Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

It Takes Virtue

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

You only have to consider the suffering of sentient beings long enough to help you create within yourself a virtuous mindstream. Once you have created a virtuous mindstream, you no longer need consider suffering. It is not useful to suffer considering suffering. It is only useful if it compels you on a path that ends suffering. That is the point.

Having heard this teaching, I hope you never become weary hearing your teachers talk about suffering. You will only hear about suffering long enough for you to soften your mind and change the way you live. You will only hear about it long enough to fill your life with virtuous and compassionate acts. If you are not completely convinced that all sentient beings are suffering, you can’t help them. You won’t help them. You won’t have the strength or the fortitude to persevere. But once your mind is stable in the practice of compassion, once you are moved by compassion to where it is a fire in your heart and you can’t do anything except that which will end suffering, that which will bring enlightenment to all sentient beings, you don’t need to meditate on suffering anymore. You are already on fire. Once you are convinced of the infallibility of cause and effect, to the extent that there is no more non-virtue in your mindstream, you don’t need to think about suffering anymore. There is no point. You are already doing what is necessary to end suffering. However, once you are so filled with compassion that your whole life is virtuous, your whole life is a vehicle for nothing but compassionate activity, and once you are convinced of the infallibility of cause and effect to the extent that there is no more non-virtue in your mindstream, you are also enlightened!

The point is this. You are receiving this teaching for a certain reason. You might think you are just curious, or interested in Buddhism and would like to explore it a little further. Or you may think you would like to deepen, or you would like to learn all things from all places. Or you may be interested in becoming a Buddhist. Whatever your particular format, you do have a reason, and I bet that reason is based upon the fact that you want to find a way out of suffering not only for yourself, but for all sentient beings as well. When I say ‘out’, I don’t mean that you want to get enlightened and then leave. I mean that you want to find a way out of the kind of mindstream, the kind of phenomena that causes suffering in both you and in all sentient beings. You want to see if there is another option.

Even if you haven’t faced that fact exactly in your heart, you are looking for something, and you are a good person. You wouldn’t be receiving this teaching if you were not a good person. You must be interested; you must have karma with the idea of compassion. Because of the infallible way that karma works, you could not receive this teaching if you didn’t have the karma of compassionate activity. You must have a tremendous amount of virtue squirreled away somewhere. I am not claiming I am such a virtuous teacher that you have to be particularly virtuous to hear me. That is not what I am saying. I am saying that in order to hear the word ‘compassion,’ in order to hear the word ‘Bodhicitta’, in order to even hear these ideas from any source, you have to have a tremendous amount of virtue, because that is the Buddha’s teaching.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Cause & Effect are Infallible

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

Cause and effect are infallible. They are 100 percent infallible. The reason I think this bears mentioning is that again and again I have seen practitioners, even those who have practiced Buddhism for a long time, do things they know will cause suffering, or even cause them to fall off the path and end their quest to follow the Buddha’s teaching. I see them create non-virtue constantly.

People trick themselves. Once they know that non-virtue is the cause for suffering, because there is a karma that ripens from the seed of non-virtue, they tend to create non-virtue in a sneaky way, thinking no one will ever know. They’ll say things like, “I’m a Buddhist. I really can’t kill. I’ve taken this vow. I’m wearing these robes.” And, whap! They’ll swat a mosquito. Or even more subtle than that, they’ll make judgments thinking, “No one knows what’s going on in my mind. No one will know.” But they are constantly judging, and they think it will never bear fruit.

According to Buddhist teaching, and according to what I have seen, karma never fails to ripen. What you have done is create a non-virtue, and that non-virtue grows like a seed in your mindstream. It is an absolutely unchanging law that non-virtue will ripen in some way. The reason why you think you are getting away with judging others, for example, is because that seed may not ripen now. It may ripen ten years from now when you won’t remember what you thought about that person. Or it may ripen next week, and you know how much you remember from last week! Or it may ripen in the next life, in which case there is no possible way that you could remember. But invariably, it will ripen.

In this way, the Buddha’s teaching is born out. Even though we know all sentient beings are suffering, that the cessation of suffering is enlightenment, and that all sentient beings want to be happy, we still don’t know how to create the causes of happiness. Through non-virtuous actions we continue to create suffering instead. Even though we have these concepts memorized, strangely, we still manage to create non-virtue continuously. Therein lies the schism, the schizophrenia, the craziness that we have: while we continue to yearn for happiness, and yearn for a life and a mind state that can only be the result of a complete absence of non-virtue, we continue to create non-virtue. It is psychotic. It is really schizophrenic. You are not in touch with reality when you act this way. You are not creating your life in a way that you truly want to live.

