Speed and a burst of energy characterize the day. You blast off in a flurry of excitement and run straight into….an obstacle. A stop sign. Something that says “Don’t forget about me” Okayyyyyyyyy. Find out what needs to be done, do it, and blast off a bit more carefully the second time. Your plan is a good one. If someone else is involved – an integral part of the plan – that person will appear slow and doubtful. Listen carefully. You are the battering ram today, and your partner tells you where to aim. If everyone plays their assigned part, success is the result! Not bad.
The daily astrology post affects everyone. Because individual charts vary, the circumstances outlined in the post will affect people differently. Some will feel this energy in the personal arena, some in finances, some with children or family, some in work and so forth. There are many departments of life. Look to see where the dynamic affects you!
An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series
The Buddha says that all sentient beings are suffering and that enlightenment is the cessation of suffering. But we forget that enlightenment is the cessation of suffering. As a Buddhist you say, “Oh, yes, I’ve learned that. I practice the Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind. Enlightenment is the cessation of suffering. I have that memorized.” Oh, really? I must ask you then, why do you still practice the technology of suffering? Because until you achieve supreme realization, you are still practicing the technology of suffering. You realize this, and yet you continually create the circumstances that make you suffer. Here is why we do that: we have forgotten the other infallible law, the law of the certainty of cause and effect.
We have a problem. We are locked in to our own limited perspectives. We are in finite bodies, therefore our minds perceive in a finite way, a way that is natural for a finite reality to be perceived. Within this context, we can see that certain cause and effect relationships are absolutely unchangeable, that they always happen, that they can’t be messed with. We can see that if we pick something up and then drop it, it will fall.
Now, you may say that cause and effect doesn’t always work. There is magic, there is prayer, there are miracles. Okay then, pick something up, anything, and drop it, and stop it from falling. Let me see you do it. Who can do it? If you can do it, then I am going to buy your story and the class is over. Until we can figure out how to do that, it is certain if something is dropped, it will fall. It is also certain if you stick your hand in fire for long enough, your flesh will burn. It is certain if you never eat you will starve. It is certain if you catch a disease you will be sick. These things we understand.
It is also certain that everybody gets old. But the strange thing about us is, while we are still young enough to have a little twinkle in our eye, we will continue to convince ourselves that we will never get old. What we do is unbelievable. I have done it myself, so I know. Each year we buy something new, a little wrinkle remover, a little under-eye cover-up, and each year we still convince ourselves that nothing has changed. Then eventually, none of that stuff works. Then we have two choices: we can either face the facts or consider surgery. Whatever we do, we are putting off the inevitable.
Motor mouth day! You talk, talk, talk, hoping to explain how you really feel. Notice how you keep telling everyone the same thing, or else you keep hearing the same thing. You are attempting to solve an emotional situation with words. If you say something once, you have given information. If you keep saying the same thing, something else is going on. Think carefully about what you want to communicate and you will be able to say the right thing to the right person. You will feel relieved. This is a good day to engage in sports or outdoor work of some sort. The more energetic you are, the better you’ll feel today. Get moving!
The daily astrology post affects everyone. Because individual charts vary, the circumstances outlined in the post will affect people differently. Some will feel this energy in the personal arena, some in finances, some with children or family, some in work and so forth. There are many departments of life. Look to see where the dynamic affects you!
An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series
It is useful to really look around at sentient beings and see they are suffering. It is also useful to look at yourself. This is not meant to make you depressed or sad. It is meant to give you what it takes to go to the next step, which is to try to determine for yourself the way to remove the causes of suffering.
Even though there are times when hunger is not comfortable, when you would rather not think about it, there are also times when hunger is useful in that it keeps you alive. In the same way, while it may be uncomfortable for you to think that all sentient beings are suffering, it is actually quite useful for you to realize that. It is this realization that will give you the foundation and the ability to turn your mind in such a way that you have to seek out the causes of suffering, and how you can remove them from your mind.
It is not useful in any long-term way to try to convince yourself, by putting a band-aid on an ulcer, that everything is okay, because you still have to face the same things that you’ve always had to face. Nothing has changed. You still have to face old age, sickness and death. Neither does it help you to be helpful to other sentient beings. Look at the animal realm. Go to India and see how the oxen are beaten and tied up in order to be worked. They are worked all of their lives. That is suffering. Look at all the different ways that other creatures suffer just out of ignorance, because they have no way to help themselves.
Once you have determined suffering does exist, there is no need to dwell on it in a morbid way. Rather, you should think, “This is how it is. Now I have to realize that there is, in fact, a cure, there is a way to deal with this.” It is not useful to dwell on suffering without also accepting the antidote. In other words, if you just think about hunger all the time, and you don’t eat, that is stupid. When hunger is no longer useful to you, it is simply suffering. You should use your awareness of suffering to prod you to seek and practice the antidote to suffering. Use your awareness; it is your tool.
Today is the end of a certain cycle. Remember King Arthur’s deathbed words “The old order changes, yielding place to new, and God fulfills himself in many ways.” Something you feel very strongly about today may seem inconsequential later. Try not to feel disappointed. Wait for the change and you’ll feel better. This is a good day to make new friends, to reach out to others. Act on your hunches and you won’t be disappointed. A distinct shift in energy occurs today, and you feel yourself move from relaxed to action oriented! Machinery plays a role in things you do today, and you could walk off and leave a possession by mistake. If you retrace your steps you will find what you lost.
