JNT 005 Tools To Deepen Your Pracitce | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

Non-Duality

February 28, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Tools to Deepen in Your Practice”

We think that bodhichitta is something that we must practice, and yes, in order to build proper habitual tendency, that’s what we should do. That is the basis and foundation for the next level of practice. But this level of practice requires going beyond simple human kindness, or even extraordinary kindness where we practice from life to death, you know, in order to practice medicine or give out food, or make some phenomenal contribution.

But here in the Vajrayana path, we must understand that you cannot create the bodhichitta. You cannot establish it, nor can you tear it down or destroy it. All you can do is deny that you are that; and you can do that from now ‘til kingdom come, whenever that is. But you cannot deny the understanding that when we seethe fundamental picture we see again and again and again in Vajrayana of the Lama and Consort in union, this is emptiness and method, emptiness and compassioninseparable, functional as one. We can take them apart to discuss or to understand them, but in truth the bodhichitta cannot be separated from emptiness. And the true awakening to the bodhichitta comes from the fundamental view of understanding the emptiness of all nature.

In Vajrayana, we are asked to accomplish many things. One thing we are asked to accomplish is, of course, the realization of emptiness, the understanding of emptiness. We are asked to understand the arising of compassion as being consistent with the understanding of emptiness. What we can’t do is change that or build it or control it, or anything. By simply letting go of the idea of duality, the display of truth must surely arise, and that display is the bodhichitta.

The Seduction of the Five Senses

February 23, 2017February 23, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Tools to Deepen Your Practice”

All the practices, no matter what they look like or sound like or seem like, are heading in that direction of gradually awakening more and more to the awareness of the sphere of truth. Wisdom is then the accomplishment of a state of such non-attachment that one realizes the emptiness of phenomena by simply [Jetsunma effortlessly and blissfully breathes out, her eyes and body completely relaxing]. I don’t know how else to describe it except to just show you that posture. Just…[Jetsunma once again breathes out as noted above].

Because the same as your touch is bliss. The same as your smell is bliss. The same as your tongue is bliss. How does it happen then that we’re so darned uncomfortable? How does it happen then, according to the Buddha’s teachings, that so many sentient beings are revolving so helplessly in samsara, so lost, so unable to understand how to understand, or how to awaken, or even how to live virtuously so that in the future they’ll be happy? How does this all happen?

Lord Buddha said it during the course of his actual physical life, when he said, “All suffering arises from desire.” So while you can say that the fundamental space of the five lights is the same as the five primordial Dakinis, they are activity not separate from the Buddha nature. And yet these five senses hold on to us. Well we think they do, although we did create them. But with their grasping nature, they cause us, because we have the strong habitual tendency, to constantly react and constantly react and act really neurotically because we don’t understand. To be neurotic is to not understand the situation and to act inappropriately repetitively. That’s pretty much us. We do not understand the emptiness of self-nature and so we constantly act differently.

So, these five primordial Dakinis that are your senses and that someday you will awaken to are now—because we are clinging, because we have not renounced, because we believe in phenomena and we believe in the solidity of everything, and because we are really revolving in dualism—we would have to consider them like five nasty whores. Because they trick us. They seduce us. They say to us, “Come and play with me and I will give you anything.” And when’s the last time you got anything from a skanky whore. (laughter) [Jetsunma: I did not say that!”] Our five senses actually keep us in a constant state of inflammation, because while we’re grasping to the solidity of phenomena, we’re constantly reacting. While we’re constantly reacting, we’re constantly acting neurotically, out of accordance with the nature of reality. And so we’re being tricked, seduced.

The senses have many tricks. As front runners for our consciousness of duality, they like to trick us by building us up. You know, we can see and hear things that make us feel very proud and make us feel as though we are worthy of praise. You know, we can arrange phenomena any way we want. That’s the amazing thing about it. And it can become very seductive. We can absolutely crap out on our practice and yet with our five senses, we can manage to create in our consciousness of duality a scenario in which we’re looking pretty good. We can wear the right clothes and have the right beads, and you know we can look pretty good. And so that’s the deceptive nature of the five senses.

