Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

Warrior of Virtue

July 18, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Art of Dispelling Anger”

For myself, I have that commitment. I made it a long time ago. There’s no backing out now. Every time I try, my commitments are made. It’s a done deal. I’ve always known that. My aspiration is to leave the footprint of bodhicitta every time I incarnate, to leave it so it is undeniable , and to help others so that they can leave that same footprint. And I don’t intend for that to ever stop until all sentient beings are free. Now why is that? It is because I am such a great kid? I am such a doll? Iam such a wonderful person? That may all be true, but that’s not why. It’s because I cannot be truly free without you. There are many gurus of different kinds who are self-realizers. They realize mastery of self. But that is not our gig here. That is not what we do in Buddhism. At least not Vajrayana. We don’t do that in Vajrayana. In Vajrayana, our goal is to understand and give rise to the primordial nature in display, which is the great bodhicitta. End of story. And so I will not abandon you. I cannot abandon you, because you are me and I am you and I cannot be free without you.

That’s the understanding we should all aspire to. In our selfishness and our self absorption, we forget and we commit this abomination of even fighting with each other when if we could only truly look in each other’s eyes, if we could truly see,… We are the same, we are the same, we are the same taste. And so, this is why we need to break our habitual tendencies, train ourselves thoroughly, look at ourselves honestly and most of all, if any of you are in that childbearing age, anyone who is listening, please, raise your children right. Raise your children right. Teach them responsibility for what they do. The ‘I help with the household chores’ is one thing. Teach them to clean up their own messes. Teach them that pencils were made with erasers for reasons—so that we can correct ourselves. We can erase our mistakes and correct them and make better. Teach them ethics. Teach them the ethics of liberation.

The reason why we have so much difficulty teaching people proper values and how to stick with the beginning stages of the Buddhadharma, which is about virtue and conduct, the reason why that is so hard is that most of weren’t raised up. We were kind of dragged up. You know? We weren’t raised up with thoughtfulness and regard and respect. Many of us were just kind of fed and watered and whatever. When you raise a child, you must teach the child to be a good citizen in the world and to leave the world better than they found it.

So that’s my hope for you and that’s my hope for anybody’s children and that’s my hope for all sentient beings. Just think if we could really just get that message across. Forget the big practices and the bells. Just think. The most fundamental of the Buddhist teachings allows one to be whatever faith they wish, but teaches us how to live with good qualities.

So take up your sword, take up your shield and beat the crap out of your bad qualities, lest I have to do it for you. That wasn’t a threat. I am a nice person.

Habitual Tendency

July 16, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Art of Dispelling Anger”

If you have the habit of gossip, go through the method. Fix it. Understand that if you allow that hatred in any form to continue, you will get more and more unhappy as you age. The people who are youthful and beautiful when they are elderly are the people who kept something alive, even if they aren’t Buddhist. I’ve met people like that. A duty, a responsibility, an ethical responsibility they feel to be kind. Maybe they don’t understand extraordinary kindness, but they are kind. An ethical responsibility to not put shit in the pool of earth. Some people just seem to have that karma to understand that even without the Buddhadharma. I respect that so much.

And that’s true of all of us, too. As we get older, we get the wrinkles. and this is crazy, the wrinkles, and this is crazy, the wrinkles, and this is crazy, the wrinkles. It’s a symbol, if you think about. It’s a symbol of how much deeper the lines of our habitual tendencies get over time. Do you see what I am saying? Our habitual tendency is in our posture; it’s in our face. We screw up our faces when we are doing our habits, and all of this aging stuff is phenomena—our phenomenal habitual existence becoming more solid and more real and more heavy in samsara as we get older. That’s unfortunately how most people age. They get stiffer. They get harder. They get querulous, frightened to death, frightened of death. And for many people, it’s an ugly, humiliating time.