The daily astrology post affects everyone. Because individual charts vary, the circumstances outlined in the post will affect people differently. Some will feel this energy in the personal arena, some in finances, some with children or family, some in work and so forth. There are many departments of life. Look to see where the dynamic affects you!
An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series
There is an expression in one of our prayers, that one’s mind becomes ‘hard as horn.’ The minute I first read that particular phrase, it touched me deeply. Every time I have thought about it, it has meant more and more to me. One’s mind becomes hard as horn because of the discrimination, the conceptualization that is involved with the idea of ego, because of the pride and arrogance that arise from our belief in self-nature as being inherently real. We have established in our minds all of the clothing, the dogma, the discrimination of this idea of self as being real. These things become rigid in our minds, and our minds are no longer gentle.
The moment you decide in some subconscious way you have an ego, that you are a self, you have to start gathering the constructs of self-identity around you. You have to determine where self ends and other begins. In order to do that your mind has to be filled with conceptualization. In order to be a self you have to survive as a self. In order to maintain this conceptualization that makes survival possible, your mind has to become rigid. So if I say to you that your mind is rigid, you shouldn’t think I have insulted you. I am talking about a condition all sentient beings have, and it is a condition that is the cause of a great deal of suffering.
Definitely go out for dinner this evening, or else prepare a lavish feast. Being well fed and well rested makes a difference today in terms of your happiness and success. Go shopping. You could buy THE THING that enhances your life. Money is well spent today. Pay your bills and give what you can to others. Someone may repay a loan you never expected to get back. You look particularly good today, and red is now a great color for just about everybody. Artists and musicians are particularly “on” today. An impressive person comes up with the solution to a partnership issue. Someone can break a strike or play a diplomatic role that resolves a standoff. A decision made suddenly is the right one. Quit dithering and take action!
The daily astrology post affects everyone. Because individual charts vary, the circumstances outlined in the post will affect people differently. Some will feel this energy in the personal arena, some in finances, some with children or family, some in work and so forth. There are many departments of life. Look to see where the dynamic affects you!
His Holiness Penor Rinpoche bestows Long Life Empowerment on Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
Precious Guru,
During this time of celebrating the anniversary of His Holiness Penor Rinpoche I thought you might appreciate this image. It is a photo from 2006 when His Holiness visited KPC, and he is offering you empowerment with the Long Life Arrow.
Came across it while looking for photos for TBA and was so moved by it I decided to send it along.
This Great Master, Throneholder of this ancient Lineage, who offered so many immeasurable blessings to the world, offered the most precious and inconceivable blessing for your students when he recognized you and enthroned you to teach.
For the benefit of countless beings, may your life be long, health strong and may all your aspirations be swiftly fulfilled!
May this Great Master, who held this stainless Lineage together during these degenerating times, be swiftly reborn!
Ogyen Tendzin Jigme Lhundrup, with his teacher. He is considered to be the reincarnation of H.H. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.
An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series
The precepts that the Buddha laid down are real and workable for everyone. You don’t have to be a Buddhist to hold to these precepts. One of these is the realization that all sentient beings want to be happy, yet don’t have the skills or knowledge to achieve happiness. Another is the realization that because of our ineptness at capturing that happiness we make ourselves sad. In fact, the Buddha teaches us that all sentient beings are suffering because we don’t know how to attain happiness.
You don’t have to be a Buddhist to notice this is true. You don’t have to be a Buddhist to look around you, if you are willing to look with courageous eyes, and see that this is so, and you don’t have to be a Buddhist to use the antidote. That antidote is purity of conduct. It is purity in practice, whatever your practice might be. The antidote is the realization of compassion, which should be the core of one’s life. Of course, the Buddha’s teaching is more involved than this, but still one does not have to be a Buddhist to hold to these teachings. They are universal.
If you have been studying Buddhism for some time, you may think you have already learned the Buddha’s basic teachings that all sentient beings are suffering, that there is an antidote to suffering, that all sentient beings are trying to be happy, and that one needs to hold a compassionate viewpoint. But this is not true. You still need to hear these things.
No matter how long I teach, and no matter whom I teach, whether they are brand new to anything metaphysical, or whether they’ve gone on 20-year retreats, I will always address first and foremost the root reasons why one should practice. These basic beliefs are the foundational viewpoint that will encourage you to keep practicing, and, most especially, to keep practicing the idea of compassion.
There is never a time on your path when this is no longer necessary. In fact, the further you go on whatever path you choose – and specifically on the Buddhist path – you will meet up with challenges. You will invariably meet obstacles that make you feel tired and unwilling to go on. You will feel the pressures of living in the material world, especially living here in the West where we are so busy. It is a stretch to be a person committed to a spiritual path, whether it is the Buddhist path or not. It is a stretch because most of us have to earn a living and raise our families, and do all those things that are so time consuming. It is easy to fall back and say, “I’ll wait until later. I will wait until I’m older and more settled, or less busy.”
It is good to hear the Buddha’s foundational teachings. You shouldn’t think that if you’ve been a long-time Dharma student you are beyond all this. If you think that, then I have to tell you from my heart that you have a problem. I don’t think that, and I don’t know of any teacher who thinks that. Every teacher I have ever spoken to has told me to teach compassion first. Teach first the foundational teachings, and keep on that throughout your whole involvement with the Buddhist path.
