Prisoner of Mind

An excerpt from a teaching called Bodhicitta by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Some of you here are not young anymore. I’m not young anymore and some of you are older than me.  I don’t know where you are going to be, because you have not renounced samsaric existence.  I cannot guarantee that in your next incarnation you won’t be reborn as a cow because you are so ignorant.  And believe me, cows in India and Nepal do not have a good life.  I cannot guarantee you that you won’t be reborn as a hungry ghost because even in the presence of the Lama, even in the presence of the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, even with this absolutely precious human rebirth, you are still grasping, having not renounced samsaric existence thoroughly.  I cannot guarantee that you will not be reborn a hungry ghost.

Sometimes I think about those of you that are not getting any younger.  That’s all of us, of course. I tend to think of the older members of the group with great love.  Sometimes I lose sleep thinking about you all.  That’s the truth.   And I wonder, “What can we do?  Maybe I’ll get them to practice Phowa really consistently, so even if they really screw up in this lifetime, at least in the bardo state there is a chance for liberation.”  I think about this.  Well, why aren’t you thinking about this?

You people that have the leisure to practice, where the heck are you?   It doesn’t make any sense. Here is a beautiful and comfortable place to practice.  You can make time to practice, and you have your teacher with you, and you have the direct empowerment of the Nam Cho lineage.  Why in the world haven’t you renounced cyclic existence?  Why haven’t you taken the teachings that you have now to purify your mind of grasping?  You have everything.  In the Ngondro practice, you have everything you need to purify your mind of grasping and need.

Now the shallowness that I hear is people doing their practice and saying, “OK, I’m going to visualize this milk coming down.  Oh I feel so good that this milk is coming down.” They’re having a wonderful experience.  But are they saying, “I know that my life is impermanent and I’m going to die soon.  When?   Ten years, 20 years, 30 years?   That’s soon.  And in the meantime I still have this greed in my mind.  I am going to visualize that non-dual nature of Vajrasattva completely purifying me of that greed, of that grasping so that I can fully renounce cyclic existence, so that I will be safe and not imprisoned in my own dualistic mind.”

You are imprisoned in your own dualistic mind.  You are not safe.  I can take a running guess at how many of you will achieve liberation, if not in this lifetime, then soon, but I don’t know, because you can change that.  You can break samaya with me or with any of your Vajra teachers tomorrow and that’s it.  You’re a goner.  Unless you fix it somehow, there’s nothing I can do for you.  Then you are in the same position as everybody else.  You surfaced here in this beautiful place, but where are you going to be the next time?

Death is not a beautiful experience and a release like some of the New Age metaphysicians like to pretend it is.  You enter into the bardo and all the demons of your mind are there with you and unless you have enough wisdom to understand what is in front of you, you’ll throw yourself into a rebirth that’s horrible out of fear and compulsion.   And you don’t know where, I don’t know where you will be next incarnation.

Now we have this wonderful manduk.  Manduk is precious stuff because it absolutely ensures that you will not take a lower rebirth.  Of course if you don’t have faith in it, maybe it won’t work.  Your faith is everything.  Do you know what makes people not have faith?  Bad karma.  And do you know what makes bad karma?   Broken samaya.  Do you see what I am saying?  You’re not safe until you’re safe.  A deep practitioner is one that looks at the situation and says, “Holy cow.  I’ve got to do something about this and I am going to ensure that in this lifetime I am removed from cyclic existence and I am safe so that I can benefit beings and myself.”

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