A sacred space for everyone
The following is a video excerpt from a teaching offered by His Holiness Karma Kuchen Rinpoche, 12th Throneholder of the Palyul Lineage, at Kunzang Palyul Choling in Maryland:
His Holiness will be visiting KPC once again on August 4th to confer special Long Life Empowerments of Amitabha and Amitayus. For more details or to register for the event visit: http://www.tara.org/program/his-holiness-karma-kuchen-rinpoche-to-offer-empowerment-ceremony/
The following is a full length video teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:
From teachings given by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
Meditation is the natural state of mind when it is relaxed, stable, and open. When our mind is calm and settled, there is a spaciousness that allows time between action and reaction. The trouble is that the mind more frequently runs wild like a monkey. That is what happens when the mind is too agitated, wound up, or out of control. The mind controls you rather than the other way around.
The point of meditation is to create space in your mind. The mind is like a muscle. In the same way that you do physical fitness training to keep your body strong, the mind needs to be trained to be calm and relaxed, yet also alert and wakeful. For Buddhists, meditation is the means by which to experience wisdom directly.
Meditation can be practiced by anyone, regardless of religious tradition.
The following are some simple meditation techniques as explained by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:
While there are more elaborate explanations for how to hold the body, in general it is beneficial to sit comfortably with one’s back straight. A firm cushion is useful to lift the body some. In our tradition, we meditate with our eyes slightly open.
A very simple, yet powerful, technique is to watch the breath. You can take very uniform relaxing breaths. Four beats in, hold one, four beats out. Let your mind rest on the rhythm and feel of your own breath. For a person whose mind is too active and angry, it is very restful, very peaceful to do this.
Single-pointed concentration is a beautiful practice. Take an image of the Buddha, or flower, or candle, and concentrate on that. Let everything else go completely. Sit and watch the image. You are filled with the image and you take note of the image, looking at the finest parts of it. If you use a candle, focus on the nature of that flame. Simply see what it is. See only that. Let the mind rest on the image or candle or flower. When the “I left the iron on” thoughts come into your mind, you dismiss them and go back to the concentration. If you have trouble dismissing thoughts, you can use a visualization of cutting them with scissors, and throwing them away. You always return to your single-pointed concentration. Come back to rest. If you have thoughts, no matter what they are, just laugh at yourself, drop them and come back to the concentration. It is extremely relaxing and healing to let the mind rest. The resting will get longer and longer as you practice. Once you learn to apply meditation or concentration, the mind has more control, more “muscle.”
Jetsunma gives the background on her experience with meditation in Stablizing the Mind, a collection of teachings and practical instruction.
The following is respectfully quoted from the introduction to “Buddhist Ethics” by Jamgön Kongtrul:
The Ethics of Personal Liberation
The focus of the ethics of personal liberation is to control impulses that lead body and speech to undertake negative actions. Because such actions are always linked to limiting emotional patterns, Individualists, in addition to observing ethics, must train in the discriminative awareness that realizes selflessness in order to attain perfect peace, the state of cessation of such patterns. Furthermore, for that meditation to be stable, mental concentration also must be cultivated. Thus, personal liberation ethics are essentially identical with training in morality, meditation, and wisdom. Although the aim of the monk’s vows and other personal liberation vows appears to be restraint from unwholesome physical behavior, it would be misleading to view those vows reductively, because their implicit aim is to overcome limiting mental patterns.
THe foundation of these ethics lies in the precepts relating to taking refuge and four “root,” or crucial, precepts that prohibit murder, theft, lying, and adultery. Refuge relates to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha: the first is understood as the Teacher, the second as the teachings, and the third as the community (here the monastic one in particular). Originally, taking refuge was primarily an expression of faith that distinguished a follower of the Buddha from practitioners of other religions. Refuge marked the beginning of an earnest undertaking of the Buddhist path. In higher forms of Buddhist view and methods of implementation, refuge takes on deeper layers of meaning, and in the ultimate sense means taking refuge in “the buddha within,” the realization of the natural and unmodified intrinsic awareness lying within oneself.
The four root precepts prohibit four actions that would undoubtedly cause suffering for others and also compromise the tranquility of one’s mind, thereby destroying one’s chance to develop meditation and gain the discriminative awareness needed to uproot cyclic existence.
When the Buddhist community was first being formed, taking refuge in front of the Buddha was all that was needed for one to be accepted as a monk. Gradually, because of the misbehavior of monks and for other reasons, rules were instituted, for the most part limited to a particular temporal and social context. Many were intended not only for the welfare of the monks themselves, but also for the community’s internal harmony and external social respectability.
