Perception and Karma | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

Star of Your Own Show

November 26, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Perception and Karma by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, July 19, 1989

At the heart of all phenomena, at the heart of all feeling, at the heart of all thought, at the heart of all experience, at the heart of self-nature, at the heart of all things, is the nature of emptiness. Neither self-nature nor phenomena can be considered separate from emptiness. All phenomena are inseparable from emptiness. It is indistinguishable from emptiness. It is the same as emptiness. It arises from emptiness, and it returns to emptiness. At the heart of every single experience, everyone without exception, including the ones that we react to in the various ways that we react, there lies the mother of all phenomena, the heart of emptiness.

From that point of view, since all things arise from emptiness, are the same as emptiness and inseparable from emptiness. All phenomena are the same. For those of you who practice Dorje Phagmo, one of the most outstanding and obvious qualities of Dorje Phagmo is that she cuts attachment to phenomena being one way or another. She relates to phenomena in such a way that all phenomena are the same and she experiences the sameness of all phenomena. In truth all phenomena is the same taste. The analogy that can be used to really get the point home is that, from that point of view, shit is the same as chocolate. They are the same nature, the same essence, the same taste.

Yet, we do not experience them as the same. We want to eat chocolate and we feel repelled, terribly repelled, by shit. We would like to have the chocolate bar, but we would not eat a bowl of shit. That would be very difficult for us to do. One would be delicious and the other would be utterly repulsive. So, if these things have the same nature, what, then, is the difference? The difference, of course, is the perceptual process that we are engaged in.

This perceptual process is both collective and individual. That is to say, there are certain things that groups, such as all human beings, might perceive similarly, not the same, but similarly. There are some phenomena that perhaps would be experienced in a cultural way. One group would experience something in one way and another group might experience it in another way. There are some forms of phenomena that most sentient beings may experience in a certain way. Even within those samenesses and those likenesses, a person within a group actually experiences that phenomena in a very individual way. That individuality cannot be understood because there is not a true communication that can describe how experience happens.

How that occurs, of course, is through the means of karma. Each of us has a certain karmic format. We seem to be programmed in a karmic way. Each of us operates very differently due to our karma. The expression is, “due to the karma of our minds.” This is, of course, according to the ordinary mind, the mind that is experiencing delusion, not the mind of awakening. We have some similar karma, obviously. We’re all sitting in the same room. If we did not have similar karma, we would not be as close as we are. Not only are we sitting in the same room but we see each other quite frequently, we’ll probably see each other for the rest of our lives, with any luck, and we will continue to have a relationship in this way. So we have some similar branches of karma. We live in the same city, we live in the same state, we live in the same nation, and we live on the same Earth at the same time.

Yet, each of us has individual karma. It takes a tremendous amount of similarity, for instance, for all of you to have gotten ordained at the same time. If you could conceive of the tremendous ripening that had to have occurred at that time, you would understand, then, the tremendous bond that you share. It takes a tremendous amount of ripening for us to come together at this time, for all of us, in order to experience a life that is about Dharma. There has to be a tremendous amount of ripening of very pure and virtuous karma in order for that to happen. Yet, even with all of that, we have differences in our karma. The differences are so deep and yet so subtle that one person, who has similar karma with another person, cannot talk to that person and describe exactly what their experience is. No one can communicate exactly what their experience is. Even if you felt that you had thoroughly communicated your experience that would basically be a misunderstanding because the other person could not have understood what you said. They do not have the same karma as you. It is impossible. You could not exactly describe how you experience a small object for instance. If you did, she would hear it in the way that she experiences it. There is no meeting, there is some overlapping, but there isn’t an intimate sameness about our experience.

For this reason, all scientific tools, from this point of view, are utterly useless. A simple thing, such as a thermometer, is useless. If I put it in my mouth and had two people read it they would both say 98.6. But the meaning of their experience, the way in which it was received, what they say, every single piece of what happened in order for that to happen is quite different. The sameness of the karma is indicated by their ability to sit together and have the opportunity to read the thermometer at the same time. But the sameness is not in the experience. It is an illusion that we all live with that makes us think that we all have the same experience.

In a very ordinary way, this accounts for the unbelievable thing that happens when groups of people get together and try to pass along information. It also explains how it is that gossip should be outlawed. All things that are communicated in that way are different. So, in one way, it is best to do as the Buddha does and just shut up for awhile until you get enlightened.

