Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The Mantra of Samsara

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The following is an excerpt from a teaching called “Antidoting the Mantra of Samsara”

What we’re up against here is we are using a technology that isn’t meant for a person who has only lived one life. We’re using a technology that really wasn’t designed, was not given to the world, to cure a superficial problem. It was not given to us to heal a scratch. The technology of Dharma is so extraordinary and so complicated, so deep, so effortful because of what it is supposed to do. What it has to do is a big job. What it has to do is to purify non-virtuous habitual tendency that we have created and is deeply ingrained since time out of mind. We have another problem and that problem is that it’s kind of like we were born on a merry-go-round. Do you know what happens if you’re born on a merry-go-round?  You have no understanding that you’re going round and round. The only way you could understand that you were born on a merry-go-round is if the merry-go-round would suddenly stop. But if going round and round were natural for you, it would be invisible to you. And so for us it’s as though we were born on a merry-go-round. We have no way to know how much divisiveness, how much discursive thought, how much conceptualization, how much super-structuring goes on within our mind. We are literally, in many ways, strangers to our own mind. Actually within our minds as ordinary sentient beings there’s a constant dialogue going on inside, a constant inner dialogue. You have to ask yourself, between who and who?  But it’s going on, you know. It’s a constant inner dialogue. There is this white noise, this conversation, that’s going on. And you’re answering yourself! That’s the weird part about it.

If you can really calm down and tune into yourself, you’ll see that there’s this constant inner chattering, inner noise. It isn’t even as simple as the one piece that you’re able to hear and pick out. In fact, there’s layer upon layer of it. It’s like many tracks that we seem to be running, so much discursiveness inside of us. So what we are actually engaging in all the time in our ordinary lives is kind of a recital of, or an ongoing mantra of, discursiveness. This chattering, this noise, this continuum that we experience of white noise within our heads—the one that argues, the one that answers, all that stuff that goes on inside—in fact, is layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of delusion, starting with the original belief in self-nature as being inherently real, and from that, all this superstructuring, beginning with reaction, because if one believes in self-nature as inherently real, everything else is other than self.

If there is separation between self and other, there is going to be reaction toward other or we cannot conceptualize any further beyond that, and you know we have. So we are involved in this process of discursiveness and ignorance constantly. We are right now, unless you are listening to me so carefully that there’s no other room for thought anywhere else in your mind, and I don’t think that’s happening. Right now, we are reciting the mantra of suffering. You don’t know that you’re doing that. You don’t have a mala in your hand, but you are right now reciting the mantra of suffering. We are reciting the mantra of samsara.

Even within our minds right now we are creating cause and effect relationships, right now, because it’s impossible for you to be in this room with everyone else here or listening to me or doing anything in your life, without having some kind of reaction to it. And that reaction continues. It becomes deeper and more profound and more habitual and there is structuring and ideation that continues to form from that, continual elaboration. Every single thought that is born within our mindstream is, rather than a thought that continues in a straight line, more like a pebble being dropped into a pond. It goes out in all directions. It continually elaborates, almost on its own volition.

So for the students who ask, “Why wouldn’t one good mantra, or one truly absorbed devotional, purely conceived prostration be as good as 100,000 kind of dull ones?”  The reason why is right now, and since time out of mind, we have constantly been reciting the mantra of delusion. So we need a science or a technology that will antidote the depth of that process. You know how complicated we are. You know how that is. You know that we can sit here, open a Dharma book, read a prayer that’s very profound and really concentrate on it pretty well as we’re reading it. Of course if you really learn how to listen to yourself you know that even while you’re doing that, there’s something going on. That monkey in your head is still doing something. But let’s say we could really concentrate. We contemplate, and we think, “Oh, what a beautiful thing this is. This is really something special.” And we’re moved and we are attracted to the Dharma, you know, that sort of thing. We know that we are so complicated that even while we are doing that, at the same time although we choose not to listen to the voice that we don’t like, that other voice is going “Phew, Dharma, what do we care about Dharma!  We care about one thing. We care about watching TV and sitting on our fat butts. That’s what we care about!”  Or we have all of our other conceptions and ideas about the ways we really want to live. And so, while on the one hand, “Oh, these are the Buddha’s teachings. This is so pure and so perfect. I can see the virtue in it” —and you know really you can, I mean you read the stuff you can see the virtue in it—the other part of you is going “Nah, nah, we don’t want to do this. We want to be happy now!”  So even while we’re studying Dharma and practicing Dharma, this business is going on inside of us.

So what we’re looking for is the kind of technology that can stir that pot from the depth, stir it from the depth and provide the purifying agent, or the antidotal agent, which is to put the weight in the opposite pile of what we ordinarily do. What we ordinarily do is have a divided mind and a lot of discursive thought, a lot of reactions, a lot of stuffthat is associated with the belief in self-nature as being inherently real. So we’re constantly continuing that practice. That’s what we do. That’s the Dharma, the worldly Dharma, which we’re practicing now.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Approaching the Path

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The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Antidoting the Mantra of Samsara Su2-18”

When one actually enters onto the path and begins to practice Dharma, one begins with teachings associated with Ngundro or Preliminary Practice. Normally what happens first is one receives teachings that cause one to turn the mind toward Dharma. My experience has been that for westerners that teaching needs to be deep. It needs to be extensive. It needs to be profound. It needs to be logical, meaningful. It needs to make sense. It needs not to rely on simply blind faith. There needs to be true understanding in order for the new student to actually take hold and actually hook in. That’s been my experience.

My experience has been that sometimes a student, through whatever circumstances, is introduced to Dharma at a more advanced level, by taking some empowerment or something, but they have no understanding of what they’re taking. They finally find out that now they have a practice commitment and they have no idea what that means! That sort of thing can be really terrifying and frightening for a new practitioner. And furthermore, since there is no understanding, it’s almost like trying to make something O.K. on the surface that in fact on a deeper level is not yet O.K. or is not yet suitable or acceptable.

So I’d like to spend some time talking about how one would actually begin to practice on the path, not necessarily the hows and wherefores, because that will be done in the next period of time, both by Khenpo and then after he finishes, I will continue and continue to develop the new practitioners with that kind of understanding. But I would like to actually address some questions that newer practitioners over the years have expressed again and again and again. These questions are interesting because they come sort of loaded with preconceived ideas. You can understand what the preconceived ideas are by hearing the questions.

So let me begin by indicating to you what some of those ideas or some of those questions might be. Here’s something that newer practitioners say all of the time. When they first get introduced to the idea of Dharma, they are normally attracted for whatever reason they are attracted. And it varies with each person. It’s according to their habitual tendency, their karmic propensity, their connection, whatever. Whatever that is, that will indicate how they enter onto the path. For some people it’s the attraction to what seems like something very exotic. For some people it’s the attraction to something that is a living, ongoing experience, spiritually speaking. That is to say, it isn’t like the way perhaps, many of these people practice, let’s say, Christianity which is to go to church once a week, or twice a year, or whatever it happens to be, and then in between not give so much thought to their religion.

Many people who approach Buddhism are interested in something that really travels with you, that is more a part, more distinctly a part of your life, and more a developed philosophy that can be a true guidance in one’s life. And for other people, they are simply connected to the teacher. They see the teacher and they don’t know what this is about, but they feel that connection and they go in that direction. For other people, they’re looking for something, and this looks like a nice thing to check out. There are many different ways that people approach the path, but generally speaking, most people, when they approach anything new, including the path of Dharma, they don’t really approach it with the idea of how hard they want to work at it. You know, when you approach a new job, the idea of a new job, you don’t approach a new job because you know it’s just going to be a real back breaker. I mean, you don’t think, hey I’m really looking forward to the grueling nine to five, that sort of thing! That isn’t what attracts us.

What attracts us is the payoff, the money, or the opportunity to do something exciting. There are things that attract us, but it’s not the hard work.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo.  All rights reserved

The Meaning of Life

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The following is quoted from “The Meaning of Life” published in 1991. Jetsunma (listed as Catharine Burroughs) was one of 173 people chosen that year to answer the question, here is her response:

Lord Buddha taught us that we are extremely fortunate to have been reborn as humans, having revolved, cycliclly, through many possible realms of existence. To have this time and opportunity to seek enlightenment is an extraordinarily precious gift. While alive, we are equipped with a unique kind of consciousness that can choose and make decisions about goals and values. We live in a world where there is a need for loving, compassionate activity; and we are capable of choosing to love and to be compassionate. Our minds are also capable of abstract understanding; therefore, we can choose to pierce the veil of mystery and comprehend the underlying nature of the self and the world around us.

The Buddha also taught us that we experience unhappiness and suffering because of desire, which is a result of the selfishness of clinging to ego. We have the ability to discriminate well enough to follow the direction of those supremely enlightened ones who point us toward happiness and the end of suffering and not to follow the many paths that lead to delusion and meaningless forms of gratification. Therefore, the meaning of life is based on the choices we make, the most profound of which is the choice to practice loving-kindness and joyful concern for the welfare of all beings. The choice to live a life of selflessness is the most profoundly beneficial decision we can make because of its ability to transform our minds and hearts and to bring joy to those around us.

Accepting the greater path of selflessness has the most potent ability to bring about changes in the quality of our lives simply because loving has that power. A life dedicated to selfless activity is a life fully empowered and competent to produce happiness. It is a life unencumbered by the concerns of self-cherishing, and is, therefore, illuminated by the limitless brightness of generosity. Such a life is, itself, the ultimate display of meaning.

 

 

 

Poop Soup

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The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Antidoting the Mantra of Samsara” 

So here’s the question.  Here’s what we ask ourselves, and it’s a valid question.  When you are doing prostrations, or maybe reciting a mantra, and that’s another thing you have to do, at least a 100,000 times on several mantras.  Wouldn’t it be just as good rather than sitting there for say, I don’t know, half an hour Om Mani Padme Hung, Om Mani Padme Hung, half an hour?  Half an hour is a short time to accumulate, but let’s say, rather than sitting there for half an hour, what if we said one really good Om Ah Hung Benzar Guru Padme Siddhi Hung?  What if we said it so good that it’s like the best mantra that anyone has ever said?  What if we said it so good that we are completely absorbed?  Rather than saying it 100,000 times, per syllable, which is how you spell, well anyway, you’ll learn about that later, what if you said it once, really good?  First of all you could pronounce it really perfectly, which nobody in America can do yet, but you know, you can pronounce it really perfectly, and then while you’re pronouncing it, you can remain in complete absorption.  Isn’t that one of those kind of funny hand things that you see people doing in the New Age?  Where we can do it in complete absorption.  Let’s say that we can do it in such total absorption that even if lightning were to strike, we would be immovable, in immovable samadhi reciting that one mantra?  Wouldn’t that be better than just saying Om Ah Hung Benzar Guru Padme Siddhi Hung, Om Ah Hung Benzar Guru Padme Siddhi Hung, Om An Hung Benzar Guru Padme Siddhi Hung?   Sigh, Om Ah Hung Benzar Guru Padme Siddhi Hung.  Wouldn’t that be better than a half an hour of that, don’t you think?  That one mantra, that one glorious earthshaking, the earth moves beneath your feet mantra.  So that’s the question everybody has.  That’s the big question.  Why do we have to say these things, the underlying question is WHY 100,000?  You know, what fresh hell was concocted for us to make us have to recite this thing 100,000 times?  Where is it written?

Well, let me give you some information about that.  The reason why we ask questions like that is because of our lack of understanding.  We have an idea that if a thing is O.K. on the surface, it’s O.K.  We have an idea that if, well, I like to use the analogy, one of my favorite analogies is poop soup.  So let’s talk about that a little bit.  Poop Soup.  What’s the recipe for poop soup.  Well, poop soup is like, with poop soup you do pretty much what sentient beings do as they move through time.  You collect everything nasty there is through our own habitual tendency.  And here’s the part that we don’t understand.  Our life didn’t begin 46 years ago, or 20 years, or 70 years ago, or however old we are.  Our life didn’t begin at that time, but in fact the Buddha teaches us that we have existed as, with having the idea of self-nature as being inherently real, since time out of mind.  And during that time, we have engaged in activity which was samsaric activity, mixed activity, meaning not understanding our nature, not understanding our qualities, not understanding the relationship between cause and effect.  We simply engaged in an activity, instinctively and habitually, with very little understanding, and so we have accumulated mixed habitual tendencies, extremely mixed habitual tendencies including the habitual tendency of hatred greed and ignorance.  So that’s like  cooking up a big pot of poop soup.

Poop soup is basically all of the unclean things in samsara.  You collect it all together in one pot and you stir it up real good, ummm, yummy, it’s poop soup so you can understand what the main ingredient is, can’t you?  Poop soup, got it?  O.K., so you stir it up, the fragrance of cooking fills your house.  Wonderful, right?  And so the first day you cook up your poop soup it looks like pretty much what it is, boiling poop soup.  Right?  And the second day you boil it some more because that’s how it is, life moves on.  The poop soup is still boiling and the second day it looks pretty much like poop soup.  And the third day things are happening.  It begins to change.  It’s looking sort of colorful now.  Fuzzy in places, and colorful and you know, it’s changing.  And everyday that you look at it, one day it’s kind of orangey, the next day it’s kind of purplely, it depends.  It’s like different fuzzy little things that are growing on it.  Poop soup changes every day.  It’s just a cornucopia of colorful delight, the fragrance of which continues to fill your house.

Then one day, one day something magic happens.  You go to check out your poop soup for the day and you notice that on top of your poop soup there is this wonderful soft furry layer of something pure and white.   A white fuzzy something has grown on top of your poop soup.  And here’s how we think!  We think that now that our poop soup is all white and fuzzy and pure, it’s o.k.  Now, the only reason why we think like that is because we don’t understand that in fact we are not superficial creatures.  We aren’t that pure white stuff that’s growing on the top.  We are deep creatures, meaning to say we didn’t just crawl out from under a rock.  We didn’t just appear in space.  We didn’t just start 35 years ago, 75 years ago, whatever it happens to be, but since time out of mind we have been making connections, we have been engaging in cause and effect relationships and we’re like that pot of soup.  There are many many ingredients inside of us, and it’s a deep pot.

As we live, everything in that pot gets stirred up, from the bottom to the top, from the top to the bottom, from the side to the middle, it’s always getting stirred up.  But we think of ourselves in a very superficial way, and what that means is that on the day when we come up somehow magically just because of chance, it’s almost like you know, it’s almost like the slot machines in Los Vegas.  One day you’re gonna get three cherries.  Well, one day your pot’s gonna look like it’s all white and pure and sweet, kind of like New York City when it snows.  But you and I know that underneath there is a whole lot of trouble.  Right?  That’s true, but instead, how we think is that what’s on top is o.k.

So we have this idea, and actually this is how we think and it’s an unfortunate thing because it does not lead to self-honesty.  It does not lead us to a way to actually engage in practice and really benefit ourselves.  We think basically, because we think superficially, if you didn’t see me do it, if I didn’t get caught, I didn’t do it.  That’s how we think.  If you didn’t see me, I didn’t do it.  If you didn’t catch me, it didn’t happen.  What we are not taking into account is that we are deep creatures, that we have strong habitual tendencies that have, that we have engaged in since time out of mind, that we are extraordinary and complicated, that there are layers and layers and layers and layers of tapestry or fabric or weaving that are part of our nature.

To say one mantra, even if you say it so perfectly, so beautifully, pronounce it so well and do so with complete absorption, could not possibly counteract time out of mind worth of habitual tendencies and inappropriate negative or neurotic activity, which we have engaged in.  So reciting one mantra meaningfully, or even reciting a series of them very meaningfully, could not possibly empty the depth, could not possibly purify the depth of that poop soup that we created or that we have lived with for so long.

So what we’re up against here is we are trying, we are using a technology that isn’t meant for a person who has only lived one life.  We’re using a technology that really wasn’t designed, was not given to the world to cure a superficial problem.  It was not given to us to heal a scratch.  The technology of dharma is so extraordinary and so complicated, so deep, so effortful because of what it is supposed to do.  What it has to do is a big job.  What it has to do is to purify nonvirtuous habitual tendency that we have created and are deeply ingrained since time out of mind.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Discovering Your Personal Ethics – An Exercise

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An excerpt from a teaching called Walking the Talk – Ethics by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

We are going to be talking about ethics, our lives and the structure of our lives.  I want you to think about this for a minute and really see if you can come up with a correct answer, not the one you think I would want to hear.  What I would like you to do is write down the three most important, and most visible ethical principles that you hold dear. Please spend some time thinking about this.  What are the things that you try not to let yourself get away with too much?  What is really precious to you?  Try to be as honest as possible.

Some of you may have ethics that sound like broad, sweeping statements about something.  And some of you may have ethics that are very simple and they apply directly to your life, and both of them are correct.  We’re not testing your ethics.  We are testing your ability to hold to them.  Whatever you say is OK.

Write down how you have upheld your ethics in the past week. Write down three answers – one for each of the three ethics. If it was not this week, because the circumstance did not come up, but was two weeks ago, you can write that down.

When you are finished write about sometime in the recent past when you did not hold fully to your ethics or perhaps even held to the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law.  In other words, when you fudged on your ethics.  Write down one for each of the three ethics you have chosen.  For those of us that say, “I always keep to these ethics and I never fudge,” my suggestion is to go back and re-examine, because I guarantee, particularly if your mind is that rigid, that you have held to the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law.  Just look for it. I can assure that it is in there.

Not everyone’s ethical system looks like the next person’s.  Of course, there are fundamental ethical structures that we all have to adopt or we cannot live together as a community, as a world or as a society.  Yet, many of us have different ethical slants, if you will.  Sometimes it depends on the circumstances of our lives.  The ethics that a person holds dear, if they were born poor in a third world country might be different than the ethics we were taught to respect here.  One is definitely not better than the other; they are simply different.  In asking these questions I am not asking you to feel that your ethics ought to be a certain way. Ethics teach us how to live in our world. So they may look different.  There are certain fundamental ethics that we should all adopt but what I am asking you to do is to look at your ethics, the ones that you hold dear, the ones that you really wholeheartedly agree with and hold precious.  So, they may not look like the next person and that is all right.  That does not matter for the purposes of this request.

Once you have written down some particular ethics that are precious and meaningful to you, ask yourself how you came to the conclusion that these are ethics that you want to hold?  What did you notice about your life? Be honest with yourself.  What made you arrive at these conclusions and when in your life did it happen?

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Walking the Talk

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Kapala relic from Genyenma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Walk the Talk – Ethics by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, June 8, 1994

There is a direct relationship between a person’s ethics and their stage of development, spiritually.  If a person has a very loose, wobbly and insufficient ethical system, you can count on the fact that they have not trod very far on the spiritual path.  I think that is very clear.  However, before you make such a judgment it is not a good idea to get into the habit of evaluating people spiritually. Different people have different kinds of ethical responses according to their development.  What you want to see is whether the person walks their talk  – not necessarily what their ethical system is.

An extreme example might be if a person lived a very simple life and was very poor and the circumstances of their life were very cut and dried, such that when they milked the cow they got the milk.  There are many, many cases of great bodhisattvas that, for whatever reason not only manifest as the farmer that milks the cow, but sometimes manifest as the cow.  In any case, when you see someone who has developed enough spiritually to have a set of ethics that they simply do not transgress, then you know you have got something to work with there.  Or, at least the person has a set of ethics that they try hard not to transgress and they are mindful of that whole situation.  That is important. To the degree that a person keeps their commitments, to that degree, you are looking at spiritual advancement, spiritual development or distance on the path.

I gave you the ‘simple person’ extreme example. What about in the case of a lama? The one that comes to my mind immediately is the first Ahkön Lhamo.  Generally speaking, the stories specifically about her are about when she would be sitting in her cave doing whatever and people would come to her with some life threatening illness or something like that, and she would beat them with sticks to remove their obstacles.

Now, most people think, particularly if you are a nurse, that if a person comes to you with a life threatening disease, beating them may not be the best thing!  Did Ahkön Lhamo not hold to her ethics, whereas the simple person held to their ethics more strongly?  Well, of course not.  In the case of Ahkön Lhamo, she was removing obstacles to their lives and that was her method.  That was simply her method so that in the case of a very advanced bodhisattva or lama, you cannot look at the ethical system – you cannot even understand it, really.  They will hold to a different view.  It is as though you were looking at the world from a street corner – from the world on a street corner, you can see the street and you can see stoplights and you can see the cars coming from different directions.  You can see the buildings going up.  But the Lama might be looking from the top of the building, or maybe even up in a helicopter somewhere, looking down, and the lay of the land is quite different.  Where the person on the street may think that the big thing they have to do right then is to buy a loaf of bread on the way home, the one who is looking from the helicopter may be seeing that the big thing they have to do right then is stop a tragedy that is about to happen three blocks away and they might forget the bread.

It is a question not necessarily about determining what the ethics are or making a judgment according to that, but rather looking and seeing that whoever you are looking at is able to walk their talk, is actually able to live in such a way as to obviously display that they have a strong ethical system.  That is what you want to look at.  And in the case of sentient beings, there is often a very huge distance between our ethical systems that we have through even our own simple logic to understand and our performing of the ethics and holding and sticking to them.

For those of us that feel that we have strong ethics and feel that we always hold to them, then I have to say, unless you are a living Buddha, either you are lying to yourself, or you are not deep enough and not sufficient in your search of your own mind, which you should know better than a book by now.  I would say to you that you have not searched your mind and your heart, that you have not really observed yourself truly.  I would say that you are fundamentally being dishonest and you may not know it.  It is not possible for sentient beings to keep closely and truly their commitments easily. It is not that it cannot be done, but it is not easily done.  Generally when people do, they hold the commitment up like a shining bauble and they find circumstances that match up easily with their commitment and they are able to fulfill them and say, “See, I’ve done this” and they wear it a bit like jewelry or some sort of gaudy bauble.  In that case, you would say that that person is maybe, in a few cases, holding up the letter of the law about their ethical equation, but not the spirit of the law. The spirit of the law is much deeper than that.  The spirit of the law requires you not only to be happy when your life situations easily match up with your ethics, but rather in every circumstance.  When you practice your ethics deeply you look for a way to display your ethics in every circumstance. When that begins to happen, you are also going to look at your ethics and think they are not big enough, because you want to live a bigger life than that and you will be hungrier as you develop; hungry to live a bigger, broader spectrum of spiritual development.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

A Courageous Life

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An excerpt from a teaching called Dharma and the Western Mind by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

I think a difficulty that Westerners have is so much input and so many different kinds of teachings.  Do you remember the first time you ever heard anything metaphysical? I don’t care if it was about flying saucers or about ghosts or whether it was the first time you picked up the Ouija board or did something weird like that. The first time you did anything that was metaphysical, you thought, “Hey I am on to something, this is it” and you got really excited and that excitement was a real joy to you. But haven’t you noticed that as you continued to go on this path in this direction you became less and less excited each time and finally you became a little cynical, and then suddenly you are just cool, “I’ve heard this before.”  When you start getting to the point where you say I am cool and I have heard this before, you are dead.  That is real cool.  That is about as cool as you can get.  But the problem is that most Americans are like that.

I find that when I teach new students the first thing that I have to do is a little razzle dazzle. Why? To get their attention.  We have heard so much stuff and everybody has got a sales pitch.  Of all the nations on earth this has got to be the nation with the most salespeople.  Of all the nations this has got to be the only place where everything gets sold, no matter what and you get to pick and choose no matter what and there are four different varieties.  It is almost a sickness.

It is a problem because now we are presenting Dharma, which is an ancient path, it is a path that describes supreme enlightenment, it is a path, which lays out the technology of supreme enlightenment, and it does it very well.  It does it consistently, and it does it purely.  It has done it in the same way for such a very long time and it has had proven results.

We even have stories of people who have practiced Dharma who have achieved what is called the rainbow body and have incredible miraculous signs at the time of their death. We think,  “Make me a believer, I dare you.”  We think like that and we act like that and we hope that someone will convince us.

I have found that another problem with Westerners is that we become a little hard.  I love you desperately, this is not an insult but we are a little cynical, a little hard to please. We have to have a certain percentage of entertainment value while we are being taught the Dharma.  I understand that but it’s a hard row to hoe.

Finally when we get this fire, this incredible love, this feeling that we only want to live this courageous life in order to benefit beings then we are okay but it is hard to get our attention and so this is another thing that I wish you would examine: how much you have been exposed to many different kinds of spiritual thought, and how many things you have been excited about that if you went back and examined, you would find were a puff-ball.  How many different systems have you thought, “Wow, this is exciting, this sounds right” and then you go back to it and you ask and find, “Who is it invented by, nobody; nobody that knows anything.” And nobody that got anywhere, anyway. Where did it come from, you can’t trace it back, you can’t figure it out.  Did it come from the mind of supreme enlightenment, maybe not?  If you go back and see the things that you got excited about you may find that from time to time you have been a little duped.

Mom told us that we would be happy if we did this and this and this.  The old idea about being rich, marrying a doctor, having children and dressing them nicely and wearing Polo shirts and Carter’s underwear; if you get all these things right then we will be happy.  We have become disappointed because we did everything correctly.  We got educated and we got a little prosperous. We have a Crock Pot; there is a chicken in it that, even as we speak, is overcooked.  We did all of these things and in mid-life we have a crisis.  It is so normal in our society that we write books about it.  The ‘Mid-Life’ crisis, the one you are bound to get to. It is weird if you think about it.   We tried all these things and we are not happy any more and we never were happy and it didn’t work. Basically what has happened is that we have become cynical and we are afraid to try.  We are one culture that has a particular problem: we are not believers actually, we are afraid to try. We say, “I have heard this and I have tried this.  I am not going to do anything hard.  I am going to get by and then I am going to die and that is how I am going to work this thing out.”

I find that Westerners have a tremendously hard time with the idea of making a real commitment with their lives, saying “Okay I get it.” I see that everybody is suffering, I see that there must be an end to suffering, I see that desire may be the cause of suffering, I see all of these things and I now understand the nature of emptiness.  Maybe it isn’t so dark and bleak and horrible.  Finally I can see where practicing Dharma would be right, I can see where this is what you should do with your life.”  But that moment at which you say, “Let this life only be a vehicle in order to practice Dharma, let that be the value of this life, let that be what I do” and be really courageous about it; that is hard for us.  We have a hard time. Understanding that the real value of this precious human rebirth is that we can accomplish a path to supreme enlightenment is a little difficult for us to get inspired about in that way.

If we could devise a way to help us to be less in love with what we should collect in our society, and how to be prosperous and have meaning in a material society, if we could become less involved with that idea and more involved with understanding the really important factor – the way in which we cultivate our minds and practice a proper technology to accomplish a pure and awakened mind state.  The point is to be of benefit to beings, to be awake as the Buddha was awake so we can bring about the end of suffering for ourselves and for all sentient beings.  The moment that which we discover this and it becomes meaningful to us we also need to divine a way to accomplish it.

©Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Emptiness = No thingness

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An excerpt from a teaching called Dharma and the Western Mind by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

I like Dharma and I have a Western mind. I feel that this is something that I need to talk about a great deal.  I also feel that there have been certain challenges that I have become aware of in speaking to Westerners, and that these things need to be addressed, brought out in the open where we can examine them, see what they mean and how they affect us.  In doing so we will derive some useful answers that will help us to remain firm in our practice and keep us on the path of Dharma.

There are certain ideas and kinds of conceptualization that are natural for each culture.  Each culture formulates its own specific ideas about reaching conclusions, and accepting ideas and conceptualizations as their own.  We reach our own conclusions about norms and what is right, what is normal and what is appropriate. When you bring a system or a teaching to a culture, it is necessary to address the peculiar way in which that culture listens.  In order to do that you have to understand the way in which that culture hears.

When I first began to teach Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist ideas, I found that there was a tendency for Westerners to hear certain ideas in a particular way otherwise it turned them off. However, if these Westerners were given the idea in a different way it would be all right and appropriate.  They would understand it and it would not be distasteful to them.  I found that it was a particular challenge to speak to Westerners in this way. I would like to express some of what I learned about that to you.

When you speak to a Westerner about the Primordial Wisdom State it must be done very carefully.  I discovered that trying to convey to Westerners the idea of self-nature as being inherently empty is a very difficult thing for Westerners to deal with.  We hear emptiness and we think about something that we don’t like.  We hear “empty” and we think empty pocketbook, empty stomach, empty, dark, cold, lonely, and no good.  That wasn’t the emptiness that Lord Buddha was talking about.  That was not the idea to be conveyed.  When we think of emptiness we think of the opposite of fullness and that is not what Lord Buddha is talking about.  When we think of emptiness we think of something that is bereft of any comfort, of any meaning, of any glory and of anything beautiful. We are an emotional people and we like our ‘glory’ and our ‘beautiful’ and all that stuff, so we think that emptiness is not good.

Actually when the Buddha spoke of emptiness, he spoke in such a way that he was delivering his message from a state that does not distinguish between emptiness and fullness; a state that actually understands emptiness and fullness to be the same taste, the same nature. When we speak of emptiness we actually don’t speak of emptiness as nothing and cold but rather we speak of “no thingness.” In this case nothing doesn’t mean gone, it doesn’t mean black, it doesn’t mean terrible, it means no thing, just what it is supposed to mean.

The Buddha spoke of a state that was actually free of conceptualization.  For the most part all that we perceive, everything that we have ever known in fact, is conceptualization. We know nothing then of that underlying nature which is empty of that conceptualization.  We think that to not have that conceptualization is simply not to have – that there is an absence rather than a fullness.  This is very difficult for us.

One of the reasons that it is so difficult is first of all we have not become awake to the Primordial Wisdom State and we have never had a taste of it.  And that taste is important; it is important to sense the reality of it.  Also, we are a materialistic society.  We are a society that is based on ‘thingness’ and all of the things that become important to us, all of our goals, are so much a part of our pattern of thought.  There is a tendency to wrap our minds around ‘thingness,’ it is all that we know, all that we are aware of.

© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

I WON! A Precious Human Rebirth!

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An excerpt from a teaching called Dharma and the Western Mind by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

When the Buddha speaks of the reasons why we should practice, he speaks primarily of the fact that all sentient beings are suffering and that they experience this suffering in one form or another every moment.  Even when they are extremely happy, sentient beings experience the suffering that is inherent within that happiness.  The happiness is impermanent and will soon be over: we have all experienced that.  We have all been afraid of our really good moods because we know that they will end.  And there are some times we are not willing to give ourselves over to a wonderful experience of wholeness, or happiness or love because we know that there will be a day when the mood swing will go in the opposite direction and then ‘kurplunk’ – there we are again.  So we have difficulty in relating to that kind of concept.  We also have difficulty in relating to the fact that we should be motivated to practice because the conditions of cyclic existence are unpredictable.  There is something about our culture that is pretty regimented.

Here in this country we know that if we are born, probably we will get to eat.  We know that there are people who are hungry but we don’t get to see them very often.  Most of the public knows that it is going to eat.  They may eat on welfare or caviar and pâté but they will eat.  We know pretty much that if we are sick, there is a place that we can go to get help.  Even if we have to get free help; still we can get help.  It’s true there are exceptions but I am thinking of the greater population.  The greater population has a certain regimentation that it is accustomed to things upon which it can rely.  We really don’t see too many people dying very young.  Proportionally there is less infant death and death by disease in young people than elsewhere.  We see it but somehow it is not a major part of the fabric of our lives and so we find a way to work around that.  We think that it is not a good reason to practice because the chances are good that we will scoot through it okay and even though we really do know that we might not be okay.  It could be that we could die young or experience some suffering; still we think that the chances are that we will be okay.

We have also been shielded from some of the more gruesome forms that suffering can take.  We don’t see a lot of gross deformity or retardation.  We don’t see a lot of things that are kept away from us, really for our protection, so it will be more pleasant.  We don’t like to think about the poverty that other people experience.

The way that our society works is that there is enough option for change. If we are aware that some people are suffering because there is a prejudice against them or some people are suffering because they are lonely, there is enough movement within our society that we can stay away from that.  We don’t have to look.  That isn’t the same in other societies, you have to look, and it is there.  Unless you close your eyes when you are crossing the streets, there is no way that you can deny it, because it is there.  So you are not particularly motivated by the fact that suffering if you do not develop the skill through the technology of practice (of insuring that you have a positive rebirth) that you could be reborn in conditions that are unbearable.  We don’t accept that as being true or we don’t think about it.

We also have certain ideas that we have grown up with and these ideas are part of our culture: they are sort of children of religious systems that are inherent in our culture.  They are part of what was handed to us.  There is an idea that so long as we do our best and consistently stay good and improve that predictably the next moment will be a little better.  I am not exactly sure how that happened but I think that it has to do with the fact that this is not, generally speaking, a culture that believes in cyclic death and rebirth.  It is not a culture that understands that you have had many lifetimes before, and unless you achieve supreme realization, you will have many lifetimes yet to come.

Instead we look at the fabric of our lives and we see that children eat and they get a little bigger and they eat some more and they get a little bigger and they get a little smarter and then there is a period of decline at the end of our lives, but we don’t think about that too much.  We think that things improve.

Even if you have come to accept the idea of rebirth, and that it is important, still the idea is that somehow I won’t get worse than I am.  We tell ourselves it is not going to get worse than it is right now.  It’s only going to improve because I am going to continue to do well and I am going to be good spiritually.  I am going to be a good person and if I have already become a human being and I have these fortunate circumstances then this is all that there is so it is just going to get better.

We think this way because we don’t understand how awesome the components of the phenomena that we experience are.  We think that things are so stable, that the circumstances that we experience now are the sum total of all the learning that we have ever done and all of the goodness that we have ever been involved in: all of the good and bad, it’s all been worked out.  It’s only uphill from here.   Basically I think that this belief is the result of an absolute marriage with the idea of linear progression.  Therefore we are not motivated to practice.  But this is inconsistent with what the Buddha teaches.

The Buddha teaches us that we are here through a miraculous set of circumstances because we must have done something wonderful in the past.  In order to hear the Buddha’s teaching, in order to even have a shot at enlightenment, in order to not be suffering so much that it is possible to practice, to have a shot at listening to Dharma, to be able to think of helping others, we must have had an extremely fortunate past.  We must have had wonderful circumstances and really have done some good.  What they call good karma.

However, according to the Buddha we have lived incalculable eons.  From beginningless time we have been doing this.  We have experienced so many lifetimes that the causes that were begun during those times, many of them have not even actualized themselves.  They are still seedlings within our mind stream.  We have so many under the belt, that we literally have accumulated the causes for rebirth in the highest and most fortunate state and we have also accumulated causes for rebirth in the lowest and most difficult realms.  We have all of these circumstances and somehow, almost like a gambling wheel going around we stopped at a precious human rebirth and here we are experiencing this precious human rebirth.

What makes it precious is that we have all of our faculties; we have the opportunity to practice the Buddha’s teaching.  What makes it precious is that we have a shot at attaining realization and we aren’t suffering too much to do it.  We have the leisure to practice.  Understand that finding this precious human rebirth is, as the Buddha taught, very similar to finding a precious jewel while sifting through garbage.  It is that rare.  Finding this precious human rebirth with these fortunate circumstances is as common as dust on the fingernail compared to dust on the earth.  That’s how many more options you had of other kinds of rebirths.  If you understand how rare this birth is, you will find motivation to practice.   But Westerners have a tremendous difficulty with that.

Feeling that there is only linear progression Westerners have a certain pridefulness that unfortunately says, “Well if I have what it takes to get to this point where I can think as I do and practice as I do and be as wonderful as I truly am, then surely I can keep that stuff going somehow and it will remain stable in that way.”  The Buddha says not.  The Buddha says that there are specific reasons that you are here and if you utilize this life to increase your merit, good karma, virtue and value inherent within your mind stream, and if you purify your mind, thereby increasing its beauty and luminosity, then you will proceed on a path that will lead to supreme enlightenment.

But think about how many people here in the West kid themselves about this.  We feel safe in a life that is ever changing.  We feel permanent in the midst of impermanence and we feel that we have got it knocked and we go up and down every day and then we don’t do anything to improve our state.  Maybe we change a few things as a token gesture, we try to live a good life, we are nice to our kids.  We are good upstanding people, but in the end we find that we have been sitting on top of a precious jewel and a fantastic opportunity, and at the end of our lives we come to a realization that we have wasted it. What has happened is that it takes such an enormous amount of good qualities, virtue, good karma and merit to have gained such a life as this and when we could have done something, when we had an opportunity to accomplish the Dharma we didn’t.

©Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

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