The problem lies in our lack of understanding of cause and effect. You need to convince yourself completely, as though it were written in cement in your mind, that cause and effect are infallible. Find a way to know this as deeply and instinctively as you know that if you stop breathing, your body will expire. Know this on such a profound level that it manifests like an instinct. Strive to internalize these ideas to such an extent that they never leave you, and that your mindstream is pregnant with them. Strive, so that you cannot consider creating non-virtue even one moment.

Now, brothers and sisters, this is a tall order. But for that reason, it is necessary to study the Buddhist truth, and you don’t have to be a Buddhist to do it. You just have to look around. Open your eyes and look around. All sentient beings are suffering. But unfortunately, until your mind is softened and gentled through realizing that all sentient beings are suffering – that you yourself are suffering – you will never be able to convince yourself of the infallibility of cause and effect, because you will never consider that it is useful to consider the infallibility of cause and effect.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Worthy of Respect

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Rigzin Zeoli of the Garuda Aviary www.garudaaviary.org
Rigzin Zeoli of the Garuda Aviary www.garudaaviary.org

The people I respect most are those who are kind and willing to be of service to all beings. People who display compassion. Live it.

The people I respect are those who are capable of respecting the dignity of others. Honoring the Light in all. And living it.

The people I respect most are those who respect and maintain their enviornment. Who keep it pure, and make beauty where they are.

The people I respect most live honorable lives, benefiting others. Their livelihood and habits support kindness and love.

The people I respect most are those who speak well of others, or not at all. They are aware of the pollution of gossip, and act accordingly.

The people I respect most honor our planet and avoid ruining it for generations to come. They act responsibly toward Earth. Keep it clean.

The people I respect most are kind to children and animals, all beings less fortunate, and leave the word better than they found it.

Like a Bee in a Jar

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

Did you ever watch yourself when you were young? Did you see what you did? Do you watch young people now? Look at the teenagers you know. They are invariably right. They know everything. I knew everything at that age, too, so I understand. They know beyond everything. If there is more than everything, they know it. They have all the answers.

We are also like that. We are locked within a time-and-space grid. When we drop something, it falls, immediately. What makes it so immediate? If it were to hang in the air for ten years, then fall, invariably we would convince ourselves it’s never going to fall. But since it falls immediately, since when we stick our hands in the fire, it hurts immediately, we believe that. Old age, sickness and death we don’t believe. We sort of get it, but it’s in the back of our minds somewhere.

Why is it we don’t fully believe in cause and effect, even though we take into account the passage of time? It’s because we are trying to be happy, so we convince ourselves that cause and effect is not absolute. Why is that? How is it that we can understand that we create the causes of suffering in our mind, and yet still convince ourselves it will not bear the fruit of suffering? It’s because karma appears to ripen in different ways. Karma can ripen immediately. If I drop something and it falls, this is karma ripening. I dropped it; it fell. Karma can also ripen in a different way.

Because of your belief that self-nature is inherently real, you have created the delusion of a self. Self has a beginning and it has an end, and that is the cause for death. The cause for death is the belief in self-nature as being real; that is why people die. Yet you will convince yourself it is okay to believe in self-nature, that there is no problem as long as you can find a way to make self happy. You think it’s going to be okay. But you are still going to die. We are doing this to ourselves, and we don’t even realize it. The self is a finite thing. It had a beginning, a time when it was conceived. There was a time when the thought of self-nature as being inherently real first manifested. Since that is so, then it also must end. If there is a beginning, there is an end.

In the same way, we are constantly engaged in creating things that are the karmic causes of our own suffering, but we don’t make a connection. The reason we don’t make a connection is due to the other kind of karmic ripening, the one that you don’t see in this life. The karma that ripens after a long time, an intermediate time, or even a short time, are karmic ripenings that you actually do not see in this lifetime.

Here then is a problem. Here is one of the reasons why it becomes very difficult to realize the unchangeable truth that all sentient beings wish to be happy, and yet not realizing how to create the causes of happiness, create instead the causes of suffering.

Many of the things that we have suffered in this lifetime seem to have been put upon us in an innocent way. We were innocent. Why is someone born with a cleft palate? Why are some of us born with a crippling condition, some handicap? Why do some of us become ill or die when we have tried to live a good life, when we have done everything we can to be kind to other human beings and have never killed anyone? It is because many of the causes that we see in this lifetime have come from a time before.