Each of us, then, is totally and completely involved in a perceptual play that we believe to be real. We constantly experience self and other, we constantly experience phenomena surrounding us. We constantly experience thoughts and feelings within our own mind and are constantly involved in reaction. Do we understand how completely and totally individual that is? If we did understand that, we would have a way to understand how artificial the entire construction is and how it is absolutely dependent on one’s karma. How useless it is to try to react or not react in a certain way in order to change things. How useless it is to try and manipulate phenomena in order to get a certain result. We would understand, then, that the only lasting means by which to make change, is to purify one’s karma.

I think of an example of someone, one of my students who is constantly bothered by losing things or having others mishandle things. The only cure to a situation such as that is not what we usually try to do, which is to lay blame or take measures or lock stuff up. The only lasting cure for something like that would be the practice of generosity. The result of the karma of a generous mind is a feeling that is a state free of lack, a state that is without doubt or anger or without the building blocks that cause a situation to occur again and again and again. The karma of a generous mind is such that those kinds of things simply don’t happen. There is more stability in a generous mind. A person who has truly practiced and attained selfless generosity, the experience of such a person will be stable, it will not be challenging in the way that the life of an ego-clinging person is. It will not have the same frustrations. It will not have the constant vacillation between having and not having. The karma of loss will not be there. But we don’t understand this. We constantly revolve in a very tight opera in which we are the stars and all the scenery is created just for us. What we don’t realize is that it’s also created by us, and that no one else is playing.

Did the Buddha Get Thirsty?

January 18, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Perception and Karma by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, July 19, 1989

In a previous teaching we talked about the six realms of cyclic existence and how they would see a cup of water. How would the Buddha see a cup of water? The Buddha would know it’s innate nature. The Buddha would know innate nature. In that awareness there is no thirst, there is no need. There is relaxation, space, and freedom from desire. Even though the Buddha might live in a life where he drinks water, there is spaciousness in that experience, because he knows the nature. He knows the nature of desire and of thirst. He knows the nature of the experience itself. He knows the nature of the thought, “I should drink now.” In the heart of every piece of phenomena, and every single experience of any kind, is that profound nature, completely unified, completely inseparable, the same. Even to say that in the heart of that experience is that nature isn’t true. It implies that you might think of it as being like one of those chocolate covered cherries. In the heart is the nature, and the rest of it is something else. It’s not. That’s the only way we have to describe it. This that I call a cup of water is emptiness. It is emptiness. The water, the glass, the color, the taste, the desire, the need, the experience, everything is emptiness. Knowing that nature, experiencing the relaxation and spaciousness as the Buddha experiences each experience has as its core unlimited supreme bliss, bliss that is united with compassionate activity.

I am not a Buddha therefore I cannot speak as one, but a hypothetical difference may be this: I’m going to drink this because my mouth is getting dry. My mouth is getting dry because I believe in self-nature as being inherently real. My mouth can be satisfied by this water because I believe this water is other. I’m taking a drink. The Buddha experiences the nature as a result of that awakening because the very nature of that awakening is perfect compassion. The Buddha appears in the world and takes a drink of water. Within the experience of this cup, within the experience of this water, in this experience of the movement, in the experience of the decision to take the water, within the experience of being here, is the heart of emptiness and at the core, each experience is bliss. The Buddha experiences that because he knows the nature and has awakened to that nature to the extent that there is no self-craving. Therefore each experience is potentially, though it may look ordinary to you and I, potentially the experience of the primordial view, as pure, as blissful, as luminous, as inseparable from that nature in ways that we cannot understand. Yet the Buddha did come to the earth and did drink water. I assume, I wasn’t there, but I assume he did.

We, however, continue to suffer because we don’t have that space. Our minds are not relaxed. We are constantly engaged in the rigidity of reinforcing self and other and constantly at the mercy of the compulsion of our karma and constantly at the mercy of our own automatic habitual tendency to exaggerate and continue to build more suffering.

The moral of the story is, be a Buddha now. Ask me how. That is a joke, of course, but if you follow the Buddha’s teachings you are changing. You are constantly changing in the only way change is meaningful. If you really use the techniques deeply, in a contemplative way, really thinking about this, then there is hope. If you sincerely think in the ways that I’ve instructed and do the practices that you are given, you will begin to transform your awareness into the pristine, primordial experience, which is your true nature. You will have a taste of that nature and that taste will surely grow.

