A Vow of Love Series | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

Limitless Kindness

May 28, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

One of the most important and central thoughts in Buddhist philosophy is the idea of compassion. The Buddha taught that we must cultivate our lives as a vehicle to be of benefit to all sentient beings. It’s good that you’re a good mother, and it’s good that you’re a good friend, but we can’t limit ourselves to a small, familiar circle. We have to go on and on increasing our compassionate activity, our influence and our determination until we attain a level of kindness or compassion that supersedes what we believe is reasonable. We can’t stop even with our nation. We can’t think that we only want to help Americans. Nor can we stop with our world. We can’t think that we only want to help humans and animals, which are the ones that we can see. We have to think, according to the Buddha, that we wish to be of benefit to all sentient beings.

A sentient being is one who has sensory feeling or the development of that kind of discriminating consciousness. According to the Buddha’s teachings, there are six realms of cyclic existence, and there are sentient beings in all of these realms. The human realm and the animal realm are visible to us. This is living proof that at least some of the Buddha’s teaching is right. We see human beings and we see animals; therefore, we know that they exist. But according to the Buddha’s teaching, there are also non-physical beings and different kinds of beings that must be considered if we are to truly develop the mind of compassion.

Limiting ourselves to an identity such as,”I am a woman,” or “I am a man,” or “I am an American,” or “I am a Russian,” or even “I am a citizen of planet earth,” is not the way of the Buddha. Instead, we should think that on every particle we can see, and all those that we cannot see, and in every inch of space, there are millions and millions of sentient beings. And space goes on forever. If we intend to develop the mind of kindness, it must extend to all sentient beings equal to the limits of space. Space has no limits and there are limitless beings, seen and unseen. Therefore, we must extend the mind of compassion to beings far beyond those we can conceive of with our brains. That is an awesome thought. How can we really do that? We think that must be impossible. How can we be directly concerned with somebody we can’t see? How can we really care about something that might be infinitesimally small, like bacteria? Or a sentient being that may be as large as a galaxy? How can we seriously consider we must be kind to all sentient beings in that way?

When you develop the mind of compassion, you have to be careful how you develop that mind. If you examine yourself profoundly and honestly – and you have to be willing to be very honest with yourself – you may find that your goal is not really to benefit all sentient beings, but to be a kind person. There are worlds and universes of difference between these two goals. One is selfless: you truly wish to be of benefit to all sentient beings. The other is heading in the right direction, but ultimately it is not selfless because you wish that you could be a kind person. I hope that you can hear the difference between these two ideas. There are worlds of difference between them.

Daily Wishing Prayers

April 11, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series
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Having understood that all sentient beings are suffering, and having cultivated in your mind the aspiration of Bodhicitta, you should make fervent wishing prayers, constant wishing prayers. My teachers have told me that time and again great Bodhisattvas have been born in India and Tibet and their practice was not that extensive. They were not very educated in their practice; they were very simple people. But they were known in their previous incarnation for the heart-felt wishing prayers that they made. Because of the depth to which they desired to benefit beings, and through the force of their prayers alone, they were reborn in a form in which they could benefit a great many beings. So those prayers are exquisite.

Wishing prayers are important. They should be done in the morning and they should be done in the evening. They should be done every moment that you can be mindful of them. Make fervent prayers in your mind and your heart that you will, in this lifetime, benefit many beings and end their suffering. And that in all future lifetimes you will be reborn in a form in which you can benefit beings so that they might achieve enlightenment and have their suffering ended. Make prayers to cultivate in yourself that mind of enlightenment and to cultivate in yourself the pure intention to achieve enlightenment in order to benefit beings. That is the aspirational Bodhicitta, or practice of compassion.

The Buddha’s Point of View

April 9, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

According to the Buddha’s teaching all sentient beings have experienced suffering and continue to suffer. We have old age, sickness and death. We don’t know what to do about them. We get run over by cars and all kinds of crazy things happen to us on a regular basis. The Buddha teaches us the only way to end suffering is to achieve enlightenment. Once we achieve enlightenment, the very root causes that produce suffering, the seeds of karma within our mind, are eradicated.

We want to achieve enlightenment in order to attain happiness for all beings. That is the reason we enter the spiritual path and really pursue it in a determined fashion. If we were to look past the level of our mind that is constantly developing new and wonderful concepts, we would find that there is a basic primordial natural state. That natural state, free of conceptualization, that suchness, is the very fabric that is the mother of all phenomena, including your own self. The natural primordial nature that cannot be described is your nature and it is everyone’s nature and it is the same nature; there is no point at which you can divide it. When you divide it you start believing in self-nature or the ego structure. At that point, you are not experiencing the primordial state any longer.

