The following is a teaching offered by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo at Kunzang Palyul Choling in Maryland on the importance of Bodhicitta in Dharma practice:
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo. All rights reserved
Teachings
Karma: Virtual Reality
The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Neurotic Interaction to Guru Yoga”
When you’re practicing to accomplish pure view, you realize that for you, the teacher is the appearance in the world of a method or a path, a means by which one can enter the door of liberation. This is what makes the teacher precious. The teacher can connect you with the path, can explain the path, can ripen and deepen the mind so that one can practice on the path, and is a spiritual facilitator of a very high caliber. Their activity is extraordinary, or beyond what is normally found in samsara. So you begin, in pure view, to recognize the teacher as being representative of your own true face, the ground of being that is your inherent primordial wisdom nature—that nature which is free of contrivance, free of distinction, completely empty yet completely fulfilled and spontaneously complete. You begin to understand that this teacher is a representation of that nature in the world. The teacher provides the path, the means, the method, the ability to practice, and connects you with that in a very extraordinary way.
Once you’ve determined that, the teacher becomes for you the appearance of the Buddha nature in the world, the appearance of the method or the path in the world, the appearance of the fruition or the accomplishment in the world, the appearance of your own true face in the world. Once the teacher becomes that for you, then to take an opposite viewpoint and to determine a difference of opinion is not a sin or a nonvirtue. It simply argues with what you have already determined for yourself. It’s almost like walking three steps forward and two steps back in your Dharma practice. It’s not that you should become brain dead and that you’re not supposed to have an opinion, but there’s a fine line there that has to be travelled, and it’s pretty difficult to understand what that line is. Now on the one hand you are, and have been raised to be, a person who has a mind that thinks, and you have the ability to connect cause and effect yourself. Hopefully on the path you are developing that clarity of mind more and more and more. Yet here you find a situation where you have also stated clearly “I have found my teacher. Here is this vajra master that I have taken teachings from. That vajra master has facilitated me on the path of Dharma. So how is it that I feel like I have a different opinion at the same time that I have said this is the ultimate, this is the face of the Buddha, this is the Buddhas’ wisdom? How do I negotiate that? What’s that look like for me? I mean, how do I do that?”
Well, let’s stop and think for a moment in a way that might be beneficial. Don’t answer that question right now, but keep it simmering. We’re cooking up some Thanksgiving dinner here. We’re keeping it simmering. Here’s the gravy. It’s simmering on low boil. So now we’re back with the turkey in the oven. But don’t forget, the gravy is still on the boil. You’ve got to keep watching that one! O.K., now, withdraw from that, but still think about answering that question.
Now think about this: You’ve noticed haven’t you, I’m sure you have, that throughout our lives we tend to repeat certain habitual tendencies again and again and again. Can we all agree on that? We have seen certain habitual tendencies. We have seen certain patterns, certain habits. It really depends on how old you are, how convinced you are of this. The older you are, the more time you’ve had to see these things repeat again and again and again. While you’re still young, you think, “Well I’ve only done this two or three times! Who says there’s going to be a fourth, fifth and seventy-fourth!” But by the time you get to be maybe midlife where I am, you’re going, “I’ve seen this movie before!! I have seen this movie before!” And you realize that these habitual tendencies kind of repeat themselves again and again and again, deeply ingrained.
And then if you’re the kind of person who is really insightful, you realize that you project these habitual tendencies onto the circumstances of your life, and without realizing it, will very much control situations and people in your life according to your preconceived notions and according to your habitual tendencies. A difficult situation where you may recognize this is, let’s say, a child that grows up in a house where the child is not given any dignity or any respect and the child feels not loved or abused in some way. So the child develops a certain understanding about that —I am not worthy or I am not lovable—and then goes out into their lives and tends to project some of the same information on others. Others might be perfectly willing to love, be perfectly willing to just do the best they can, not always perfect of course, but to do the best they can, loving them. And yet this person is unable to accept that love and sees the same outcome pretty much all the time and actually is engaged in that outcome. So that’s one situation.
