Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Rejoicing

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An excerpt from a teaching called Viewing the Guru:  The Seven Limb Puja by Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo on October 18, 1995

The next posture that we maintain constantly is that of rejoicing.  Constantly rejoice. This posture of rejoicing actually isn’t like, “Walk around being happy!”  That would be like putting on a false face.  You have all this samsaric past in you and yet you’re putting this happy face on it.   That’s not what we’re talking about.

We’re talking about rejoicing in the accomplishments of the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas, of all those who have achieved realization.  We’re talking about rejoicing in the accomplishments of others.  In the face of the Guru, as the Guru’s child and inseparable from the Guru’s nature, instead we say, “Oh, this one has crossed the ocean of suffering,” and rejoice in the accomplishment of the Guru.  The accomplishment of the Guru reflects on one’s own karma, if you think about it. “I rejoice in the accomplishment of the Guru, and now I am in the presence of the Guru, and now the accomplishment of the Guru then becomes available to me, as well.”  How do you think the accomplishment of the Guru could ever become available to you if you do not rejoice in that respectfully, if you do not give rise to the recognition of the joy of that?  If you say, “Well, I wonder what she really has accomplished?  I mean, let’s think about it.  I mean she really doesn’t pay much attention to facts.  She doesn’t know any of those lists.”  You know  those lists that you all have to know? So you might be saying to yourself, “She doesn’t know any of those lists, so how good can she be?”  So that’s the kind of thought that you might have about your teacher, and maybe in this case you would be right.  But in this case you would be wrong for you, because it doesn’t help you to think like that!  If you find fault in the face of your Guru, you will never achieve realization.  Period.  That’s it.  If you don’t recognize the nature of the Guru, you cannot recognize your own nature.  It simply will not occur. So instead, we recognize the qualities of the Guru.  We see that this is the very extension of Guru Rinpoche’s miraculous compassion, that this is primordial empty nature and luminosity, non-dual, expressed in the world in a form that I can understand. This is beyond flaw.  Because that’s what it is.  It is not a human being.  It is not a samsaric being.  It is not a prop.  It is not a thing.  It is not ‘out there.’  It is the very display of our nature, in a form that we can recognize.  So we rejoice in that.

That’s how it’s relevant to our practice, but in general, rejoicing in the welfare of those who have accomplished Dharma includes rejoicing in the Buddhas who have crossed the ocean of suffering and returned for the sake of sentient beings: rejoicing in the Bodhisattvas who hold back from the brink of nirvana for the sake of sentient beings; rejoicing even in practitioners who have accomplished, who are now accomplishing, Dharma in order to benefit sentient beings.  When you hear that one of your peers has completed Ngondro or completed some other practice, or had a really profound relationship with their practice or they are really going into it and they are really moving on it, the faulty human tendency would be to say, “Well, I could do that.”  Or,  “Well, yeah, but they’re not taking out the garbage!  I mean, they’re practicing all day, but you never see them take out the garbage.”  That’s the kind of tendency that we have.

Instead, we are talking about constantly rejoicing in the achievements of others.  That is a way to increase your own accomplishment as well.  But in terms of practicing with the Guru, you should think that, in fact, we are looking at the face of primordial nature, we are looking at the nature of emptiness, at the display of luminosity. The Guru appears in the world, and we are rejoicing in the accomplishment of the Guru, rejoicing in the magical, mystical and miraculous appearance in the world, for the sake of sentient beings.  We are constantly rejoicing in that to where there is no room for grasping and clinging and judging and all those things that we normally do.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

From “The Way to Freedom” by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

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“As long as prisoners do not know that they are in prison and do not perceive the life of prison is difficult and painful to bear they will not develop any genuine wish to free themselves from prison.

The same is true of samsara: as long as you are unable to perceive. The defects of life within this cycle of existence, you  will never develop a genuine wish to gain nirvana, freedom from samsara.

If we remain idle and do not think seriously about karmic law, we might feel that we are not accumulating any negative actions and that we are good practioners.

If we analyze our thoughts and actions closely, however, we will find we are engaging in idle speech, harming others, or engaging in covetousness on a daily basis.

We will find we actually lack the primary factor of deep conviction Necessary to really observe the law of karma.” From: THE WAY to FREEDOM by His Holiness Dalai Lama of #Tibet @Dalailama#Buddhism

Something told me to open my book to pg108. And there were jewels there, the unfathomable wisdom of HH Dalai Lama.  I gathered them for YOU!  Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Excerpt From The Way to Freedom

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by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

There are no physical markers by which to measure progress between positive and negative forces in consciousness.  Changes begin when you first identify & recognize your delusions, such as anger and jealousy. One then needs to know the antidote to delusion, and that knowledge is gained by listening to the teachings. There is NO simple way to remove delusions. They cannot be extracted surgically.  They have to be recognized, and then, through the practice of these teachings can be gradually reduced and then completely eliminated!

These teachings offer the means to free oneself from delusion; a path that eventually leads to freedom from all suffering and to the BLISS of enlightenment. The more one comes to understand the Dharma, or Buddhist teachings, the weaker will be the grip of pride, hatred, greed, and other negative emotions that cause so much suffering. Applying this understanding in daily life over a period of months and years will gradually transform the mind because despite the fact that it often seems otherwise, the mind is subject to change.

Though we realize the harm caused by our delusions, such as damage done to ourselves and others when we act out of anger we still fall under its influence. Thus an untamed mind throws us recklessly into the abyss instead of stopping when it sees the edge.

All merit dedicated to the continued Long Life of His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet. Gratitude for the great blessing of His kind words! All benefit!

Similarly even I have taught that self-honesty in viewing one’s faults and taking the necessary antidote is truly the way. -JAL

Understanding AH

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A Relic from the First Ahkon Lhamo, housed at Kunzang Palyul Choling in Poolesville, MD

 

From a Series of Tweets by @ahkonlhamo

Don’t get misled! “Ah” is Sanskrit or Tibetan. It is not Japanese or Chinese. It is the seed vowel of our Primordial Wisdom Nature, the very ground of being. Buddha Primordial! It is our own pristine face. Please don’t be confused.

It is so essential to understand “Ah,” as it is the primordial ground of display. The ground – Buddha nature. The path – Dharma, or method.  The fruit is Buddhahood. Notice the relationship of seed, ground; and fruit, result. Cause and effect! The result can never be other than the seed. One cannot awaken to Buddhahood if the ground and path, seed and method are wrong. Ground/method/result, seed/path/fruit.  THIS is what the Buddha taught. Do not be confused by false teachings. There is no magic, miracle cure for samsara. It’s not for slackers!

Dedicated to all those who in their ignorance, oppose the Buddha’s teaching.  May their afflictions be antidoted.  May they find peace and happiness.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Introduction to Mantra Recitation

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from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:

If you see any animal dying, even a bug or worm, recite audibly *OM AMI DEWA HRI* then *OM MANI PEDME HUNG* to bless them, for a good rebirth.

If you or someone you know suffers from mental confusion recite *OM AH RA PA TSA NA DHI* to Bodhisattva Manjushri and then *DHI D D D….. At least one full MALA of each.

If you are on the spiritual path and wish to find your Guru or repair any connection with GURU recite *OM AH HUNG BENZAR GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG* That is the Mantra for GURU Padmasambhava, the lotus born Guru.

If one sees a disaster, natural or otherwise; or many suffering pray to Tara, Mother of all Buddhas recite; *OM TARE TU TARE TURE SOHA*

Ethical Responsibility of a Teacher

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From a series of Tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo @ahkonlhamo

When one assumes the role of teacher, Guru, sensei, whatever,  one has an ethical responsibility to reveal qualifications and identity.  When students follow a Guru there must be trust and respect. The teacher owes the disciple the respect of transparency and character, so the disciple can make an informed choice on an issue that will affect them in EVERY future life. If one is misguided they will spiral down spiritually.

If a person, in their delusion and psychosis believes themselves to be a Guru that does not grant qualities. One MUST see the life and past history and good works so the student can be careful. If the person seeking to teach is ethical they will give that information.

Remember that seeds produce their OWN fruit. An apple seed will never produce a pineapple. A man with violence, perversion and dishonesty will always produce more of the same. It is the seed of their life.   A person may find redemption if they work VERY hard and for a long time to do so. There is NO instant change. One MUST apply the antidote; and after a low life of violence and shame, can only hope to purify their wrongdoing. To jump up and hide identity, claiming enlightenment and instant ability to teach others is absurd and makes fools of the followers.  They are looking for pure accomplishment, not a song and dance. Not kabuki theatre with masks. How will they know?

Now, if one wishes to TALK about Dharma and debate- well anyone CAN do that AND it is a good thing. As long as nothing is hidden and the discussion is open to all. AND the Guru wannabe DOES NOT CLAIM TO BE an ENLIGHTENED MASTER. That robs students of choice and dignity.  It is snake-oil criminal. Period.  If there is delusion, psychosis and a dark violent conniving past it must be revealed for the sake of all sentient beings.

Talk all you want, but do NOT fool honest followers. Some evidently don’t care about character, talk to them, but man, do NOT lie to put yourself up or mix your paint so no one knows what you are. Drop and purify that diseased ego. We don’t need it

And nobody will EVER benefit from your haughty self cherishing. Like a bad little boy playing king. We have politicians for that.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Mother Earth

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I LOVE the greeting on “AVATAR” which is “I SEE YOU”; said mindfully and deeply. Yes, saw it 5th time with Atira. Cry every time.

“I SEE YOU”. How I wish we all could SEE like that. I want to move to Pandora and get an Avatar body.

As on Pandora I wish the people knew their oneness with tree + forest. Could connect utterly! Walk with grace and beauty! Lived in spirit!

Ooh, right. The indigenous American Indians were just so; and we killed them like in Avatar. We burnt their mother. Our mother.

I guess that’s why we’ll never live on Pandora. We are not blue, we are whitey/pink. And we burn our Mother every day. OM MANI PEDME HUNG

I weep for the rape of our Mother. Even as she comforts us and sets us FREE. #stopthehate #bringthelove #animalrescue #saveTibet

From a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Wandering in a Circus of Appearances

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

To develop spiritual recognition, you need to recognize that beings that you see living in a material way that seems so fruitless have the very seed of Buddha Enlightenment within them.  They are That Nature, but piteously confined; blind, wandering in this deluded world of appearances, simply dancing through reactiveness.  Without that spiritual discrimination, there’s no practice.

If we can begin to really push ourselves to give rise to a state of recognition by applying this discrimination and mindfulness, then perhaps we are actually practicing, actually accomplishing something.  It is entirely possible to spend one’s whole life calling ourselves a “renunciate,” dressed up like Dharma, walking around with beads, but if we do not require of ourselves that we move further and further into giving rise to a state of recognition, we might as well be entertaining ourselves.  The very thing we wish to disengage, that deluded ego, that inherent belief in self-nature, is on center stage.  So long as that is happening, we are suffering; we are wandering aimlessly in samsara with no way to understand our Nature: blind, deaf, dumb, unable, mistaking the five primordial wisdoms for our senses.  Our senses that tell us if things are hot or cold, big or small, so we can have them.  Our senses that tell us if things are far away or close by so we know whether to react with repulsion or attraction.  Our senses describe that stuff ‘out there’ so we can determine how we should feel about it.  This deluded and continuous reality that we steep ourselves in is not practice, even if you do it with the robes on; even if you do it with your beads in your hands.  It is awakening to the state of recognition that is most important.

When we see deluded sentient beings, this is an opportunity.  They become to us like gurus.  This is an opportunity to practice.  Have you seen your parents? Though I’m sure they’re dear to you, they’re not really enlightened people.  They’re not like living Buddhas.  We’ve watched our parents age and sometimes very painfully – the aging process is not a comfortable process.  Your body drops out from under you and starts betraying you. Not only have we watched this process go on, but we’ve watched them suffer so much.  We’ve watched them try to attain, one by one, all the goals they were told to obtain and work so hard.

Sentient beings aren’t lazy. Sentient beings are working very hard every day to fulfill their belief systems.  Our parents went to work.  They might have been the worst parents in the world, but they went to work every day.  They worked really hard. Maybe my parents were some of the worst in the world, but I did watch them suffer, suffer, suffer and work, work, work and beat themselves to death.  And the grief that they feel when they look at what they’ve been doing and working so hard for, and it amounts to nothing. What happened?  Now I’m old, nearly dead.  This is not only true with our parents; it’s also true with us.  It’s true with all beings.  These are not bad people; these are not evil people.  The sickness here is ignorance.  The sickness here is a state of non-recognition.  The sickness here is the narcotic sleep called samsara.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Giving Rise to Recognition

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

Do you want to be powerful like all Americans want to be?  Do you really want to be potent?  Do you really want to be a Great Being?  Well, if you want to do that, then stop seating your ego on the throne.  Awaken.  Get the fact that you are impotent unless you are able to move into a state of recognition.  You are impotent if you do not recognize that all the things you call your life are merely symptoms of the condition of your mindstream.  You are impotent if you do not realize that every time we have an opportunity to practice discrimination and lift up the sacred, we have an opportunity to awaken within ourselves; we have an opportunity to practice recognition, and that is power.

The way most of us live is like we’re trying to get through a dark room.  It’s pitch black.  There’s all kinds of stuff in it: furniture, sinks, bath tubs, all the stuff that they have in rooms.  We’re trying to get from the birth door to the death door.  We’re going across this room.  Now, you have two choices.  You can either go through this room and stumble over everything that’s in your way, or you can turn on the light and recognize what’s there, move around it, move over it, your choice.  But, that state of recognition requires constant mindfulness: constant mindfulness of that which is sacred, distinguishing that in the world.