The truth of the matter is, there is only that natural state. It is free of conceptualization, it is self-luminous, it is all-embracing, it is pure, and it remains and will always be undefiled. That is the natural state. If we are all one in that way – if that is what truly exists – then it is not possible for us to be separate. The Bodhisattva’s or the Buddha’s point of view is that I cannot achieve enlightenment without you. I cannot. Because that which I truly am is the same as you. If I separate myself from you, I’ve missed the point somehow. It is as important for all sentient beings to achieve enlightenment and to be free of suffering as it is for me and for you, individually, to accomplish that.

Thus the idea of compassion becomes more than an idea. It becomes the basis or the foundation of enlightenment. It becomes the only thing with meaning. That being the case, we must think about the ways in which compassion or Bodhicitta are practiced. There are two levels of Bodhicitta. There is aspirational Bodhicitta or aspirational compassion, and there is practical compassion.

Aspirational Bodhicitta is just as it sounds. It is the aspiring to compassion, or the wishing for compassionate activity. You should not think that because it is only wishing it is not precious and valuable. It is absolutely precious and valuable because it is the kind of contemplation that provides the basis or foundation on which you build your ability to practice practical compassion.

Mind of Compassion

April 8, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

What is it about compassion that is so important? Why do you hear so much about it in the Buddha’s teaching? From the Mahayana point of view there are two different kinds of compassion, or Bodhicitta. Bodhicitta actually means mind of enlightenment. The mind of compassion – the fully functional, fully awakened mind of compassion – is the same, and not different from, the mind of enlightenment. You cannot achieve enlightenment without developing the mind of compassion. You cannot achieve compassion – true compassion, selfless compassion – without moving ever closer to the mind of enlightenment. Essentially they are the same.

In our language we have two different words for fully awakened compassion and enlightenment, but from the Buddhist perspective when you say Bodhicitta you mean compassion and you also mean enlightenment. Due to the structure of our language, we actually separate the two. Yet they cannot be separated. Compassion and enlightenment can never be separated. It’s impossible. The reason why we seek to express the mind of compassion, and why we emphasize it, is to accomplish our own purpose and the purpose of others. We want to achieve enlightenment.

The Practice of Loving

April 7, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

Compassion is a subject that should be of interest to everyone. There isn’t one person that should consider themselves exempt from the practice of loving. We know from our own lives, I’m sure, that the times we have been the happiest are the times that we have loved. And the times that we have been the most useful are the times that we have been loving.

Compassion is one of the foundational teachings of Mahayana Buddhism, but it is more extensive than the kind of loving we find in our lives. From the Mahayana view, we should seek to love all sentient beings equally. It is a very interesting point of view, because you would think it more natural to love your husband or your wife, your parents and your children, more than you would love others. Buddhists are taught to honor our parents and to maintain the integrity of family, to not have divorces and go from family to family. Yet the Buddhist perspective is that all sentient beings are essentially equal, that their needs are equal and that all sentient beings equally desire happiness. It is useful and beneficial to love everyone and to experience compassion for all beings equally.

We are taught the very reason we love certain people more than others is because in our minds we have the karma of attachment and aversion. We have hope and fear within our minds, and these things are based on the belief in our own ego structure, the belief that self-nature is inherently real. Our relationships with others are shadowed by that and take on the flavor of whatever particular energy suits our particular ego. Because of our ego, we think that we love one person more than we love another.

If we existed somehow miraculously in an egoless state, we would find that all sentient beings are equal and the same nature. They are that same primordial, natural suchness. Seeing each sentient being as that would help us understand that there is essentially no difference. We are all exactly the same, we all desire happiness and haven’t yet developed the skills to get that happiness. We are all deserving of love and caring and nurturing and being taught the skills of happiness.

With Fervent Regard

March 15, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

One of the problems that we Westerners have is that we’ve grown up with religions that say God is external. That is not what the Buddha teaches. The Buddha teaches us not that our supreme object of refuge is an external God, but that ultimately, in the deepest sense, our supreme refuge is enlightenment, the uncontrived natural state free of desire. According to the Buddha’s teaching, it is possible to achieve realization; that desire-free state, that natural uncontrived wisdom state is attainable. According to which path you take, it is attainable in many lifetimes, it is attainable in some lifetimes, it is attainable in a few lifetimes, or according to the Vajrayana, with sincere practice it is attainable in one lifetime.

