The following is a YouTube video teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo recording live at Kunzang Palyul Choling in Maryland:
Teachers
Use Your Heart
The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:
I hope and pray all people will come to see that kindness is the way. Most trouble can be avoided if we are simply good hearted. Bitterness and meanness poison just about every situation. If people would communicate skillfully and with respect nearly all arguments can be solved without war or hate. Only when one’s very life and livelihood are threatened, then legal council should be sought for advice.
In general, no resolution is ever possible with insults, snarky talk, or childish cruel jokes or rants. It is possible to grow up and grow in the capacity for compassion with practice. If we care about any sentient beings, we must care about all, as we are all of the same nature. So the obsession with harming others is a strong indication that this is not well understood. From the view of say, Lord Buddha’s extraordinary awakened state, there is no “place” where one life “ends” and another life “begins.” There is only the empty and complete display of the primordial ground of being. Beyond that, we are not separate- not in being, not in distance, and not in time, as these are all relative, where the absolute nature is unchanging, and fulfilled at once.
Relative view can be a real mess, and discord results when one has no healthy boundaries or indulges the ignorant, ordinary monkey-mind to do as it pleases. We are not here for that. We are all, in ultimate view, Buddha in physical form. How well the “light” shines through one’s “window” depends entirely on how well we clean and keep the “glass”, and this is our true job. We must see all as it is. Not as our habits dictate. You can change, you can do better. You are Buddha! Never forget that. Use your heart, and stand tall for the sake of all!
OM MANI PEDME HUNG!
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved
Six Realms of Cyclic Existence
An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhists Think by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
Most people, however, fixated as they are on self-nature, experience hatred, greed, and ignorance. This is the content of their mindstream. We all have a great amount of self-concern, craving, desire, and grasping, which Buddhists consider a form of greed. We have abundant anger.
You know you have anger; everyone has anger, which Buddhists consider a form of hatred. And we have ignorance, which in Buddhist terminology signifies the lack of awareness of the primordial Wisdom State. It means the lack of being awake as the Buddha is awake.
In the Bardo, some of the latent karmic potential, or the karmic seeds in our mindstream, will ripen. For instance, if we have hatred within our mindstream, we will perceive it externalized as some kind of demonic entity––and respond with fear. And we will try to take rebirth as soon as possible. We will go compulsively into the next rebirth. So it’s very possible that we take rebirth in an undesirable form.
Even if we achieve again the precious human form, we might be reborn in poverty in Calcutta, or as the offspring of parents who have AIDS. And we ourselves could have AIDS. There is no way to predict how karma will ripen. This is the unpredictability of cyclic existence.
Of the six realms of cyclic existence, the human realm is considered the most precious––because it is the only realm in which we can practice Dharma in order to achieve Realization. In all the other realms, preoccupation with immediate experience is too tight, too intense––so much so that one cannot meditate, contemplate, or practice. This is true even in the higher realms.
The highest realm into which we can be reborn is the realm of the long-life gods. The suffering in this realm is actually related to pleasure. You may think, “I’d like to suffer like that,” but in this realm pleasure really is the source of suffering.
To be reborn in this realm requires tremendously good karma, but also involves the karma of pride. (It is your pride that will, despite a great accumulation of positive causes, keep you from being born in an Enlightened state.) Positive causes produce the experience of great pleasure which prevails in the long-life god realm. The scent there is an overpowering experience, sensual and erotic, healing instantly and completely. Any sense––touch, taste, sight, hearing––is so potent that one is completely intoxicated, completely consumed by it. The gods in this realm are extremely, excruciatingly beautiful. Their bodies are sweetly scented; their skin, exceedingly pure. They swim in nectar-like water; everything they taste is the elixir of life. And they live for thousands of years.
Some people may think: “How do I get into that place?” But there’s a catch. When the thousands of years of their god-realm karma are exausted, these beings begin to change. Suddenly they are no longer so sweet-smelling. Then the other gods and goddesses start to move away from them––as far away as they can.
Soon the god-realm beings whose good karma is depleted become aware that they are deteriorating. No longer are they quite so beautiful; their “high” is wearing off. They realize that they’ve used up all the fortunate causes they had accumulated for aeons. Since they have a touch of clairvoyance, they can look down and see that there is nowhere to go but to a lower rebirth. And they get no help from the other gods and goddesses, who are still absorbed in their intoxication. This is the most pleasurable rebirth. You suffer only as it ends.