I’ve given this again and again and again, and I will never stop because I love this so much.  It’s a line from a song that Art Garfunkel had in one of his albums. I think the name of the song is Mary Was An Only Child, and this one line that describes exactly what I’m talking about is perfect, another way in which the Guru speaks.  It goes like this:

“And if you watch the stars at night

and you find them shining equally bright,

you might have seen Jesus and not have known what you saw.

Who would notice a gem in a five-and-dime store?”

That five-and-dime store is ordinary perception.  To notice the diamond, we have to give rise to recognition and the View.  I feel that to practice like that is really a natural empowerment, a natural medicine that helps us give rise to the wisdom that is inherently ours.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Don’t Wait to be Swept Away

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Gyaltrul Rinpoche

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

The mistake that we make with almost any spiritual practice is waiting for it to affect us.  We’re waiting for the “feeling” when Dharma is supposed to sweep us away like a Calgon bath or something, and that’s not the way it’s ever going to happen.  You may have wonderful, sweeping experiences, but you’ll do that in your bathtub too.  It’s just normal.

The kinds of practices that we are taught to do on the Vajrayana path, such as prostrations, are quite different and unique for us and for our culture.  At first, a Westerner feels very strange performing prostrations.  We feel goofy and foolish and think, “Wait a minute! I don’t even know if I like her yet.  I mean, just because she’s on the big chair…” But that’s exactly why we do the prostrations, because she’s on the big chair.  The big chair is there because the big chair is the throne of Dharma.  It’s not my throne.  It’s not Alyce Zeoli’s throne.  It’s not Ahkön Lhamo’s throne.  It is the throne of Dharma. When we perform the prostrations that we do, it is actually meant to be a connection between body, speech, and mind.  These three are utilized together.  The physical is doing something, the speech is doing something, and hopefully the mind is doing something.  These three aspects of ourselves performing at the same time makes a sense of connection.  It is a ritual that anchors something that is subtle, very spiritual: you can’t taste it, you can’t own it, you can’t pick it up.  It anchors it into the physical.  When the body performs the prostrations, you literally go into a different space.  That event involving body, speech and mind takes you into a different space, if all three are engaged.

There are many mannerisms associated with Dharma, and as Westerners we think, “Well, I don’t get that whole crouching over thing.  It just looks like a hunchback to me.”  As Westerners, we’re taught to walk straight, almost military-like and prideful.  But, actually, it is the constant mindfulness when you are in the presence of the Lama that creates an exchange of some sort.  It’s not that you have to be unnatural all the time.  If there is an exchange of some sort, simply that subtle tendency of doing that very little bow with mindfulness – and that’s the trick – puts the Lama’s speech in a place where you can hear it more directly.  It actually establishes the connection between you and the teacher, almost like a tube or a direct tunnel going between yourself and the teacher.   If you were in a room full of people and your Root Guru was talking and other people were talking and you were listening to everybody at the same time and to all in the same way, there would be no blessing there.  The reason why there would be no blessing is because the main point of practicing Guru Yoga is to get us past the point of pridefulness and past the point of lack of discrimination that makes us not know whether something is extraordinary or simply ordinary.  Eventually, we will come to see the non-duality of the nature of the Lama and one’s own nature.  At that point one actually takes refuge in that nature, which is one’s own nature every bit as much as it is the Lama’s nature.  Until then, this training is actually mind training, and, once again, Westerners have a hard time with that.  We keep trying to slip it off, because we’re naturally uncomfortable with it.  It doesn’t look like the rest of our culture, and we truly don’t understand.

We try to take our clues from the Lama, and this is where we all go wrong because some Lamas, like Gyaltrul Rinpoche, are funky, humble guys, and other Lamas come in like they’re your best friend.  And then other Lamas come in, and they have a very fine and royal, genteel appearance.  There are so many different Lamas.  The trick is not to take your clue from the Lama, but to take your clue from the Dharma: from the teachings about the nature of the Lama.  Whatever the appearance is, you need to form the habitual tendency and mindfulness of elevating that in preparation for the recognition of and awakening to your own Buddhanature.  The reason why we’re asleep, why we’re not able to awaken, as the Buddha is awake, is primarily because the mind is so thickened through the mixture of non-virtue and virtue.  It’s literally coarsened to where the loudest thing is what we hear, and the loudest thing is our ego.  The loudest voice is our demand, our desire, how we feel, whether our feet hurt or not.  That’s the loudest voice.  The mind is simply not able to distinguish through the obscuration of being constantly involved in clinging to self-nature as inherently real.  So the practice of Guru Yoga is for you, not for the teacher.  Actually, I have found it to be very inconvenient.  To get across the room when people are trying to prostrate is very difficult.  I really do come from Brooklyn, and I really don’t care about that stuff.  The only reason why I teach it the way I do, with such a fervent energy, is because I know how it works, and I know the power of that kind of practice.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

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