Another situation is, for instance, that of a cat. A cat is actually so strongly habituated towards killing it seems instinctive. From the Dharma point of view, we understand this to be habitual tendency reinforced many many times, life after life, a karmic kind of situation. The cat will be reborn, and even if there is nothing to kill, if you throw a ball of yarn across the room, the cat will go after it. You know what happens when a cat sees flies against the window. If a fly is bumping against the window, the cat will go after that. Anything that scuttles, the cat is after it and their eyes get really big. Have you ever seen a cat look out the window at a bird feeder? Have you ever seen that? The cat makes these horribles noises like “I want those hamburgers! Give me those hamburgers!!” For them it’s like McDonalds in the sky. These animals are so strongly habituated towards killing, that even though they come into this life as a cute little fluffy kitty, those little ears and the little tail and those little feet, still and all, they are killers. They are habituated towards that and the first chance they get, any stimulation, any stimulation, such as the rolling of the ball of yarn across the floor, they will interpret as the hunter and hunted scenario.
Did you know that we do the same thing? We do exactly the same thing. We are so deeply habituated in our own particular tendencies, whatever they are, that we project in the same way onto external stimulation. If we have deeply habituated ideas, sometimes they are bordering on the obsessive and compulsive. Maybe not even bordering, maybe all the way in that country! Pay the toll, we’re in! What happens is once we are strongly habituated into habit, we interpret all stimulation outside as something that keys us into our habitual tendency. So what I find as a teacher and a female, for instance, is that many people interpret me as their mother. They think of me as being the authority figure, someone they have to answer to in that way. They can’t be bad around me. A lot of times the students will… I mean it’s one thing to have your Dharma manners going when you see the teacher—you hold that in respect, and that’s a really good thing—but what I found is that I can walk into a party and kill it, just like that! Because my students suddenly stop functioning. It reminds me of when I was a kid and my mother said ‘dust the living room.’ So I’d be dusting the living room, having fun, thinking about other things, like boys or whatever, and dusting and carrying on. My mother came into the room and I’d suddenly start moving fast! It reminds me a little bit of that.
And sometimes some of my students are habituated towards authority figures in a certain way, and since I must exude some kind of authority, they look at me and interact in the same way with me that they do with other authority figures. So there is this “has to be good girl, good boy or whatever, routine” and the blaming of the teacher and making all of those “I’m mad at you authority figures” kind of scenarios going on. There are all kinds of different gigs, You know what your gig is with authority. Everybody has one. And so they project that onto the teacher. But you see, what’s really happening there is you’re looking at your own habitual tendency—the way that your mind works, the way that it intersects with the time and space grid in front of you, and how you play with your own habitual tendency. What you’re really seeing there is kind of like a bounce-back phenomena that’s actually taking place within your own mindstream.
There is nothing external happening. There is nothing beyond you that is happening. There’s just nothing out there that determines your fate. You’re looking at a kind of almost internal bubble, or a virtual situation in a certain way. You can learn a lot from that kind of virtual reality situation. It’s almost a virtual internal situation that’s happening there.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo. All rights reserved
Incalculable Blessings for All
The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:
Today I thought to share with you the Prayer Wheels of KPC. Having seen them in India I fell in love with Stupas and Prayer Wheels and determined to contact a Lama who is a specialist in the necessary steps. My students became well trained in compiling and stuffing them.
These Prayer Wheels are well kept, and filled with every conceivable Vajrayana mantra. All Lamas there blessed and sealed them. Hooray!
Here they are! Glorious.
There is method here, no ordinary artist can make one. They are to spin clockwise, and circumambulated clockwise (this is me demonstrating.) As many thousands have done over the years:
We have many testimonies that the Prayer Wheels and Stupas have healed so many. Many blessings. I invite all people suffering from illness, including cancer, mental illness, HIV-Aids to make a pilgrimage here to heal and receive blessings, as well as joining our 27 year, unbroken Prayer Vigil.
Here is the main Stupa, we have several here in Poolesville, Maryland and two in Sedona which are much loved by the community:
I am happy to have offered this blessing to the people of the world, and all worlds.
