A sacred space for everyone
The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:
If weary, sick or sad, come to the KPC Stupas and rest and pray. Leave an offering to say “I was here!”.
Stupas are meant to heal suffering, bring peace, balance, strengthen one’s path. Come see for yourself.
I wish I had funds to build Stupas all along the Pacific Rim. They would heal, balance, purify the Earth.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo All rights reserved
The following is a YouTube video teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo extracted from a talk called “The Attitude of Gratitude”
The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Antidoting the Mantra of Samsara”
As a part of Ngondro, we have to accomplish 100,000 repetitions of a short version of the Bodhisattva Vow, the Bodhicitta mantra. Do you think to yourself, “Well what’s the goal here? See, I’m trying to be compassionate. O.k. so from now on I’m just going to be nice.” Have you ever tried to make that decision? From now on you’re going to be nice? Have you ever tried to do that? How long did it last? Maybe five minutes if you’re lucky! I think the all-time world record for a woman is 28 days! And that goes for her husband also! So it really can’t be done. You can’t just decide you’re going to be compassionate. And why is that? Because you still have the weight of these ancient habitual tendencies and deluded perceptions.
The Buddha teaches us that what’s needed here is to recite the Bodhicitta mantra at least 100,000 times with the correct absorption, correct mental concentration, mental imaging, and mental visualization, just as you are taught by the Buddha. Don’t make up your own religion now. Don’t do that! Practice what the Buddha has taught you just like the Buddha says, and that will change that. Rather than thinking “Oh, let me see if I can rewrite this religion to make it a little easier,” which you guys have all tried to do, haven’t you? Yes, we know that. So, instead of rewriting the religion, we actually practice it the way that it was given. But we’re thinking, “Wouldn’t it be nice, instead of this 100,000 business, why don’t we sort of do it the new way? This is a new age isn’t it? We’ll just think positive all of the time.” Anybody ever tried to think positive all the time? That’s another fun one. The world record for that is also 28 days.
So we have to understand that what’s recommended here is not arbitrary. Some Buddhist person didn’t show up a long time ago and say “Let’s see, when it gets to be about 1996, how are we going to torture these people?” It wasn’t like that at all. These practices are meant to antidote your particular situation. You must understand that these were not given to us by ordinary sentient beings. These were not authored by someone who felt that they had an answer the way many of our New Age wisdoms are. You know, nowadays we hear people coming up with wisdom all the time, all kinds of wisdom.They came up with it two years ago, five years ago—how to dream, how to vision. Everybody’s got some wisdom.
But this stuff that comes from the Buddha is different. What actually occurred here is that the very mind of enlightenment appeared in the world as the perfected Buddha. This was not an ordinary sentient being. This is the Buddha nature appearing in the world in a form that we can see with our eyes. And from the mind of that nature, from the mind of that one, from that, directly from the Buddha nature itself, this antidotal process was given. It’s not the same as some mom and pop wisdom somebody cooked up nowadays. So it’s not going to sound like, “Let’s put a bandaid on an ulcer.” It’s not going to sound like “O.k. you’ve been alive since time out of mind creating lots of nonvirtue. Just think positive. Everything will be fine.” It’s not going to sound like that.
It’s going to sound like what it is. The necessary solution for what ails you according to what you actually are, not according to your over-simplified understanding of yourself. So the Buddha has given a very deep, very extensive, very profound method for a very deep, extensive and profound problem. And there are no shortcuts.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo. All rights reserved
The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Western Chod”
I came to understand that that is the way it would be. I had to not lie to sentient beings. I could not hold these beings in my arms and say, “Here I am for you. I’ll do anything I can for you,” because it was complete, pardon my French, bullshit. You know, I was lying to them. So I began to think, “Well, if this unlimited luminous, pure, uncontrived nature that is free of suffering could somehow be here, that’s it. That’s it.” But how to do it? How to do it?
At that time I really didn’t have the answers. Honestly, I have to tell you that part of my life was like mountain tops and valleys at the same time, because I really felt the bliss of feeling that I had come to understand the faults of this world and had come to truly reach for and lift my sights to something that was so much purer, so much better. I really felt the bliss of that, and kind of excitement and happiness of being on my way. But the suffering of knowing that you could do nothing but lie to your child… The suffering of knowing that everything that we see looks so good, so colorful and wonderful, and it’s bullshit. It’s a lie. That kind of suffering! It was a very difficult time. Plus the struggle of thinking “I’ve got to find a way!!” And I had no teacher who could give me the way. No teacher at that time had come to my life yet who could say, “All right. Do this and this and this, and that will happen.” So I’m struggling with this and I’m thinking every day, “What can I do?” I mean literally I had gotten myself into such a state that if I could have physically ripped out my heart and handed it to Lord Buddha himself… I didn’t think of Lord Buddha at that time, I forget. It was just that absolute nature. If I could rip out my heart and physically hand it to the absolute nature, I would do it, because I was going crazy, kind of a little crazy. There was this crazy Yogi phenomenon happening, you know? I was a little crazy with this idea. I couldn’t think about anything else. It was weird.