You have to decide for yourself what you’re going to do. It’s a difficult job, because we are so filled with ideas from our upbringing. People say, “I’m moved by what you say, but I just don’t know if I can renounce everything. I just don’t know if I can give everything up.” That’s not what’s being talked about here. What’s being talked about is that you have to determine your objects of refuge. You have to determine what your refuge is, and from that you should make your own decisions. There are many different levels at which you can practice. You can become a full renunciate, taking vows, taking robes. You can also practice in a more casual way, laying the pathway for eventual deeper practice. Nobody’s making a rule for you. The point is that you should think for yourself and you should think past the ways in which you were brought up. You should look courageously at suffering, at the causes for suffering, and at the end of suffering.

According to the Buddha’s teaching, there is nothing on this Earth that can end suffering for all sentient beings. If we found the cure for cancer, AIDS, for everything, something else would happen, because the karma of sickness is there. If we found the cure for poverty, something else would happen. If we found the cure for war…. and all these ifs are mighty big. The karma of suffering is desire. It is the root cause for all suffering. Having determined that, we have to think that to get rid of it from our mindstreams will take something more profound than manipulating our external environment. The problem cannot be solved in that way.

I think it behooves us as Westerners to think deeply about these things. From my point of view, I have seen Westerners adapt the Buddhist religion, and I am not satisfied in the way that they are doing it. They’re practicing Buddhists, they know the mudras, they know the mantras, and they know how to ring the bells. They know how to do all the ceremonial things that come with the Buddhadharma; and I am not happy with their minds. Because maybe they didn’t take long enough to decide for themselves what the object of refuge is and what the cause of suffering is.

You can collect Dharma in a materialistic way just as well as you can collect cars and TVs. You can collect Lamas and the blessings of Lamas in a materialistic way just as easily as you can do anything else. You can collect new thoughts and new ideas and spiritual truths and books and all kinds of things, and never change. Or you can come from a really pure place and examine these things with courage and with pure intention. You can be determined to awaken the seed and the fire of compassion in your mind by examining the suffering of all sentient beings. You can encourage that flame, that fire, fanning it into life so that it burns away all obstacles to your practice. And you’ll find for yourself your object of refuge, and you’ll go…just go. You can do that. It takes courage and it takes pure intention and it takes determination to really think about these things, in a logical and real way. That’s what I hope you will do.

I am a Buddhist, and I always will be. But I’m not trying to sell Buddhism. What I would like to see is a world without suffering. That is the point, hopefully, of all religions; certainly of mine. I wish to talk about the same thing Lord Buddha himself talked about: the causes of suffering and the end of suffering. If we start there, thinking of these things and thinking of them with what Buddhists call fervent regard, we can make a lot of progress.

Contemplating these things creates a great deal of virtue and merit. After you think about these things, please dedicate the time that you spent and the effort that you took, to benefit all sentient beings. In other words, offer the virtue or the merit that you have accomplished by even just wanting to love. There’s a tremendous amount of virtue in that. Offer that as food and drink to all sentient beings so that the karma of that can be shared with a world that is suffering.

Determine How You Will Spend Your Life

March 14, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

I wish from my heart that it would be okay to be a renunciate. Because to be a renunciate is to renounce the things that one has desire for, the objects that one grasps, and instead seek only a true source of refuge. To renounce the sources of suffering. There ought to be a place for that in our society. It ought to be okay for anyone to do what they want. It ought to be okay if they want to remain as they are and continue to function in the ordinary ways that we are used to in our society. But it ought to be okay if a person sincerely becomes discontented and wants to seek a supreme refuge that is the end of suffering, which is enlightenment.

You don’t necessarily have to be a Buddhist to adopt these kinds of ideas, although I found for myself that the Buddha’s teaching was the best way to do it. But not only Buddhists can do this kind of thing. In order to do this successfully you have to determine what your supreme refuge is. You have to really review that. This is why I like what the Buddha said, because in the foundational teachings you are never asked to buy something with blind faith. You’re asked to think things out logically.

This is what I suggest you should do. Think to yourself, “Really, how do people suffer? How do sentient beings suffer?” Sentient beings of all kinds, not only people. If you can learn anything about non-physical sentient beings, do that. The Buddha has many teachings on non-physical realms. But, even about just the ones that you know, human beings and animals. Check books out from the library on different life forms and different conditions around the world. Check out books about India. Check out books about Ethiopia. Check out books about different cultures and different ways in which people live. Check out books about different animals and different life forms. How they grow, how they evolve, from insects to lions. Study them all carefully.