Immediately below the long-life gods is the realm of the jealous gods. The causes for being reborn there are power-hunger, competitiveness, and jealousy. There is much wealth in this realm, and intoxication too, but of another sort––intoxication with power. There is continual warfare––and the suffering which comes from it. There is suffering, but also pleasure. The jealous gods are very powerful, very demanding. They engage in battle with other gods, and they sometimes become involved with other realms in order to use them for their warfare agenda.
Some say that the Old Testament God Jehovah is actually a jealous god, exhibiting the characteristics of this realm––wielding destruction and demanding exclusive allegiance.
The realm below the jealous gods is the human realm. In this realm, old age, sickness, and death are our main sufferings. If we live long enough, all of us experience them. One cause for being born human––instead of appearing miraculously in the state of Enlightenment––is doubt. Everyone in the human realm experiences doubt. You must look at yourself as if from the outside and recognize that doubt is an obstacle to your practice. We have the habitual tendency of only believing what we can see and hold in our hands.
We may not believe that there are non-physical realms. Well, we’ve heard of them, and think they may possibly exist. We think we may have lived before, but we don’t know for sure.
Right below the human realm is the animal realm, in which a rebirth results from “dullness.” The word actually translates as “stupidity,” but we hesitate to use that term because we all love animals. Here however we are focusing on the consciousness of animals and their inability to absorb the teachings needed to achieve Realization. They can’t reason, they can’t be taught in the way humans can. They’re tightly reactive, completely involved in their experience of phenomena, without any spaciousness between event and reaction.
A tiny bit of spaciousness is the difference between us and animals. Unlike them, we can consider and formulate in a creative way some kind of impression and response. An animal’s inability to do this is termed ignorance, or stupidity, or dullness. Animals are preyed upon by predators, pursued and eaten by one another. They are often at the mercy of humans, who eat them or use them for their own purposes. Animals suffer greatly from all that.
Below the animal realm is the realm of the hungry ghosts. These beings are not visible to our eyes, but we have information about them: the Buddha in his omniscience saw and described them. The cause for being reborn as a hungry ghost is grasping or desire. With very small mouths and very big stomachs, these beings are weak from hunger and hardly ever able to get what they need. They suffer from physical and other kinds of hunger and cannot be satisfied. They have the unfortunate karma of strange, mixed perception.
When you drink a cup of tea, it tastes like tea to you. (To long-life gods, it would taste like the most exquisite nectar.) Hungry ghosts would experience it as pus or another equally horrid substance. Their perception is askew because of their greed and desire.
The lowest rebirth is in the hell realms. The main causes for being reborn there are hatred and anger, and the suffering is tremendous. Who can claim a mind free of anger and hatred? If you’ve ever had a frightening nightmare from which you felt you could not escape, then you have the potential to create the phenomena of a hellish realm. It’s the same.
© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo
To download the complete teaching, click here and scroll down to How Buddhists Think
For the Benefit of All
The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:
I haven’t been on twitter so much in a teaching or connecting capacity, as I am required to testify in this upcoming case between the US Government and William Cassidy, with others involved. I would prefer not to testify but there is no choice. I am the main victim, and my Ordained Sangha. It is sad it has come to this. But this is a criminal case, and laws have been broken. As well as hearts and even spirits. Many of us have suffered greatly. And grieved for Buddhism here in the west. We have done our part, screen shots, every bit of cruelty, every single threat. All these three horrible years. Now the FBI has taken this as criminal and due process is underway.
My motivation is not punitive, but a hope that hate-filled people will think before harassing women or anyone for whatever reason. I hope Buddhist Sanghas everywhere see they need not accept such abuse. Nor will I, nor should any other woman. Cyber stalking and threats, all forms of it should be eradicated from Buddhism, Dharma, and any true spiritual path.
OM MANI PEDME HUNG
OM TARE TUTTARE TURE SOHA
May virtue and compassion prevail!
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved
Overcoming Life’s Obstacles
An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called Turning Adversity Into Felicity
Ours is not a religion that believes you can get through a room full of obstacles—which life basically is—without turning on the lights and seeing where the things are that you might trip over. Our religion is one where we turn on the light, we look with our eyes, we do not absent ourselves from the responsibility of clear thought, of the reality of cause and effect relationships, of engaging in those practices that will clear the obstacles.