I don’t want that for you. But it’s going to happen if you don’t take yourself in hand and say, ‘Let’s walk through this.’ Really look to benefiting yourself. Instead of being steeped in habitual hatred, conquer that monster. It’s a bubble; it’s a dream; it’s not a solid thing. There’s no elephant in this room, not really. We have to practice away from that. Start simple. If you can’t find anything good about a person, first of all, that’s your fault right there. If you can’t find anything good about the person, make it your business to find something. If it’s just you like the way they tie their shoes, work from there. If that is where you are starting from, if that is what you have to do, forgive yourself and move on from that point. But start. If you can go a little further and understand through practicing and contemplating, and through the method that we teach here, that all sentient beings wish to be happy and in their nature they are the very Lord, and that there is an end to the suffering and that is liberation. With understanding, we can then give rise to the bodhicitta and compassion.

The Seed and the Fruit

July 12, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Art of Dispelling Anger”

The fruit of potential and method is the awakening. But in Buddhism we see all three as the same and it is taught that all three are the same. And in truth, there is no realization without understanding the sameness of these three,. It is easy to think that we are evolving in a step by step way; and it is easy to think that we’re on the ladder. See, I am up here and somebody else is down there and some of the people are over here. And we get into that view, and that’s not what the Buddha taught. The Buddha did not teach that someone is higher and someone is lower. The Buddha taught that we should recognize the appearance of the Buddha nature in the world as our root gurus. The root guru gives us the method, and therefore we have the result. But nobody is better than anybody else. That is a different religion or a different idea, or something else. I don’t know what that is, but we don’t have that here.

Ridding ourselves of hatred is based on that kind of thinking, that kind of view. Really understanding the Buddha’s teaching that there is the foundation, the method and the fruition, and that is the path. Succinct, boom, right here. This is it. And we understand that, again, according to the Buddha’s teachings we are all suffering. We are all in the same place. Here we are. Even the people that are not in this room, we are in samsara together. They want to be happy like you do. You struggle for happiness, don’t you? Come on, don’t you? Every day. Every day. And we do it sometimes rightly or wrongly. It’s a mixed bag because we lack understanding. But the method is to recognize that all beings wish to be happy. If there are three people sitting in front of you, and two or three of them are unhappy, you come out of yourself and try to help. Efforts like that are what move us along on the path. Not just doing the fancy practices and knowing the fancy words.

Of course, we do not achieve realization by deeds alone. That is a long and difficult path. We have the Dzogchen path, which is so remarkable. It not only gives us method and the opportunity to give rise to the bodhicitta, but we also are given the wisdom to understand the empty nature of phenomena. Through that method we can understand that in samsara we are in a bit of a bubble, or an echo chamber. It’s kind of like that. Unfortunately, it’s also the nature of samsara to be somewhat blinded to that. Again, we are still asleep. It’s like a dream. It has a dream-like quality. You know how in dreams crazy things happen? And it’s OK. It makes sense somehow. Like you could be somewhere and then you are somewhere else, and it makes sense. But that dream-like quality exists right here and right now. We literally do not understand that when we gossip about a fellow vajra brother or sister, or any sentient being of any quality, or put them down, at the same time, we create that energy, that cause. Somewhere in samsara, the result is also being born. Right then. Something will change because of that hatred. Now we often don’t see it immediately, but it comes back to us; and the way it comes back to us is according to our conceptual belief. We believe in relative phenomena being solid as it is until we become practitioners, hopefully. So when somebody sends a negative energy at us, like their anger, we think, ‘Oh, it’s coming from them. Everybody hates me.’ But in fact, what has happened is that you have sent out hatred. It echoes back and it will come through somebody else’s mouth. Do you know why it’s nobody else’s fault?. Because there is nobody else. Bingo. There is nobody else. And how you can sit there and say you are practicing trekchod and togyal and you don’t know that yet, I can’t figure out.

We must take responsibility for our experiences. How will we ever awaken if we don’t understand the unhappiness that comes to us is of our own making? It may have been in the past, the past in some past life. It may have been recent. I see you guys creating the causes of suffering all of the time. And so, get back to the basics. Follow the Buddha’s teachings. To antidote hatred,… And I know, hatred is my big one today, OK? We’ll do greed and ignorance some other time and the other ones as well. To antidote hatred, the antidote has to be very strong, because hatred is such a strong energy that it brings about war in places where there is a lot of emotional, egocentric agitation that has hatred as part of it. Any time there is emotional, egocentric agitation, there will be hatred. Places like that often have a lot of earth movement and strange weather and that sort of thing. And war. Who would have guessed it?.

