New practitioner

Commentary on the Bodhisattva Vow: HH Penor Rinpoche – Our Kind Parents

by

mother and child

The following is adapted from an oral commentary given by His Holiness in conjunction with a ceremony wherein he bestowed the bodhisattva vow upon a gathering of disciples at Namdroling in Bozeman, Montana, November 1999:

[The second way to adjust one’s intention in order to be in harmony with the special feature of this instruction is through] developing attraction to enlightenment. According to this tradition, what leads one to develop an attraction to enlightenment is the cultivation of love for all beings, which begins by contemplating the suffering of cyclic existence and then cultivating repulsion and weariness [toward that existence].

Think about all living beings that at some time or another, throughout the course of innumerable past lifetimes, have been your own kind father or mother. Consider how a mother will anything for her child–even give her own life, without hesitation. Consider how all living beings have been that kind to you at some time in the past–not just once, but countless times, in countless different circumstances and situations over the course of countless lifetimes since beginningless time. Consider also that to not think carefully about repaying this kindness, and thereby to go through your life without the intention to truly benefit parent sentient beings, and so to actually ignore them, is truly shameless.

Many people in the West may think, “Wait a minute! My parents were not very kind to me. In fact, we are not even close, and I don’t even like them, so why should I feel that I need to repay their kindness now?” If that is what you think, then take a moment to think about how you acquired your body. Is it not due to the kindness of your parents that you have your precious human body? From the time your consciousness entered the union of your father’s seed and your mother’s egg, your mother carried you in her own body. Her body nurtured you as you grew within it. Then with pain and difficulty she gave birth to you. Her kindness did not just stop there: for many years she cared for you and lovingly fed, cleaned, clothed, and wiped you; she provided shelter and cared for you when you were sick, and thus she protected you and looked out for you constantly. If you think you don’t need to repay the kindness of your parents, just remind yourself of those events, which you were the recipient of time and time again.

If that still does not change your attitude, so that you still do not understand the kindness your parents showed you, then think about your body, the gift of your body, which is who you are; your parents gave you that. Because your parents showed you the great kindness of giving you your body, your precious life, here you are. Sure you had the causes for your precious human rebirth, but without parents you wouldn’t have your body. And if you didn’t have your body, you wouldn’t be able to receive these vows.

In our present state of ignorance, we have an inability to recognize that all beings have been our parents in the past, and we certainly don’t know what the particular situations and circumstances of those lifetimes were. Nonetheless, it is certain that we have had countless sentient beings as our parents over and over again in countless past lives. The truth is, at the present time we just do not recognize that.

Imagine you are on the bank of a river with your mother and suddenly she falls in and is being carried away by the rushing water. There you stand on the bank, watching that happen. What would you do? Would you do something to try to save her, such as throw out a rope? Or would your turn your back and walk away rather than risk your own life? Would you be concerned for her, or would your concern be only for yourself? The intention of hearers and solitary realizers can be likened to the later case, while the intention of Mahayana practitioners can be likened to the former. While it is important to develop attraction toward peace, you should never, for any reason, be attracted to the quiescence of the hearers and solitary realizers.

Bodhichitta: From “Enlightened Courage” Commentary by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

by

Dilgo Khyentse

The following is respectfully quoted from “Enlightened Courage” a commentary by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche:

Bodhichitta is the unfailing method for attaining enlightenment. It has two aspects, relative and absolute. Relative bodhichitta is practiced using ordinary mental processes and is comparatively easy to develop. Nevertheless, the benefits that flow from it are immeasurable, for a mind in which the precious Bodhichitta has been born will never again fall into the lower realms of samsara. Finally, all the qualities of the Mahayana path, as teeming and vast as the ocean, are distilled and essentialized in Bodhichitta, the mind of enlightenment.

We must prepare ourselves for this practice by following the instructions in the sadhana of Chenrezig, “Take refuge in the Three Jewels and meditate on Bodhichitta. Consider that all your virtuous acts of body, speech, and mind are for the whole multitude of beings, numerous as the sky is vast.”

It is said in the teachings that “since beings are countless, the benefit of wishing them well is unlimited.” And how many beings there are! Just imagine, in one small garden there might be millions and millions of them! If we wish to establish them all in the enlightened state of Buddhahood, it is said that the benefit of such an aspiration is as vast as the number of begins is great. Therefore we should not restrict our Bodhichitta to a limited number of beings. Wherever there is space, beings exist, and all of them live in suffering. Why make distinctions between them, welcoming some as loving friends and excluding others as hostile enemies?