In our lives, perhaps, we might suffer from the loss of fortune. Let’s say that we have a certain situation where we were very wealthy, we had everything that we needed, and suddenly bam! Misfortune hits. It happens, doesn’t it? It happens a lot. Misfortune hits and suddenly we are no longer wealthy. Perhaps it isn’t about money. Perhaps it’s about relationships. At one point, for the women, the prince rides up on the white horse and everything looks like it’s going to be happily-ever-after, you know, the Dream. For men, the Queen of Sheba has landed in our lap somehow, and here she is with all her blazing glory.
So maybe that kind of thing has happened. But eventually we will find that the cloud definitely has another side to it. It has a silver lining, yes, but it has a little rain in it as well. For many of us, we would experience some loss. Perhaps we might think that we have everything we need, and then simply it is lost. That might occur with our health. Many of us, we don’t plan to die, we don’t plan to get sick, but suddenly, perhaps even at a point where we thought we were young enough and sturdy enough to have been healthy, we find that our health slips and we can no longer rely on our health. And then, for others of us that survive all these other things without too many disasters, eventually we will get old and we will die. So there are these situations that must be dealt with.
Now when we deal with them, should we just paste some sort of unthinking, syrupy, positive statement on top of it and therefore make it acceptable? Should we say, “Ah, well, you know I’ve lost the great love of my life, but hey, it’s not so bad. What’s the big deal? I can do this!” Or, “Once I was rich and now I’m poor, but hey, I’m a positive thinker and wealth will come to me soon, I’m sure.” Do we think like that? I don’t think so.
We are taught by our teachers to engage in creating the causes by which our suffering might end. Clearly if you do not have enough fortune or money in your life, the causes by which that might come to you have not been created, or they haven’t been created in sufficient amounts. So we turn to the guru, not with an empty prayer of, “Gee, hope you’ll land a few thousand in my box. Just stick it in the mailbox. I’ll pick it up tomorrow.” You don’t pray like that. You don’t pray to win the lottery. That isn’t how it goes. In our religion, the difference is that we actually pray for guidance and we use the teachings that the teacher gives us and we begin to create the causes by which we can overcome the obstacles in our lives.
© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo
Willingness and Bodhicitta
The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Your Treasure is Heart”
How do you practice this Bodhichitta? In the beginning, the most important posture is to start from where you are. That is your time and space grid, That’s your place, your posture, your “now.” You have to start there. Now that may seem like restating the obvious. “Of course you’re going to start from where you are, oh queen of the department of redundancy.” But most people never start exactly where they are, with that kind of self-honesty, being genuine on their path. No baloney. No games. You look and see what your habit patterns are and what your practice has been. You really look inside yourself and see what your qualities are and face them honestly. It’s not necessarily going to be good news. Some of it will be good, but not all of it. Trust me on this. You look at it the way a child looks at a world it doesn’t have the capacity to conceptualize.
When we look at something, we judge it immediately. We don’t know how to look at something without judgement. When a child looks at the world, it looks at the world with a sense of wonder. In a way, it has no idea what it’s looking at. I read about a perfect example of this in a book. For instance, a one-year-old child, playing in their yard might stop dead in their tracks because they can feel a vibration, but they have no idea where it’s coming from. They don’t even know where to look. And suddenly they just look up and see this thing. They don’t know it’s a plane. They point, go “uh uh uh” you know. It’s shining and it’s moving; and they remain completely absorbed in it until it reaches the end of the sky. And then it’s gone and they just go “wow!” in baby talk of course, whatever their particular way of describing that is. Just two years later, by the time the child is three-years-old, they are going to hear the noise, know where to look, look up at the sky and go “airplane,” and then go back to whatever they were doing. That wonder, that freedom to reinterpret, to actually see everything, is gone. Literally, from that point on, they never see another airplane. It’s like that with all of our ideas and concepts, particularly these subtle concepts about ourselves and about love.
We have very little understanding about how to look at ourselves and to see ourselves fresh and new, so that we can determine how to give rise to the Bodhichitta within our lives. That takes a great degree of self-honesty. If you are not willing to see yourself, whatever poop you have produced, and whatever negative habitual tendencies you have, as well as, and equally with your good qualities, there is no way to actually know yourself. You’ll be like the three-year-old who says, “Oh, airplane.” From the moment that unwillingness occurs, you never see yourself again, not ever.