Rules gained more importance, to be a monk became a matter of maintaining specific rules and regulations rather than a matter of heading into a spiritual life. Eventually, to enter the Buddhist community, the aspirant needed to assume vows, and vows came to represent a commitment to abide by the entire body of rules. Such vows were not simple promises. Instead, they were “generated” in the candidate through a series of conditions and requisites, such as the abbot, and their primary requirement was an attitude of disengagement from cyclic life.
As the vow developed into an “entity,” identification of its nature became an important matter, which explains the various assertions Kongtrul presents, based on detailed analyses, on the nature of the vow. The conclusions would have little relevance to the keeping of the rules themselves but would definitely be relevant to determining at what point a vow is lost.
Personal liberation vows are basically of two kinds: those that prohibit actions such as killing and lying, which are considered unwholesome for anyone who commits them; and those that prohibit actions such as eating in the evening, which ar improper only for monks and nuns. The first kind involves a concept of “natural evil,” or “absolute morality,” which is probably influenced by the realist philosophical view held by the Analysts, to whom the tradition of personal liberation is undoubtedly connected. That also explains, to some extent, why the personal liberation vow is compared to a clay pot; once broken, it cannot be repaired.
Kongtrul discusses in detail the various classes of personal liberation: the precepts of the purificatory fast and the vows of the layperson, the male and female novices, the female postulant, and the monk. He also briefly examines the series of monastic rites, including confession. The vows of a nun, regrettably, are not included, because, as Kongtrul explains, the ordination of nuns was never introduced into Tibet.
The following is a full length video teaching offered by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo at Kunzang Palyul Choling:
The following is a full length video teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo on the Seven Line Prayer:
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo All rights reserved
The following video is a true story as presented by Ben Zeoli expressing his personal experience with the power of prayer:
The following is respectfully quoted from “Buddhist Ethics” by Jamgön Kongtrul:
Fourteen root downfalls of the commitments of training are explained in [Shantideva’s] Compendium of Trainings in accordance with the Akashagarbha Scripture. Five of them apply mainly to kings, one applies exclusively to ministers, and eight apply to beginners. The five [downfalls] that apply mainly to kings who are bodhisattvas-in-training are the following:
Five root downfalls that apply mainly to ministers: the first four are the same those prohibited for kings, and the fifth is to plunder a town.
The five root downfalls that apply mainly to ministers who are bodhisattvas-in-training include the first four root downfalls for a king, plus plundering a town and the like.
To plunder [a town] comprises five kinds of ravage: of a village (inhabited by four castes); a town (inhabited by eighteen kinds of artisans); a county (an area that includes several towns); a province (an area consisting of several counties); or a country (an area consisting of several provinces).
The eight root downfalls that apply to beginners are to teach emptiness to the untrained,
To cause another to give up the intention to awaken, to make someone abandon the Individual Way,
To assert that the Individual Way does not conquer emotions,
To praise oneself and belittle others,
To falsely claim realization of emptiness,
To cause a king to inflict a fine and then accept stolen property as a bribe,
To disrupt meditation or to give the possessions of a contemplative monk to one who merely recites scriptures.
The eight root downfalls [that apply mainly to] beginner bodhisattvas are as follows:
These are the fourteen downfalls that apply to acute practitioners, five for kings, one exclusive to ministers, and eight for beginners.
Four downfalls that Apply to Average Practitioners[B’]
Downfalls for average practitioners are to give up awakening mind, be ungenerous, angry, or hypocritical.
Four [downfalls] apply mainly to average practitioners. These are stated in the Compendium of Trainings, based on their presentation in the Skill in Means Scripture:
To abandon one’s awakening mind;
Not to give alms to mendicants
Out of strong attachment and avarice;
Not to forgive
But to strike others in anger
Even though they try to please one;
And to present false teachings as the Buddha’s teachings
Motivated by an emotion or in order to please others.
One Downfall that Applies to Obtuse Practitioners [C’]
An obtuse practitioner must at least maintain the aspiration to awaken.
Having entered the Universal Way, an obtuse practitioner must, at the very least, maintain the aspiration [to awaken]. Accordingly, the Advice to the King Scriptures states that all precepts are fulfilled in this alone. To abandon one’s [aspiration] is a very serious root downfall for any bodhisattva, whether acute, average, or obtuse. The Condensed Transcendent Wisdom Scripture states:
Though [a bodhisattva] may have tread the path of the ten virtues for ten million eons,
If his goal shifts to becoming a solitary sage or a saint,
His ethics deteriorate and his commitments are lost.