Throughout the stream of our lives, from time without beginning until the present, we have all been wandering in samsara, accumulating evil. When we die, where else is there for us to go but to the lower realms? But if the wish and thought occur to us that we must bring all beings to enlightened state of Buddhahood, we have generated what is known as Bodhichitta in intention. We should then pray to the teacher and the yidam deities that the practice of the precious Bodhichitta might take root in our hearts. We should recite the seven-branch prayer from the Prayer of Perfect Action, and, sitting upright, count our breaths twenty-one times without getting mixed up or missing any, and without being distracted by anything. If we are able to count our breaths concentratedly for a whole mall, discursive thoughts will diminish and the practice of relative Bodhichitta will be much easier. This is how to become a suitable vessel for meditation.

ABSOLUTE BODHICHITTA

Consider all phenomena as a dream.

If we have enemies, we tend to think of them as permanently hostile. Perhaps we have the feeling that they have been the enemies of our ancestors in the past, that they are against us now, and that they will hate our children in the future. Maybe this is what we think, but the reality is actually quite different. In fact, we do not know where or what we were in our previous existences, and so there is no certainty that the aggressive people we now have to contend with were not our parents in former lives! When we die, we have no idea where we will be reborn, and so there is no knowing that these enemies of ours might not become our mothers or fathers. At present, we might have every confidence in our parents, who are so dear to us, but when they go from this life , who is to say they will not be reborn among our enemies? Because our past and future lives are unknown to us, we have the impression that the enemies we have now are fixed in their hostility, or that our present friends will always be friendly. This only goes to show that we have never given any real thought to this question.

If we consider carefully, we might picture a situation where many people are at work on some elaborate project. At one moment, they are all friends together, feeling close, trusting and doing each other good turns. But then something happens and they become enemies, perhaps hurting or killing one  other. Such things do happen, and changes like this can occur several times in the course of a single lifetime–for no other reason than that all composite things or situations are impermanent.

This precious human body, supreme instrument though it is for the attainment of enlightenment, is itself a transient phenomenon. No one knows when, or how, death will come. Bubbles form on the surface of the water, but the next instant they are gone; they do not stay. It is just the same with this precious human body we have managed to find. We take all the time in the world before engaging in practice, but who knows when this life of ours will simply cease to be? And once our precious human body is lost, our midstream, continuing its existence, will take birth perhaps among the animals, or in one of the hells or god realms where spiritual development is impossible. Even if life in a heavenly state, where all is ease and comfort, is a situation unsuitable for practice, on account of the constant dissipation and distraction that are a feature of the god’s existence.

At present, the outer universe–earth, stones, mountains, rocks, and cliffs–seem to be the perception of our senses to be permanent and stable, like the house build of reinforced concrete that we think will last for generations. In fact, there is nothing solid to it at all; it is nothing but a city of dreams.

In the past, when the Buddha was alive surrounded by multitudes of Arhats and when the teachings prospered, what buildings must their benefactors have built for them! It was all impermanent; there is nothing left to see now but an empty plain. In the same way, at the universities of Vikramashila and Nalanda, thousands of pandits spent there time instructing enormous monastic assemblies. All impermanent! Now, not even a single monk or volume of Buddha’s teachings are to be found there.

Take another example from the more recent past. Before the arrival of the Chinese Communists, how many monasteries were there in what use to be called Tibet, the Land of Snow? How many temples and monasteries were there, like those in Lhasa, at Samye and Trandruk? How many precious objects were there, representatives of the Buddha’s Body, Speech, and Mind? Now not even a statue remains. All that is left of Samye is something hardly bigger than a stupa. Everything was either looted, broken, or scattered, and all the great images were destroyed. These things have happened, and this demonstrates impermanence.

Think of all the lamas who came and lived in India, such as Gyalwa Karmapa, Lama Kalu Rinpoche, and Dudjom Rinpoche; think of all the teachings they gave and how they contributed to the preservation of the Buddha’s doctrine. All of them have passed away. We can no longer see them, and they remain only as objects of prayer and devotion. All this is because of impermanence. In the same way, we should try to think of our fathers, mothers, children and friends. When the Tibetans escaped to India, the physical conditions were too much for many of them and they died. Among my acquaintances alone, there were three or four deaths every day. That is impermanence. There is not one thing in existence that is stable and lasts.