So here’s the trick. Be willing, in an honest way, to really look at yourself and see where you are, and from that point, you can freely and honestly begin to practice the Bodhichitta. That is a very important first step.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved
What Will You Give?
The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:
Hammering on sentient beings for their “faults” or for their thoughts and opinions is unacceptable. The first reason is, the hurt it causes, and then because the persons judging and pointing are themselves flawed. Gossip and threats, puffed up judgments are a downfall. We should try to see the situation and indeed the world from other’s eyes. Chances are if we just strike out blindly, before walking in that person’s shoes for a mile or so we will likely be dead wrong on all accounts.
To avoid judging, gossip, hate etc requires a generosity of spirit. We must learn that generosity for ourselves, once we have been taught. We are rarely raised with such pristine ethics. And when we gain this kindness it is through the effort of changing our habitual tendencies. It takes work, work that few attempt, or stick to. We are afraid to be honest, afraid to open up, to care, we would rather step on others. Many think if they open, soften the heart, they will be duped, endangered and a total chump for being “vulnerable.” His Holiness the Dalai Lama says that warm heartedness, compassion, kindness are the basis for all spiritual paths.
Further we are encouraged to note and study the condition of samsara, and the actual suffering of beings. This too, takes courage! “Good grief!” we think. It will spoil my mood! Upset me! However if we do not follow this pith instruction we will have entirely missed the boat on the treasure, result and nectar of the Buddha Dharma. Not to mention the joy of a kinder, gentler world. And we all have that responsibility, not just the chosen few, not just His Holiness the Dalai Lama, but all of us.
I wish we could develop the view of being caretakers of the Planet, like the Native Americans and other indigenous tribal people do. They stay in touch with the natural world and in their own mystical way support and hold it. There is no excuse, no reason behind sitting on one’s duff and being of no help, only “tisk tisking” at everything. What will you give? We must all do what we can. Love and respect all equally and totally. Open the heart and mind so compassion truly pours forth, glorious to see. That will not make you weak or vulnerable or soft. It will make you love, and you will be greatly loved and respected as well. Try it!
OM TARE TUTARE TURE SOHA
OM MANI PEDME HUNG
OM AH MI DEWA HRI
OM AH HUNG BENZAR GURU PEDMA SIDDHI HUNG
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved
Letting Go of Concepts
The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Your Treasure is Heart”
How are you going to practice Bodhichitta? That’s the question. What’s it going to look like for you? Do not make the mistake that so many people make by trying to adapt a saintly demeanor where everything is love and light and there are no real feelings, only fabricated ones. As if all of those neurotic little ulcers in our personality are neatly covered with bandaids and we’re not seething underneath them at all! That’s not the mistake that you want to make. That’s not even what compassion looks like. Why should it? What difference could it possibly make to any other person, really and truly, that you look saintly? How is that going to help someone else, unless that’s exactly what that person needs to see? Then, as a Bodhisattva, that’s what will happen.
I have to say, for the most part, my experience has been that love is not neatly tied up in little bundles or appearances. It doesn’t necessarily fit in a box. Love, we should all know by now (unless we’re just stupid) is not convenient. It is just not convenient. Love is messy.. It doesn’t have any particular appearance, because it appears exactly as it needs to appear. So don’t make that terrible mistake of doing something that’s the equivalent of playing dress-up, putting on your mommy and dad’s clothing and walking around like “Oh I’m a Bodhisattva now.” That’s not it. Adapting a certain demeanor that you feel is some sort of compassionate ideal has nothing to do with love. It brings no real benefit. All it does is stroke your ego. In one way, the most self-absorbed thing that you can do is to selfishly use Bodhichitta as a costume for yourself. Instead toss all those images out the window.
Do you think that Bodhichitta should always appear as sweet words and sugary kindness? No. No, if sweet words and sugary kindness always worked, if that’s all that it took, you could go to Dale Carnegie or something like that modified to fit this particular need. You could learn how to speak words of love and light, and how to be so sweet that everybody loved you. If that’s all it took, how easy it would be. I mean, really, it would be a no-brainer. Somebody could write a list of statements and responses that you could have all typed up on a laptop computer. Whenever you got hit with a situation and didn’t know how to practice Bodhichitta, you could just key it in and come up with a response—see the blue aura, give the blue speech. It could work, but that’s not how love is. Love is messy. Love has to reinvent itself every single moment, because it’s constantly looking to see what is needed. The moment love becomes a concept, it is not love. The moment you have a concept about what love should look like, you are not loving. Love is not the way you think.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved
Introduction to Meditation – YouTube Video
The following is a YouTube video teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:
Compassion in Real Life
The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Your Treasure is Heart”
When we begin to practice the Bodhichitta, we become more in tune with the idea that the great Bodhisattvas are willing to do whatever it takes regarding the suffering of sentient beings,. We, in our practice, should follow accordingly, and use them as our example. When we look at the world today, and when we study in the texts, we see that sentient beings, as numberless as grains of sand on the earth, are revolving in the six realms of cyclic existence. And we are suffering horribly— horribly and needlessly. Needlessly because, other than our own habitual tendency, our desire and our own distorted perception, there are no chains that bind us here. And so the Bodhisattva is moved to tears watching the suffering of sentient beings and seeing that even here in the human realm where things are pretty terrific and we have the capacity to practice, we are still suffering from old age, sickness and death. And there is nothing we can do about it.
When the Bodhisattvas see that, they consider that enough is enough and they feel a heartfelt courage or concern come up within them. Therefore, their determination to be of benefit to sentient beings and to do, literally, whatever it takes is born. So now we are on the path of the Bodhisattva. How should we engage on that path? We really don’t know how the mechanical appearance of it should look in our lives,. This is a big dilemma for westerners. I’ve noticed this myself. Once we vibe with the idea of compassion, we seem to understand it. When so many of the ideas of Dharma seem foreign, why is it that the idea of compassion is somehow more palatable and more understandable? Well, probably because we’ve seen the idea before, in other religious systems in our culture with which we are better acquainted. So we have the idea in our minds already. I think also, for those of us who are American, we have this national identity of being a great country, or a prosperous country, and therefore we feel that we are in a position to minister to others. It’s almost like a subtle national identity that we all seem to have. We know we’ve got more food , more clothes , and better conditions than a lot of the other guys. So, in a national or group way, we are aware of our capacity to be an elder brother or sister in the world. I really think that that’s part of us. Our national identity is definitely a factor here..
Where the terrible confusion comes in is that we don’t know what Bodhichitta should look like. When we actually get down to the nuts and bolts of our practice, something is missing. Something just flies the coop. It really doesn’t quite connect in our mind. So we try to draw on these archetypal pictures that we have in our culture. One of the pictures that we have is a saintly archetype. Does it come from medieval time? Probably, I would think so. I would say that we are very slow to change some of our ideas. We’re pretty quick to change our fashion sense, our idea of how to get educated and how to remain current in certain things in the world, but subtle archetypal ideas take a long time to change. We have the idea that that we would look saintly practicing compassion, the idea that a Bodhisattva has to be something that… Well I don’t know. What did medieval saints look like? Maybe a little anemic, you know? Like if you were too robust, or maybe had a pint too much blood, you wouldn’t look very saintly. I don’t think I’d pass for a saint either. You know I think I look like a make-up expert or something else, a beautician.
So we have these pictures and our saintly image is somewhat anemic. We have this idea that saintly people should never really let out a good guffaw, and have absolutely zero capacity to find anything truly amusing, most especially not themselves. Lord knows that saintly types have no capacity to laugh at themselves. In fact, all they are able to do for the most part is to roll those eyes ever skyward and look pure. So we have some kind of ridiculous idea of what sainthood or compassion actually ought to look like.
Well, I don’t think compassion looks like that at all. I think compassion can look like a banana, if that’s what sentient beings need. I think compassion can look like a puppy if it brings comfort to sentient beings. I think compassion can look exactly like whatever it takes. Actually all the teachings about the great Bodhisattvas say that they literally appear in any form in order to bring benefit to sentient beings. In The Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, which I hope each and every one of you will buy a copy of at some point, there are many beautiful and heart-wrenching prayers, like, “Let me return as a bridge so that sentient beings may cross over. Let me return as food so that sentient beings will be nourished. Let me return as shelter so that sentient beings will be protected,” this heartfelt cry to return in whatever form necessary in order to be of benefit to sentient beings.
I don’t think that a bridge or a banana or whatever it takes will necessarily look like some anemic saintly thing. Instead, I think compassion can be pretty exotic and meaty stuff. I think it can look like meat and potatoes. I think it can look like whatever it damn well pleases, so long as it gets the job done.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved