Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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!

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

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

The following is a music video prepared by a devoted student:

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Prayer To Manjushri

Obeisance to my Guru and Protector, Manjushri,

Who holds to his heart a scriptural text symbolic of his seeing all things as they are,

Whose intelligence shines forth as the sun, unclouded by delusions or traces of ignorance,

Who teaches in sixty ways with the loving compassion of a father for his only son,

All creatures caught in the prison of samsara, confused in the darkness of their ignorance, overwhelmed by their suffering.

You, whose dragon thunder-like proclamation of Dharma, arouses us from the stupor of delusions

And frees us from the iron chains of our karma, who wields the Sword of Wisdom

Hewing down suffering wherever its sprouts appear, clearing away the darkness of ignorance.

You whose princely body is adorned with the 112 marks of a Buddha, who has completed the stages achieving the highest perfection of a Bodhisattva, who has been pure from the beginning.

OM AH RA PA TSA NA DHI
(Repeat the mantra many times through. The last time:
DHI DHI DHI DHI DHI…..SOHA)

I bow down to you, O Manjushri. With the brilliance of your wisdom, O Compassionate One,

Illuminate the darkness enclosing my mind.

Enlighten my intelligence and wisdom so that I may gain insight

Into Buddha’s words and the texts that explain them.

 

Ceremony and Celebration

Sunday September 23rd

2:00 – 3:30 pm:
LONG LIFE CEREMONY with Khenpo Tenzin Norgay Rinpoche and Khenpo Pem Tsheri Sherpa.

MANDALA OFFERING to Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
(All attendees are invited to present individual offerings & scarves, which provide an opportunity to make a connection with the teacher)

3:30 – 5:00 pm:
Lama Dancing and Music by the monks of Palyul with other entertainment during Reception Picnic

We offer this joyful event free to all who can come. In the same spirit of generosity, we welcome any offerings or sponsorship of the activities you would like to make, as a way to increase the merit for you, your family and all beings. May your generosity ripen in your lives in auspicious ways in all future lifetimes!

Thank you all for being part of our family!

Join us for additional events on:
Saturday, Sept 22

Day of Practice and Generating Merit

10:00-11:30 am
Riwo Sang Chod (Smoke offering)
Vajrakilaya
21 Homages to Tara

11:30am-2:00pm
Break (Lunch on your own)

2:00-4:00 pm
Rigdzin Dupa Guru Yoga practice with abundant beautiful Tsog

Visit www.tara.org for additional celebration weekend activities, prayer practices and events.

Help sponsor this event

Kunzang Palyul Choling (KPC) is a Buddhist Temple in the Nyingma Tradition, founded by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo under the guidance of H.H. Penor Rinpoche.

KPC is a Bronze-level Guide Star Exchange participant, demonstrating our commitment to transparency through sharing information.

Kunzang Palyul Choling is a tax exempt 501(c)(3) charitable organization.
Federal Tax ID # 52-1501476.
All donations are fully tax deductible.

Contact information:

Kunzang Palyul Choling
18400 River Road
Poolesville, MD 20837
(301) 710-6259

[email protected]
www.tara.org

The following is a prayer from “The Great Perfection Buddha in the Palm of the Hand: The Lama’s Oral Instructions Upon the Recitation and Visualization of the Preliminary Practice of Ngondro” as revealed by Vidydhara Terton Migyur Dorje

The syllable GURU is the Guru in the hell realms, Guru Nampar-nön.

Reddish-black in color, he holds a vajra and a scorpion,

Protecting all beings in hell from the suffering of heat and cold.

The syllable PED is the Guru in the hungry spirit realm, Guru Nam-nang-ched.

Maroon in color, he holds a vajra and an iron phurba,

Protecting all hungry spirits from the suffering of hunger and thirst.

The syllable MA is the Guru in the animal realm, Guru Seng-ha-ten,

Blue-black in color, he holds a damaru and bell,

Protecting all animals from the suffering of inferior persecution,

The syllable SID is the Guru in the human realm, Guru Pema Jung.

White and red in color, he holds a skull and a vajra,

Protecting all humans from the suffering of birth, old age, sickness and death.

The syllable DHI is the Guru in the jealous gods realm, Guru Nam-par-gyal.

The color of smoke, he holds a Khatvanga and skull,

Protecting all jealous gods from the suffering of competitive warfare.

The syllable HUNG is the Guru in the god realm, Guru Sid-thub-dzin.

Yellow-white in color, he holds a vajra and bell,

Protecting all gods from the suffering of falling to the lower realms.

These six Gurus protect beings from the suffering of the six realms.

(Here one may repeat the Vajra Guru Mantra as many times as possible)

OM AH HUNG BENZAR GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG