Practicing Deeply

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Western Chod”

Westerners, in particular, have this habit. I think it may be somewhat unique to us because our experience is so multiple. We could go into the spiritual supermarket and buy ten different kinds of baloney. That’s the truth. We can go anywhere and get anything. We have so much to look at, so much that we can have, that oftentimes when we’re given a practice and the teacher says to us,. “Turn to page such and such. Read this practice and visualize like this. Then you say the mantra. Then you do the closing prayers. Do some dedication.”  Done. The practice is done. On Wednesday I make out my shopping list, and it’s with that kind of fervent regard, unfortunately, that westerners tend to practice, like we’re writing out laundry lists.  We need this. We gotta have this. We’re going for this. Let’s do it. It’s very much by rote.

I felt that my good fortune was that this practice had to be brought up from the very depth of me. I had to feel it or it wouldn’t work, and so that was my task. To the depth of my being I had to find a way to renounce. I had to face the part of me that was attached and addicted to whatever parts or things about my life that I had that feeling for. I had to face the ramifications if I didn’t accomplish this practice. That meant we all get to die and everything just goes on the way it is. That seemed to me unbearable being as there is so much suffering in the world.

It’s as though I had to reach down in the depth of my gut and pull this up everyday. It was so hard and so rewarding at the same time.  I have to say there are very few practices that I do at this time that match the intensity and the depth and the regard and the beauty that I felt at that time. In some ways it was so natural and so innocent and so total, because I couldn’t stop and go on to the next thing until I had really really accomplished the previous phase. That was the important thing. Unfortunately, we don’t practice, we don’t think like that at this time. That was my practice every single day.

Over the years that practice has made my life much easier.  In a way it was kind of like putting money in the bank for the future. My teachers have instructed me that that practice is called chöd . There is no text to go with it so you couldn’t say it was the practice of chöd as it is written in the text. It has been called by my teachers the essence or essential nectar of chöd. So I have been given permission to continue to practice that way and also to teach others to practice in that way.  My experience has been that it has made my life a lot easier.

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