Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

Gratitude and Guru Yoga

November 23, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from the Mindfulness workshop given by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo in 1999

Another aspect of constant mindfulness – it’s sort of like hand-in-glove with offering – is gratitude. When you think about the appearance of all phenomena, like beautiful flowers, beautiful trees, all of our beautiful stuff, suppose you were able to develop the habit of thinking like this: “How great must be the Buddha nature, that this display of the Buddha nature is so beautiful,” with gratefulness. It’s not like ‘thank-you-God-for-everything.’ It’s not like that. It’s a deep response, joyfulness, the Recognition to see that the nature that is our deepest, most profound nature, the nature that is all-pervasive, the nature that is our Buddha nature is actually inherent in all appearances. To acknowledge that, to move into any kind of Recognition of that is so amazing. To think that we are somehow connected. How amazing!

A sense of wonder that encourages you, not just to see and react in a dull and stupid way, but to perceive more deeply. By doing that, we develop the habit of letting the mind be more profound, letting the mind reach its depth, and consequently, one’s practice becomes so much more profound and our level of Recognition becomes so much more deepened. This sense of gratitude ultimately, as we begin to practice, gives rise to an awareness of the emptiness of all phenomena and the inherent nature that is the heart of all phenomena.

As we begin to think like that, every time we take beauty into our eyes and have the opportunity to offer that beauty, perhaps we can say, “That is Guru Rinpoche’s. This is Guru Rinpoche speaking to me. I see this beauty and now I have, because of that, the opportunity to offer this beauty to the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas for the liberation and the salvation of all sentient beings.” If you have a marvelous personal experience and remember to offer the joy of that experience for the sake of sentient beings, or to the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas, to be able to do that, in that moment, you are with Guru Rinpoche. Guru Rinpoche is speaking to you.

If we learn to Recognize the intrinsic nature of phenomena, isn’t that like learning to see the face of the guru? What’s important about this is the power that we have to practice this way. In ordinary situations, if you love somebody, they can be taken away from you. They themselves can walk away from you. You could lose them. But in this way of thinking, this kind of practice of mindfulness, no one can ever take the appearance of Guru Rinpoche away from you. No one can ever take from you, nothing on this earth has the power to hide from you, to keep from you, the face of the guru. So if you’re able to look at your environment, and think, “Oh, this is so beautiful, such a beautiful place,” and you’re able to really offer it and feel that blissfulness of just letting go and surrendering all the beauty that you see to the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas, praying fervently that somehow that virtue will be used to benefit beings, praying that all of that virtue will go to nourish sentient beings, at that moment, you are in the very arms of the guru. You are not separate from the guru.

In ordinary relationships, someone can take that away from you. Samsara has that power, and there’s not a thing you can do about it. How amazing to distinguish between that and the extraordinary relationship that is brought about through mindfulness and Recognition: this one relationship that nobody on this earth, even Guru Rinpoche himself, could take away from you, not that he’d want to. We have this extraordinary opportunity.

Regarding recognition and mindfulness in our Guru Yoga, remember how I’ve taught you that ultimately the practice of Guru Yoga helps us to recognize our own nature, to recognize our primordial wisdom nature as being inseparable from the teacher? How amazing to use this practice of Recognition in such a way as to expedite all of that and make it so much more profound and so much more meaningful instead of reacting constantly as we habitually do. How amazing if even once, twice, three times in one day, in one week, we can practice that Recognition and remove ourselves from that neurotic scenario, using the appearance of phenomena and our reaction to it as a way to see the face of the guru. How amazing!

Watch It

November 19, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from the Mindfulness workshop given by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo in 1999

You’ve heard this so many times in Buddhism: watch your mind. That is an indication to give rise to a state of recognition, the ability to discriminate the nature of phenomena. When we begin to practice in such a way that we can get a little spaciousness in between the assumption of self-nature as inherently real and the reaction to the tree, there is a natural pause that develops. It’s a very small pause, but as you continue to practice, it will grow. That moment of spaciousness will grow. Then you are empowered to do something that you couldn’t do any other way, and that is to get ready to start dealing with your emotions and seeing them for the empty phenomena they actually are.

You know, we have all kinds of techniques for dealing with our emotions. We take Prozac, we go to therapy, we drink – self-medication – we suppress our emotions. Some of us are just champs at that. We repress our emotions, or we divert them. We divert them into something else entirely, and then we’re completely crazy. There are all kinds of different ways to deal with our emotions, but one way to deal with your emotions, if you’re really going to practice this path and you’re really going to treasure this idea of recognition and treasure this idea of practicing mindfulness, you’ve got to watch the mind. You have to watch; you have to perceive the nature of experience, perceive the nature of appearance, perceive the nature of phenomena.

Instead of suppressing emotion, diverting emotion, glossing over emotion, the thing to do here is to practice when we are very relaxed so that when we are in a highly emotional state we can begin to insert that same wedge, that same bit of spaciousness. It’s not that you judge yourself harshly and say, “God, I’m just such a terrible person. I’m just so angry all the time. I hate that about myself!” I actually have a student that does that to herself. “I just hate that about myself!” Well, that’s a solution, isn’t it? “I just hate that about myself.” Instead of doing that, you can simply observe. Observe like a mind that is calm like a lake. You’re observing. That’s all you’re doing. You don’t need to do anything else. Watch yourself in the equation. Watch yourself clinging to the idea of self-nature as being inherently real. Watch yourself assuming that everything else is out there, and watch yourself react to, with hope, fear or neutrality, everything. Watch yourself also go into that emotional state which is really only the elaboration of that original equation. That’s all it is. It’s just an elaboration of the original equation. We think our emotions are us; they’re so precious because we areour feelings, and that’s what makes us unique. That is bull hockey. I don’t know how better to say that.

Instead we have to begin to realize what these emotions are. They are just the continuation or elaboration of that original equation: ego-clinging reactiveness, that equation is simply a more elaborate form. In order to insert the spaciousness that is required, what we have to do is find a way to observe. Even when you’re getting ready to kick the dog and throw the kid through the wall, technically speaking it’s very, very hard when you’re in that state to do much about it. Once you’re there, just wait for it to go away. That’s all you can do. Once you’re there, it’s very difficult, but even if in that aroused, inflamed state we are able to observe ourselves, that is the unique capacity of human beings. Won’t you use it? It’s what distinguishes you from the rest. If there’s anything that makes you special, that’s it: the ability to put that spacious moment in there through observing the reaction. We can just say, “That’s just like me. Yeah, that’s just like me. I do that.” And then maybe questioning oneself later on and understanding, “Well, I do that because I’m protecting my turf; I’m protecting my space; I’m not wanting to change anything; I’m wanting to be powerful and right, so I need to put everybody else down.”

Whatever it is, simply observe, just observe, and you’ll find out that if you do that as consistently, deliberately, honestly, truly and deeply as you can, that after a while – and it doesn’t come immediately, so please don’t look for immediate results necessarily – there will be a spacious moment. It might be just a little moment between you and your reaction, but eventually in your practice, by practicing Dharma, by using generation and completion stage methods, you will be able to recognize. In that spaciousness, you can begin to recognize the emptiness of both the ego and that which affects it. But it takes a combination of things. It takes the ability to practice Dharma the way that our teachers teach us in generating oneself as the deity and practicing completion stage practice, but it also takes this deliberate, walking, waking mindfulness. This is part of the path.

Another Glass of Samsara?

November 18, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from the Mindfulness workshop given by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo in 1999

Do you ever sense that there is a thickness in your mind, almost like pudding? We can’t break through it. It’s like we go through these sleepwalking motions, and you lose days, hours, years. You just lose time, and that thickness is because we already decided, way back somewhere else, that one of the goals in life was to get such-and-such, and in order to get such-and-such, we have to act thus-and-so. Once we decide that, we never think about it again, not really. We never stop to reevaluate. That is the unique thing about our brains. It’s something we really need to understand. Once you come to a conclusion and you conceptualize something, that’s it. You act by rote afterwards. You have to break through that.

In order to really give rise to true compassion, one has to recognize the faults of cyclic existence, and be in a state of recognition. In order to awaken to a state of recognition, to begin that process of discrimination, you have to rouse your mind from going through these preset patterns which are based on deluded ideas that you were given somewhere early on that you’ve never bothered to change. If you don’t change those, you will still try to attain the same type of goals, but you’ll be wearing Dharma clothes and doing Dharma activities when you do it. If you got the message that you have to be a star, be powerful, be smarter, or be some kind of special person, then when you practice Dharma, if you don’t go back and reevaluate that in a mindful and discriminating way, you will simply do the same thing with Dharma clothes on, with Dharma words in your mouth. Basically what we’re doing there is continuing to practice sleepwalking.

This discrimination that I’m talking about is not like a generalized, euphoric state where you walk dreamily outside and you say, “I’m mindful of the Buddha nature and everything.” That’s not what we’re talking about here. This mindfulness is requiring of yourself, stimulating yourself, rousing yourself to rethink, to reassess, and to try to give rise to some recognition of what is precious and what is flawed; of what is extraordinary and what is ordinary.

We can equate the condition we are in ordinarily to be like drunkenness. It’s exactly like drunkenness. Some of my best students –Best with a capital “B,” as in Buddhist – are recovering alcoholics. Recovering alcoholics have a wonderful opportunity because having emerged from the cocoon of constant, chronic alcohol consumption and the cycle of craving and the response, the recovering alcoholic has the opportunity to put aside the drinking and go through the process of picking up one’s awareness again and focusing it. They have the sense of knowing what it’s like to do that for the first time. I’ve talked to many recovering alcoholics, and they always say the worst time is the first time. The worst time is right after you quit drinking, and you notice that you have no mind, and you try to get one going. You try to punch start it somehow. You try to teach your mind how to think in a way that does not always go back into obsession, compulsion, and desire. Recovering alcoholics have this magical understanding of what it’s like when you first get sober and the difference between that sober state – even if it’s a little raw and painful at first – and that other state. They realize that they were not functioning. They understand that they were not “there.” There was nobody home and they were being driven by craving alone. There was nothing else going on. There was nothing in your head but buzz, and the buzz got louder when you walked away from the liquor store, and it got better when you walked toward the liquor store. The opportunity to experience what that’s like, to awaken to sobriety, is a fabulous teacher because it gives one a sense that all sentient beings are alcoholics. We may not be drinking alcohol, but we are guzzling down the samsara! We are high on ego! We don’t ever want to get off that. If we ever, in just one day, spent as much time on our practice as we do on our ego, we would be changed forever.

Having that experience of suddenly awakening to a sober state is not so different from moving out of the drunkenness of preconceived patterns and ideas, with all of their judgments, reactions and habitual tendencies of doing what you thought you were supposed to be doing, and into that sobriety that one attains when one begins to move into a state of recognition. At that point, one begins to discriminate what the problems of samsara are, and what the difference is between what is extraordinary and what is ordinary. One begins to see what’s really going on here. That state of discrimination is just like the very beginning of sobriety, and like the beginning of sobriety, it can be a little raw and painful. In the drunken state, you try to stay comfortable in the time and space grid where you are in ignorance, saying, “Oh, I’m sitting here right now, so I’m not dead, therefore I’ll never be dead. I’m sitting here right now and I’m middle-aged, therefore I’ll never be old.” To awaken from that kind of deluded thinking and say instead, “I’m middle-aged now and I used to be a kid. Uh-oh, that means there’s a progression happening here. Whoa! Where’s that taking me?”

We don’t like to think like that. As sentient beings, we try to keep ourselves in a safety zone, thought-wise, don’t we? One day you look in the mirror, and you say, “Wow, what happened to the flesh that used to be up on that cheekbone?” And although you see it, and you think it’s kind of funny, you know it’s happening, but you tell yourself it’s not really happening. You tell yourself it’s just that you had a potato chip last night so you had too much salt. We try not to think that any of this is happening, and we stay in our comfort zone. We spend most of our calories trying to stay in this comfort zone.

Recipe for Results

October 5, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series

As long as the idea of self exists, self will experience other with either attraction, or repulsion. There is no other way to experience other. Whether it’s subtle or not, even if you are a proponent of New Age philosophy, and are supposed to love everybody and have unconditional positive regard towards others, if you could really examine your mind with determination, courage, innocence and willingness, you would discover that you are either attracted to or repulsed by everything you see, no matter how you gloss it over. No matter what you say, the karma is still forming. That is how the consequences of one’s life actually manifest: through that constant inter-reactive relationship, through that interplay, through attraction and repulsion, through desire. That’s how it’s possible for you to be born. That’s how it’s possible for you to do things you feel uncontrollably forced to do.

Even if we are so convinced that we know all of these teachings, don’t we still get into trouble? Don’t we find that we react to circumstances in a way that is not skillful? Don’t we, in fact, on an on-going basis make everything worse? I mean, it’s true, if we are honest with ourselves. Every time we react, we make things worse. Even when we can’t see that we’ve made things worse, I’m telling you this is the truth: we are constantly compounding the karma of our own minds. Even if in retrospect, we could see that we should have been loving, and we should have been kind and good, blah, blah, blah, blah, still, we are compulsive about it. We are what we are. We are ‘feeling junkies.’ We are hooked on sensual experience. And we react to it.

What then is the answer? If all of this is true, and desire is the foundation of all suffering, then what if the Buddha is right? What if all of suffering comes from the belief in self-nature? Will it do to pacify our minds with positive thinking? Will it do to walk around with the idea or the New Age philosophy saying, “Oh, I’m already enlightened because I understand I am the creator, or one.” I’d have to say you’re talking about two selves there. You’re talking about ‘creator’ and ‘I,’ and so long as there is distinction, so long as there is the belief in self-nature, you still have desire. You still have attraction and repulsion. You still have hope and fear. You haven’t gone yet into a deep and profound understanding of the emptiness of self-nature. Of course, we have to do that through meditation. There is no ordinary language or ordinary experience that will teach us that profound understanding.

The best thing to do, actually, is to find a qualified teacher who can begin to help you, not only in terms of giving you the words – the verbal teachings – but also some kind of virtuous or valuable energy transmission. On the Vajrayana path, that is done through the transmission of the lineage. The teachings on the nature of emptiness, the teachings on the generation-stage practices, all of the different teachings that we receive here, are passed down through a lineage. That lineage originates in the mind of enlightenment, in the primordial state. It then is transmitted to us. It doesn’t stop there. The minute we receive an empowerment, we’re not going to instantly become enlightened. I wish it were that easy, but it is not. At that point, we are qualified to practice, and it is through the practice and our meditation – with the help of the transmission of the lineage – that we will achieve results.

About Self

October 4, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

A teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love Series

What is the root cause that goes underneath and beyond the thinking and reckoning of the human mind? What is so ancient that it has existed for time out of mind, even before you could think? What is so old that you were born with the certainty you too will die? In order to uncover these mysteries, you need to examine the idea of suffering. Once you can answer these questions, you are free to explore the path of enlightenment. According to the Buddha’s teaching, the real cause for suffering is the belief in, and clinging to, self-nature as being inherently real. And here is a little bit that is so embarrassingly superficial, you could call it the Kellogg’s cereal box-top version of the nature of mind. Anyway, having made my apology and legal disclaimers, I will continue!

For the very idea of self to arise there has to be a division in which there appears to be a separation between self and other. In other words, the mind arises in such a way that it becomes divided at that time. In order for that division to exist in any form, even the most subtle form, that which considers itself to be self, with the impetus to divide, must begin to gather data around itself. In order to be a self, self has to be distinguishable from other. Different discriminating thoughts begin to form, and self begins to clothe itself.