How difficult it is to understand that that which helps us negotiate around is actually the very nature of bliss. How to understand that the opposite side of the very clinging that we do so tightly that prevents us from awakening to the primordial wisdom state, is liberation? Well, that’s wisdom and that is the kind of wisdom that we strive for as we practice.

What Are Your Senses Telling You?

February 22, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Tools to Deepen in Your Practice”

When you see, you react with acceptance or rejection. You have an acceptance or rejection or even a neutrality, which would be a combination of both or a decision not to do either; but there is that first knee-jerk reaction. It’s the same with all of our senses. We react to what we sense. The senses are really to keep us pacified in the belief that our lives are inherently real, that we are sitting on solid, that we are solid, we live in solid and everything’s ok. And that’s what the senses are meant to do. They are meant to grasp on in a way, and hold on to the time and space grid so that we can feel as though we are safe. Because we don’t like that idea of emptiness. That’s just troublesome.

So when a Tantric practitioner sits down to meditate, he has to take the senses and open them up. How can you do that? Can you visualize it? Well, you really have to go quietly in your practice and find out for yourself. It’s very difficult for any teacher to tell you exactly how to let go of the senses or to let go of the attraction of the senses. Yes, we can give you pointers. But it comes down to the point really when you have to sit and you have to know your own mind. When we know our mind, we know how to deal with it. And it’s like feeling our way around. Oh, we know we shouldn’t go there because there’s an object; and we know we should go there because it’s ok. We’re kind of feeling around.

So when a Tantric practitioner meditates on emptiness, he doesn’t build emptiness. He doesn’t make emptiness. He doesn’t cling onto emptiness which is somewhere else and bring it here. Instead, what the practitioner does is to simply allow the grasping to solid phenomena and solid self-nature to be appeased. One relaxes. One awakens to emptiness!

How does one awaken to emptiness? Well of course, the first time you sit down and try this, you’re not going to awaken to emptiness fully because that would be like becoming practically enlightened in a very swift time, like very swift. And so, you can’t expect that. You must be patient with yourself and expect that this will take some work, that it will take some time.

When one relaxes the grasping, the difference is . . . Ok. If you take a crystal and sunlight comes through the crystal and is reflected and refracted and you see a rainbow, the rainbow is the same nature as the light that came through the crystal. In a way, what you’re going to do, is if you’re seeing a red ray and a purple ray and a blue ray or whatever color you’re seeing from this crystal, you’re going to, with intention, go to the heart of that color, as though you were peeling away the colorness of it. Almost reversing it. Putting it back through the crystal and understanding its source. Like that.

I know. That’s a little chewy. So you have to chew on that for a little bit. But it is very much like that. To be a Tantric practitioner, in fact, you must have assumed the nature of emptiness. And in one’s practice, that is what you do. You assume the nature of emptiness. So, you are relaxing the senses and the grasping knowing that. You don’t visualize emptiness because when you allow the relaxing and the grasping to go, emptiness is what is. It spontaneously arises. And even that’s a joke. Because here I am telling you “it” spontaneously arises. And of course, that’s not possible. Because once it’s “it”, then it isn’t empty. And yet I say to you that this is the trick of it. When we take that precious minute before we generate the deity to really allow the senses to unlock, to stop contriving, to cease to evaluate, to stop giving you the food that you use to react, to simply let go, the more deeply we go into our practice. And your assumption there—and that should be your first assumption—is that separate from this grasping, there is the nature of emptiness. That, in fact, if we can pacify this grasping, then the empty nature is visible or knowable in some way.

Understanding the Senses

February 20, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Tools to Deepen Your Practice”

In order to practice Vajrayana, for instance, there has to be some certain capacity that the student has, or some previous karma that now comes forward and comes to bear, or Vajrayana simply would not work. Indeed, for certain kinds of students because they practice very superficially, Vajrayana , would be like just reading Sutra—just reading it, reading it, reading it, reading it. You may glean some information, but you will never accomplish any wisdom that way.