If we have an understanding of impermanence, we will be able to practice the sacred teachings. But if we continue to think that everything will remain as it is, then we will be just like rich people still discussing their business projects on their deathbeds! Such people never talk about the next life, do they? It goes to show that an appreciation of the certainty of death has never touched their hearts. That is their mistake, their delusion.

His Holiness Penor Rinpoche on Offerings

by

The following is respectfully quoted from “An Ocean of Blessings” by His Holiness Penor Rinpoche 

IT’S VERY IMPORTANT to always supplicate your master with perfect devotion and make offerings of lamps, flowers, and so forth. Any offering you make, big or small, will be a cause for accumulating merit and purifying obscurations. But you must make offerings with pure motivation; you shouldn’t offer anything with miserliness or use offerings to show what a generous person you are. Lamp offerings purify the obscurations of ignorance, increase your life span, pacify illness, help you to perceive more in the intermediate state, and, according to Dzogchen, develop and increase your inner wisdom. In Tibet, when laypeople have problems with their business and so forth, they make large offerings of hundreds or thousands of butter lamps. They are worldly people and mainly concerned with temporary happiness and benefit, but they do receive benefit through those offerings.

Who Can Be a Guru?

by

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

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

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

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

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

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

It’s Simply Phenomena

by

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

It is difficult to see the many different spiritual systems prevalent in our country that are based on the accumulation of knowledge. The thought is that at some point you will have enough knowledge, as if you can get a big bag of it and you can get enough in the bag that finally you have enough knowledge. At that point some sort of change will occur, a switch will flip and you will have enough, and there it is.  Why is that not possible, according to the Buddha?  Because according to the Buddha what you are accumulating as you accumulate knowledge is a contrivance in itself.  It is the necessary road we must take in order to reach certain conclusions, in order to understand in the ordinary human way.   Because of the way our minds work, I can’t even talk to you about Dharma without using language. I can’t talk to you about the primordial wisdom state without describing it. The tricky part is that the moment I describe it, that is not it.

Every bit of information that you gather, whether it is good information or bad information, whether it causes you to draw good conclusions or causes you to completely ruin your life, whether it causes you to give up drinking and smoking or whether it causes you to go off the deep end and cut off the tip of your nose, whatever bit of information you get from the primordial wisdom state it can be viewed as phenomena, exactly the same.  It is hard to understand because we really think things need to be judged by high and low, good and bad, here and there, up and down, and we have our criteria for judgment. We think that this is meaning. Yet from the pure state we must understand that all phenomena is the same – it is simply phenomena, good or bad, high or low, it is all a contrivance.  It is all an encumbrance upon the natural view.

Ironically, if you cut off the end of your nose and it causes you to realize the suffering of sentient beings, and because of that you practice, then that is good phenomena.  Likewise, if you get on the wagon and give up your drinking and womanizing ways, and you live a good life and become an upright person, causing you to become satisfied and think that is enough, you become a little rigid. That causes you to become a little egotistical and that causes you to get a lot of pride going, and that causes you to never to look any further than yourself, and if it causes you to think that it’s important what a good person you are, then that is the worst kind of phenomena.  So from the natural state, phenomena only has importance or any meaning in relation to the ability you have to become awake and to realize the primordial wisdom state.  The only thing that is meaningful is that which leads to the ultimate goal.

If you take that standard and really learn it and adapt yourself to it, and you look at the life you have lived so far, you should think about the many different things that were important to you.  I look at my own life that way and I see that I have placed importance on things that have no meaning because they did not lead to supreme enlightenment. I can look at the lives of all sentient beings and I can see that we spend a hundred and ten percent of our energy doing that which you cannot take with you when you die.  We are all involved in doing things that are, from that point of view, utterly meaningless. Also meaningless in the sense that not only do they not lead to the supreme goal, but they do not empower us to be of any benefit to sentient beings because we do not remove from our minds the causes of suffering: desire, hatred, greed and ignorance.  I think this is true of everyone.  I don’t think anyone is exempt unless they were born supremely realized, born on a lotus, and I was definitely not born on a lotus.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Life is Fleeting

by

An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhists Think by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Have you ever seen someone made completely  miserable by neediness?  Some people are like a big gaping hole,   and all the love you could pour in there would not be enough.  Haven’t you ever gone through a phase like that yourself?  We’ve all had extremely needy, hungry-ghost-like phases.

Have you ever been prideful, arrogant?  Deludedly thinking that you’re better than other people?  Have you ever felt yourself so attractive that you thought you were hot stuff?  Do you ever think you smell better than other people?  I do.  I wear Estee Lauder.  Many people have that kind of pridefulness.  Haven’t you seen people being arrogant––while you wondered why they considered themselves so special?  It’s a kind of dream-like delusion from which they’re not able to wake up.

We have seed-like causes planted within our mindstream that we may be unaware of, among them our jealousy and competitiveness.  Have you ever been so angry that you were hell-bent to get someone’s goat?  That was all you could think about until you realized that you had put yourself in a kind of hell.  Have you ever seen other people living that way, continually frothing at the mouth and hell-bent on being right?  We can detect these things in our own mind––the impressions of them, like footprints in the sand.

The Buddha taught that these six realms exist and that we all have the karma to be reborn in any one of them.  He also taught that we have the right, the power, and the responsibility to produce the causes to ripen auspicious karma––to be reborn in an auspicious way.  In other words, there is no predestination.  No one is doomed.  No one is jinxed.  We all have both beneficial and unfortunate karmic potential in our mindstreams.  To the degree that we decide, we can engage in the ten virtuous activities which produce an auspicious rebirth.  No one is special, no one is flawed, no one is damaged, no one is brain-dead.  While you’re human, you have many options.

Having understood that rebirth in any of these realms is possible for each of us, we must make the best use of our time now.  There is an urgency in Buddhist thinking: you are asked, please, to make use of this fortunate human rebirth.  Don’t waste your time.  If you feel pushed to do as much as you can, the purpose isn’t to entrap you or to tell you that “there is only one right way.”  It is only to urge you to use your time effectively and courageously––because there is so little of it.

Buddhist teachings describe this human life as a waterfall.  Now, where is the drop of water that even a moment ago was at the top?  That’s how our lives are.  They appear stable, but they go by in a flash.  We need to use our opportunity.

 

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

To download the complete teaching, click here and scroll down to How Buddhists Think

The Nature of the Guru

by

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “The Guru is Your Diamond”

The Lama gives us not only a way to have single-pointed concentration, but the Lama also offers their own accomplishment.  When one practices the Guru Yoga really deeply, whether it be in the Guru Yoga in Ngndro, or Shower of Blessings, or in any of the pujas that have Guru Rinpoche as the main focal point or Guru Rinpoche and consort as the main focal point, we should think thatthis is the way to practice Guru Yoga.  And in each one of those practices, whichever it is, we understand nondual nature.  That’s what we’re working on.

We see the arising from the nature of emptiness appearing in a real, but insubstantial gossamer-like light form, first as the seed syllable, and then as the Guru.  We are telling ourselves our own story, because it is we also who have arisen from emptiness.  It is our nature that is indeed also the seed syllable. Ultimately we are the same nature as the Guru.  By the power of the Guru’s accomplishment, through their many lifetimes of amazing practice, many lifetimes of looking out after sentient beings and accomplishing the needs of sentient beings and liberating sentient beings, they offer themselves and their accomplishment in that way to be the very door to liberation.  And so we should think of our teachers in that way—that we are in a burning house, no other way to get out except that one door.  Boy, would you ever be devoted to that door.  That door would be on your mind if your house were burning, and there were no other way to get out, wouldn’t it?  And that’s how we should think. We should think that here we are in samsara. This is indeed the time of Kaliyuga.  We have, at best, as many habitual tendencies guaranteed to bring us suffering as we do to bring us happiness.  At best.  50/50.  And that is so unusual.  We tend to make ourselves more unhappy than we do happy.  So we are in this burning house and we look to the teacher to provide the door to liberation.

So when we give rise to that devotion, it’s not to the person Guru.  It’s not to that person.  It doesn’t matter if you like what they’re wearing or how they smell or what they look like or how they walk or anything like that.  It doesn’t matter.  That’s just the stuff you do in regular life.  So you can just sweep it over. Instead you think, “This one has appeared and will appear throughout time out of mind until all suffering has ended, until samsara is emptied, as the door to liberation.  What kind of dope am I that I wouldn’t walk through it?”  It’s that kind of fervent regard.  Think of it that way—more than like-dislike, that kind of judgment, but rather, fervent regard.