© copyright Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo All rights reserved.
Ever-Present Blessings
The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo called “The Guru Is Your Diamond”
Guru Yoga is the most potent of all practices and it’s the most simple. One can practice Guru Yoga simply by visualizing the Guru above the crown of one’s head and making offerings by visualizing them, and then receiving the blessing, real quick. The white blessing from the Guru’s Body to your body comes in the head, white to white; the red blessing from the Guru’s Speech, from the Guru’s throat to your throat; the blue blessing from the Guru’s Mind, which is the heart, from his heart (or her heart) to your heart). You can receive that blessing constantly. It’s free. It’s yours. You can receive it periodically. You can receive it every morning, every night. Whatever you want, as much as you want. That’s the beauty of Guru Yoga. And you should think that the Guru is like your constant companion. Not in a creepy way. I don’t want you guys looking in my window (laughter). But in a wholesome way, where we understand that this nature is freely given, like method that one can use. It is indistinguishable from the ground which is full enlightenment, the method which is Dharma, and the result which is the completion or accomplishment of the precious awakened state.
So we understand the Guru is the ground, the Guru is the method, the Guru is the result. And we begin, through the devotion, through calling out our own nature, our own mind, our own qualities, to mix willingly with that of the Guru. Over time, that blessing mixes like milk with water and we understand that indeed, Lord Buddha resides in us all. We understand that indeed each one of us is some uncontrived beginningless and endless and yet fundamentally complete luminous nature, some state of awakened and yet uncontrived view. That we are that in our nature. Our job in this lifetime is to use the blessings of our Gurus, to use their accomplishment, their qualities, their methods, to listen carefully and accordingly accomplish awakening to that nature. It’s the swift way. It’s the rocketship. It’s powered because it’s like lighting something at both ends. You’re not thinking, “Oh I have to go there.” We are thinking, “This is like a mirror and a mirror”—inseparable in their nature.
Here in America, we have a lot of pop-psychology. We all have these little boxes about how relationships ought to be. Pop-psychology has told us how big they ought to be and what shape they ought to be. We are told that we should be independent in certain ways and then sharing in other ways. One way or another way, we are told how we ought to be. I want to tell you that the relationship of Guru Yoga is not like that. For instance, in relationships we are taught, I’m ok, you’re ok. What is it? Don’t be co-dependent. So don’t be in a co-dependent relationship. Well, if you’re going to be in a co-dependent relationship, I guess it ought to be with your Guru (laughter). But you don’t look at it that way. Because a co-dependent relationship is where two people who are ill or not seeing clearly or are deluded or neurotic in some way, are being neurotic together, and it fits.
Well, that’s not the same with one’s own Root Guru. You can freely and openly give your whole heart and know that you are not in danger. You can freely and joyfully walk, dance through that door of liberation, and you will be happily and joyfully received. You can depend utterly and completely on the Three Precious Jewels and the condensed essence which is the Root Guru and never fall. This is the one time you should not guard your heart. A difficult habit to break for all of us.
So again, we’re not talking about personalities, because that’s ordinary. We’re not talking about you guys all coming to live at my house. Not like that. That’s ordinary, ordinary context. We are thinking that the blessing of my teacher resides as me, in me, and I am that. And like we say in The Seven Line Prayer, “Following you I will practice.” Through that devotion, through that practice, all the blessings of the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas are yours. Freely given. To the deserving student, to the practicing student, the Guru will always appear. And we should always today be creating the causes for the Guru to appear tomorrow. In whatever form.
So, I guess that’s it for today. It will give you something to think about. And I hope when I give teachings like this that you will really take them in. Don’t bar the way. Let them come in. And if you are moved to go recite The Seven Line Prayer and open your heart and feel that blessing, then I ask you please to fill up. Don’t deny yourself. You’ve done that for too long. Instead welcome to the banquet of Dharma and the yummy good food of Guru Yoga. I invite you to partake.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo All rights reserved
Growing Up Spiritually
The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:
Every sentient being has suffering, and we should contemplate that. But not judge, as we cannot see through the fog of our own reaction.