And so, we have to understand that we want to awaken, but we don’t want to take responsibility. We want to awaken, but we don’t want to stop dreaming. We want to awaken, but we don’t want to go through that effort of bringing ourselves into truer awareness, something that is more profound and deeper and more real than our own simple habitual tendencies.

The Challenge of Self Honesty

July 6, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Art of Dispelling Anger”

We must take ourselves to task more. I don’t want to speak harshly because harshness doesn’t help, but I want to say succinctly and directly, we have to take ourselves to task regarding our faults and our poisons. When I think of the Tibetan culture, that’s a lot easier because there isn’t that attachment to materialism. Even in terms of the roots of the culture itself without religion, they were a nomadic people and they had things, but you couldn’t carry much. You had your yaks and your yurts and that was it.There wasn’t that much variety in food; there wasn’t that much variety in clothing. It’s true that the aristocratic Tibetans used to collect jewelry—some of the strangest looking jewelry. It was intense jewelry, and that was considered a status thing. But for the most part, culturally, a Tibetan Buddhist would not have a hard time understanding that hatred, greed and ignorance and particularly desire, as the Buddha taught, keep us revolving endlessly in samsara. We, unfortunately, are programmed quite differently.

I know in my household and in those of many people that I’ve talked to, there was confusion. My mother was sort of a lox and bagel Jew and my father was a twice a year Catholic; and we were supposed to somehow dance in the middle. So when mama won we were going one way and when daddy won we were going the other way. I think that this happens with a lot of people. They are raised with a lot of confusion around religion. And even when they are taught that faith and religion should be a part of their life, and even when they are given the Western ten commandments, still there is so much confusion because we seem to find ways around that.

Thou shalt not kill. But you can kill bugs, animals and enemies. So who are you not supposed to kill? I will not kill you. That will do it. So there is tremendous confusion around that. How does one venerate these absolute laws that have to do with a moral and ethical human when there is so much confusion around them? I mean, thou shall not kill but go to war. How does that make sense to a child? And so, as we grow up with religion, even though we have been founded in religion, or have some foundation in it, the information that we’re given is very confusing. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Whose family hasn’t had a little bit of that? You know, it’s just crazy.

And so, first of all, we’ve learned to be a little bit hypocritical; but most of all, we’ve learned that these laws don’t really matter, and that’s really sad. So when we become Buddhist, we hear that there is a Vinaya and there are certain things that we must not do. And that if we take a life, we understand that we will be giving our lives someday from having taken a life because karma works like that. Karma is exacting. When the cause arises, the results arise independently and simultaneously. It’s our misjudgment through having the mind of duality that makes it seem like time stretches out. So even though you may not have the result of that bad karma until later on in life or even some future life, definitely we know from studying, at least. And every once in a while we get blessed with a little instant karma, so we have sometimes the opportunity to learn; but still that confusion is rampant, really rampant.

We want to practice Buddhism, so we take the teachings. We get to all the retreats; we see the right teachers; we try to do the practices. Yet we don’t really change ourselves. It is an amazing thing to me that students can be on the path for so long and even try to go to the completion stage practices, the tsa lung and the trekchod and togyal, and go to those levels and practice them with some part of their mind, and yet the rest of them is somehow remaining the same. To me that is probably the worst tragedy on the path. It’s the one that makes me not like to teach, but that’s the battle I fight with myself, you know. I’m just being honest.

Warriorship on the Path

July 5, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Art of Dispelling Anger”

The theme that we will work on today is working through one’s five poisons. I think it’s an important one. And I think what we should do is take our time and pick through it. That doesn’t mean working through one’s five poisons. That means getting rid of them. In a sense when we take to the path, we think that, ‘Oh, I am going to be like the picture of the Buddhist where I get to sit on top of the Himalayan Mountains somewhere all by myself, and eventually people will climb up and ask me profound questions.’ But it really doesn’t work out like that. When we enter upon the path we want to go forward with the most exotic practices and wear the most exotic robes and collect all the implements and learn how to use them. I know there is the tendency to want to get into the customs and trappings and surroundings of Dharma. But really the first thing that should be done when we enter onto the path is to take hold of and begin to think of ourselves as a warrior regarding our own poisons.

Now when we say “warrior” everybody thinks they can’t be very Buddhist, because Buddhists are peaceful. Well, Buddhists are peaceful. We’ve never had a war that I know of. We’ve been attacked, but we’ve never had a war. There is no other religion that can say that. Every other religion has brought about war and that has never happened in Buddhism. Yet we are warriors. And we consider ourselves warriors in the sense that we must take to task that which prevents us from attaining liberation, because the goals here are very different. In other religions, there are lots of materialistic ideas about possessions, like how much land a certain religion should have or how many pieces of gold they should collect. There is a certain materialism in it. But with Buddhism, there is really no materialism. In truth, students will give their last dime to make an offering to the three precious jewels. There are many stories of practitioners whose generosity and unthinking faith—no, not unthinking, more like spontaneous faith—is so strong that they would offer even their last garment at the altar to give to the three precious jewels knowing that it is so much more important to gather the merit of making that kind of offering. That it is important to have done it.

Step by Step

July 3, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Reclaiming Our Merit”

Based on the eightfold path of the contemplations on the meditations, and so forth, that are prescribed, we start to build the wisdom, which is more than knowledge. Let’s say we find an ordinary person who is 70 years old. with general and average sensibilities, a person as honest as Woody Allen, who said that he never gained any wisdom his whole life.. I think that’s strange, but anyway, coming back to reality here. A 70 year old person is going to have to experience some of the cycles of life, the passages and changes that we negotiate through that change us, make grownups out of us. Somebody much younger may have the same capacity, but they have not had that repeated experience. So that’s the kind of wisdom: The way a 70 year old person would have calmer view, a better wisdom, a better grip, a bigger understanding, perhaps, of how the world works, than say, a 20 year old.

In the same way, we build our practice carefully, step by step in the way you have to live year by year. You can’t skip years if you want to do that with our practice. And don’t even dare to think to go on to the higher practices until you’ve accomplished what was before that. Really, back in the old days, that’s how it was. A teacher gave you a teaching. You climbed back down the mountain and didn’t go up again to visit your teacher until you accomplished it. And it was not, ‘I did this many mantras.’ You accomplished it. And back in those days, teachers weren’t worried about lawsuits. They would throw you down the mountain if you didn’t do it right. But nowadays we’re worried.

So these are dark times and there are reasons why we should get together more. There is a universe of reasons why we should get together and practice our art. We have the robes. We have the teachings. And I pray that we have the pure intentions, the willingness to experience a little bit of discomfort, inconvenience—oh, perish the thought—so we can actually contribute.

The Foundation

July 2, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Reclaiming Our Merit”

Lord Buddha built the path sequentially. First what did he teach? That all sentient beings are suffering, that suffering is all pervasive,. that the cause of that suffering is desire and greed. None of which we, by the way, have bothered to get rid of. But he also taught that there was an end to suffering, and he taught that as the eightfold path. Unfortunately, we’ve gotten so ahead of ourselves, thinking that we are Dzogchen practitioners that we haven’t bothered to have right mind, right concentration, right meditation, right work, … (I have a list somewhere. I’ve forgotten them all.) But all of the eightfold path, all of those different qualities, they have to be looked at one at a time. Right speech: That means cut out the gossip; that means you cut out the bullshit and the bad words you have toward each other. Right contemplation:. Ok, what is wrong contemplation? Wrong contemplation is watching phenomena dance around you and just buying in, dancing with it. Right contemplation would be taking the Buddha’s teachings one by one and studying them carefully. Have any of you practiced the eightfold path? No. No. Then the Buddha came along, and he took the eightfold path and he sort of condensed it into the Mahayana view, which is wisdom and compassion.

The thing is, that when we have wisdom and compassion, we think, ‘Oh, that’s much easier.’ So we leave behind the eightfold path and we go right to the wisdom and compassion; and really we do ourselves a disservice by faking our way through it. Wisdom is something that arrives through practice, through service to fulfilling the ideas that Lord Buddha presented before. In other words, wisdom and compassion are not considered separate or different or above the eightfold path. You still have to accomplish the eightfold path, you see. And when you have fulfilled that, then you have the capacity to give rise to wisdom and compassion. And then you find out that the reason why the eightfold path was taught first, and Mahayana second, , is that it’s almost impossible to keep your commitment as a bodhisattva and to practice the way of the bodhisattvas for even one hour.

And so we have to rely on all that we’ve learned before this to build this house of Dharma. We have to make sure it’s all standing correctly, and we’re all here in line, and the foundation is good. Then you can start to build a house. That’s your wisdom and your compassion. And you have to ask yourself, has it come yet? We’re waiting for compassion to come likeHappy Birthday, you know, some sort of thing that is coming from a wave from the sky. Suddenly you’ll be good. But in order to really give rise to compassion like that, you have to have your foundation; and then as you begin to give rise to the bodhicitta, you have to base it on what you learned before.

What did you learn before? All sentient beings are suffering. That in samsara, suffering is so pervasive that our perception is askew. We don’t know up and down. We’re running so fast to get away from discomfort and pain; we really don’t have ourselves in order. This is what the Buddha taught. And so you look at the situation of sentient beings. If you did that right contemplation and you did it right, you really spent some time on it. And you open your eyes. You don’t close them and say, ‘I hate this stuff. I can’t look.’ You open your eyes and see it, and be willing to shoulder the burden of noticing that what Lord Buddha taught was right: That there is nothing but suffering, really, and we’re causing it ourselves through our being asleep and our lack of understanding.

You Get What of You Pay For

July 1, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Decision Time”

Who are you? Is being busy your guru? Good luck. Good luck. Is being fearful your guru? Is keeping your heart in a place where it doesn’t have to mingle with the cry that I hear from samsara that says help me now, help me? You have to ask yourself because this is the time. Who am I? How many people will suffer at my hand? How many people will slip through my fingers that I did not offer Dharma? These are the questions that you have to ask yourself.

You get what you pay for. That rule is as good in Dharma as it is anywhere else. And if you don’t do the work, the work does you. Each of us has karma and we will experience it. Karma is exacting. There is no way out of it, unless we rely completely and utterly upon the teachings and our teachers as the door of liberation. To delude yourself into thinking that you are practicing that you are Buddhist or that your life has meaning whatsoever, unless you are walking through the door of liberation, is a waste of time. My time and yours.

So I’m asking you, won’t you please let go of your habitual tendencies? Won’t you please let this precious nectar of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas enter your heart and heal you? Won’t you please respond in kind to the cries of sentient beings, because if you are not helping them onto the path of Dharma, not your make up stuff… You can’t have a bunch of people that sit there and talk Dharma to you and think you’ve done your job. Unfortunately, you haven’t practiced that well and you are not the Buddha yet, and you’re not awake. So when you talk about Dharma, it’s just you talking about Dharma. People learn by your practice. They don’t learn by your ego talking about Dharma and saying, ‘I’m so great, I have some Dharma.’ They learn by watching your humility, your qualities, your practice. What is your practice? How do you change week by week, month by month. That’s what people learn That’s when people can learn by your example. But if you yourself are lost in samsara, you have nothing for anybody. Nothing. Your little gifts that you give when you say, ‘Here’s a little Dharma. I know a little Dharma. Try that, I know a little Dharma.’ It’s nothing. It’s a little kabuki dance. You know, you’re playing your little ego thing and they’re playing their little ego thing and everybody’s doing their little ego thing. Real Dharma is not like that. Real Dharma is a method. It is method that must be practiced every day. If you do not rely 100 percent upon your guru, then you are not practicing that path—relying on the teachings, relying on the wisdom, and most of all, relying on the compassion.

Our teachers understand our minds without being inside of them. Did you know that? Teachers can look a certain way, and we can see what you think you’re hiding. In fact, we see it so well that we find that what you’re hiding is running your life. It’s in charge. Whatever you are doing in your mind is in charge.

And I’ll tell you that the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas love you. You know in the East, they talk more about the bodhicitta and it sounds very intellectual. They talk about compassion, and that sounds good. They talk about respect and devotion, and these are all good things. But being a female I can tell you this, I know this from my own experience: You are loved, each and every one of you. Your egos and your stupid stuff, that’s not the part we love the best. We can be patient with that, but we see it killing you. Clinging to life is the very cause of death.

We see you scratching on top of that dirty field and we see the diamonds, and those diamonds are calling to you, ‘Go deeper, go deeper. You can’t see me, but I’m here; and you can’t see me because you are scratching.’ Like beggars under the table of a great feast, we pick up a little crumb, we think, ‘Oh, I got a crumb,’ while the Buddhas and bodhisattvas are saying to us, ‘Come to this feast, eat everything. Have enough for your whole life. Take it all. Take me.’ I’d take everything. And like beggars, we just have a little piece; and we’re so proud. Show it to everybody, got this little piece. And that’s the nature of human beings. Your teachers understand. There’s no question of forgiveness. It’s not like that. There’s no question of guilt. There’s no question at all, actually. It’s simple. The nectar is here and because your teacher has been recognized as the consort of Guru Rinpoche, we’re speaking of the nectar of immortality. That’s the offer. The feast is here, but you have to want to eat, and you have to be willing to chew.

And the love and respect is real. I don’t know of any teacher that purposely gives a student a hard lesson that is so unbearable that they cannot bear it. The teachers hold us as close as they can, like a bond, a bond that is a tether of love; but at the end of that tether of love, if we are not looking to our root gurus with faith and with good mind and proper thinking and proper view, then we will never receive the blessing. It will never come. And instead, what happens is we dance at the end of that tether. And that is what I see. From my heart, I tell you this. You’re dancing at the end of a tether of love, absolutely ensuring that you will never, never come to the feast. It’s decision time. You have to decide who is on the throne: your ego, your fear, your idiot mind, selfishness, delusional thinking. Whatever is on the throne, you’ve got to fix it. No one else can fix it but you. And no one else can come to this table and eat with me this beautiful feast but you.

He who I love beyond all measure lives in you, my teacher, and you betray him every moment. You do not seat him on your throne. He is Guru Rinpoche, teacher of teachers, Buddha of Buddhas; and I tell you this because I have mixed my mind with his.

You are wandering in samsara, my darlings, and I’m asking you, please come back. Please practice the teachings. Please abandon the world. You will do so soon enough. Soon enough we will leave this world and then there will be no choices, only results.

I don’t think there is anybody more qualified than me, forgive me, to tell you that it’s not easy to be a true disciple, that it’s not easy to mix one’s mind with the mind of the guru; it’s not easy to learn. But I can tell you, and nobody is more qualified to tell you this, that when you give up, you win. When you let go, you have it all. And when you stop wiggling, the tether of love binds you so tight, there is nothing else. Please don’t forget the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, and please invite the guru to be seated upon the throne of your heart. I can tell you that there is bliss and happiness in doing so and I can tell you that samsara will always, always be the whore she is and will continue to let you down.

So that’s my teaching for this evening and I’m really thrilled that I had the opportunity to give it to you. And I thank you for listening.

Understanding the Opportunity

June 28, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Decision Time”

I want to say a few words, if I may. How many of you, I wonder, feel that you have absorbed enough of the teachings over the years to have a good enough idea of the pointing out instructions that Lord Buddha and many teachers over time have given us? How many of us, I wonder, have really taken the time to contemplate the teachings in such a way that they really become a part of our inner gyroscope? How many of us have taken to heart teachings that were given generously and kindly over the years in order to help us to see our way through?

I think about, in the beginning, how many times I taught that life is like going through a dark room with lots of furniture. And, of course, you have free will, lucky you. You can choose to go through that room in the darkness with the furniture right there, taking your chances. And, of course, we know what happens if you are operating in perfect darkness with lots of furniture in your room, or obstacles or past karma ripening, which we all have, or being in samsara, which we all are. How many of us have even taken that first step, I wonder, to make that decision to say, ‘I will not go through this room in darkness, I will not go through this life in darkness’? Why would someone teach you that? Why would someone say that life is like a dark room and there is so much furniture and so many things that, without being able to see or negotiate or understand without any wisdom, without a map, without any instruction,. you’re likely to have difficulty. Why would one’s teacher teach that? Because it’s true. This is not a made up agenda. These are the teachings of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas and the gurus throughout time.

We have this incredible stubbornness though, a terrible inner stubbornness that for some reason doesn’t want to take that teaching to heart. For some reason, we want to risk it, having the idea that we are strong or that it will work out or that maybe the teaching wasn’t true. Or because we didn’t actually take it to heart or never even learned it in the first place. I don’t know what the reason is, but we still have this kind of stubbornness that says to us, ‘You can do it, kid. Find your own way.’ Well, nobody is arguing that we can do it, but find your own way you will not,. not across the ocean of samsara. Will you make it through that room in the dark not knowing what’s in there? Not bloody likely, is it? Well, it is bloody likely if you think about it. You’ll probably get awfully bloody doing it.

Since time out of mind, the Buddhas and bodhisattvas have been coming to us, and not through their own need to experience or to come for fun or to come for torture or whatever. Buddhas and bodhisattvas appear in the world. They come for us; and they come to give us these teachings. And yet we are somehow so continuing in our delusion and habitual in this stubborn clinging to the idea that my ego has the answers, we still feel that way after all these years.

That is a teaching that is taught to you out of kindness, not out of a wish to push you around. If one cannot take at face value a teaching of that merit, that you must rely on the root guru, that you must rely on the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, have we somehow not put out the effort that it takes to come to terms with such a powerful truth as that? It reminds me of alcoholism. It reminds me of the place where you say, ‘I can control my drinking.’ It reminds me of the place where you say, ‘I’m really on top of this. It hasn’t gotten me. Samsara hasn’t gotten me somehow.’ Or the idea that maybe the Buddha was lying or maybe he had his own agenda, or maybe Guru Rinpochewas just a phony. Maybe he was just on some sort of crazy power trip.

Why would somebody warn us of the suffering of samsara, of the danger of samsara? Because the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas are different than ordinary beings. They are different in one way: They have awakened. That’s the main difference—awakened to where the delusional phenomena of samara is simply that. Its dreamlike state is understood. Its seduction is also understood. To be human is to know that. But you have to decide once and for all, who is your guru? I’m asking you another question. How much time have you spent studying, reasoning out any of the teachings you have received so far? The Buddha’s teachings. Not that I am the Buddha, but my teachers have been saying all this time I’ve been teaching Dharma all these years. So I’m not making this up.

Jealousy

June 19, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “The Foundation of Bodhicitta”

The next realm is the jJealous gods realm. The jealous gods realm is actually the war-like gods, the competitive gods. We have stories about them in our old testament, don’t we? We have stories about a god that is very jealous and war-like. We have stories about Old Testament,not Buddhist but Christian-Jewish Old Testament. The jealous god realm consists of gods who are very willful and very bossy and very competitive; and they really want things done their way, now. And if you don’t do it, kaboom, thunderbolt to you pal, turning you into salt or something like that. They are constantly fighting each other. They are constantly doing things that make you look at them and say, “Get a life.” I mean I wouldn’t do some of the things that they do, and what do I know? They act like three year olds. (She looks up at the ceiling in anticipation of retaliation. laughter) Don’t you hope that I would get away with that? If I got struck by lightening, though, it would prove what I just said, maybe.

Anyway, there is terrible suffering in the jealous gods realm; and that suffering is the suffering of warfare and competitiveness; and it is ongoing. It never ends. There is a violence there; there is a constant, violent outpouring there. It is a very strong war-like energy. They are not particularly happy. They are happy in some ways: They have lots of riches, and they have lots of people underneath them. I guess that makes them happy. They are actually always engaging in some kind of very active war-like activity; and therefore they are not happy and eventually they die. All of these realms are impermanent. They all begin with birth and end with death.

So what is the cause of being born in the jealous gods realm?. The cause of being reborn in the jealous gods realm is jealousy, competitiveness and jealousy—that kind of arrogance, ego kind of thing. Have you ever seen people like that? Have you ever been like that? Have you ever seen people who just think they are so glad that they have it and you don’t? Have you ever seen people who sort of set themselves up in a very high place and they really engage in activity to try to get as much money as they can, and they compete and they really like the game? Think of the movie Wall Street. Remember that a few years back? That kind of thing. That is jealous god activity right there, a perfect example of what is going to happen. The people involved with that when they take rebirth could very likely end up in a jealous gods realm. They were like gods, and they were always engaged in that kind of competitive activity.