So when we first come to Vajrayana, we are expected not only to read, to learn how to pronounce, to accomplish the tune; but we also have to learn how to visualize. We also have to learn how to allow the five senses to dissolve into the sphere of truth, which is emptiness, and that means letting go of perception. And that’s the first step towards meditating on emptiness, or rather as we do in Vajrayana, dissolving or realizing the essence of all nature to be empty and then arising from that empty nature as the deity or as a wisdom being. This is basically the meat and bones of Vajrayana, that generation of the wisdom being by first dissolving into emptiness.

If a person who is studying Theravada Buddhism (that’s the early stages of Buddhism that Lord Buddha taught when he was actually physically alive), practices like that, they are letting the mind relax. They are using some kind of method like allowing the mind to rest on the breath, to simply breathe, to simply be like that. But ideally, when a Vajrayana practitioner prepares to really generate the deity and they’ve done their taking refuge and all the steps that precede:the promising, the Bodhisattva promise and all the prayers:and they actually get to the part where there is the dissolution or the original view of emptiness, they are not, at that point, relaxing the mind. Because if we’re simply relaxing the mind at that point, we are technically practicing Theravada Buddhism. It’s a little different.

It’s ok to start that way, but again, we’re talking about going more deeply into our practice. So when a Tantric practitioner meditates on emptiness in order to pave the way for the rrising of the deity, what you really do at that time is to open up the senses in the sense that the senses are grasping things. They see “this” or “this”. I hear “that”. I smell “something”. So the senses are grasping things. The senses are actually the children of the original conscious assumption of nature being essentially real, or of phenomena being essentially real. And so the senses arise from that assumption. It’s a chicken or egg thing. It’s opposite what you would think. The senses arise from the assumption of consciousness as being inherently real. And so the senses’ job is to grasp!

The Trap of Duality

July 16, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Tools to Deepen in Your Practice”

We see ourselves in a dualistic way. We have very concrete roles as to how that dualism plays out: in the way that we procreate, in the way that we die, in the way that we’re born. We have very exacting ways in which it plays out because of our belief systems, because of the system of duality. And we’ve had a long time to work out the kinks. So, when we believe in physical reality as being essentially real, we can find all kinds of facts and information and people who will agree with us.

And if you wish to avoid awakening to the primordial state, you’ll have lots of friends, because most everyone is locked into that confusion of the five senses. Like a dream. We know how it is when we’re in a dream. We may on some level understand it’s a dreamlike state, but the emotions are so strong. It just pulls us into it. A dream can be very sensual. It can be very alluring. It can be very stimulating in that you’ve had dreams with interesting things that happen and interesting colors, or something. But we’ve had all kinds of dreams. We’ve had all kinds of phenomena as well.

That’s a terrible obstacle. That’s a mean one, oh boy! Because when you are getting ready to generate the deity, you cannot even allow the deity to arise naturally, as it does, from the from the wisdom that is emptiness because your brain has a better idea. That’s unfortunate, because it is that wisdom that we need.

Here in Tantric practice, particularly with the Nyingma tradition, we are considered the ‘ancient’ ones, the oldest. They say, “How many Nyingmas does it take to change a light bulb? Well, none. We all meditate in the dark.” (much laughter). So we are the ancient ones and we like to meditate in the dark.

So in Vajrayana, what is the most precious capacity is that capacity to simply let go the thoughts, the conceptualization, the products of the five senses—you know, all the conceptual proliferations that we’ve built around what we sensed. It is letting go of that. It is opening the senses to allow the view. That is the wisdom that we really work on that becomes the very foundation for any accomplishment that we have on the Path. That’s the foundation for it.

The Basis of Vajrayana

July 13, 2016July 13, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Tools to Deepen Your Practice”

Today I would like to discuss the depth at which one practices. That is to say, how to avoid practicing in a superficial way where there is no mental or emotional investment. That’s really not the ideal kind of practice. It’s a little bit like watching TV, or listening to the radio, or something like that where you do it with half-a-mind, you know, and the rest of the time, of course, the mind is involved with other things. And so, we’ve all heard that we don’t want that to happen, that we want the mind to be gentled and stilled but yet we have a hard time understanding that really the key to that is the depth, the level, and the absorption with which we practice. That depth or that absorption is called the Dakini’s breath. That is actually what makes one’s practice relevant, delicious and sweet, meaningful and nourishing. Without that depth and that level of absorption, it’s very difficult to practice in any way that is more profound than say, recitation by rote. So that’s the effort that we want to make. In order to do that, I would like to explain things a little differently, perhaps a little more deeply than you may be used to.