We can use our own suffering as method. If one breaks a leg it is awful. But it gives more time to rest and Practice Dharma. There is no use in whining, blame, rumination, holding on to the idea that one has been wronged. It does no good, and it is just karma playing out. Events that affect us seem to come from outside. Seem to be caused by others. But every perception is our own mindstream, born of habit and the inability to understand and think in full equations. Such as “if this, then that” cause and effect. We also refuse to take responsibility and in that way we deny ourselves the ability to be strong, and to “grow up” spiritually and emotionally, to make progress. It is lost opportunity.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved
Choose Well
The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:
I can understand how bad the economy is for all of us. Many people, even former good citizens are turning to money crimes, sadly. They don’t see any other way to get funds. So they turn to illegal means to survive. The really awful thing is how temporary that gain can be! Once the “deal with the devil” is made, one has lost their way, spiritually, as well as character, ethics, purity and samaya. Then when the money is gone, no more happy times remain. And one has lost everything, all virtue diminishes, and future poverty and suffering is assured.
Why is greed so difficult to overcome? Or the urge to gather power and be on top? Perhaps no true understanding of the law of karma? Some will even allow themselves to try to take what another has earned. Even to the point of destroying the victim. That is just the perfect method to destroy oneself. The fact is, most people dumb enough to commit crimes are actually made stupid by their own lust for gain and mostly get caught. Or their criminal friends turn on them. There is no honor among thieves, they cannot be trusted.
I’ve learned so much about this in my life alone. We should always remember that some people are very, very weak. And some people are very, very strong. It is almost impossible to tell the difference. Until the thief turns demonic. Then they are easily known. Remember this. And choose well!
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved
Peerless Guru: His Holiness Penor Rinpoche
The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo: I wish there was no corruption in any religion. I wish there was no corruption in Buddhism. I wish there was no corruption in humans. When Tsawei Lama Third Drubwang His Holiness Penor Rinpoche was alive there was never any such thing. His Holiness always emphasized purity, honesty, bodhicitta. His Holiness Kyabje Penor Rinpoche ruled with care, and love. He was never in His life spoken of badly by anyone that mattered. All loved and revered him. His Holiness Penor Rinpoche kept his vows, outer, inner, and secret ones, all without stain. He began and built Palyul in India with his own hands! What Tulku, Khenchen, monk or nun could ever hope to accomplish the same? His Holiness Penor Rinpoche was peerless! Now we’ve lost Him. Who will keep Palyul pure? I can say this. No one should make money off Dharma. It should pay the bills, yes. KPC has no major donors, just many small ones. But we keep the doors open. Money goes to help sentient beings, like Garuda Aviary and Taras Babies or feeding the poor. Not lining pockets. Everyone, for the most part, wants money for themselves. Money is power. And it feels good until the Bardo, where all we will have is our selfishness without interruption! Everyone, except Kybje His Holiness Penor Rinpoche. He only wished to preserve the purity of Palyul and to empty samsara from its depths! May His Holiness Karma Kuchen rise up and do His work. And offering the precious jewel Mandala I beg and cry out for His Holiness Penor Rinpoche’s Yangsi to appear and return to us who mourn! Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved originally published Sept. 2, 2011
Where Are You on the Path?
The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Marrying a Spiritual Life and Western Culture”
I don’t know how many times I can present this same teaching. It’s about understanding that the ball is in our court. It’s about having a direct hands-on experience, not about being a good boy or girl. Aren’t you sick of that? This moralizing stuff has got to go! Instead, have a direct understanding, a natural wisdom—your wisdom—that dry times cannot take away from you, that broken hearts cannot take away from you, that no one else can take away from you. Your wisdom. You don’t look to anyone else to get your wisdom. You’ve got it inside. You understand the path in a deep way. You are empowered.