Once self begins to clothe itself, a tension arises. There is a need to maintain self in order to distinguish self from other, because if at any moment self drops the conceptualizations that surround it, self becomes indistinguishable from other, and there is only suchness. Therefore, the idea of survival becomes important. With survival comes the idea of clinging. With clinging, comes desire. If there is self, then, there is other, and there must be cause and effect. It is at this level that cause and effect arises. In the natural state, the uncontrived state, there is no cause and effect.

The moment there is the consideration of self-nature, the reality of cause and effect, or karma begins immediately to appear in the most profound way. From that point on, karma is very, very real. We should not kid ourselves, thinking that we can talk our way out of cause and effect. It is real. Self then, in order to become distinguishable from other, must have a kind of inter-reactive relationship. In order to maintain the idea of self, there has to be the distinction of self. There has to be an idea to formulate self more and more firmly, to form ideas around self. The only way to do that is to react for or against other. Self has to have something to bounce off of. That is the way the idea of self is formed.

A State of Recognition, Not Neurosis

September 12, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from the Mindfulness workshop given by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo in 1999

As human beings, some of the greatest downfalls and difficulties are the constant messages and self-imposed kinds of structures or ideas regarding how we should be and shouldn’t be. When we fail to come up to these standards and these ideals, the guilt that we have is so profound that it stops us dead in our tracks and we feel worthless and a whole, neurotic scenario begins about worthlessness. It is absolutely the opposite from the kind of practice that we want to do. We may think that as spiritual people we should feel like nothing, be humble. Try to understand it a little differently.

If you’re walking around superimposing an idea on yourself and you’re feeling worthless and guilty and like nothing, that’s not really spiritual. One is supposed to be in a state of Recognition, not in a state of neurosis. So this guilt, which results from having all these ideas of how we ‘should be’ in this materialistic society, and the feeling that we are criminal if we don’t measure up to these ideas, is very much all-pervasive. Witness how it is as a mother; when you have small children. You know what it’s like when you develop that cord between yourself and your child where they become little satellites. They’re out there, but there’s this little cord, this connection, between the mother and the child so that if the child is no longer in your sight, as a mother, you react to that. That pulls the cord. There is a big feeling of, “Oh, I have got to take care of my child, and I have to make sure my child is safe. I have to supervise my child.” If for one moment we respond differently to it or perhaps not quickly enough, or if there’s a moment of confusion, we immediately think of ourselves as criminals, and we immediately think the first thing to do is hide that. Then we carry around this block of guilt and criminal feelings that make us act out in certain ways that are unfortunate.

Training the mind to constantly be in a state of offering, to constantly be in a state of more and more increasing Recognition is a way to circumvent the criminalizing-guilt neuroses. To be able to gain a deeper recognition of the nature of phenomena, of what is sacred and what is ordinary, what is meaningful and should be gathered and what should be abandoned; to gain a better recognition of the faults of cyclic existence, and be able to distinguish between a diamond and a piece of glass — to train oneself in that way moves us out of that realm of being ego in the center of our own mandala, constantly being good or bad, blaming, judging, being hopeful or fearful — that constant neurotic scenario that ultimately, when you really look at it, is what we call ‘us.’ In training the mind to a deeper Recognition as an extension to one’s practice, and to practice constantly as we move around, is an antidote that is extremely powerful.

In terms of thinking about how our minds work, did you ever try to just sit down and just still the mind, just kind of relax and go blank? Did you ever try to do that? To try to get your mind to do that is like screaming at a monkey in a cage to stop jumping up and down. What do you think is going to happen? The monkey is going to go even crazier. So in practicing in the way that I’ve described, constantly offering and not clinging, (therefore applying the antidote to clinging), constantly moving deeper and deeper into a state of better Recognition rather than deeper and deeper into ego-clinging, self-cherishing and neurosis, what happens is that it actually calms the mind. It’s like it begins to apply the remedy or the medicine that makes our mind change from something that is inflamed to something that is much more relaxed so that our minds actually begin to change. That happens in our sit-down practice, and that also happens in our mindfulness as we walk around.

Practice With Every Breath

September 4, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from the Mindfulness workshop given by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo in 1999

As practitioners we think, “Oh, I love all this stuff you’re telling me and it’s all very nice and everything, but what I’d really like is a nature of mind teaching. What I’d really like is some Dzogchen! Don’t start me with the basics. Give me that high stuff.” We think that, and then, sadly, pitifully, really, what happens is that we get this incredible Dzogchen teaching about the nature of mind, and it becomes to us something else that we, I, the ego, have collected. Something as precious as a view of the nature of our Buddhahood, of the nature of our mind becomes just another thing that we hold; that I, the ego, holds. It becomes something I have, and it makes me even greater because I have those teachings, and you don’t.

If we allow ourselves to practice in that way, by simply wanting that teaching and not requiring the recognition, not making ourselves go through the steps, we are dishonoring the Dharma. Instead of collecting great teachings from great teachers, it would behoove us to look in the mirror, to observe our own phenomena. In order to discriminate between what is extraordinary and what is ordinary, what is enlightened activity and what is samsaric activity. In order to develop this mindfulness, we have to learn to discriminate the world of phenomena. We have to learn to discriminate appearances. That never happens magically.

The terrible and painful mistake that we make is to think that eventually if we do our practice there’s going to be an experience. We think that one day we’ll do our practice, and suddenly our aura will get big, or we’ll have some kind of AHA! “There it is! Enlightenment!” and we’ll be magically changed. We even fantasize about this. You know that you do. You fantasize about other people seeing how enlightened you are. You fantasize about how honored you will be when they “get” where you’re coming from. You’re not alone, don’t worry.

This kind of idea is completely the opposite of the kind of discrimination regarding the world of appearances. In waiting for enlightenment to come to us, we’re actually practicing duality. In waiting for enlightenment to come to us, in waiting for that moment when the hallelujah chorus starts, we are actually saying, “I, ego, I am waiting for that to come to me.” So in that state it will never happen. In that state there is no such event. There simply cannot be because there is no discrimination and no mindfulness — no mindfulness of the world of appearances. In order to engage in giving rise to recognition of the empty nature of phenomena, you have to work at it. To do the practice and just wait for this recognition is inappropriate. It should be practiced with every breath. It should be practiced with every moment of our lives, and not just our spare moments.

Practicing Recognition

September 3, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from the Mindfulness workshop given by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo in 1999

As a teacher, sometimes I’ve had the opportunity to bring a student to task, to say, “Look, you’re all spaced out. You’re working hard, you’re going through the motions, but you’re not practicing. There’s no inner practice happening here.” The first thing that the student will do is get defensive, and the reason why they’ll get defensive is because they’re dancing as fast as they can. A student will look at me and say, “Well, what the hell do you want? I’m dancing as fast as I can. In the way that I understand, I’m working real hard.” I won’t argue that with you, not for a minute. You’re right. You’re dancing as fast as you can; you’re working really hard; but the difference is you are not practicing recognition. Even if you spend two hours a day practicing and then you leave it to go live the rest of your life, that is still a state of non-recognition, and you are not truly practicing.

What is required here is a deeper understanding, a deeper awareness, and a more profound grasp of the realities that we are facing. Once again, our habitual pattern is to say, “Oh, this person is doing this and that person is doing that and that makes this person like this and that person like that.” but the way to practice is to understand that these things we see are the all-pervasive faults of cyclic existence; this person that you’re seeing is like a bee in a jar, just hitting the glass, boom-boom-boom-boom-boom. Does the bee know what’s going on? The bee is trying to fly. The bee is trying to do what bees know how to do, but being in a glass jar, like samsara, all it can do is bash its head against the glass. There’s no way for that bee to figure its way out. That is the condition of samsaric beings, and awakening to that recognition is really the only way that we can give rise to the bodhicitta, give rise to compassion. Otherwise we are simply acting compassionate, which means, “I am the star of the show.” We are still in that deeply deluded state. We’re just acting differently, but acting is still acting.

Paying Homage

September 2, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called The Seven Limb Puja: Viewing the Guru by Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo on October 18, 1995

Since we find that we are, in fact, in the presence of the primordial Guru at every single moment, what is the posture that we should take? You should refer to the practice called the Seven Limb Puja. The Seven Limb Puja appears in many different practices in slightly different variations, but it has certain common denominators, and these should be studied and looked at as a guide of how one should practice now that one is coming to understand that the eyes of the Guru are our eyes; that the heart of the Guru is our heart; that in our nature, that is the nature. That is the nature, and we are indistinguishable in our nature from that.

Practicing in that way we should think like this. First of all, in the face of the Guru, knowing that the face of the Guru is always with us, we should practice paying homage constantly. Constantly paying homage to the Guru, this will antidote our pride, our ego, that habit that says, “Oh, well, look at that! The Guru has faults. He or she must be human.” And, of course, that is the statement that keeps you from practicing pure devotion and pure surrender, and the same statement that prevents you from achieving realization. So this is the antidote that helps you to give rise to that spiritual posture that makes it possible for you recognize the nature of the Guruas the absolute non-dual display of emptiness and luminosity; and to give rise to profound devotion at last, rather than the superficial stuff that we’ve been passing out as devotion.

We practice paying homage. We pay homage to the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas; the Lamas are in that number. The Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are all represented in the Lama. We should think that we pay homage to the Buddhas because they have crossed the ocean of suffering. Therefore, they are capable of captaining us across the ocean of suffering. So we pay homage with that kind of regard, as though we needed to cross an ocean of suffering and the trip is scary and long and hazardous and difficult and so a qualified captain is required. Otherwise, we can’t make it. So that is the kind of recognition of the superior quality of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, of the Lama. Recognize every moment, this is a vajra command, that when we think of ourselves in our samsaric state and then we think of the Guru, we should think that the Guru is like a precious diamond, beyond compare, because the Guru is capable of helping us cross the ocean of suffering. We cannot do that ourselves. That will antidote the kind of pride that we have when we try to put ourselves above everything, in subtle or gross ways, whatever it happens to be.

The Two Eyes of Your Practice

September 1, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from the Mindfulness workshop given by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo in 1999

Guru Rinpoche himself said, “I will appear as your Root Guru,” and that appearance is to be recognized. It demands to be recognized. One of the reasons why I harp so much on reciting the Seven line Prayer is because the Seven line Prayer is a prayer, the blessing of which creates the capability of seeing the Guru in all things, and of following the Guru and of practicing in such a way as to discriminate that absolute nature. The nature of that prayer is to begin to awaken our inner psychic channels and to bless our psychic channels and winds and fluids in such a way that everything within us that is the Buddhanature begins to awaken. That’s the power of that prayer, and it is done through the practice of recognizing and discriminating what is extraordinary. In order to provide for that kind of recognition, we have to put a lot more effort into that aspect of our practice than we have up until now.

Maybe I am giving you the impression that it’s all about Guru Rinpoche. For me it is, but maybe that’s because I’m lucky enough to have had enough teachings to have an understanding of Guru Rinpoche’s nature. When we talk about the nature of the Guru, we are talking about the perfect mating of wisdom and compassion, of emptiness and appearance. When you see the image of Guru Rinpoche, you always see that staff crooked in his arm, and that is the symbol of his consort. It indicates that the Lama is never separate from his consort, and the meaning of that is the non-duality and union of emptiness and appearance, of wisdom and compassion, or bodhicitta. That is the meaning of that union of Lama and consort. So Guru Rinpoche is always seen that way. We are to understand from that, then, that His nature is the perfect union of wisdom and bodhicitta, of the view of emptiness and the understanding of the display of appearances. That is Guru Rinpoche’s nature.

That being the case, we have to find a way to not only recognize the physical form of the Guru, the picture that looks like Guru Rinpoche or the picture that looks like your teacher. We really have to get past that and go into a deeper sense of trying to awaken and potentiate our own meditation, our own understanding, of the nature of emptiness and of the nature of appearances. We have to begin to potentiate and practice and meditate in such a way that we see wisdom and compassion as being like the two eyes of our practice.

Click here for a teaching on the Seven Line Prayer and audio files of Jetsunma chanting the Seven Line Prayer.