One of the things that I would like to mention is that in Tantrayana, or the path of Vajrayana (which is the same thing), which is where we are now, you could say that the Path has two eyes or two legs, two supports. Another way to say it would be that the Path can be distilled to its essential nature in two words: wisdom and compassion. In fact one sees in many of the thangkas, the traditional paintings that are all around, pictures of a female and male in union, two lamas as consorts in union. And of course having ordinary minds and being used to billboards and stuff like that, we think “Oh, what is this?” But we shouldn’t look at those pictures with an ordinary mind because they have a profound meaning. The meaning of the union between lama and consort is the union of wisdom and compassion, the union of emptiness and method. The union of emptiness and method is the perfect balance, the perfect ship by which to cross the ocean of suffering. It’s the perfect vehicle. And of course, first we should understand what it means. Wisdom and compassion or emptiness and method. . . What does it really mean?

Well the meaning is this. First of all, wisdom is something that you cannot arrive at by accumulating facts, because facts are phenomenal. They are believed to be self-existing. They are part of samsara, even if they are very smart facts. Even if they are PhD-style facts! Even if they’re MD-style! No matter how many facts you know, you can never accumulate wisdom through the accumulation of facts, or what we would call the accumulation of knowledge. It’s not to say that the accumulation of knowledge is not necessary. If that were the case, then none of us would need training. We would simply sit and do our best at meditating.

Of course facts are necessary. It is necessary for us in our practice to understand how it is that the preceding lamas and excellent practitioners accumulated merit and how they accumulated tremendous achievement. It’s tremendously helpful to know facts, for instance, about the great lamas and the great saints and the Buddhas that have come in this time, and in other times, in order to understand with our ordinary minds what it is about them, how they come to be. In fact, to some degree, our ordinary minds do require satisfaction. And that’s where Vajrayana is ideal, because Vajrayana gives us ‘mental food.’ We have visualization. We have mantra recitation. We have the absorption in emptiness and then the springing from emptiness as the deity; and then the vajra confidence and the vajra pride. It’s busy work! Sometimes when people who are used to just sitting quietly and doing whatever it is they do, you know, when they have that habit of just sitting quietly, and there is a part of Vajrayana Buddhism in which you do sitting meditation; but if students only have that experience, they come here and they say, “Well, my mind is not calm. I’m reciting all this stuff and I’m really stressed because I can hardly pronounce it. And the tunes—forget about it. And so there!” And of course the response to that is, “Well really in Vajrayana the task is not to calm the mind. The task is to awaken to the emptiness of all nature,to awaken to emptiness, that is, to perceive emptiness.”

Vajrayana

December 12, 2012 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Tools to Deepen in Your Practice”

When we are in love with our own minds—which is a lonely way to go, I have to tell you—when you are in love with your own mind, you can’t believe that you’re supposed to substitute anything for that stuff in your head, because it’s so phenomenal. It’s so impressive. It’s amazing what you can do with neuroses! I mean. . . Unbelievable! When you really believe in phenomena, like a child you can build it like blocks and do anything. But that accumulation of knowledge is practically worthless on the Vajrayana path when it comes to actual accomplishment. Sure you need to learn a lot in order to get to the point where you are practicing, and so we do have to accumulate some knowledge. But when you really want to accomplish, it’s wisdom that you must accomplish. And that wisdom is pure perception, the view—letting go of ego-clinging, opening up the grasping of the five senses, allowing oneself to view the emptiness of space.

What about the other leg or the other eye of Vajrayana which I said was compassion or method? When we practice early on in Buddhism, like when Lord Buddha taught, he taught that we should do no harm, that we should never harm any being. That was one primary level of vow taking that we should all take. Now, in Vajrayana, there is less emphasis on pure stark teachings like that, and more emphasis on something maybe a little bit more complicated. How can I put it?

It’s like this. In Theravada Buddhism, when you are accomplishing Dharma, what you are doing is purifying the mind and allowing the mind to relax. Ok. That’s a necessary step, a necessary stage. And part of that is to do no harm, to awaken to the realization that all sentient beings are equal in their nature and that they all strive to be happy, while not knowing how to be happy. For that reason, we should have compassion for them. We shouldn’t harm them because we know that each one has the Buddha seed.

In Vajrayana, that is already assumed. Everything in Vajrayana is built on the layers underneath it. Like Vajrayana is built on Mahayana, Mahayana is built on Theravada Buddhism. And they all become a little more fancy, explained, and mystical as they ascend.

In Vajrayana Buddhism, for instance, we can expect that there will be practices in which there are wrathful deities. And we can expect in Vajrayana Buddhism, when you ask your teacher a question, you’ll get a frank answer. Now in Theravada Buddhism, there is not the same binding to the Guru. Your teacher is more like a companion on the path. A teaching monk, let’s say, can point and say, “This this,” “Accomplish this,” “Do that,” “Do that,” “Do that,”and guide you, and have encouraging words for you along the path. Whereas in Vajrayana, for the same reason that we accomplish wrathful practice, we sometimes have wrathful teachers. And we think to ourselves, “How can that be? I thought Buddhism was the peaceful religion? I thought you guys didn’t fight?” Well, we don’t. That’s not what is happening here.

In Vajrayana Buddhism, the assumption is of the emptiness of all nature and the emptiness of dualistic existence. Therefore, I cannot find where I end and you begin. Who are you that you are different than I am? It’s not possible. Simply because of the clothing that you put on? The face you put on? Simply because of the ideas that you have about self-nature being inherently real? Should I accept that? No. And therefore, in Vajrayana, we have very active kinds of practices. We have Vajrakilaya, who’s like a pointy phurba on the bottom. You generate Vajrakilaya when you want to remove obstacles. And Vajrakilaya can look very fierce. In one visualization, in his two hands, he’s holding a phurba, a pointed knife, just like himself, and he’s rolling it around and he’s looking really wrathful. And he’s got all his wrathful clothes on. He’s got sometimes tiger skins and elephant skins and human skins and you think, “Whoa, what is that? I don’t know about this religion?” And that’s because originally, like in the early stages of Buddhism, in Theravada Buddhism, you want to relax the mind, purify the mind, do no harm and your accomplishment is more self-oriented.

Now in Mahayana and particularly in Vajrayana, we already assume that all phenomena is empty of self-nature. We already assume the truth of the unsurpassed primordial view. We already assume that all beings are essentially the same “taste” in their nature. We assume that. And yet, we cannot assume that there is no phenomenal reality because we seem to find ourselves in it. And you can’t go into a state of denial about it because we could prove you wrong. I could just stick a pin in your foot and boy, that’d show you. You’d get it real, real fast!

So we find ourselves here in Vajrayana. We are aware of this amazing reality that is the fundamental sphere of truth. At least somehow we are aware of it, somewhere, a little bit,ok, just a tiny bit, the sphere of truth. Yet at the same time, we find ourselves in phenomenal reality. We see the sufferings of the physical dimension, particularly the human dimension which are old age, sickness and death. We see all these things. And so while we understand on some level the emptiness of phenomenal nature, we have not yet accomplished enough to be able to hold the sphere of truth so smoothly that there are never obstacles. So in that case, we practice the wrathful deities. The wrathful deities are active in phenomena and yet we assume their nature to be the same as the Buddhas, the same as our Root Teacher; and eventually, let’s say if one were to accomplish Vajrakilaya as his or her root deity, eventually, we would understand our nature as Vajrakilaya.

In fact, when we say that the Buddha is awakening, the Dharma is the method, enlightenment is the result, we can also say that the Dakinis are the activity of the Buddhas, and the Protectors and Wrathful Deities are the active expansion of the nature and of realization. We’re practicing all of these deities; and they’re all arising from emptiness and they all dissolve into emptiness. What we’re actually doing is engaging facets of our own nature.