Such a setback is far more serious than the defeating offense [of a monk].
The following is respectfully quoted from Jamgön Kongtrul’s “Treasury of Knowledge: Journey and Goal“
On six levels there are the three higher trainings, while on four the results of these are ensured. With the realization of the actual nature of phenomena, five components of practice are successfully refined.
On the first bodhisattva level, one trains in the causes leading to the three perfectly pure higher trainings. One the second level, one applies oneself to the higher training in discipline; on the third level, to that of mind; and on the fourth, fifth and sixth levels, to that of sublime intelligence. Thus, one focuses in succession on the factors that contribute to enlightenment, the Truths, and interdependent origination.
The results of these trainings are as follows: On the seventh level, timeless awareness of what cannot be characterized is ensured; on the eight level, the spontaneously present experience of timeless awareness, on the ninth level, the spiritual maturation of all beings; and on the tenth level, all the supports for meditative stability and power of complete recall.
Once one has directly realized the actual nature of phenomena on the first level, on the second level one trains successively in the component of discipline; one the third level, in the component of meditative stability; one the fourth, fifth, and sixth levels, in the component of sublime intelligence; and on the seventh and higher levels, in the component of complete freedom from anything obscuring the four aforementioned results. On the level of buddhahood, the total refinement of the component of complete freedom from anything obscuring any possible object of knowledge, [2.123.a] as well as the component of the vision that is the liberated state of timeless awareness.
Purity, Elimination, and Realization [e]
Endowed with three causes, what is fundamentally positive becomes even purer. Cognitive obscurations are gradually eliminated, and ten aspects of timeless awareness are ensured.
Due to the three causes (those of making offerings to the Three Jewels, bringing beings to complete spiritual maturity, and dedicating one’s fundamentally positive qualities toward enlightenment) carried out over eons, from the first to the tenth levels these fundamentally positive factors become ever more completely purified. Analogies are used to describe the different degrees of purification that apply to successive levels; one can learn about these in the sūtra the Ten Spiritual Levels.
As for the distinct states of elimination and realization that pertain to those on these levels, the 112 factors to be eliminated on the path of seeing are removed on that path, and those to be eliminated on the path of meditation are removed on that path. But when we discuss the ten levels, on these respective levels there are specific aspects of timeless awareness (that is, of realization concerning the basic space of phenomena) that successively eliminate the cognitive obscurations that are the counterproductive factors specific to any given level.
As well, the five states of fear are eliminated, as the sūtra the Ten Spiritual Levels states:
Immediately upon attaining this level, one is free of the five kinds of fear;
free of the fear of being without livelihood, of death, of not being acknowledged,
of lower states of rebirth, and of one’s retinue. One has no feelings of anxiety concerning these.
Any why, one might ask? These no longer have any hold over one.
Spiritually advanced beings have thoroughly removed
the sufferings of death, illness and aging.
Rebirth takes place due to the influence of karma and afflictive states;
but because they are not subject to these, they are not subject to the rest.
Which is to say, one has eliminated the four “rivers of suffering.” In these and other ways, one has been freed from an inconceivable amount of fear. The point to be understood [4.123.b] is that these processes continue to increase from the first bodhisattva level to the tenth.
Even though one is freed from these four kinds of suffering, one manifests as though one were still not freed, which is to say one consciously takes rebirth in conditional existence. As the same source states:
Because they perceive reality authentically, just as it is,
they have transcended birth and so forth;
nevertheless, through the power of their compassion
they demonstrate birth, death, illness, and aging.
As concerns realization, in meditative equipoise, those on all ten levels realize the spacelike nature of phenomena (that is, the ultimate mode of reality, just as it is, free of the limitations of conceptual elaboration). In postmeditation, they realize the illusion-quality of objects in the phenomenal world (that is, the relative mode of things in all their multiplicity, apparent yet lacking any independent nature of their own).
Other than the authenticity of this actual nature of phenomena, which is initially perceived on the path of seeing, there is no other kind of realization, nothing “new” to be seen; nevertheless, when we consider the distinctions between these ten levels, we can analyze ten aspects of realization as the certain knowledge that derives from eradicating false assumptions in the aftermath of factors to be eliminated having been removed.
A devotional song by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo for His Holiness Penor Rinpoche:
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo All rights reserved