Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Short Confession to the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities

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This is an offering from Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. This prayer is found in the “The Great Perfection: Buddha in the Palm of the Hand the Lama’s Oral Instruction Upon the Recitation and Visualization of the Preliminary Practice – Ngyundro” from the Nam Cho cycle of teachings revealed by Vidyadhara Terton Migyur Dojre.

From Jetsunma: “There are many blessings and one can recite this prayer and mantra to dispel obstacles, increase health and all well being. Please try!”

From the Sang Dzog (Secret Perfection) Tantra, recite

The Short Confession to the

Peaceful and Wrathful Deities:

CHOM DEN DE ZHI THRO RAB JAM KYI TSHOG LA CHAG TSHAL LO

I prostrate to the vast assembly of enlightened peaceful and wrathful deities.

E MA HO   CHOG CHU DÜ ZHI KÜN GYI DAG NYID CHE

How Astonishing!    The supremely great beings of the ten directions and four times,

LAMA GYAL WA ZHI THRO YONG DZOG GONG

The entire assembly of Lamas and enlightened peaceful and wrathful deities, please be attentive.

DIR SHEG NYI DA PEDMA’I DEN LA ZHUG

Come forth and be seated on your lotus, sun and moon seats.

NYAM CHAG NA RAG JANG CHIR CHAG CHÖD ZHE

In order to cleanse all downfalls and broken commitments which result in the lowest rebirth, I bow down to you and present offerings.

YÖN TEN PHUN TSHOG LAMA NAM LA CHAG TSHAL LO

I prostrate to all the Lamas who are fully endowed with pure qualities.

MIG MED TRÖ DREL CHÖ KYI KU LA CHAG TSHAL LO

I prostrate to the unvisualized, uncontrived Dharmakaya.

DE CHEN LONG CHÖD DZOG PA’I KU LA CHAG TSHAL LO

I prostrate to the complete enjoyment, Sambhogakaya body of great bliss.

DRO GÖN CHIR YANG TRÜL PA’I KU LA CHAG TSHAL LO

I prostrate to the Nirmanakaya, which manifests in whatever way is necessary to protect beings.

NE LUG MIGYUR DORJE KU LA CHAG TSHAL LO

I prostrate to the unchanging nature of reality, the Vajra body.

YANG DAG NGÖN PAR CHANG CHUB KU LA CHAG TSHAL LO

I prostrate to the perfectly pure body of the actual Buddhanature.

NYÖN MONG ZHI DZED ZHI WA’I LHA LA CHAG TSHAL LO

I prostrate to the peaceful deities who have pacified delusion.

LOG TA TSHAR CHÖD THRO WA’I KU LA CHAG TSHAL LO

I prostrate to the wrathful deities who annihilate incorrect view.

THAB GÖN TSHE DAG JAMPAL KU LA CHAG TSHAL LO

I prostrate to the skillful protector, owner of life, Mañjushri, the body emanation.

KYÖN DREL DRA DROG PEMA’I SUNG LA CHAG TSHAL LO

I prostrate to the speech emanation, Hayagriva, of the Lotus Family, who is free from all faults.

YANG DAG DÖN DEN BENZAR THUG LA CHAG TSHAL LO

I prostrate to the mind emanation, Yang Dag, of the Vajra Family, possessor of true purpose.

DUG NGA NED SEL DÜD TSI MEN LA CHAG TSHAL LO

I prostrate to Dudtsi Men (Amrita Kundali), who clears the illness of the five poisons.

DREG PA JOM DZED PHUR PA’I LHA LA CHAG TSHAL LO

I prostrate to Vajrakilaya and his assembly, who see to the destruction of worldly spirits and forces.

JUNG WA’I NGA DAG MA MO’I TSHOG LA CHAG TSHAL LO

I prostrate to Mamo and her assembly, who control the five elements.

SA DANG LAM DZOG RIG DZIN TSHOG LA CHAG TSHAL LO

I prostrate to the assembly of pure awareness holders, who have perfected the stages and paths.

TEN PA SUNG DZED DAM CHEN NAM LA CHAG TSHAL LO

I prostrate to all the Dharma Protectors, who protect the Doctrine.

DRA GEG DÜL DZED NGAG DAG NAM LA CHAG TSHAL LO

I prostrate to the deity Ngag-Dag and his assembly, who tame enemies and obstructing forces.

GANG GI GYAL WA ZHI THRO YI

To all the enlightened peaceful and wrathful deities

KYIL KHOR LHA LA CHAG TSHAL NA

And their mandalas I pay obeisance

NYAM CHAG MA LÜ KÜN CHANG TE

And pray to cleanse all of my broken commitments without exception.

TSHAM MED NGA LA MÖ CHI GÖ

There is no doubt that the five limitless nonvirtues can be cleansed,

NA RAG NE KYANG DONG TRUG TE

And even the lower realms can be emptied from their depths,

RIG DZIN GYAL WA’I ZHING DU DRAG

And beings will be guided to the pure realms of the enlightened pure awareness beings.

DORJE SEM PA’I SANG NGAG NGÖ

Since Vajrasattva is the essential nature of the Secret Mantra,

LE DRIB NYAM DRIB DAG CHED PA’I

Cleansing all of our karmic obscurations caused by broken commitments,

KHOR WA DONG TRUG YANG NYING DA

To empty the realms of cyclic existence, recite the mantra.

OM BENZAR SATO SAMAYA  MA NU PA LA YA  BENZAR SATO TE NO PA

TIKSHTRA DRI DHO ME BHA WA

SU TO KHAYO ME BHA WA  SU PO KHAYO ME BHA WA

A NU RAKTO ME BHA WA SARWA SIDDHI ME PRA YATSHA

SARWA KARMA SU TSA ME  TSITTAM SHRI YAM KU RU HUNG

HA HA HA HA HO BAGAWAN

SARWA TATHAGATA BENZAR MA ME MUÑTSA  BENZRI BHA WA MA HA SAMAYA SATO AH

Mindfulness: Letting Go of Reaction

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The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Stabilizing the Mind”

If you can get to a place of natural awareness, you can remain mindful in a way that isn’t really describable in words.  You can begin to sense a little bit of space between the calm, natural awareness and the reaction that you have quite automatically, instantaneously.  It’s really necessary to develop the skill of sensing that little bit of space, because your tendency is to run off and react to every thought that you have. Just look at what you’re doing in your mind right now.  What are your thoughts?  You’re reacting.  Everything is a reaction, and you’re floating on it.  You’re up and down with it all the time.

If you can just begin to sense a little bit of space between that natural awareness and the reaction, you can begin to have the skill to not be so at the mercy of the conceptual proliferations of your mind.  That little bit of space is exactly what you need to begin to disengage the ego, to begin to disengage desire.  You need space in your mind to meditate even on the problems that desire brings up for you.  You have to have some space in your mind to meditate on true nature.  You have to have some space in your mind to meditate on emptiness.  That kind of space can be developed all the time.  If you practice in that way constantly, or at least as often as you are able, to remain mindful, and increase that mindfulness and increase that kind of practice, you’ll find yourself doing it more and more naturally.

But don’t try to keep yourself locked up.  That’ll make you crazy.  That is not a solution.  You make yourself crazy when you say, “I’m not going to be happy now.  I’m not going to be unhappy now.  I’m not going to follow my mind around the block.  I’m not going to do that.”  Really, that is not a good solution.  If you practice the spaciousness in your mind in the gentle way I have just described, you’ll begin to be able to be more mindful and more aware of the validity of the Buddha’s teaching.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Spaciousness: The Foundation of Practice

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The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Stabilizing the Mind”

If you are romantically involved with Dharma, then you have developed no space in your mind and you will be constantly up and down, skating on your own dramatics with no stability in the mind.  And you are completely at the mercy of suffering.  Where there is no space, there is nowhere to go.  There’s no quiet place where you can rest.  You are either going to be suffering or feeling exhilarated — an intensity of a different kind.  Ultimately it’s all suffering.  You’re going to be into the intensity with no spaciousness in your mind.  You’ll be stuck there with nowhere to go.  You just ride on your emotions.  If you have not developed spaciousness in your mind, you are the victim of the highs and lows and the mind’s conceptual proliferations.  For example, you’re completely at the mercy of pain.  Have you ever had really intense pain?  It can make you lose all awareness.  It’s unbelievable.  You just lose consciousness, and it’s because there’s no space in your mind.  Pain is a concept; it’s something in your mind.

You are completely at the mercy of emotionalism of all kind, and you know that of yourself.  You follow your emotions constantly.  They’ve been high, and they’ve been low.  They’ve been big, and they’ve been small.  They’ve been in, and they’ve been out.  Have your emotions ever made you happy for a long time?  Have your emotions ever been dependable companions?  They never have if you really think about it.

So if you develop spaciousness, you have at least a fighting chance, if you will excuse the phrase, to begin to practice in such a way that your mind has some potential for liberation.  In other words, there’s a little spaciousness in which you can practice.  It’s very, very important for you to try to do that.  If you develop a little bit of space, you can start building up these bricks of the Buddha’s teaching.  You can evaluate the teachings for yourself.  From that calm place, from that place behind all of the concepts, you can see that following the mind leads to no happiness.  You can see that desire is the cause of suffering.  You can sense the potential for enlightenment or at least for disengaging from that phenomenon that you are so involved in.  You can sense that there is something behind all of your concepts that’s very profound.  You can begin to build the solid blocks that are necessary in order to follow the Buddha’s path until you achieve supreme enlightenment.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

How to Practice Mindfulness During All Activities

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An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Stabilizing the Mind”

While you’re practicing you have to find a way to stabilize your mind.  I cannot emphasize mindfulness enough.  It is what will result in a stabilized mind.  One of the best things that you can do, no matter what experience you’re having – whether you’re getting excited about something new that you bought, some new project that you’re doing, some new idea that you’ve been presented with, some new relationship that you have, or depressed about the loss of any of these things, whether you’re having a high or low experience – ask yourself in the midst of that circumstance, “Who is the taster here?”

When His Holiness Penor Rinpoche was giving the Rinchen Terzod, he gave us lemon juice and then honey, and he asked, “Who is the taster? Who says one is sweet and one is bitter?  What is the meaning of this taste?  How does taste come about?” It is important to remember that taste is a perceptual thing.

You should practice this type of mindfulness when you’re feeling intense emotion of any kind – whether great joy, great sorrow, great pain, great physical pleasure, even during sexual activity, during any of those intense experiences that run the gamut of human emotion.  Center into a natural awareness.  A good way to do that would be, for instance, to just watch your breath with gentle attention.  It’s not forceful; don’t go, “OK, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in…”  It isn’t like that.  It’s a gentle, nonintrusive, passive attention on the breath, a light awareness.  Just lightly watch the breath for a few moments, and let that be what you’re doing right then.  Then observe, while you’re breathing,  “Who is the watcher?”  Observe the natural awareness that occurs when you just gently watch your breath.  Try to sense that natural awareness.

If you really ask yourself the question, “Who is watching the breath?”  then your mind is going to come right back at you and say, “I am.”  Then you have to play the game with your mind that goes, “Who is I?”  And you get sort of tense about that.  So you don’t want to really ask yourself who is the watcher.  There will be a sense of peeling away layers until you get to a place of pure awareness.

What you want to do is to gently sense the watcher without forming any conceptualization about it.  Just sense and go behind the concept.  If you gently observe what you are doing, you have a concept about the watcher.  Go behind that concept and sense behind that.  And if you develop another concept about the watcher, go behind that, gently, gently, gently.  You can practice this technique quite naturally while you’re typing or doing anything.

It’s also good to use this technique in meditation, but there are more formal techniques that you can use at that time.  This is a good, ordinary technique that you can use while you’re doing anything – while you’re listening to music, while you’re thinking, “I’m having a good practice” or “I’m having a bad practice” or whatever it is that you’re reacting to.  Take yourself out of the realm of reaction and watch the breath.  Just concentrate on your breathing for some time with light attention and go behind the concepts one after another until you have somehow gotten gently behind or underneath all of the concepts that you have about who the watcher is, until you get to a place of natural awareness where there isn’t so much the question of who the watcher is.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Caught in a Dream

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An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Stabilizing the Mind”

In order to practice the Buddha’s teaching with any meaning, you first have to understand that all sentient beings are suffering.  Now I have to ask you: Have you really seen that with your own heart, with your own eyes, with your own mind?  Have you seen that all sentient beings are suffering?

If you have seen that you are suffering, then let me describe a funny little thing that you still do that cannot coexist with that knowledge.  You have circumstances throughout the day (and throughout the month, the year, your life) that either please you or displease you, that either make you happy or make you unhappy.

You may think, “Oh, I’m really down today.”  Then you talk to someone, and someone has an upbeat thing to say to you.  It’s meaningful, it’s good, and it pleases you.  So what happens to you?  You go up, right?  There’s a nice sense of warm fuzzies, and you go up.

Or let’s say you are a renunciate, a monk or nun, and when you wake up in the morning, it’s a ho-hum day.  You’re in a flat-line zone, a kind of grey zone.  And let’s say you manage to get in all of the practices that you want to do in the morning, and you manage to have a pretty good experience with them.  You feel buoyant in your practice.  You feel stable in your practice.  You’re able to hold your visualization.  Somehow that magical thing that happens every now and then happens.  You had a good practice.  Then you have your breakfast, eating your cereal by the window like a guy in a commercial, and you say, “Morning is my time!”  But later on the dog urinates on your one robe, you are too busy to eat any lunch or any dinner, and you have a bad practice.  That’s the worst thing – you have a bad practice – and things are no longer going so well.

These things happen to all of you, and yet, although you say you know that there is suffering from the depth of your heart, you have looked to satisfy the end of suffering in a way that is different from what the Buddha taught.  We let our minds float on an ocean of waves like a buoy, up and down.  What is “up”?  What is “down”?  And who is feeling it?  Who says morning is your time?  Who says evening is not?  Who says life is good when you go out to a restaurant and have a glass of wine?  These are concepts that are part of your mind, and your consciousness floats on them.  For some of you, there is not a moment of spaciousness in your mind where your consciousness is not floating on some circumstance you contrived all by yourself.  Why does that happen?

You say that all sentient beings are suffering and that the end to suffering is enlightenment, yet you allow your mind to be satisfied going up and down according to circumstances.  All of the beings that you say are suffering are doing the same thing.  Has anyone achieved happiness by allowing the mind to float on that ocean of concept that we call samsara, affected by circumstances, lifted up by what we call high circumstances, put down by what we call low circumstances?

No one.  Never.  The Buddha tells us that samsara is not happiness, that the contrivances of the mind are not happiness, that sentient beings are suffering, and that the only end to suffering is enlightenment.  Yet we allow ourselves to slide up and down every day.  We get excited about some project, we get enthusiastic, but it always comes to a dead stop.  It always ends.  It has never, never, never, never, never continued until it gave you supreme happiness.

So here’s the point I am trying to make.  First brick: All sentient beings are suffering.  Now, we’ll put the next one on top of it: There is an end to suffering, and it is enlightenment.  Just two bricks, and already we find that we are not secure behind those two bricks, that we don’t believe.  Yes, you say that you believe that all sentient beings are suffering.  Yes, you say that you believe enlightenment is the end of suffering.  Can you tell me how that can coexist with the tendency to let your mind drift, relying on circumstances to make it happy, being the victim of circumstances that make it unhappy?  How do we allow that?

We forget.  We’re caught in a dream, and we lose faith.  So how are you going to practice this Vajrayana, the Diamond Vehicle, the Tantric teachings of Buddhism, passed from teacher to disciple, that can lead to the attainment of enlightenment in one lifetime, a path with sincerity and stability for the rest of your life until some potential comes for you to achieve supreme enlightenment?  Do you believe that that can happen?

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Why Practice Dharma?

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An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Stabilizing the Mind”

Do you really understand why you are practicing Buddhism?

Ultimately, when you come to understand what the Buddha and all the great lamas have taught, you will come to understand that it basically boils down to the fact that all sentient beings are suffering, that desire is the cause of suffering, that there is an end to suffering, and that end is enlightenment.  There are different ways that you can attain enlightenment, but they all have to do with ending attachment and desire in the mindstream.  They have to do with realizing that one’s nature is not the same as the conceptual proliferations that we live with, the desire that we live with, and the ego that we perceive as ourselves.  I really think that once you understand enough so that you can look at your life – with all its emotional highs and lows – and realize that it is impermanent, that you’re just riding on your own concepts and that by doing that you can’t make your mind stable enough to break free of the compulsion to revolve in cyclic existence for eons and eons that awareness becomes the taskmaster.  That realization becomes the teacher.

If you don’t realize that circumstances are impermanent, if you’re practicing because you have some crazy idea that you’re going to be a great being some day or that you’re going to triumph in the end, and that it’s all about self and self-cherishing, if you have some romantic notion about ordination or about practicing at all, you won’t be stable in your practice.  Understanding the teachings about impermanence is the stabilizer, the real teacher.  Understanding from the depth of your heart that desire really is the cause of suffering is the taskmaster.  Looking at your mind in some stable way so that you can understand that the mind just floats helplessly, constantly, on its own concepts, whichever way the concepts go, up or down, and that these concepts are the cause for suffering and that there’s no lasting happiness in them, gives you a firm foundation.  It is then that you understand why you practice, and although the circumstances of your life may change, you will never turn away from practice.  You may go to work or you may stay home; you may have children or you may not; you may take robes or you may not. Whatever the circumstances are of your life, as long as you know these things, you will remain firm.  Your infatuation with the culture, with the music, with the color, with the ritual of Tibetan Buddhism will never be enough.  You have to understand the heart of the Buddha’s teaching.  You have to understand the value of compassion.  You have to understand how important it is to end suffering and what the means are to end suffering in order to stay with the Dharma, in order to be stable and safe in the Dharma.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Motherhood

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The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Western Chod”

Somewhere in this process I had my second son. I remember picking him up. Here he is a newborn baby, and I am looking into his face. Those of you who have had children, you know what that is like.  You look into that face and you can see your genes! I don’t know how that is, but you can. You can see that this child has your blood in him. There is just this connection. Plus there is something visible, like you recognize those feet. There they are again, or something like that. You have the sense of that. So I remember holding this newborn baby, having this connection with this child. I breast feed this child. I gave birth to this child. This child, at least in part, looks like me. I love this child so much. There is nothing like that feeling. You can hardly think about anything else.

I am holding this child in my arms, and I am thinking, “I will never let you suffer. I will never let you suffer. I will never let you get cold. I will never let you get hungry. Wherever you go, even if you have to go off by yourself, I will watch you and I will follow you.  I will make sure that nothing happens to you. And as long as I am alive, you will have food, you will have clothing, you will have a place to live. You will be safe.” Then I realized what I had just said,“As long as I am alive… “ Then I realized that that is no promise at all. What is that? I am lying to my child. Then I thought, ”What if I could somehow provide for my child all the way until the time of his death.” Then I thought, “Yeah, but when my child dies, can I guarantee that that death won’t be a suffering? Can I guarantee that it won’t be a terrible feeling of loss or that it won’t be painful in some way?”  No. Can I absolutely assure thatmy child is going to die in a painless way? No. There is nothing that I can do about that. I don’t have that kind of power.

So I thought to myself, ”How disgusting! Here I am holding my newborn baby in my arms and I am making all these promises and I am lying. The first thing I have done for my child is to lie to him. That really made me unhappy. I just couldn’t think what to do. So I used that as a way to practice. I thought to myself, “Therefore, this temporary reality, the human reality, is worth nothing. If there is a way to absolutely embody this primordial wisdom nature, I know this nature is not limited by death. I know this nature is something that is all pervasive. I know it. I don’t know how I know it, but I know it. I think to myself, “If only I could really embody this nature, then somewhere in there is the way to protect my child.

It was being a mother that really taught me how to feel the same way about sentient beings because ultimately I came to understand that if you look at two children side  by side because you are the mother of one but not of the other…What is that? These are both my children. How do I say that this one is not my child but this one is? I couldn’t. That doesn’t even make any sense to me.

 Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo All rights reserved

Going Deeper

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The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Western Chod”

I thought about my ears in the same way. I would listen to some music, and I really like music so I could become hypnotized by the music; I could become entranced. I could become sort of addicted to music, and maybe that’s all that I think about is music. In my head is always this music. Have you had it happen where you get a song stuck in your head and you think it will drive you out of your mind?  That kind of thing. So what if I were really to do that with music and just remain in that “music is so wonderful” state. You might think the benefit of that would be that it could be relaxing. It could be pleasurable. Maybe if I shared the mood music with someone else, it might make them feel temporarily better. But, ultimately if I use my ears to just give myself some kind of narcotic experience like that, what good are they?  I am going to stay in samsara and I’m never going to get out. It’s not going to produce any real result.

Ultimately, I came to understand, here in this day and age, that my ears are precious because I can hear the voice of my teacher. I can hear the prayers. I can hear the sound of mantra.  So my ears became to me precious; but I’ve also understood that in truth while they may be a beautiful and precious animal, they are a work horse. They should not dominate me. I must dominate them.So I am thinking like that even with the five senses. I learned how to renounce them and how to experience them as something that will lead to ultimate benefit rather than to something that is temporary.