The Karma of a Cup of Water

July 16, 2014 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Perception and Karma by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, July 19, 1989

I’d like to illustrate some very basic teachings on the six realms of cyclic existence by looking at a cup of water. In the human realm, this is a cup of water and it has lemon in it. I know that it’s water because it smells like water. It tastes like water with lemon. I know what that tastes like. I can tell the difference between tastes. I know that water is good for me; I know that it will quench my thirst. The reason why I’m having this experience is because of my karma. In the animal realm, a dog would also experience that. Let’s say a dog or some kind of lion or tiger or bear would experience that as water, also. They wouldn’t know what the lemon was, they would think there was something funny in there, but they would experience it as water. They don’t taste very much. They know the water by smell. They can’t taste the difference between city water and country water. They might be able to smell a difference. But they know it to be water, and they instinctively drink it when they are thirsty. They don’t think much about whether it will do this or that for them. They don’t think about how much they need. So their experience with water is similar, but different.

In the hungry ghost realm, beings are horribly thirsty and horribly hungry, and their mouths are very, very tiny, so they’re not able to take in food. Someone from the hungry ghost realm would experience that as a cup of pus and would not be able to drink it because their experience is that it’s pus, it’s horrible and it isn’t drinkable, it isn’t water. It smells foul and is foul. It is not something you would drink. So, they do not drink and they continue to be extremely thirsty. This is my cup of water, I know that it’s not pus but in the hungry ghost realm it would be experienced as pus and they would be terribly thirsty.

Why do they experience it that way? Are they jinxed? Did some magician go to the hungry ghost realm and transform all the water? Is someone out to get them? Had they just not looked in the right places? Should they keep on checking around? Should they think positive? What would happen if they could get it down? Would it act like water? No, it would act like pus, right? Even if they could drink it, the water would act like pus to them. No matter what they do, it remains pus and they remain thirsty. That’s really disgusting, isn’t it? Why does that happen? It happens because of the karma of their mind. Their perceptual experience that they have, the construction that they abide within has that reality or that quality because it is an emanation of their mind. It is the karma of their mind. It’s as real and as solid to them as the fact that this is water to me.

What about someone from the hell realm? Depending on which hell realm it is, it would be either a cup of fire or a cup of ice. Unfortunately, it would be a cup of fire if they were in the hot realms and it would be a cup of ice if they were in the cold realms. The difficulty is that if they held their nose and said, “I really think this is probably water.” They would drink fire and be burned. It’s very real, very real to them. Why is that the case? It is the case because that is the karma of their mind.

On the other hand, if this were experienced in the god realm, it would be experienced as a cup of elixir, the nectar of long life, or the elixir of infinite power, or the nectar of infinite beauty. The gods would drink it and live a long time, anyway. Nothing is forever in the god realm. They would take it and it would be like an elixir that would put them into a state of absolute bliss for a while.

Well, I drank that water. I drink lots of water, and so far, no bliss. So it isn’t happening to me. That’s because the gods have the karma of their minds and that’s how it works out for them. Each one of these different beings that I have described arises from emptiness. They are the same as emptiness; they are inseparable from emptiness. Each cup in those different realms, no matter what was in it, arises from emptiness, it is the same as emptiness, it is inseparable from emptiness, and yet the experiences are totally different. The experiences are different due to the karma of our minds.

Everything that you have ever experienced is completely relative, completely artificially constructed and totally experiential. Everything that you have experienced is like that, and yet what do we do?

Let’s think about the poor old guy in the hungry ghost realm with a cup of pus. That’s really disgusting, isn’t it? Let’s say that he picks it up and he sees that it’s pus, and he puts it back down. Now what is the next thing he does? He sits there and he feels really miserable. He feels agonizingly miserable and thirsty. Then he thinks, “Why does this happen to me?” Then he thinks, “Everywhere I go, there’s this stuff.” He thinks, “There’s no relief.” He goes on and on and on and continues with the experience. The experience does not stop when he decides not to drink it. He continues with the experience. He reacts to the experience. The karma is that he experiences pus. He’s in the hungry ghost realm and he’s experiencing phenomena as he experiences it, which is pretty disgusting, and he’s experiencing also this great longing for nourishment and help and respite from his suffering.

