Saga Dawa 2016 | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

How To Wake Up

September 9, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo given on Saga Dawa 2016

The great Bodhicitta permeates everything. It is our true nature. It is up to us to activate it in the same way in order to wake up the deities inside.

How do you do that? You practice the Bodhicitta. It doesn’t come naturally to most people. You have to practice it. A very new student that I had once came up to me and said, “I don’t have any Bodhicitta,” and I said, “Well, make some.” Practice. You have to practice. You have to understand that you are the same nature as the person that you may have bad feelings about. We are not different. We are intimately connected and we are actually in the same place. You appear to be over there when, in fact, you are in here. I appear to be up here when I am in your heart, too. There’s no reason for us to act as we do and make the world worse. There’s no reason for that because we are the same. The great Bodhicitta that emanated from seemingly nothing is empty, and yet it is the nature of everything. It is your seed nature. The Buddha seed that is within you is Bodhicitta. There’s no reason why any of you cannot accomplish the Dharma. You are the Dharma. We are all Dharma inside. We only have to wake it up. There’s nothing we can do to make Dharma appear where it is not. It has to be where it is, and it is within our minds and our hearts. The Bodhicitta first emerged, and then everything came from that. Everything. I’m seeing all the different forms in the world, and when I see them I know that they are not separate from me. They are not separate from you.

We have to learn that it’s different than what we see because the five senses are liars. They will deceive you. They tell us what our consciousness believes to be true, and our consciousness is born in samsara. The tools that we use to tell us definitely that this is five feet long, definitely this is that high, definitely this is definitely that, are lying to us. You can’t believe them. You have to believe what you see in your deepest nature and that’s comes through practice. It’s the only way you can see it. Sometimes I look at peoples’ bodies and I can see if they are sick or not, and where they are sick. I did that yesterday and I was 100% correct. I’m not bragging. It’s not like that. It’s that we all have this kind of vision if we practice. We all do. The root of it is Bodhicitta. That view, that understanding, is Bodhicitta. We have to doubt the tools that we use to learn things because they come from samsaric minds. The only things you can’t doubt are the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Their wisdom is what it is. Yes, they may have five senses too, but their five senses have been tamed and awakened. The Buddhas and Bodhisattvas see differently. We could do that too, but it takes a lot of contemplation and practice. You have to doubt your own eyes. If you could see with pure view, you would see dimensions sliding across and around each other. You could see how they are related to each other. You can see one person disappearing here and then reappearing in another dimension. Once the senses are purified, you can see that, but with ordinary senses we don’t really see, we just make up things. We have to tame our senses and bring them in harmony with Dharma so that they can awaken.

Contemplation is good. Don’t believe in what you see automatically, but look deeper. You can’t be so shallow in your practice. You have to understand it’s not what you’re seeing. I hope this makes some sense. Whatever deity you practice, he or she lives within you—every deity that you practice—and you live within him or her. This is why we practice the deities. To wake up.

Awakening the Deities Within

September 8, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Amitabha's Pureland

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo given on Saga Dawa 2016:

Would we ever be able to get to another galaxy? I don’t think so. Because we think the galaxy is far away and it’s not. It’s not. As long as we think it’s far away, we’ll never get there. If we look at a star and we think, ‘Oh, that’s a star over there’, we don’t understand that not only is the star within us, but we are within the star. There is nothing separate. Nothing. It’s very difficult to understand. When we try to understand it, we try to understand it with our ordinary minds, and we can’t. No matter how hard we try.

The ticket is we have to wake up in our practice and, in doing that, wake up the deities within. When that occurs, we’ll understand that we are not separate and that the different dimensions not only connect with each other, but they are within each other. That’s why sometimes I can see things from other dimensions, because they aren’t somewhere else. They are layered together. These dimensions are not only connecting, they are in the same place. Nothing is separate from you. It’s hard to learn that and hold that in our minds in a strong way. Instead we are not kind to each other. We think negatively, and things like that. In fact, we are the same nature. We are the same nature. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a car. Out of the corner of my other eye, I see the corner of a building. Then I don’t see it anymore. I’m not schizophrenic. This is just the way I see. I know that these are different dimensions, but they are in the same place. You can’t even say in the same place because that indicates that everything is solid, and it’s not.

What Are We?

September 7, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching given by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo on Saga Dawa May 22, 2016:

I want to talk about the emanation of primordial wisdom: How it occurs, what is occurring. I want to talk about things that are not scholarly, but that I know with my own mind.

There’s neither emptiness nor fullness, and there are both. The primordial wisdom nature emanates from the emptiness nature. Bodhicitta is how it happens.

I would like to explain a couple of things: In your subtle body, there are Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and deities in union, all over your body, everywhere. Inside, that is what you are. It’s hard to understand because we can’t see it that way, but our nature is pure luminosity. On one hand, we have all these deities within us, and they are either asleep or awake. If you don’t practice, they are asleep. If you accomplish some practice, they are awake. That’s what brings you closer to enlightenment. On the other hand, we are also within the bodies of the deities. It goes both ways. If we see, for instance, Mother Tara in a picture, it looks like Mother Tara is out there, that she’s someplace else. In fact, She is in you and you are in Her. It’s like that with any of the deities that you see. They are in you and you are in them. There’s no space between any of us.

Have you seen some of the new science programs on TV where they show that dimensions are really in the same place? Well, it’s true. There is no difference. It seems now we are separate from each other, but in fact we are not. It seems that the deities are separate from us, but, in fact, they never are. It is up to us to wake up and study that, contemplate that, and see it carefully.

Where are the stars and the suns that we see in the sky? Where are they? Will we ever get to them? I know we’ve already gotten to Mars, and we’ve sent some rockets and things to different planets and meteors and comets. We’ve sent all kinds of things and they have evidently landed somewhere. That’s really interesting, but these planets and things that we look at in the sky are not separate from us either, nor are we separate from them. They are in us and we are in them. It’s all the same. It’s important to understand that because these eyes, these five senses, are flawed. They tell us what our samsaric mind tells us. They report what they see and we interpret it; but it’s not correct because here we are looking separate from each other.

When we study, we need to understand that nothing is separate from us, and we are not separate from any of the deities, any of the beings, that we study. It’s all one whole, but it is not solid. It’s empty. In fact, it looks like there couldn’t possibly be any more room. It looks like we have no space, and then we do have space. It goes both ways. Sometimes I can see this myself. I see dimensions hit each other. If we had the understanding, if we had recognition, there’s no reason why we couldn’t put our hands and our beings into another dimension, the way the great masters do, and come to know the different celestial palaces and different worlds as being the same as us.