Dharma of Technology | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

What Does Love Taste Like?

December 2, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

In this excerpt from a teaching called The Dharma of Technology, Jetsunma is speaking to her students who had recently received the Rinchen Terzod from His Holiness Penor Rinpoche who conferred the Rinchen Terzod at Kunzang Palyul Choling in 1988

Do you remember in the empowerments in the Rinchen Terzod we had the opportunity to taste different things, something sweet and something bitter, then His Holiness said, “Who is the taster? You know what makes this sweet and this bitter?” The taster does, because if you tried to find the essence of the thing that you’re looking at, remember, if you divided it down and looked at it under the microscope you would never find its thing-ness. In fact, you would never find its sweetness. Which molecule is the sweet one? You would never really find that. What is sweet is sweet to the tongue and the tongue is the determiner of that taste. Who does the tongue belong to? The tongue belongs to you. So you, in fact, are the one that determines whether the thing is sweet or not. You are the taster. And so when you examine yourself and you boil everything down and smear it on the microscope, you can’t find where you are, then you realize that sweet and sour, sweet and bitter are concepts and they are just proliferations of the mind.

In the same way, this person that drives you crazy and this person that is the precious jewel in your life are equal. It is the hatred and the desire, the hope and fear, the attraction and aversion in your mind that causes you to make a difference between them. If you looked at them with the mind of enlightenment, you would see that they are the same. Yet we all have our likes and dislikes. But somehow through our practice, we have to accomplish such pure view, free of desire and on fire with love that they are the same. We have to give our lives equally for both of them. We have to be willing to eat an ocean of suffering for the ones we can’t stand and for the ones we truly love. It’s easy to make sacrifices for the ones you love. It’s easy to make sacrifices for your children. That’s not hard. Anyone can do that. I was reading the other day about a creature called a midge. It conceives its children inside its belly and then as the children grow, they eat the mother from inside out and the mother dies. It’s a shell and it opens up and the children come out. And then after a while they reproduce in the same way. If a little bug can do that, if it can give its life to nurture its children, you can do that. That’s not hard. That happens even on the lowest realms.

What’s really hard is to give your life for all sentient beings, the ones that you know and the ones that you don’t know and to do so in a way so that the ones that you can’t stand are equal to the precious pearls in your life. They have to be the same. If you give only so much and you stop giving, only extending your love to your family or friends and to the people that you know here, or your nation or your planet or even your universe — what about the other 2,999 myriads of universes? What about all of the sentient beings who are, with hatred in your heart, not worthy of your love, but with love in your heart, the same as you?

That’s when you have accomplished Dharma, when your love is that great, when you are that mindful of compassion, when through your meditation and through your practice, and through your understanding of the Buddha’s teachings, you have come to understand the equality of all that lives, that they are the same mind, the same uncontrived primordial wisdom nature, that they only appear to be different. They suffer, they live and they die because of their confusion. What makes the ones you hate so hateful? First of all, it’s your vision of them. You are the taster. Someone else loves them. Who loves them is the same as you and you’re the same as them. The difference is the particular karmic pattern of attraction and repulsion, of desire that manifests in your life.

The one that you hate is the same nature as you with the same capabilities, with the same desire to be happy. The difference is that this person may be confused and the only way they know how to reach for happiness is in the ways that make them unhappy. And of course you, in your hatred and your greed and your ignorance interpret their activity because of the karma of your mind. This sounds like elementary stuff. The sun pours forth and it doesn’t say, “Well, I think I’ll go to violets today and roses are going to be in the dark.” The sun doesn’t do that. Its nature is to pour forth and embrace all life and it is the source of life. Your compassion, your mind is like that in its natural state. It is that all-pervasive compassionate reality, that all pervasive non-dual mind state and so your love has to be that way. Your accomplishment of Dharma has to be like that, with that understanding.

It sounds elementary. It sounds simple. But we still hate. We still judge. We still have the seeds for war in our bodies and in our minds. We still have the seeds for old age, sickness and death. We still have the seeds for all the six kinds of suffering in all of the six realms, and so in that way, we have not accomplished Dharma.

What Prayer Supersedes all others?

December 1, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called The Dharma of Technology by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Compassion is the foundation of Dharma. It is the meaning of Dharma. Without compassion, there is no accomplishment of Dharma and you have to make a fervent prayer, a prayer that supersedes any other prayer that you will ever make. You pray that you will accomplish the extreme great compassion, to put your mind and your heart in such a way that if Lord Buddha Amitabha did come to you and offer you the suffering of the six realms, you would eat it with happiness and with joy. And just before you took your first bite you might say, “Please Lord Buddha, save me. Help.” And then you’d eat.