We rely on the accomplishment of our teachers. If our teachers had not accomplished any Dharma, how would they be of any use to us?  So we expect it of them and we rely on them to guide us in the way of Dharma.  Sometimes it pisses us off.  We’d rather go on vacation.  We’d rather have a little more fun.  I mean, it’s Sunday afternoon, isn’t it?  And we have all kinds of reasons why we should maybe do something else.  But we come back.  There is my friend.

If this teacher can bother to appear again and again for no reason other than to liberate sentient beings as my Guru has, then I can at least be here. I can at least come half way, come full with devotion.  When we are in the presence of our own Root Guru and we have that connection and we have the history and karma of the Guru having ripened our mind in some way in the past, that ripening will surely come again.  With faith and devotion and practice, it will surely come again.  And so we have that kind of faith.  We know in our hearts and our minds that we can rely on this one for that kind of help.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo All rights reserved

Ever-Present Blessings

by

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo called “The Guru Is Your Diamond”

Guru Yoga is the most potent of all practices and it’s the most simple. One can practice Guru Yoga simply by visualizing the Guru above the crown of one’s head and making offerings by visualizing them, and then receiving the blessing, real quick. The white blessing from the Guru’s Body to your body comes in the head, white to white; the red blessing from the Guru’s Speech, from the Guru’s throat to your throat; the blue blessing from the Guru’s Mind, which is the heart, from his heart (or her heart) to your heart). You can receive that blessing constantly. It’s free. It’s yours. You can receive it periodically. You can receive it every morning, every night. Whatever you want, as much as you want. That’s the beauty of Guru Yoga. And you should think that the Guru is like your constant companion. Not in a creepy way. I don’t want you guys looking in my window (laughter). But in a wholesome way, where we understand that this nature is freely given, like method that one can use. It is indistinguishable from the ground which is full enlightenment, the method which is Dharma, and the result which is the completion or accomplishment of the precious awakened state.

So we understand the Guru is the ground, the Guru is the method, the Guru is the result. And we begin, through the devotion, through calling out our own nature, our own mind, our own qualities, to mix willingly with that of the Guru. Over time, that blessing mixes like milk with water and we understand that indeed, Lord Buddha resides in us all. We understand that indeed each one of us is some uncontrived beginningless and endless and yet fundamentally complete luminous nature, some state of awakened and yet uncontrived view. That we are that in our nature. Our job in this lifetime is to use the blessings of our Gurus, to use their accomplishment, their qualities, their methods, to listen carefully and accordingly accomplish awakening to that nature. It’s the swift way. It’s the rocketship. It’s powered because it’s like lighting something at both ends. You’re not thinking, “Oh I have to go there.”  We are thinking, “This is like a mirror and a mirror”—inseparable in their nature.

Here in America, we have a lot of pop-psychology. We all have these little boxes about how relationships ought to be. Pop-psychology has told us how big they ought to be and what shape they ought to be. We are told that we should be independent in certain ways and then sharing in other ways. One way or another way, we are told how we ought to be. I want to tell you that the relationship of Guru Yoga is not like that. For instance, in relationships we are taught, I’m ok, you’re ok. What is it? Don’t be co-dependent. So don’t be in a co-dependent relationship. Well, if you’re going to be in a co-dependent relationship, I guess it ought to be with your Guru (laughter). But you don’t look at it that way. Because a co-dependent relationship is where two people who are ill or not seeing clearly or are deluded or neurotic in some way, are being neurotic together, and it fits.

Well, that’s not the same with one’s own Root Guru. You can freely and openly give your whole heart and know that you are not in danger. You can freely and joyfully walk, dance through that door of liberation, and you will be happily and joyfully received. You can depend utterly and completely on the Three Precious Jewels and the condensed essence which is the Root Guru and never fall. This is the one time you should not guard your heart. A difficult habit to break for all of us.

So again, we’re not talking about personalities, because that’s ordinary. We’re not talking about you guys all coming to live at my house. Not like that. That’s ordinary, ordinary context. We are thinking that the blessing of my teacher resides as me, in me, and I am that. And like we say in The Seven Line Prayer, “Following you I will practice.” Through that devotion, through that practice, all the blessings of the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas are yours. Freely given. To the deserving student, to the practicing student, the Guru will always appear. And we should always today be creating the causes for the Guru to appear tomorrow. In whatever form.

So, I guess that’s it for today. It will give you something to think about. And I hope when I give teachings like this that you will really take them in. Don’t bar the way. Let them come in. And if you are moved to go recite The Seven Line Prayer and open your heart and feel that blessing, then I ask you please to fill up. Don’t deny yourself. You’ve done that for too long. Instead welcome to the banquet of Dharma and the yummy good food of Guru Yoga. I invite you to partake.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo All rights reserved

The Guru as the Path to Recognition

by

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “The Guru is Your Diamond”

How do we use the Guru Yoga as this rocketship?  How do we understand the way it is used?  Well, first of all, if we look at the Guru Yoga in our Ngöndro book, the prayers are achingly beautiful.  The tune, Lama Khyen No, that beautiful tune… You could almost hear it being sung on misty mountain tops.  There’s something about it that’s just so haunting.  And you get the idea when you’re doing this practice that it’s kind of geared that way.  It’s geared to bring tears to one’s eyes.  It’s geared to create an interdependent relationship that’s so intimate, it’s more than what we are accustomed to.  We wouldn’t take an ordinary relationship and sing Boyfriend Khyen No, (laughter) Girlfriend Khyen No. We wouldn’t do that.  And why?  Because there wouldn’t be any result.  You might as well twiddle your thumbs.  There just simply would be no benefit.

We are given this method and it should cause us some benefit.  Why?  Why is that?  Because we are opening the eyes of recognition.  What is it Lord Buddha said when he was asked how it was he was different?  He said, “I am awake”.  Awake in recognition.  We are opening the inner eyes of recognition to understand the difference between the precious connection with one’s Root Guru, the ultimate nature that we share, that we depend upon utterly, and what is ordinary. You know, the stuff we get lost in so easily.

We have this single-pointedness that we can whip ourselves back to.  That’s how we use the Guru, when we get lost and wobbly and we’re kind of out in space… You know how we get—the noises in our head and everything. We get lost in that.  We can use the Guru as our centering back to the single-pointedness.  We think this is none other than Guru Rinpoche, the second emanation of Lord Buddha, himself.  This is the way.  This is that nature.  This is what is precious.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo All rights reserved

How to Cherish What is Precious

by

The following is respectfully quoted from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “The Guru Is Your Diamond”

We should understand that if we feel that connection with the Guru, and that it is heartfelt, that is like a diamond that you should invest.  To hold onto it and to keep it stagnant is not the way.  One should not say, “I’ve got this connection, therefore I’m in like flint.”  One has to take that connection and build on it.  You have to use it for investment. You use that connection to create more virtue through learning the Buddha Dharma and practicing accordingly, through going to the teacher for guidance and advice, and then practicing that accordingly.

There’s no use going to the teacher for guidance and advice if you don’t practice accordingly.  Then you’re simply cashing in that diamond for nothing.  You’re throwing it out the window and it’s too precious to waste.  Instead again, you should invest in it, build on it.  That’s cash.  That’s money in the bank.  That’s the most precious thing you own in this lifetime, no matter how wealthy you are.

So you go to that teacher for guidance, for advice.  You allow that teacher, and ask for that teacher, to open and prepare your mind, and to deepen the mind and to mature the mind; and you depend on that teacher similarly to… Let’s say you had somehow a cash cow in the bank, you know a diamond or some fabulous thing that could be earning interest. In the same way that that diamond might be the nugget and maybe you’re living off the interest, you think like that about the teacher.   But you’re always making the moves and doing the things that never harm the principal and only increase the interest.  See what I’m saying.  I’m using a funny money analogy here, but it’s like that.

That diamond must be kept in a sacred place, enthroned upon the Lotus of one’s heart where it cannot be harmed.  And if you find that that diamond is somehow misplaced and it’s in your mouth and you’re talking about it in a non-virtuous way, get it back down there again.  Do your practice.  Recite The Seven Line Prayer.  Reestablish that connection.  Think that it lives in you, as it does.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo All rights reserved

 

WP2Social Auto Publish Powered By : XYZScripts.com