I’m not talking about ritual empowerment. I’m talking about a deeper, truer kind of empowerment. How wonderful if we can know that spiritual empowerment deeply within ourselves, to then go through the process of ritual empowerment according to the teaching and know what it’s about. It’s not just a vase (or a bhumpa) being knocked on your head. You could do that from now until your head and the bhumpa are both flat, and there would be no direct relationship. If it’s all academic and intellectual, then it’s the same as getting a Ph.D. anywhere in technical sciences or whatever. It’s not really a path. A path is a way you go. A path is not an object that you consume or collect or put in your crock pot and boil all day until it makes gravy at night. A path is where you are. Where are you then?
What I’m talking about is carefully considering how to overcome the limitations of confinement of our kind of society, of our kind of culture; how to go more deeply to have a more direct relationship with our own spiritual nature—a real mystical relationship with that nature. And I don’t mean just meditating on some sort of internal cartoon circus where you think you’re getting messages from the Pleiades or some baloney like that. If you had a real, direct relationship with your own nature and you really understood the wisdom and the beauty of the Buddha’s teaching and didn’t see it as his teaching, but as a wisdom that appeared in the world here, you could see it as your teaching, as a wisdom that you could connect with.
Actually, we Westerners have a similar problem to what Black Americans have approaching Christianity. Black Americans pray to white Jesus. It’s not to say that their faith is small. I don’t know whether they have a problem with it or not, but it must be odd. What does it look like seeing a white face on an altar when you’re a black person? Go home and look at all those Asian faces on your altar. They don’t look like us. What to do about it? How do you take refuge? How do you connect? It’s not about those pictures. It’s not about those faces. It’s about you! And it connects inside.
It isn’t about the shape of those eyes. It’s about what those eyes see. So you have to have that completely personal relationship where you look beyond that which is slanted or colored or this way or that way. It’s got to be a deeply personal relationship. To do that you must connect deeper than you’ve ever been before. We love to just skate over the surface of our experience of life. We’re even addicted to the highs and lows.
You can’t really understand why and how to take refuge by learning a set of equations or laws or rules. These can only function as guidelines. It’s really up to us to be powerful and strong and noble and knowing and awake on our path. Virtue cannot be collected. It has to be experienced, tasted, understood. Its nature must be understood.
This is not the news we want to hear. We want an easy religion. We think, “Just tell us the ten things we have to do so that we’re not uncomfortable about dying.” I’m not saying those ten things are bad; they’re good, they’re wonderful. But where does it lead you? Aren’t you still the same scared little kid who was so neurotic because you are compressed with rules and society and with being told you can’t feel things. And now we’re going to do this with our religion too. Ten more times.
What if, instead of being a girdle that makes us out of touch just trying so hard to be good, we experienced our path—our method—in a wisdom way, in a connected way, in an in-touch way? From that fertilization that happens when you really understand an idea and it causes you to go, “Ah-hah, therefore…”, from that point of view it’s like a plant or a tree coming up inside of you and growing. It bears fruit. It is a joyful thing, and you can see the fruit of your life. Most of us are so unhappy and so neurotic because we cannot see the fruit of our life and we do not understand its value. We haven’t tasted it. This direct relationship one can taste. It needs to be like that in order for us to really take refuge and not be lost little kids scared of dying, just trying to do the right thing—be good boys and good girls with a new set of rules—because maybe if we just had a new set of rules, maybe then we’d be good.
Instead of that, what if we were dynamically in love, inspired, breathing in and out on our path? The path can, in that way, be a companion, a joyfulness, a child of yours, a creation, a painting, something beautiful you’ve done with your life. You can’t make a beautiful painting by number. You have to make a beautiful painting from your heart.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved
Victory of View
The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:
I have been told many times that I worry. I must say I disagree. I do study things, try to puzzle cause and effect, try to glimpse behind the curtain. I love to notice patterns and find their meaning. I like to study abnormal psychology, love to hear about case studies, what makes people tick. I find reactions fascinating! I’ve learned that each bit of phenomena is amazing.
