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.
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