You will see that animals are consumed: that they are eaten, and that they eat. That human beings grow sick, grow old, and that they die. That so far, no one has definitely proven they can keep from doing that. Even within that, there are sub-sufferings and different kinds of sufferings. While you are studying all of those things, develop a deep sense of compassion for the endlessness of it. Compassion for the lack of resolution and that everything around you will have its moment of intense suffering; everything and everyone. Develop a deep sense of compassion, that their suffering is endless. That it is unbearable at times. And that there is yet no solution. Think for yourself, what could be the possible solution; try to think one up. Really work that through, down to the place where you’re into the planning stages. You will find it will never work, because we are all filled with the karma of desire. Every one of us.

Having decided for yourself that all sentient beings are suffering so greatly that you can no longer bear it, and having understood that there is nothing else but to end this suffering, then maybe you might also think there’s no other way to spend your life other than to accomplish that for yourself and other sentient beings. Because the only way you can truly benefit beings is if you yourself have achieved some realization and understanding of the causes of their suffering.

Having understood all these things, then you must determine for yourself how you will spend the rest of your life. You must determine this, and it will take every day of your life, because we’ve been trained to do the opposite. You must think for yourself again and again and again, of what use is this life? If I am constantly filled with more suffering, if I am constantly participating in a scenario that always ends up with suffering, how will this life be of any value? And if you come to the solution that this life has value if it is a vehicle for enlightenment, then you should think for yourself, how should I do this? You should examine what you do now; how you spend your day. Then you should think, how have I spent my years? Then you should think, what should I do?

Red-blooded Buddhist

March 13, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

Now, I’m a red-blooded American. You can’t get any more American than born in Brooklyn to an Italian father and a Jewish mother. That’s as American as they come in this world. So I understand our culture. I don’t claim to have any special powers or abilities; in fact I could study Lord Buddha’s teachings for the next twenty thousand lives. It’s the same for everyone: until you reach supreme enlightenment, you don’t understand the Buddha’s teaching, because to do that you must understand the Buddha’s mind. I feel that I am a beginner. But one thing I do understand is that as Westerners we have not yet come to understand what our objects of refuge are. One of our main sufferings, and the cause of more suffering, is that we take refuge in the wrong things.

As a culture we have not come to understand the value of using this life as a vehicle to achieve supreme realization. Even for those of us practicing Dharma, it takes a long time to understand that the only value of this precious human rebirth is to achieve enlightenment. Here in America we have the most precious jewel of all: the leisure to practice. If we don’t have the time, we can make the time. You can. Try it. You can. We have the leisure to practice. We have the ability to study. We have within our grasp a true path that has proven again and again and again it can produce enlightenment. We have these precious things, and yet we don’t understand that the only point of this life is to end suffering, not only for ourselves but for all sentient beings. Because once we ourselves achieve realization, we can contribute to the end of suffering in a real way for all sentient beings. For all others.

We tend to think of our lives in a very different way, because we don’t understand what our objects of refuge are. We try to live our lives with immediate gratification. We think, “Well, I have to be busy because I have to have this and this and this and this and this and this. I have to buy this, and I have to have this and I have to attain this.” We don’t accept that maybe it is possible to live a completely successful life under a completely different set of rules.

Renunciate in the USA

March 12, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

The idea of renunciation is not popular in our country because we don’t understand it. In America we believe in accumulation; that’s our source of refuge: we accumulate. The minute we have that coffee pot and that microwave and that big- screen TV and all those different things, we’re going to be happy. If you don’t have a car, if you’re not rich, if you don’t have a toaster, if you don’t have a dishwasher, if you don’t have all of these things, that is the cause of suffering. Yet the Buddha says, “No, that’s not the case. The cause of suffering is the desire for those things.” Having devoted ourselves to accumulation, it becomes uncomfortable to think that we might have to dedicate our lives to renunciation.

It depends on your objects of refuge. If you really think that the coffee percolator, the TV, the anti-aging cream, the microwave, the big car and all the money are your source of refuge, then most Americans are practicing their religion correctly. But if you believe that enlightenment is the end of suffering, then that is your object of refuge. All the teachings and the supports to the Path to enlightenment – the Buddha, the Dharma or the Buddha’s teaching, and the Sangha or the Buddha’s community – are the objects of refuge. That is what you see as the solution. The things like toaster, can only make toast. The things like coffee pot can only make coffee. The things like TV can only show whatever they show. They are not sources of refuge; they never, ever, end suffering for more than a short period of time. If we understand that our sources of refuge are those things which end suffering, we’ll be able to perceive in a logical and real way.

We are a hard-working people. We get up very early in the morning. We quickly get ready under stressful conditions, putting on as much of those Estee Lauder things as we possibly can, before seven o’clock. Then we leave and stay on the road for a very long time, under terrible conditions. Then we get somewhere and we work very hard with people we don’t know very well, doing very strange things that are very different from our nature, all day long. Then we come home on a very long road that is also very difficult to travel. Then we eat very quickly, and don’t feel very well, watch TV and go to bed. That’s what most of our culture does. And it’s a very hard road.

We use so much energy doing things that we are told we must do. We must have a certain level of education. We must have a certain level of accumulation. We must care for these things that we have accumulated. We must cultivate certain kinds of relationships. That’s a big job. According to our culture there are certain lines that we have to cross in order to be successful and happy. We work very hard at these things.

But chronically and repeatedly at certain ages of our lives we go through phases or passages when we are dissatisfied. Marriages go through the seven-year itch. We go through middle age and we go through menopause. We go through all these different stages, and they’re so common and usual that our psychologists are beginning to recognize and document them and consider some of them normal.

What are they really? We work very hard to get to a certain phase of our life and then we find that it’s basically empty. We didn’t get the satisfaction we were promised. Then we gear ourselves up for another phase. When we get there, suddenly we find: uh oh. That’s not to say we don’t have our little joys and happiness’s along the way. But basically as a people we work very hard and yet are becoming deeply disappointed and disillusioned.

The way that some of us have chosen to deal with it is to think more positively and convince ourselves that we really are happy. We go to friends or support groups or some New Age groups or a psychologist; all the different avenues that people explore when they’re really hurting. What you basically come out with is, “Oh you have to change your thinking around.” You are told to think, “My life is full, my life is fruitful, I am really happy and I like being busy like this because it means that I’m having many experiences.” There are so many people doing that kind of thing it’s painful to watch. Some people are okay with that; it’s their karma to live a good and simple life, and throughout their life they try to be kind to others. But some people are really struggling.

In Pursuit of The Real Cure

March 11, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

For Westerners, one of the basic teachings of the Buddha, that all sentient beings are suffering, is very difficult to understand. Our culture doesn’t buy the idea of suffering. Most of us seem to have everything, or if we don’t have everything we can get it if we really try. There are books that say if you really want to do thus and such, you can do it. That implies something about the understanding of suffering in our culture. There is also a movement that developed gradually with the idea that if you constantly think positively, you can make your life into something that is completely pleasurable all the time. This became the New Age movement.

The Buddha says that if you honestly and with courage look around, you will see that idea doesn’t hold up. No matter what people’s thoughts are, or how they try to live a life with positive thinking or master their emotions in that superficial way by saying, “Right now I am happy. I am constantly happy. I am always happy, therefore I will be happy.” No matter how they try to do that, we are getting old. We are getting sick. Eventually, everyone will die.

These are the thoughts we are given when we begin to study Buddhism, which turn the mind. The three sufferings of the human realm: old age, sickness and death, and also the suffering of suffering. Because even within that, there are different kinds of suffering: the suffering of loneliness, the suffering of poverty, the suffering of hunger.

We are not instructed by the Buddha to meditate on suffering to make ourselves miserable and increase our suffering. That isn’t the point. The point of understanding suffering and courageously viewing suffering is that finally you will have the tools to do something about it. Because at the same time that Lord Buddha teaches us there is suffering, he also says, “And there is an end to suffering. And the end to suffering is enlightenment.”

Here in the West we do everything else in order to end our suffering. We stand in front of the Estee Lauder counter for thirty years, and every year we buy a new product. We do this in order to not suffer aging; that’s how we think as Westerners. We develop new and better medical techniques in order to not suffer sickness. When people die, we quickly take them off the streets and out of view and stick them in boxes. Then we claim that according to psychology one can safely grieve for nine weeks before it becomes neuroses. We have done all of these things in order to deal with old age, sickness and death. Of course we have social services and we try not to let people be too poor. If they are poor we put them all in the same part of the city so that nobody can see them. All of these things exist in our society and yet we managed to cover them up. That’s really our psychology.

But if you understand a timeless and very simple truth, and look around you with courage at humans and animals all over the world, you will see suffering exists. Has Estee Lauder cured aging yet? Have we found a cure to death? Have we found a cure to sickness? We may have found a way to manipulate sickness, but it still exists. These sufferings are still there, although we have managed to delude ourselves that they don’t exist. The problem is that it’s not the cure. The cure is realization, enlightenment. In order to accomplish the end of all suffering, we as a culture have to turn some of our attention away from the grand cover up, and more to the pursuit of the real cure. We have to finally understand our objects of refuge.