So you may see me with a knit brow…but this life has taught me squarely that it is a dream. One moment you feel mortally wounded, then with a little tweaking it isn’t so anymore. I’ve found if we step back and breathe we can avoid getting all tied up in stuff, and bound in neurosis, insanity. It’s choices.
Life is a whirling colorful, mesmerizing dance with lights, sound and distraction, like a circus. And like a circus it soon packs up and disappears, leaving only dust and tracks in dirt.
If we study life and think in sane full equations that add up, we can manage well. If we sink into reaction, rage, fear, despair, we will be ground into blood and guts and will always be a bee in a bottle. Round and round with no rhyme or reason or true purpose. And certainly with no accomplishment. Meditation, mantra, and prayer, all help soothe and deepen the mind, increases our view, relaxes our ego-clinging, helps us expand our thinking and being into something beautiful. Extraordinary! We can “be” to the degree that we can laugh with pure joy. Dance. Howl at the moon… cry, mourn and recover well. No, I don’t worry about life or death. I am into knowing, connecting, loving, laughing and recovery for all from trauma. I don’t take it so seriously. And I never worry anymore! I’d call that a victory of view!
OM TARE TUTTARE TURE SOHA!
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved
Understanding the Faults of Samsara: by Khenchen Tsewang Gyatso
The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Khenchen Tsewang Gyatso given at Kunzang Palyul Choling on Ngondro:
When contemplating the faults of samsara, we need to understand that in samsara, as we explained, there is some enjoyment, some peace, which distracts our minds and keeps us from having any accumulation of merit or purification. It is just like in Christianity: In the beginning, God said there is a very nice apple tree, but you should not get distracted and eat of it. If you do, then you will get spoiled. By not listening to that and eating the apple, all evil and bad things happened. Just like that, in this world there are certain things that really feel attractive, but when you look at the object of attraction and really examine it deeply, there is nothing attractive. It is all just like a magician’s creation which looks very real, but when you approach it, then you see that it is artificial with no essence. That is why one has the thoughts of the precious human birth, that death is uncertain, that the law of karma is going to direct you, and that the law of karma is created by yourself. There is no external law of karma ordering you to do all these kinds of things. Each and every experience of good and bad, suffering and happiness, that you experience each and every moment is created by yourself. That is known as the ripening of karma.
So we need to understand the fault of samsara. When one has a clear understanding of these four thoughts, you could have some kind of feeling that you have to do some practice. Samsara looks so attractive, but it doesn’t have any essence, like the rainbow. The rainbow looks so colorful, so nice, and you have so much desire and attachment. You really want to have it, but when you jump up to get it, you cannot get anything. Then you feel very sad, and you get so depressed. Why can’t I have some of this beautiful rainbow? You get upset, but nothing happens. All these worldly pleasures are exactly like a rainbow. When you really enter into them, there is nothing there to have. That is why one must have a deeper understanding of cyclic existence. Then you can become more relaxed and have more enjoyment, thinking how attractive everything is, but having no attachment to it, no desire. You can enjoy and at the same time not create any negative karma and be more relaxed, because you don’t have to try to get anything. Whether you get something or not, you just relax. If you can’t get it, you won’t feel depressed because you know that it has no essence.
So your mind gets very relaxed, you can enjoy whatever happens without any attachment or afflicted mind. In that way, one can have a very smooth life without any depression or emotional feelings and without any excitement, but still some kind of enjoyment is always there. That is how we can really apply practice into our daily life—just relaxing, no attachment, no hatred or anger, just always relaxed and balanced. Whatever things you have, you enjoy them just like a magician’s creation.
At the same time, you do not have any attachment to the practices. No attachment to the Great Perfection ngöndro practice. Attachment binds you; it is a type of bondage. When you feel that kind of excitement, like, “Oh, I want to do this ngöndro practice. This is so great!” with so much expectation and so much interest, then as you apply it into practice, some obstacle arises. Then you feel like you should have gone some other place for the weekend. “I should have gone to see my friends or relatives.” When one has so much attachment or expectation, that also becomes an obstacle. So you need to get relaxed, always get relaxed, thinking this is a great opportunity.