Bringing Virtue Into Life Su2-07 | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

Examining Cause and Effect in Real Life

August 7, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Bringing Virtue Into Life”

You may have been born rich, or perhaps during the course of your life it has been relatively easy for you to make money, gain riches. Or perhaps during the course of your life, at some point you have inherited riches. And you wonder to yourself, “How is it that I hear about the starving poor and yet I, who wasn’t even hungry in the first place, have inherited this money, or I have this money? How is it? It would seem as though I am completely undeserving. How has that happened?” You wonder about that. “Why is it easy for me to make money?” Well, the reason why it is easy for you to inherit that money or to make that money is because some time in the past you have earned it; and the way that you have earned it is by engaging in virtuous activity concerned with generosity toward others. If you have given food to others, in this life you always have enough to eat, and more. In fact, the problem is not eating too much.

So then, if you have a lot of money and things have been pretty comfortable for you, then sometime in the past you must have been very generous toward others, and your big problem in this lifetime is not how to make money but how to spend it, or not spend it. In that case, you deserve everything that you get. You deserve all of it.

Now, in this lifetime, if you just take that money and express through it no acts of generosity,… Let’s say maybe you keep it in your family to make sure that your children are provided for. Well, that’s a kind of generosity. You did give some to your children, but that isn’t real generosity, because children are kind of like an extension of our own ego. We think of them as part of us. We don’t think of them as being separate from us. We like our children to be rich because it’s a good reflection on us and it makes us die happy.

But let’s say in this lifetime, although you have lots of money, you haven’t really given any to benefit others. You haven’t helped others not to be hungry. You haven’t given it to children that don’t get any toys as Christmas. You haven’t made any offerings to the temple where you receive all your spiritual benefit. You haven’t done anything with your money. If you think then that you’re going to somehow be able to legally make it happen that they’ll find you in your next incarnation and give you back that money,… Au contraire, monsieur. You can’t take it with you. It’s not going to appear again in your next life. Forget it! It’s not going to happen. But in your next life you will probably be born much poorer because, even though you had the money before, you were not very generous.

So it’s very, very clear that cause and effect are interconnected. In fact, the Buddha teaches us that they arise interdependently: When the cause arises, the effect arises at the same time, but in seed form. Think about that. Think about that the next time you have non-virtuous behavior. One of the reasons why it’s so easy to be non-virtuous is because you think, “Well, O.K., I’m being non-virtuous now, but I don’t see the effect rising yet. So maybe they…(Who are they anyway? We don’t know.) they’ll forget about it. “ You know, the guys with the x’s and the checks. They’re up there. They’re sitting on the throne. You know, the guy with long beard. Maybe he’ll forget about it by then. But in fact the Buddha teaches that, number one, there is nobody with a book up there, or a beard. And number two, when you give rise to the cause, the effect is already born, and you will experience it. You will experience it.

The Choice

April 2, 2014 by anisonam

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Bringing Virtue Into Life”

Whether you are contemplating teachings, offering, practicing, praying, meditating, whatever it is that you are doing, you’re doing it because you must. You are preparing for your next rebirth. I’m not a dope. I’m preparing for my next rebirth. Are you a dope? You have to prepare for your next rebirth. If I have to prepare, so do you.

That’s what is beautiful about your human existence right now. You have the capacity to prepare for your next rebirth. Other life forms cannot do that, but you can. So I am asking you please, at whatever level you practice, whether you are just sniffing around, kind of interested, whether you’re really getting with the program and you’re starting to practice, or whether you’re an old-time practitioner, the thoughts that turn the mind—those beginning thoughts that are in the beginning of your Ngondro practice—there is never a day in your life when you don’t need to practice them, because the day that you don’t practice those thoughts, the day that you don’t think about those thoughts is the day you’re going to start deluding yourself again, and basically drinking the alcohol or the drug of samsara which dupes you and tells you that there is no connection between cause and effect, and, in fact, you are not getting older every day, and your life is going to go for a very long time—these deluding thoughts.

Don’t wait until a life challenging catastrophe, to you or someone close to you, teaches you this hard lesson. Please don’t wait for that, because it will happen. Some day you’re going to find out that you’re dying, or someday you’re going to find out that someone near and dear to you is dying or has died. That is a life changing experience, and it will teach you Dharma. It will teach you to prepare for your next rebirth, if you’re listening at all.

On the other hand, there are even those that are so deluded—and this has happened to students of mine—that they have been diagnosed as terminal, have been at death’s door and have decided they didn’t want to spend their last months practicing Dharma. They wanted to spend their last months having fun. This is the kind of delusion that is within our hearts and our minds now. And if you don’t think that you have that in your mind, listen to your thoughts. Engage in some self-honesty and listen to how you think. This is what we’re doing every day, tossing it back, tossing it back—the drink of samsara. Keep it numb. Keep it numb, because when we’re numb we don’t have to face it.

There is another way, you see. You can be the kind of person that wants to keep it numb. You keep all the lights in your house off and try to walk around in there (if you can), and what is ultimately going to happen is you are going to hurt yourself. You’re going to fall over stuff. You’re going to trip and you’re going to bang into walls. You’re going to burn yourself. All kinds of things are going to happen if you try to live with the lights off. But on the other hand, if you go through the effort—and this is like practicing Dharma—if you go through the effort of getting the big picture and you switch on the lights, even though it’s effortful to go through the regimen of doing this and pay attention, and learn where the things are in your house, at least you know how it stands. And you can negotiate around in your house without bumping into walls and falling over the furniture. Our lives are like that. We have a choice.

We can live our lives as the walking dead, and then die, unprepared, like going to a continent filled with precious jewels and coming back empty-handed. Or, we can switch on the lights, face facts and do what it takes to negotiate the shoals of samsara as painlessly as possible.

Bringing Virtue Into Your Life: Full Length Video Teaching

December 17, 2011 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is a full length video teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo offered at Kunzang Palyul Choling:

The narcotic of samsara encourages us to believe that we will stay the same forever. Self-honesty tells us differently. Jetsunma helps us see the reality of impermanence and karma in our lives. Living a life of virtue will bring us ultimate happiness.