How Buddhists Think | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

Blinded to Our Own Nature

February 16, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhists Think by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Until we attain Enlightment, we are blinded to our own Nature, fixated on the belief in self-nature as inherently real. We walk through an experiential field that is based on this false supposition, and all desire and compulsion arise from it. We experience death and rebirth in an endless cycle. We may feel relatively stable now, but soon we will die and be reborn. You may think, “Great! It’s an endless adventure. It goes on and on.” Well, here’s the problem: you don’t know where you’re going next.

When you die, you go through what we call the Bardo or intermediate state, in which you experience the content of your mind in an externalized form––almost as if flashed on a screen in front of you. If you have much hatred and anger in your mind, you will see what looks like demons. If you have much virtue and loving kindness in your mind, you will have what seems to you a very beautiful and seductive experience.

Hidden beneath that kind of event is the truer experience which occurs to everyone as the elements that bind us dissolve and the consciouness becomes more fluid. What we experience at that time is our own Nature; however, if we are deluded and fixated, we won’t experience it as such. We won’t recognize the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, though we are in their presence.

But if, in the Bardo, your mindstream is free enough to experience the vision of these Buddhas and Bodhisattvas as inseparable from your own mind, it will be overwhelming. The intense connection will be as strong as that of a child and its mother. You will run into the arms of Enlightenment! If you have accomplished the causes I’ve just described, that very experience is possible in the after-death state.

To download the complete teaching, click here and scroll down to How Buddhists Think

I am Awake

February 11, 2016 by Holly

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An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “How Buddhists Think”

When the Buddha was asked what kind of being he was, he described himself neither as a god nor as someone who has attained godhood, but simply as “awake.” He was awake to the primordial Wisdom Nature, which is free from the delusion of fixation, from the process of separation, from distinction between subject and object. In him, that process had been pacified: the Buddha was awake to the Nature.

In our Judeo-Christian culture, however, there is an underlying assumption of an external deity toward whom we move. We were brought up with the idea that we should do good things in order to end up in The Good Place, as if there were an external being chalking up marks in a big book. We think of the goal as “out there somewhere,” and we believe we need to move towards it. It’s a subconscious thing: even after hearing the Buddha’s teachings, we still walk away trying to be good little boys and girls, looking to see who is watching.

We tend to think of ourselves as solid and real, and as needing to become something more. We have it in our minds that we should be advanced beings, great beings. I know this from personal experience: when students first come to me, they often say or imply: “You’re supposed to be so wise. Look into me. Am I an advanced being? Am I close to spiritual mastery?”

According to the Buddha’s teaching, such questions are a waste of time. Mastery and failure––like chocolate and pea soup, running and stopping––are merely phenomena. They have no bearing on the truth, which is your Nature. And you don’t need me to answer these questions. You can answer them yourself. How fixated are you on the continuum? On continuing of your continuum? How fixated are you on the solidity of your own form? How much of your time do you spend reinforcing and decorating the superstructure of your ego?

It is safe to say that most people spend all their time fixated on and continuing the continuum. All aspects of our everyday lives––families, jobs, personal time, relationships––reinforce the continuum. And this results from our belief that self-nature is inherently real.

Cessation of Suffering

February 4, 2016 by Holly

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An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “How Buddhists Think”

The Buddha’s next teaching is that there exists a cessation of suffering, which is the same as the cessation of desire. This cessation is called Enlightenment, and it is the only true cessation of suffering.

In a very poor society, people focus on basic survival. But what happens in a society like ours, in which survival is not a main concern? (If nothing else works, we can go on welfare.) Since we don’t need to focus on survival, we have time to be neurotic. The more we seem to satisfy our needs, the more needs we develop.

In cyclic existence, there is no way to solve all our needs. Everything constantly changes. And temporary happiness is almost a mixed blessing: it always ends, and in the meantime, we are preoccupied with it. The problem is that we haven’t done anything about viewing our true Nature. It’s almost as if we keep ourselves satisfied by eating the icing off the cake; never really obtaining genuine nourishment.

When the Buddha taught that there is an end to suffering, it was a major revelation. Why? Although the great yogis and gurus at that time taught that one could achieve God-consciousness, cosmic consciousness, the Buddha superseded that. Due to the ripening of his great generosity in past lives, he was able to come to a level of meditation in which he realized the cessation of fixation––fixation on godliness and even fixation on the consciousness of self. He attained a level of realization that was simply “Awake.” No consciousness, no sameness, no union. Simply pure luminosity: “I am Awake.”

At that moment, all the cause-and-effect building blocks accumulated throughout time out of mind, all the building blocks from endless involvement with subject-object fixation, all the fixation on ego as real––all of this was pacified. The Buddha realized the sameness and indivisibility of subject and object, the inseparability of action and stillness, the sameness, the “Suchness” of all that is. All was dispelled in clear, uncontrived, luminous awareness. This non-specific awareness is the pure view of one’s own true Nature. It is simply being awake. The Buddha teaches that this is the end of all suffering, because it is the end of what you make suffering with. It is the end of cause-and-effect relationships––and therefore, according to Buddhism, the end of karma.

First Noble Truth

August 10, 2011 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a Teaching called “How Buddhists Think”

The Buddha’s first teaching dealt with what is now called “The Four Noble Truths.” This is the basis for everything he taught later. If it is not understood, then Buddhism will not be understood.

The Buddha taught that cyclic existence, the entire cycle of death and rebirth with all its phenomena, is pervaded by suffering. If you disagree with that, just look at a newspaper. Most people’s lives are affected by war, by hunger, by old age; we will all experience sickness and death. Other forms of sentient life have similar suffering, and it also pervades their lives.

The Buddha does not deny that some happiness exists. Is there not joy in the drug-like process of falling in love, in loving relationships, in the birth of a child, in acquiring wealth, in seeing and having beautiful things, in enjoying nature and simply feeling good on a good day?

But there is a form of suffering that we all share: every joy has a point of termination. The Buddha taught that all things are impermanent. Short-term loves break our hearts when they fail to endure. Then we revert to our habitual loneliness, anger, and unhappiness. Even life-long loves and marriages end in separation.

The bottom-line cause of suffering, the Buddha taught, is desire. And what causes desire to arise? At a point so unimaginably long ago that it’s called “time out of mind,” there arose the idea of self-nature as inherently real and as separate from “other.” This fixation on the duality of subject and object is the persistent skeletal structure for all experience. Until you achieve realization, all the experiences you have derive from this misperception.

Six Realms of Cyclic Existence

January 9, 2012June 11, 2011 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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.

To download the complete teaching, click here and scroll down to How Buddhists Think

The Honest Truth

January 9, 2012May 17, 2011 by Holly

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An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “How Buddhists Think”

The first step in achieving the cessation of suffering as prescribed by the Buddha is to understand samsara, or cyclic existence. This tends to be difficult for Westerners. They often come to the path assuming that it’s all about “love and light” or about being positive. This is not Buddhist thinking.

As Buddhists wishing to attain knowledge, we must examine the faults of cyclic existence fully and completely. We must understand why cyclic existence doesn’t work. We Westerners don’t want to spend any time on that: we tend to fool ourselves into thinking we’re happy until we get old and die. “There is just too much to do,” we say. “We can’t sit around being sad all the time. Shouldn’t we just think positive?”

That is really how Westerners think when they come to this path. “I’m okay,” they say, “but now I want to figure out how to be better. I want to be spiritual too.”

According to Buddhism, that is absolutely wrong thinking. In order to attain awareness in the Buddhist sense, one must understand the faults of cyclic existence.

The Buddha’s teaching is extremely logical, and very real. So we must enter this path not with blind faith but with our eyes wide open. If you think that to practice the Buddha’s teaching is about coming into an amazing place with exotic wall hangings and sitting around being bliss-ninnies, you’ve got it wrong. Here you’re going to get real, very real. You’re going to look at cyclic existence, and you’re going to face the fact that some day you’re going to die. And it’s up to you whether you waste your time, or whether you use this life in a way that you will see as beneficial. And you will have the capacity to make that distinction.

When you see beautiful, youthful bodies, you will understand that, yes, this is nice, but soon these bodies will sag and become wrinkled; soon they will get sick and die. You have to get real about that, because it’s the truth. No one has ever beaten that rap. When the Buddha teaches us to make use of this precious human rebirth, he doesn’t do it in an exotic, far-flung way. He teaches us to be very honest, very courageous, very real.

Delusion

December 8, 2011January 2, 2011 by Holly

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An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhists Think by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

According to the Buddha, all that you perceive through your five senses, all your feelings, all the thoughts you take pride in, are based on delusion. Essentially, this experience, this game, this scam, is a puff ball. In fixation, we do not have the spacious, luminous view of our Primordial Wisdom Nature as it is.

Due to the distinction we make between subject and object, we react to every phenomenon we perceive with attraction, repulsion, or neutrality. And even neutrality is part of the continuum and leads to additional fixation, which leads to additional desire.

Even as you watch me drink a glass of water, you may experience a tiny bit of wanting water, and thus an infinitesimal amount of suffering. You may talk yourself out of this wanting, but then right away you want something else. A minute cause-and-effect relationship has begun, and it remains part of you.

Such fleeting desires, no matter how small, distract us from an awareness of our Primordial Wisdom Nature. The mind remains enmeshed, fixated on this subject-object experience.

C-H-A-N-G-E

November 1, 2011April 24, 2010 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhists Think by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

When you hear unfamiliar Buddhist ideas, don’t get tightly wrapped up and constipated about them. You’ve been going in a different direction for lo, these many aeons. Just relax, be okay. You have that choice. You can hear the teachings. You can utilize them to the best of your ability. On the other hand, don’t let yourself get away with thoughts that block you from utilizing the teachings. Such thoughts will pop up for you.

You were brought up in a materialist society, and its imprint is on your mind. You may therefore have a tendency to think: “Well, that idea doesn’t sound right to me” or “That sounds foreign to me.” Don’t let yourself be stopped by tripping over your own brain.

When you embark on a spiritual path, you should expect to be challenged. You should expect that because you are on a path that necessitates change. Or else, you are choosing to remain as you are, an ordinary sentient being in cyclic existence, with all its pervasive suffering.

If you are considering the Buddhist Path, you are considering that which leads to Enlightenment. If your goal is supreme Realization, if you want to be free of the suffering of cyclic existence, then change you must. So get used to that word “change.” It’s going to be your best friend––at times. Allow yourself the fluidity and spaciousness you need.

To download the complete teaching, clickhereand scroll down to How Buddhists Think