Then, after he doesn’t drink it, he continues with this process of saying, “Why doesn’t anybody love me and give me something to drink? Why do I have to suffer this way?” And then goes on with, “I’m so hungry, I’m so thirsty, I’m so ugly” and so on. What I have just described is an elaboration process that branches from the original karmic occurrence. That elaboration is a very important factor and a very important thing for us to look at and understand. It is the process of exaggeration. Now, it sounds really far fetched to talk about this guy in the hungry ghost realm, but I use that example because it’s so solid, you can really understand how that might happen.

What about us? Let’s use for example the experience that we have when we lose our job. We lose our job, and it’s not the first time we’ve lost our job. The karma of that particular relationship that you had in order to have the job, ended. Maybe it just ran out because it was time. Maybe it ended because you ended it but the karma of that particular relationship ran out. What happens after you’re fired, though, is a process that continues and becomes more a part of you than the actual firing or even the job ever was. That process is the process of exaggeration and elaboration. You begin to elaborate on the process.

The first thing that happens is you begin to make an entire scenario about what really happened. What really happened has a certain flavor. You have perceived it in a certain way. You have lost your job and you have the perception that your boss was kind about it, or your boss was mean about it, or it happened in this way, it happened at midday, it happened at night, it happened in the morning, it happened when it was a good time for you, it happened when it was a bad time for you, it happened before your car payment, it happened after your car payment. You have your own kind of perception about it.

Spinning off from that, you have your determination, which is a more subtle process, about what the real story is. In other words, you’re always going to decide for yourself whether you should have been fired, whether that was righteous, whether you should be treated meanly or whether you should be treated nicely. You’re always going to decide for yourself whether things happen as they do for good reasons, and then you’re going to make up a whole story about how it should have happened. Probably you spend the next few days, weeks or months reworking the entire thing, and imagining what you might have said to your boss under different circumstances. You have your own particular belief about how things should have happened. From that you continue to elaborate and exaggerate situations, working it into the roots of your being, thinking ultimately, after you really work it down the pike, I’m a failure. “Nobody loves me. My mother didn’t love me. My father didn’t love me. I’m destined to be poor and I am deeply flawed.” You know what you do. I don’t have to tell you. You go into the entire scenario of all the different things that you feel are absolutely true. So the experience doesn’t end with the cessation of a certain job opportunity, it continues with an elaboration process and that process is as real as the actual experience. The exaggeration process usually is the one that sticks with you, longer that the experience itself, often longer than the job itself. That is the experience that sticks with you.

Stop the Madness

February 8, 2011 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Perception and Karma by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

In order to pacify the karma of our mind, we need to employ the methods of Dharma. These methods consist of generating oneself in a pure form, free of attachment and desire, meditating on the nature of emptiness, contemplating the nature of emptiness, engaging in compassionate and pure activity in order to pacify the karma of our minds. We engage in all of these things. These are the means by which eventually, over a period of time, the karma of our mind will change. It will change. How quickly it changes is up to you. No one can predict that. It really depends on you. It depends on how diligently and deeply you practice, how clear you are about what you want, how deep you can allow your understanding to go, and how much you put into it. There is no law or force outside of you that pushes you to have progress at a certain level or in a certain way. It is purely up to you.

The experience that we have, however, and the habitual tendencies we have are so strong, that even hearing this is a little bit like riding a Ferris wheel. When you ride to the top of a Ferris wheel you can look down at the whole world. You can see the horizon, you can see the lights, you can see the buildings and you can see people, and you go, “Oh, it looks like that, does it?” Then the Ferris wheel comes down and you get off and you’re on that ground level. You are in it, walking the streets. You forget that there is a horizon. You forget that there are millions and millions of sentient beings per square block. You don’t have any view so we continue with that habitual compulsive tendency to act and react in the ways that we do.

These teachings sound disturbing and they should be disturbing for people that have no access to dharma. Within that circular, compulsive, experiential procedure there is no end to it. One cannot do something that will end the phenomena because the more you do the more you interact between self and other. The more you interact between self and other, the more that you try to accomplish, the more effortful your efforts are, the more engaged you are in cause and effect relationship. The more cause and effect relationships you engage in, the more karma continues, the more exaggeration continues. The process does nothing but give birth to itself. There’s no end to it.