I would sort of reward myself at the end of the day, here on this farm. I would sit down and have a cup of tea and a snack. One day I went out and got some potato chips. I thought I would have some potato chips and a coke. Now I like potato chips, but potato chips don’t like me, so this was a splurge. So I had a potato chip. And then I started thinking about my practice, and thinking about the children, thinking of beings in samsara, thinking about my mouth. Did I give this up or not? I did. The whole thing became so disgusting to me.
So that’s the kind of experience that I had. Many of you will say, “Well, I don’t know if I want to have that kind of experience. Thank you very much.” But I have to say that also in that was a tremendous amount of joy, like nothing I had ever experienced in the world. Greater joy than even my family, which I was very happy with and very much caring for and very close to. Greater joy than anything I could see or touch or eat or smell or anything, because I could feel that here was some noble potential. Maybe it hadn’t been actualized yet, but somewhere was this noble potential, and the excitement of that was really happy. It was a happy and genuine thing, and I really thought that somewhere in here there is going to be the solution for sentient beings.
Here I was—you have to understand the humor of this.Here I am back in Chandler, North Carolina, reinventing the wheel, literally reinventing the eight-spoke wheel because I didn’t realize that Lord Buddha had already done this. I had no idea. I had absolutely no idea. So here I am trying to find the way. I didn’t realize that Lord Buddha at some point made the same decision. He noticed that there was old age, sickness and death and he left to go figure out how to make this better. He took off and tried to make it better. In a way, that’s exactly what I was trying to do. If only I had known, I could have short-circuited that a little bit. I have to tell you, that particular practice, done in that way, from my heart, with very little guidance —especially that nothing was written down so that I had to make it up—was so profound.
The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Antidoting the Mantra of Samsara”
Now, during this practice, with our whole body we’re purifying body karma arising from the non-virtuous activity that we have engaged in since time out of mind, when instead of going for refuge, we went for ice cream. So instead, now we are actually using our body, speech and mind—using the body by making prostrations, using the speech by reciting, and using the mind by remaining absorbed and visualizing. Now we are training in the same way that a body builder trains a muscle. He develops and trains that muscle by pumping it and working it and working it. Now we are working to sharpen our focus, not to be simply reactive and discursive the way we are in samsara going towards meaningless goals with no distinction whatsoever. I mean, we’ll follow anything!
Instead of going for meaningless goals that have no meaning whatsoever, instead now we are training body, speech, and mind to be single-pointed for the first time. This is pretty amazing! I mean, think about it. For the first time, single-pointed. I take refuge in the Buddha, in the Dharma and the Sangha. And if you do it with your body, speech and mind, the potency of reciting that 100,000 times is extraordinary! Simply extraordinary! I mean, completing 100,000 repetitions of the refuge mantra and prostrations is an extraordinarily life-changing experience. It’s like stopping the merry-go-round for a minute. If you were born on a merry-go-round and your movement was invisible, and then suddenly you stopped, don’t you think that something inside of you would go, “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! What’s this? This is new!” And that would be the beginning of a new kind of experience. And it takes the weight of that kind of practice to make that happen.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo. All rights reserved
An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called Turning Adversity Into Felicity
When we practice Guru Yoga, we actually begin to develop the view that the lama is the source of liberation. We begin to understand using traditional, prescribed images. For instance, we are taught that we should think of samsara as being like a burning room. In samsara there is a great deal of suffering, and it’s actually just as probable that you will experience adversity as it is probable that you will experience felicity. It is just as probable that you will experience suffering as it is that you will experience happiness and joy. So we think of samsara as being untrustworthy, and we think—and this is true—that within samsara, because of our confusion and our lack of awareness about what our nature actually is, we are constantly giving rise to the causes for more suffering. This is constantly the case. So we think of samsara as being like a burning room with no windows, that there is no escape except for this one door. In our practice we think that the Lama is like that door.
The Lama is considered to be the door to liberation, the very means by which the blessing comes to us. Without the Lama, we would not have been hooked onto the path. Without the Lama, we would not receive the teaching. Without the Lama, we would not understand the teaching. Without the Lama, our minds would not be empowered and ripened and matured. That is the responsibility of the relationship between the guru and disciple. The mind must be matured in order to progress on the path. So we rely on the Lama for all of these things without which we remain wandering in samsara experiencing birth/death/birth/death/birth/death with very little control.
Of course, when life is going well we think that this must not be true. It looks like we have a lot of control in our life. But if you think that, then you should read the newspaper more frequently, and you should talk to people who have been inflicted with incurable, diseases, who were afflicted completely out of the blue, not expecting that their lives would come to this. You should talk to people who have suffered through circumstances that seemed to come from outside, misfortune, the loss of a job, the loss of loved ones. These are terrible sufferings for us as human beings, and until we have experienced our fair share of them — and we will, eventually; old age, sickness and death, these things occur to all of us — we have the delusion of a certain kind of control in our life. Ordinarily that kind of delusion comes with youth, and then later on, as we pass the age of supreme omniscience at about 30, we begin to discover that, in fact, we are not totally in control, that life seems to control us.
So we think of samsara as being this untrustworthy, inescapable difficulty, and we think of the lama as being the door to liberation. We hold that kind of regard. It isn’t that we worship a personality. Of course, it’s not like that. That would be very superficial and useless. What good is a personality? If we conceive of the Lama as a personality, what good would that do us? We are a personality, and look where it’s gotten us! That’s nothing to rely on. So we rely on the Guru as the condensed essence of all the objects of refuge: all the Buddhas, all the Bodhisattvas, all the Lamas, all the meditational Deities, the Dakinis and the Dharma protectors all rolled into one, including all of the teachings. These are the liberating truths of Dharma. These are the objects of refuge. So the Lama becomes the door through which we exit samsara.
© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo
The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Antidoting the Mantra of Samsara”
When we practice prostrations we are applying the antidote to pride. Well, you think to yourself, if that’s what we’re doing, I’ll just stop being proud! And how long do you think that’s going to work because you know what you’ve already done? You’ve already said I could figure out how to do this better than the Buddha did! You don’t think there’s a little pride in that? Hm? Hm? I do. There’s pride in that already. Instead of being oriented towards engaging in non-virtuous activity and creating non-virtuous habitual tendency and continuing our delusions, instead we should make prostrations. And how do we make prostrations? We say, “I take refuge in the Buddha, in the Dharma and in the Sangha.” The Three Precious Jewels—the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. Now why is it necessary to do that 100,000 times and to bend our bodies when we do that? Because inside ourselves we are constantly saying “I take refuge in what-I-want, what-I’m-gonna-get, and what-I’ll-have-in-the-future. I take refuge in you-love-me, you-take-care-of-me, you-give-me-stuff.” We are constantly taking refuge in stereo, TV, CD player. We are taking refuge in chocolate. What else? What do you like? Cake? Ice cream! I mean, these are the ways that we think! We don’t realize that, but when you go for something, what do you go for? You go for something else! You don’t go for the Buddha, the Dharma or the Sangha. You go for ice cream! You go for a new car! You go for anything but the Buddha the Dharma and the Sangha!
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo. All rights reserved
The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:
Any time you talk badly about someone you actually shorten your life force. Or at the least you endanger your ability to draw trusting friends and the ability to be well-spoken in future times. And no one will believe you.
I don’t like gossip – it does no good and tastes like poison. And it comes back.
Question from Twitter Follower: “What is the distinction between gossip and recounting your experiences with others?”
Jetsunma’s response: Intention is the difference. Tell stories, I do. Usually we know when we are being mean-spirited.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo. All rights reserved
An excerpt from a teaching called Dharma and the Western Mind by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
Having taught Westerners I can see that the ones that last on this path, the ones that change and gentle and deepen in their practice are the ones that are motivated by this intensity of loving. The ones that will do almost anything to end suffering, these are the ones that make it. These are the ones that I have hopes for.
It is a Buddhist tradition that we should pray for the ones who have hopes of us because we have many karmic connections. Each one of us have karmic connections, it’s just like a giant web of connections, and some day each one of us will attain supreme enlightenment just as Lord Buddha did. Surely we will, because our nature is the same as his. We are the same and we will some day become awakened to that nature. And on that day, those with whom we have connections, those who have hopes of us, will rejoice because at last they have a chance. You should think right now there are those who are waiting for you, whose future it is, whose karma it is that when you achieve supreme realization they will depend on you as your disciples and you will be their teacher. You will be the one by which the door to liberation is opened for them.
Some day you will be reborn as a teacher that opens the door of Dharma, or makes the path available and you will be the cause of the end of their suffering. You should think about them every day. You should pray for those who have hopes of you. It is a very important thing to think about and in teaching Westerners I find that they must remember this.
Even if all of the concepts associated with the Buddha Dharma are difficult, even if the idea of devotion is difficult, even if the idea of doing prostrations is difficult because we are unfamiliar with these things, we can do anything in order to benefit beings. We can accustom ourselves to any idea in order to benefit beings. Once your mind has been gentled and softened by that kind of loving you can begin to understand that the most important thing is to eliminate suffering. You can understand also that the idea of doing what is unfamiliar to you – repetition of mantra, practice of different kinds, meditation of different kinds, sitting for a very long time, doing prostrations, developing a relationship with the guru, these things, that are not common in our Western society, become acceptable because we can see that they bear fruit and gentle our minds. They increase our capacity for loving and they bring us closer to enlightenment. Then we can do it.
©Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo
An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Dakini Workshop
The Dakini is considered to be the enlightened or concerned activity of the Buddha nature. In order to understand the enlightened or concerned activity of the Buddha nature one should understand thoroughly the activity of samsara. In order to do that, one should observe one’s own activity. The key word to describe one’s own activity is effortfulness. Everything that we do requires effort. There is nothing that we can simply do spontaneously without effort. Everything requires effort; including starting with the effort it takes to get up in the morning and the effort that it takes to continue throughout the day. Every single item on our agenda requires some effortfulness.
Of course, there are degrees of effortfulness and there are degrees of ease. You can describe some things as being easy. You can describe some things that you do as being very, very difficult but the key word, the mark of samsaric experience, samsaric movement, is that everything one does requires effortfulness. That is the basis of it. And of course, in order to understand that basis of effortfulness, one must understand the foundation or the basis of activity. All activity experienced within samsaric existence is based on the idea of self-nature as being inherently real because the self is doing the activity. It has to be based on that. And in order for self to interact with the environment, self has to distinguish between self and other. That distinction has to be made. That is the activity that is going on in samsaric experience.
In order for that to happen, one must have attraction, repulsion or neutrality. One must interact with, or continue to meet up against and reinforce duality in every sense. Therefore, in samsaric experience concerning activity, there is always an inherent friction. Nothing slides through. There is no effortlessness. There is always a friction. There is always a bumping up against. That bumping up against has to do with the mind of duality and the distinction between subject and object. There is no movement in samsara without that. All movement occurs in that way.
Therefore, in order to understand the nature of the Dakini and enlightened activity or compassionate activity, one must understand the concept of effortlessness. In order to understand the concept of effortlessness, one must understand the basis for the appearance of miraculous enlightened activity in the world, and that, which is consistent with the nature of the Dakini. The basis for enlightened compassionate activity is that this activity is consistent with, inseparable from and indistinguishable from, enlightenment itself – Buddha nature. That must be understood.
How is that distinct from ordinary activity? Ordinary activity has that friction and struggle associated with its basis. This basis is the fundamental idea of self-nature as being particularly solid. Remember that in order to determine self-nature, one has to distinguish between self and others, so immediately there has to be division, there has to be distinction, there has to be cleavage – there has to be a breakage of some kind. That movement is very hard. It is a movement very much involved in a solid process of continuing the continuum. That is the basis for any activity or movement seen in samsara. That is not the case pertaining to the nature of the Dakini, enlightened activity or compassionate activity.
If we can think of the nature of the Buddha we should think of the great sphere of truth, the undifferentiated expanse, the great sphere of emptiness. We should think that there is no basis for the sphere of truth, there is no basis for emptiness, and there is no building block or cause and effect relationship because there is no distinction within the great expanse. In order to understand the great expanse, the mind has to relax utterly. There is no arising of the components of distinction. There is no contrivance. There is no ripple or friction or cleavage or distinction of any kind. The great sphere of truth is simply suchness. The moment one tries to box up suchness or put it in a bottle or put in a certain shape or color it or distinguish it from suchness, it is no longer that. So, the great sphere of truth is as it is – simply suchness.
Yet, all potency arises from the sphere of truth. All that one sees, all richness, all diversity arises from the sphere of truth: that which we perceive as diversity arises from the sphere of truth. How can that be so? Either a thing is empty or it is not? Well, the mistake, the delusion comes after the idea of self-nature as being inherently real. At that point, the mind operates in the posture of distinction. It operates in the posture of duality. And everything that is perceived from that point is engaged in that process. Yet, from the point of view of enlightenment, when one has awakened to that nature and the view is correct, when one no longer engages in the process of distinction, when the mind is restful, spacious and luminous in the natural state, the mind is not operating in distinction. There is no distinction. And so, all that arises from the sphere of truth arises spontaneously and effortlessly and is spontaneously completed and insubstantial, like a rainbow.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved