minute you try to take that conceptualization in an iron clad way, wrap that conceptualization around the experience that you just had, you just lost the natural state.  It is no longer natural.  It’s contrived.  You made it up and so you lose it immediately.  But also if you use that particular experience to increase your desire and pride, or even to increase the grasping that comes with loyalty to memories or experiences, if you use it in that way it becomes something opposite to that which leads to Enlightenment. You take a side path and end up not going in the direction you wanted. You end up losing that pristine, poised balance in which the mind needs to remain in order to remain steadfast in that natural state.  It becomes important to remain stable in your practice.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Astrology for 03/03/2018

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03/03/2018 Saturday by Jampal & Wangmo

Theme: Count your blessings

With Jupiter continuing to make a good aspect to multiple planets it’s time to rejoice in your good fortune. This could take a number of forms. What form will it be for you? There continues to be a lot of direct energy which can be harnessed for forward movement. Feeling a sense of good fortune can help when dealing with difficult moments and experiences which are also evident. ‘People with clenched fists cannot shake hands.’~Indira Ghandi

 

Who Can Be a Guru?

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An excerpt from a teaching called Compassion, Love, & Wisdom by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

According to the Buddha we continue in cyclic existence and suffer as we do because of desire, and that desire is born of the belief in self-nature as being inherently real.  Therefore the cessation of desire, in all its forms, is synonymous with enlightenment. That state of enlightenment is a pure awareness, pure recognition of the natural primordial wisdom state free of all contrivance.  That state is both blissful and awake or alive.  It is described as having the quality of innate wakefulness, which means when we describe that state as empty of self-nature, we are not describing something that is dead and dark and cold.  It has the quality of innate wakefulness.  In that state of pure awakening, free of the contrivance of desire, free of the very causes of hatred, greed and ignorance that arise within the mindstream once one has desire, free of these things that are seeds for all future sufferings, we are limitless and free in our capacity to be of benefit to beings.  If the Buddha is correct, and I know that he is when he says that all sentient beings are suffering because of desire and hatred, greed and ignorance that are results of desire, then who can help us?  Who can be a Guru? Who can benefit us if they themselves are not free of those causes, if they themselves are not free of desire, if they themselves are not free of hatred, greed and ignorance, in the sense that humans experience them?  Looked at this way, how can an ordinary sentient being lead us to enlightenment if they themselves have not obtained enlightenment?  How can they guide us to be free of the causes of suffering if they themselves are filled with the causes of suffering and will continue to create more and more results that are suffering?  So, if it is not possible, and I don’t think it is, for an ordinary sentient being with ordinary means at his disposal to give us what we need, then we need to look to a guide who is free of such things.

When I look at the Buddha and his life I am satisfied that he has achieved that pristine state of pure cognition.  I am satisfied that he experiences wisdom.  I am satisfied that he reaches the state, or has reached the state, that is wisdom itself. The pure natural uncontrived primordial wisdom state.  When he was asked, “What are you?  What manner of thing are you?”  he said, “I am awake.”  It is that state of innate wakefulness, that pure uncontrived realization, which must be considered the goal.  Therefore to help us accomplish our goals, to help us accomplish our path, we should only look to one who satisfies those questions and who has those qualities.

The Buddha teaches us that in order to be of benefit to sentient beings it is necessary to experience the pure uncontrived nature of one’s own mind in its natural state without the grasping of desire, without the limitation of the sufferings that are caused by that grasping, without the constant attraction and repulsion that we experience every moment, and without the resultant hatred, greed and ignorance. In order to be of use to sentient beings we must ourselves attain these qualities.  He describes wisdom in that way, putting a tremendous emphasis, through meditation and practice, on having a taste of that pure state. That taste so precious, without it we cannot know.

There is no way that I can tell you how to know the awakened state.  There is no way I can say to you, and have you really understand it: this is what you must do in order to be of benefit to sentient beings, to bring about the end of suffering, to yourself be free of suffering.  Because what I am telling you is only that which can lead to the accumulation of knowledge.  I have given you things and you know something, if you are listening, that you didn’t know before. If you use that which you are hearing to practice, and if you practice in such a way that your mind becomes deepened, and you really work at intensive and sincere practice for a great period of time and accomplish just what the teacher tells you to do, and you utilize a path that is pure, that has consistently proven results and brings about the necessary changes that lead ordinary beings, such as ourselves, to experience the natural state, then after some period of time you will have a taste of that nature.  That is the wisdom being spoken about; it is not the same as something you learn.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

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