For those who have the opportunity to practice the path that is brought about, not through ordinary means of cause and effect, not through using ordinary techniques of manipulating phenomena and increasing exaggeration, but rather by using techniques that are birthed from primordial wisdom and that bring about the pacification and the end of cause and effect relationships, you should thank Buddha because there is an end to suffering. Having seen the impenetrability of this tight constant delusion, having seen how it simply gives birth to itself and does more and more and more, having understood this, you should look at the path that comes from the primordial wisdom state and that offers the necessary technology to bring about the end of cause and effect relationships, and feel tremendously relieved. It is like you have been sifting through garbage for many lifetimes, and suddenly you have come upon a precious jewel. Suddenly you have found the wish-fulfilling jewel. With that you should develop some sense of determination.

That determination can be a very illusory thing. I’m talking about really understanding for yourself, not just hearing my words, but taking the time to contemplate and understand how useless it is to combat this thing you’re in with the ways that you do. To really contemplate on how useless your actions are to end something that can’t be ended. To really contemplate in such a way that you look at the way you’re manipulating phenomena and see that it’s nothing. You might as well do nothing. In fact, you’re getting yourself in deeper and deeper.

Contemplate that in such a way that you become armed with a foundational view or foundational understanding that says to you that this stuff is stupid. It’s not only stupid, it’s deadly, it’s horrible and there’s no way out of it. To be involved in cyclic existence is horrible beyond belief. Be determined to examine the nature of your mind. Watch yourself as you engage in it, and from that point, use these techniques to begin to pacify the causes of the experience that you’re having, which is karma.

That determination is the kind of determination that doesn’t make you practice a little bit more for a few days and then waste away again. It’s the kind of determination, for instance, as a monk or a nun that would make you say, “Look at these robes, I will never abandon them. How precious that I have found the supreme vehicle.” Even if men or women came dancing naked through the room and they were all gorgeous, it wouldn’t affect you at all. You wouldn’t need the world to hide itself so that you could maintain your vows. You would have that kind of renunciation. You would understand and even if the most delightful sensual experiences were to present themselves to you, they would be nothing to you. What is it? It’s nothing. It’s garbage. It begets more of the same. You can’t have anything without losing it.

For those of us who are renunciates in different ways, you should have the same experience. You should look at whatever experience you have in your life and know that it can’t dupe you anymore. It’s not that you won’t achieve, it’s not that you won’t have money; it’s not that you won’t have the experiences that people have but it just won’t dupe you anymore. You can get married, you can have money, it doesn’t matter what you do, but it won’t dupe you anymore because you know what it’s about.

Having this sense of renunciation, you develop a kind of unshakeable discipline. It’s not the discipline that means I should do so many mantras per day. This discipline should go even deeper than that. You should be practicing constantly. You should be constantly developing some space in the middle of that hard core perception of self and other. You should be developing some space in the middle of all your reactions. Develop the spaciousness and the relaxation that is based on understanding what’s what, and then develop it through your practice. Please refer back to the teaching on Monday night. I hope that all of you will try to hear that teaching again. The constant revelation in every piece of phenomena is the heart of emptiness. That is its taste.

Me, You and Karma

February 7, 2011 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Perception and Karma by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, July 19, 1989

Every single kind of perception that we have, no matter what it is, is based on the false presupposition that self is inherently real. The belief in self as being inherently real, absolutely lays out that other is inherently real. Once that idea of self has been borne and is fixed, you must develop walls of ideation and conceptualization to surround it and maintain it. You must constantly separate other. In order to separate other, you must continue to determine how other and self interact. That’s the basic process. Having done that since time out of mind, you are involved in cause and effect relationships complete with lots of exaggeration. The residue and reality of that is experienced as karma.

Karma is nothing other than cause and effect. That’s all it is. It’s not somebody up there making check marks in a book. It’s simply cause and effect. It’s as simple to understand as a leaf falling from a tree. There are irrefutable laws of cause and effect.

The experience that we have is based on this karma, which has been based on a long-term relationship with cause and effect, which is based on the underlying belief in self-nature as being inherently real. Why then, hearing this, can’t we just stop? Why can’t we just stop reacting? Why can’t we just stop judging things? Why can’t we do this?

We can’t stop because we are no longer in a position where we are truly cognizant of the choice between self-nature being inherently real or not. It is now automatically so. It is now so rigid that survival has become a big deal. You believe that this is what you are. You must continue that continuum that you think is survival because you do not know that there is anything without the continuation of self-nature. It is so far buried, it is such a primal experience, it is so beneath reason, so much deeper than reason, due to the constant building up of cause and effect relationships, of karmic relationships and the constant exaggeration that has occurred since time out of mind, from the first perception that implied self.