I thought that way about touch as well. Touch can be very seductive. We can live our entire lives wishing nothing but to be in love and to touch our loved ones, to have that wonderful sensual type of experienceMany of us have the kind of lives where we simply go from one of those experiences to another.  It can be very seductive.  Touch is good. I can comfort my baby.  I can sooth someone who is not feeling well. I can make someone that I can touch temporarily happy.  But I came to understand that touch has its limitations and that it can be seductive.  I came to understand ultimately it is touch that enables me to turn my page. I can tell where the pages are. Touch tells me how to get to the prayer that I want. So I have come to understand that touch is another animal that can be ridden and that can bring about benefit.

In every case, from the different parts of my body to the whole total sense of my identity to all of my senses as I understood them at that time, even to the external circumstances of my life like the clothing that I wore, or the food that I ate, the car that I drove, the house that I lived in, all of these things that I examined, I thought of in the same way as having some temporary benefit, but that ultimately whatever one receives one will also lose. And that these things are very limited.

You might say to yourself, “Well, gee, did you develop a kind of cynicism?  Did you just sit around making yourself miserable all day long?”  And I have to tell you that, in truth, there are moments when I felt the grief of sentient beings. I recommend doing this, and I don’t recommend letting yourself off easy. It is like exercise. You know that if you don’t put any weight in your hand, but you just keep going like that [pumping your arm], maybe that muscle will get some blood in it. But if you take some weight in your hand and you really think about it, and you really work it, you will develop a very tuned, very strong muscle. So it is like that. I have to tell you that I would spend some days thinking about the suffering of sentient beings and it would not be happy. It would be really sad.

 Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo All rights reserved

The Eyes

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The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Western Chod”

I would work as hard as I could on each body part until I felt that I had gotten to some level of result, and then I would continue. For certain aspects of that practice, it really did take a month, a whole month, for just one small thing. Eventually I found that I was able to go through every single part of my visible body.

Then, I was able to think about my five senses—my eyes, my vision. That’s another thing that, really, we are very much attached to. The idea of being without vision, of course, is terrifying. When we really examine what these eyes actually do, we find out that they prevent us from running into trucks or maybe walking into walls, or they help us to read books, and watch TV, We can see our children, we can see our families, we can see our loved ones. We can see beauty, we can see in the mirror. We can see all kind of things…. These eyes are really good, right? I’ve also found when I really examined them that these are the eyes of dualism. That these are the eyes that are literally an extension of dualistic thinking. These are actually the eyes that are meant to see samsara or the cycle of death and rebirth, and only that. That’s all they can show me. They’re not able to see the primordial wisdom nature. They’re able to see that mirror on my pretend altar that was like a symbol of that, but they cannot see deeply. They cannot really see anything. Eventually, I came to understand, for instance, without my eyes I would not be able to read my prayers and I would not be able to read text of any kind. So I’ve come to understand that definitely the eyes, like any of our senses, according to the way humans appear in this realm, make us complete. With all of the senses and faculties complete, I came to find out eventually that we can practice Dharma because of that. So this is a really good thing.

Although they can be used to help an ordinary sentient being practice the practices that bring about the awakening to the primordial wisdom state, still, I would have to say that the ordinary use of these five senses is extremely limited.I cannot directly use my eyes to liberate anyone or terminate the suffering of anybody else right now. Eventually maybe I can if I keep reading the text and really practicing. But, for right now, maybe I could help somebody cross the street if they couldn’t see or if someone got something in their eyes maybe my eyes would work well enough to get it out.

There are pros and cons of the five senses, but ultimately I found out that whatever they are, they are not enough. I found out enough to know that I intend to use them to accomplish practice, that I intend to use them to benefit sentient beings. Ultimately, concerning the five senses, I found them to be more like work horses. They should not dominate me. I should not look at the world and go, “Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow! I want that and I want that and I want that.” Everything is a big feast of desire, you know, and all I think about is gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme. You know the old mantra? Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme. So if I use them like that then what are these things? They are just round spheres of flesh. They are nothing else. It is just meaningless. The fact is that they would help to hook me in even deeper to samsara if all I see is objects I desire.

 Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo All rights reserved

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