Now, from my point of view, if you don’t believe in reincarnation you have no access to the technology of Buddhism. You have to accept the idea you have lived before, and that some of the results you see ripening in your life now are ripening due to causes created in a time you do not know. And that some of the causes you are creating now – because you are creating causes constantly – will ripen in a time you cannot see. If you don’t accept that, Buddhist or not Buddhist, you cannot evolve in your mind; you cannot adapt and have the strength to continue. In fact, you cannot have the perspective to practice the antidote to suffering. Everyone who has ever been considered a living Buddha on this earth has taught reincarnation. So maybe you might want to consider it an idea that you could adopt.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Cause & Effect – It’s the Law

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

The Buddha says that all sentient beings are suffering and that enlightenment is the cessation of suffering. But we forget that enlightenment is the cessation of suffering. As a Buddhist you say, “Oh, yes, I’ve learned that. I practice the Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind. Enlightenment is the cessation of suffering. I have that memorized.” Oh, really? I must ask you then, why do you still practice the technology of suffering? Because until you achieve supreme realization, you are still practicing the technology of suffering. You realize this, and yet you continually create the circumstances that make you suffer. Here is why we do that: we have forgotten the other infallible law, the law of the certainty of cause and effect.

We have a problem. We are locked in to our own limited perspectives. We are in finite bodies, therefore our minds perceive in a finite way, a way that is natural for a finite reality to be perceived. Within this context, we can see that certain cause and effect relationships are absolutely unchangeable, that they always happen, that they can’t be messed with. We can see that if we pick something up and then drop it, it will fall.

Now, you may say that cause and effect doesn’t always work. There is magic, there is prayer, there are miracles. Okay then, pick something up, anything, and drop it, and stop it from falling. Let me see you do it. Who can do it? If you can do it, then I am going to buy your story and the class is over. Until we can figure out how to do that, it is certain if something is dropped, it will fall. It is also certain if you stick your hand in fire for long enough, your flesh will burn. It is certain if you never eat you will starve. It is certain if you catch a disease you will be sick. These things we understand.

It is also certain that everybody gets old. But the strange thing about us is, while we are still young enough to have a little twinkle in our eye, we will continue to convince ourselves that we will never get old. What we do is unbelievable. I have done it myself, so I know. Each year we buy something new, a little wrinkle remover, a little under-eye cover-up, and each year we still convince ourselves that nothing has changed. Then eventually, none of that stuff works. Then we have two choices: we can either face the facts or consider surgery. Whatever we do, we are putting off the inevitable.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Use Your Awareness

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

It is useful to really look around at sentient beings and see they are suffering. It is also useful to look at yourself. This is not meant to make you depressed or sad. It is meant to give you what it takes to go to the next step, which is to try to determine for yourself the way to remove the causes of suffering.

Even though there are times when hunger is not comfortable, when you would rather not think about it, there are also times when hunger is useful in that it keeps you alive. In the same way, while it may be uncomfortable for you to think that all sentient beings are suffering, it is actually quite useful for you to realize that. It is this realization that will give you the foundation and the ability to turn your mind in such a way that you have to seek out the causes of suffering, and how you can remove them from your mind.

It is not useful in any long-term way to try to convince yourself, by putting a band-aid on an ulcer, that everything is okay, because you still have to face the same things that you’ve always had to face. Nothing has changed. You still have to face old age, sickness and death. Neither does it help you to be helpful to other sentient beings. Look at the animal realm. Go to India and see how the oxen are beaten and tied up in order to be worked. They are worked all of their lives. That is suffering. Look at all the different ways that other creatures suffer just out of ignorance, because they have no way to help themselves.

Once you have determined suffering does exist, there is no need to dwell on it in a morbid way. Rather, you should think, “This is how it is. Now I have to realize that there is, in fact, a cure, there is a way to deal with this.” It is not useful to dwell on suffering without also accepting the antidote. In other words, if you just think about hunger all the time, and you don’t eat, that is stupid. When hunger is no longer useful to you, it is simply suffering. You should use your awareness of suffering to prod you to seek and practice the antidote to suffering. Use your awareness; it is your tool.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Hard as Horn

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

There is an expression in one of our prayers, that one’s mind becomes ‘hard as horn.’ The minute I first read that particular phrase, it touched me deeply. Every time I have thought about it, it has meant more and more to me. One’s mind becomes hard as horn because of the discrimination, the conceptualization that is involved with the idea of ego, because of the pride and arrogance that arise from our belief in self-nature as being inherently real. We have established in our minds all of the clothing, the dogma, the discrimination of this idea of self as being real. These things become rigid in our minds, and our minds are no longer gentle.

The moment you decide in some subconscious way you have an ego, that you are a self, you have to start gathering the constructs of self-identity around you. You have to determine where self ends and other begins. In order to do that your mind has to be filled with conceptualization. In order to be a self you have to survive as a self.  In order to maintain this conceptualization that makes survival possible, your mind has to become rigid. So if I say to you that your mind is rigid, you shouldn’t think I have insulted you. I am talking about a condition all sentient beings have, and it is a condition that is the cause of a great deal of suffering.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Animal Rescue and Practice

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Toffee, mother of the litter
Toffee, Mother of the Litter of Rescued Puppies

Hello to one and all from Barnesville MD. Our Rescue family arrived early this morning. Oh, boy- Mama is emaciated, don’t know how she fed

Some pups are kind of plump, others not. There are 9 of them, thinking not all fed equally. We will feed a slurry of formula + canned food.

All 9 Rescued Puppies
All 9 Rescued Puppies

We use an excellent food, EVO which has no grains, like their ancestral diet. It does have meat, veggies, and fruit.

Some of the pups can lap food, some prefer to walk through it. LOL. Funny, the skinnier ones don’t lap well. Toffee is a good Mom

So we go into the weekend part of the retreat completely exhausted. And the back’s out again. “Way to think it through,” Smartypants.

But what to do? The little ones would all have been exterminated by now. I guess they pile them in a box and gas them. Regrets? NONE!

I know method and practice ARE the way. So I am a “cushion Buddhist”. But I am not the kind that ignores the obvious suffering of others.

In truth, I don’t know that many Buddhists who practice all day retreat-style in the west. In fact we do have time to help sentient beings.

I hope you will all pray for this little family who still live by the power of LOVE.

One Little Girl in the Litter
One Little Girl

The Antidote

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Ogyen Tendzin Jigme Lhundrup, with his teacher. He is considered to be the reincarnation of H.H. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

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

The precepts that the Buddha laid down are real and workable for everyone. You don’t have to be a Buddhist to hold to these precepts. One of these is the realization that all sentient beings want to be happy, yet don’t have the skills or knowledge to achieve happiness. Another is the realization that because of our ineptness at capturing that happiness we make ourselves sad. In fact, the Buddha teaches us that all sentient beings are suffering because we don’t know how to attain happiness.

You don’t have to be a Buddhist to notice this is true. You don’t have to be a Buddhist to look around you, if you are willing to look with courageous eyes, and see that this is so, and you don’t have to be a Buddhist to use the antidote. That antidote is purity of conduct. It is purity in practice, whatever your practice might be. The antidote is the realization of compassion, which should be the core of one’s life. Of course, the Buddha’s teaching is more involved than this, but still one does not have to be a Buddhist to hold to these teachings. They are universal.

If you have been studying Buddhism for some time, you may think you have already learned the Buddha’s basic teachings that all sentient beings are suffering, that there is an antidote to suffering, that all sentient beings are trying to be happy, and that one needs to hold a compassionate viewpoint. But this is not true. You still need to hear these things.

No matter how long I teach, and no matter whom I teach, whether they are brand new to anything metaphysical, or whether they’ve gone on 20-year retreats, I will always address first and foremost the root reasons why one should practice. These basic beliefs are the foundational viewpoint that will encourage you to keep practicing, and, most especially, to keep practicing the idea of compassion.

There is never a time on your path when this is no longer necessary. In fact, the further you go on whatever path you choose – and specifically on the Buddhist path – you will meet up with challenges. You will invariably meet obstacles that make you feel tired and unwilling to go on. You will feel the pressures of living in the material world, especially living here in the West where we are so busy. It is a stretch to be a person committed to a spiritual path, whether it is the Buddhist path or not. It is a stretch because most of us have to earn a living and raise our families, and do all those things that are so time consuming. It is easy to fall back and say, “I’ll wait until later. I will wait until I’m older and more settled, or less busy.”

It is good to hear the Buddha’s foundational teachings. You shouldn’t think that if you’ve been a long-time Dharma student you are beyond all this. If you think that, then I have to tell you from my heart that you have a problem. I don’t think that, and I don’t know of any teacher who thinks that. Every teacher I have ever spoken to has told me to teach compassion first. Teach first the foundational teachings, and keep on that throughout your whole involvement with the Buddhist path.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Kindness is Universal

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

To truly understand the mind of compassion is to understand suffering. To be willing to cultivate aspirational compassion and act in accordance with those aspirations, so that you fully intend to liberate your mind from the causes of suffering and fully intend to return in whatever form necessary in order to benefit beings.  In so doing, you’re on your way. Whether you call yourself a Buddhist or not, kindness is a universal term. No one’s got a corner on it. Compassion is not a word that the Buddha invented.

I am a Buddhist because I found this religion is the most useful way to benefit beings. This is my own determination. If you also determine this for yourself, then continue to do what you’re doing. Perhaps you’re heading towards studying Buddhism, or perhaps you are already studying it. But if you don’t want to become a Buddhist, that doesn’t let you off the hook! You still have to live a life of compassion.  No matter what path you’re following, compassion is the only way to realization. No matter whom you’re listening to, hatred, greed and ignorance are the causes for suffering. There is universality about all this. Whether you call yourself Buddhist or not, you still have a job to do. I suggest doing it by first cultivating the firm foundation of fervent aspiration to be of ultimate benefit, and by having the courage to look at the content and meaning of suffering and determining how best to overcome it.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

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