We are all in a body that has an ego associated with it, a body that is an ego that has an “I” identity. We want to work for our safety. We are very concerned with our safety. So it’s understandable that you might make that prayer, “Please, by the grace of the wisdom of your mind, let the suffering, once I eat it, be transformed.” But you should eat it and not really care whether it works out that way or not. If you could be the only one that suffered and all of the six realms could be liberated, if you could be the very last, the only one left, that should be your greatest joy. If all of the ones that you have hated and judged, the ones that you thought were the thorn in your side, if they could achieve enlightenment before you, that should make you happier than the thought of your own enlightenment. If you can really come to that understanding not in a superficial way, but from the depth of your heart that if Lord Buddha Amitabha would give you this opportunity you would take it in a minute, then you have accomplished Dharma and you are to me the light of the world. You are to me the best student there is. You are a treasure. And I don’t really care if you accomplish anything else about Dharma, because the mind that does not differentiate, the mind that is free of hatred, the mind that has overcome desire associated with the self to the extent that it will take on the suffering of all the worlds, that mind is the liberated mind. That is a jewel. That is the mind that is the wish-fulfilling jewel.

The reason why I am telling you this is because I want you to know as my students, I really want you to understand and have there be no question in your mind what I think Dharma is. I want you to understand what I respect and what I admire. I’ve told before that I see students that are learning the technology of Dharma and some of them hang out with the big lamas and they go for the big empowerments and stuff like that and they remain unloving, unchanged, and full of gossip, full of judgment and I don’t think much of that. I wouldn’t have a student like that.

If my opinion is of any value to you at all, then please understand that to the best of my ability this is what Dharma really is. This is the understanding that I have. To the best of my ability, I understand Dharma to be that love. I am not going to teach you something that will not lead to enlightenment. I don’t claim to have any special powers, but if you have any consideration that I’m your teacher, any faith in me, then hear this. If you accomplish this and do nothing else, you will have accomplished Dharma and basically, that’s really all you’re ever going to learn from me. That’s all I really have for you. I hope that you will consider that precious. There is no other Dharma. There is no other enlightenment besides that. The mind of bodhicitta, that is the supreme goal and there is none superior to that. When you have accomplished that, that’s it. Your mind is liberated from the very causes of suffering and you then are in the position where you can, in turn, liberate minds.

I wish that you would actually use this technique. I wish you could really think about what if Lord Buddha Amitabha came to you and offered you the six realms of suffering. Would you take it? Try to cultivate your mind and gentle your mind and purify your mind to the point where you would gladly, willingly take it and be willing to suffer for an endless amount of time, and be really happy about that. Think that your precious self, the one that you love so much, might be deformed and made gross by that suffering. Think that might happen and still be happy about it. You should think about all the people that drive you crazy and all the people that you hate and try to get to the point where you’re really happy if they make it ahead of you and think that the people that are precious to you, your family, the ones you make such a big deal about, make it in your mind where they are the same, exactly the same as the people that drive you crazy. When you have accomplished that, through whatever means, and generally it happens through kindness and practice just in the way Lord Buddha dictates, then you have accomplished Dharma.

Through the cultivation of your mind to be pure in that way, through a mind like that, through that exalted mind of bodhicitta, you will certainly have the power to appear in an emanation form again and again under all circumstances, in all roles, in strange places, under strange conditions and be able to provide a means to enlightenment to all sentient beings, just through that and nothing else. You don’t even have to be smart to do that. That’s why sometimes I think intelligence is a pitfall. You don’t have to be smart to do that, but you have to be determined to accomplish Dharma.

I hope that you find meaning in this and that you have it clear in your mind what I really cherish and what’s really important to me. I would like it very much if you understood me that well at least because then if you decided that you really wanted to be my student for the duration and learn what I have to teach you, that’s it. That’s all I can teach you. But I can teach you that.

Using the Enemy as Guru

November 29, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called The Dharma of Technology by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Think about the people in your life. Is there one person that you just can’t stand? I know that you’re a Buddhist, however, there is probably one person in your life that gets your goat every time. If you think there is no such person that you can’t stand, then you don’t know yourself at all. Think about all of the people in of your life and think about whether you can sincerely wish that each one of them gets ahead, has all the happiness, all the approval, all the food, all the money, all the goods, all the joy, all the accomplishment that they could possibly have.

Think about all the people in your life. There is somebody in your life, probably more than one person, who when they get praise or that good old pat on the back from the authority that you’d like to have approval from, you’re not happy about it.

You want all sentient beings to be happy. You want everyone to get ahead. You want everyone to have a new car, lots of food, a great house to live in, everything they could possibly want and then you want them under those circumstances to reach enlightenment even without trying. That’s what you want for all sentient beings. But if you examine yourself, there is at least one person in your life that you really would like to see work for it. And you wouldn’t mind if this person got disciplined heartily along the way. You’d like to see this person get what they really deserve. It may be somebody that you flat out hate. There is always somebody like that.

Take that person and then think of that person next to the person that you love the most in the world, the person whose qualities you think are the purest, the one you’d most like to be like, the person that you really love. Maybe a child or a mate or a teacher or a friend who has given you so much, somebody that has been so kind to you and someone you really feel like you couldn’t make it in this life without. There must be somebody in your life who is such a treasure to you.

Your job, in order to fully accomplish Dharma, is to make that person that drives you crazy the same in your mind as the person who is the real treasure in your life. They have to be the same. And in fact, if the person who drives you crazy to the point that you can’t live with being crazy like that any more, and through the Buddha’s teaching you are able to accomplish loving that person equally with the jewel in your life, then that person is more valuable to you than the one you love easily. That person is your real guru. You have to think about the one person in your life that you would never, under any circumstances, call your guru. That’s the one you use, the one person that you would be embarrassed to have the world know that was teaching you anything. That’s the one you use.

Somehow you have to develop a sense of stability of mind and that is only done through compassion where you understand the equality of those two, because they are equal. They are exactly the same.

The Heart of Dharma

January 19, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Dharma of Technology by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

I really hope from the depth of my heart that all of you really fully intend to accomplish Dharma. What comes to your mind when you think, “accomplish Dharma?” One of the dangers, I think, when you see monks practice in the traditional way, especially if they are really polished in their practice is that we think that must be accomplishing Dharma. We think that what accomplishing dharma is getting the hand movements right and looking very disciplined and very ordered and in sync. And it’s part of it. That is the mechanical part, the skill that is necessary. Pujas and practices, all the different kinds of practices, whether they are recitations of different kinds, the making of tormas to all of the different kinds of offerings that you would make, to accomplishing tsog properly, to doing the mudras properly. These things are all the technical side of practice and they’re all important.

There is a reason why they are in the practices that we do. They all have a specific role to play in ripening the mind. And one of the things that makes tantra tantra, is that there is this outer, inner and secret level of meaning and that there is actually a physical thing that you do in order to accomplish what you’re doing, such as making a torma or making a certain kind of food offering at the same time that you’re accomplishing on the inside. And they’re done together, hand in glove and one is meaningless without the other. Not completely in the sense that you can make an offering in your heart and if you don’t have anything physical to give, it’s still a valid offering, but still, it’s universal in the Vajrayana path that you do all these different things together. So it’s a great skill and it’s really good to learn these things and that’s part of accomplishing Dharma.

Don’t be overwhelmed by watching people play bells and damarus in sync. Don’t be overwhelmed by watching the different technical things that you can do in Dharma and think that if you could just learn to make your hands go smoothly and do all this stuff at one time or if you could learn all the different parts of puja and do them absolutely correctly, then you will automatically have accomplished Dharma. If you have any understanding of Dharma by now, you’ll understand that Dharma is in the heart.

If you have the heart of Dharma, then to accomplish the technical side of Dharma is extraordinary. If you could have both of these components, it’s extraordinary. It’s a tremendous blessing. It’s a blessing beyond description. On the other hand, if you have the heart of Dharma without the technical side, you still have the heart of Dharma and that heart remains with you. It’s not something that dies at this lifetime. It’s something that remains with you and it changes you and it brings about the results that you want. But if you only have the mechanical part of Dharma, if you only have that without the meaning, without the heart of it, then you come away unchanged, and there again you’re in danger of collecting these skills in a material way. And if you collect them in a material way, it will be like any other form of materialism. It has the danger of pride, it has the danger of greed, it has the danger of lots of different things.

Now hear me. I am not saying that you should not become proficient in accomplishing these physical parts of Dharma, but I’m saying that if you do, be certain that you don’t lose an inch, a centimeter of your understanding of what Dharma is and in fact, be sure that your understanding of the heart of Dharma increases accordingly.

I’m not saying don’t bother to learn the technical side. I hope from the depth of my heart that we can learn the technical side. I really encourage all the monks and nuns to learn the technical side of Dharma, but I warn you not to do it without the heart.

In truth I have to tell you there have been one or two of you doing the offering mudras every chance you get and I see that there is no concentration and no real fixation or stabilization of your mind so that as you do the mudras you remember that you’re actually making an offering to the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas or an offering to the specific deity. I think that’s sad. I think it’s sad if you pay a lot of attention to what your hands are doing and very little attention to what your heart is doing. I think that’s kind of like a shell. Do you see what I am saying? So I think it is very important for you to accomplish Dharma from the heart.

When I say “from the heart,” I don’t mean in an emotional way. I don’t mean that you should think about Dharma in such a way that you make it into a vast, blissful experience. It isn’t like that at all. The real heart of Dharma is compassion and it’s the very hardest part. If you had a teacher that sat there beside you, you could learn all the different parts of Dharma practice and you could learn them very well. Relatively speaking, even though there is a lot to learn and even though we’re actually technically too old to start now and learn it all. But even if we could, we could accomplish it sufficiently to be pretty good at it or to look pretty good at it.

From that point of view, that kind of accomplishment is relatively easy. It’s doable. It’s doable to anyone of normal intelligence or perhaps a little bit above. But the heart of Dharma – if you sat with a teacher and yet you were not receptive or you had any of the karmic obscurations that I have described in previous teachings, it may be that you could sit with an excellent teacher for many years and never accomplish the heart of Dharma, which is compassion. Of all of the things that you can practice in Dharma, compassion is the very hardest. As a monk or nun, you can keep your vows exactly. You could read them every day and you can measure your bed and you can never clean a toilet again in your life. You could do all these things that would keep your vows exactly. But I bet anything if you examined your heart, you have not kept the bodhisattva vow for one hour.

The Test

February 12, 2011 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called The Dharma of Technology by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

You should come to respect the root of Dharma, which is bodhicitta or compassion, as the most profound teaching at whatever level you are practicing. You should come to understand that if you accomplish only that, then you have a right to wear your robes and you have a right to call yourself a Buddhist. But it is by far the most difficult of all of the vows. You have to think about compassion like this.

If you can pass this test, then you have accomplished Dharma, even if you don’t know how to do a single mudra or ring a bell, even if you don’t have any arms or legs to do it. Here is the test. Ask yourself, “If Lord Buddha Amitabha came to me right now, giving me an opportunity and saying, ‘I’m going to make you a deal. You could take on all the suffering of all the six realms, every bit of suffering that every sentient being carries, meaning that you have to take on and absorb all the causes of their suffering – hatred, greed and ignorance, desire. I can give you that, and you could take all of that onto yourself and absorb it completely so that you will suffer endlessly in the most extreme, horrible way until time has run out and in doing that there would be no more suffering in the six realms.’” Would you do it?

When you hear me say this, you are going to say yes. You get carried away with emotions. But if Lord Buddha Amitabha really appeared to you, red and sitting on his lotus, and he really said that to you and he showed you the condensed suffering of all the six realms and you knew that the six realms of cyclic existence appear to be like an endless ocean, and have been going on for uncountable eons, then if you had to accept all that suffering onto yourself, knowing that your mind had to change from the nice thing that you think it is now into a monster filled with hatred, greed and ignorance from all the six realms, but in doing that all of the six realms would be emptied, would you do it? If you were shown this horrible poison of suffering, this cauldron, this endless sea of suffering and Lord Buddha said to you, “Eat it for their sake and become for an uncountable amount of eons a horrible thing suffering in agony for their sake.” Would you do it? Would you open your mouth and start eating? More than that, would you be happy about it? Would you be able to do that?

You should try it sometime. You should test yourself in that way by really thinking that it is possible. Would you take on every bit of the suffering? Would you become so grossly misshapen and ugly because of the grossness of all of that suffering? Would you become so unrecognizable to what you are now? Would you be willing to do that, knowing that as a result there would be nothing in the six realms of cyclic existence except for you? There would be nothing. There would be no more suffering. The karma of all of those minds, uncountable minds would be purified so that they were free of desire, free of all karma. Would you bite the big one?

If you think that you would do that, then you know less about yourself than you think. But to accomplish Dharma you have to get to that point where you would gladly, joyfully, willingly start to eat an ocean of suffering for their sake.