Alyce Zeoli

Ultimate Compassion

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An excerpt from a teaching called Compassion, Love, & Wisdom by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Ordinary sentient beings cannot bring about extraordinary ends.  Ordinary sentient beings do not have the skill to bring about the end of suffering, since they themselves have within their mindstreams the causes of suffering.  Who then will act as this guide?  Who then will bring this path?  Who then will offer these teachings?  Who will announce a door to liberation?  It must be our intention as we practice this path until we reach supreme enlightenment, and once having accomplished realization, that we will remain in such a form as a Bodhisattva and return again and again and again in order to benefit beings. This is ultimate compassion.  This is the compassion that is actually quite different from ordinary human kindness.

Let’s take as an example a relationship with a teacher.  Let’s say that you have found a teacher who has those qualities, who has attained some realization and returns again and again to benefit beings.  We might think of human kindness in a certain way.  For instance let’s say that I have a student over here and he is a little slow.  He is a nice person, he is trying to accomplish Dharma, but he is a little slow.  Well if you examine it, that slowness is the result of laziness.  He is a little lazy.  Maybe he doesn’t have all the compassion he needs to really be fervent on this path.  Maybe he really needs to develop that compassion and maybe he is just getting a little slothful and maybe there are some things that the teacher can see that are not quite kosher, not quite right with him.  But because we are ordinary we might think, well maybe he is just a little slow and he can’t help it, he is doing the best he can. He is a nice guy, just leave him alone.  He is a little slow.  We might think maybe we will just be kind to him and we will try to support him to see if we can help him. Then we will just be nice to him and little by little he will do the best he can in his feeble, little way.

So he continues and he is still kind of slow and feeble and pitiful.  Then one day a good teacher comes along, sizes up the situation and really displays some wrathful activity and says, “You are going to straighten up your act.”  Gives him ‘what for,’ tells him the truth, reads him the riot act, testifies before Buddha and just changes his whole life around.  Causes him a great deal of upset, causes him to have serious gastric disturbances, causes him to whimper and cry a little bit and the rest of us might think, poor guy, boy did he ever get it.  Wow, that is really rough, that is really terrible.

The difference is that this teacher might have had the capacity to understand what is really happening is that an obstacle to his practice is arising.  It isn’t about being simple at all, it’s about an obstacle to his practice arising, and that obstacle has to do with past habits of sloth and laziness.  It has to do with not having been helpful to other sentient beings; it has to do with his not sending his mother a card on Mother’s day for a couple of years. We couldn’t see what the Lama could see and the Lama knew, but the Lama had that kind of wisdom. Well, what happened to this poor old guy is that he got really shook up, he got finished with his serious gastric disturbances, he took him pepto bismal and he is all squared away. Now suddenly he has changed.

How has he changed?  Has he changed because he really needed to be yelled at?  No because you could have done that.  What the Lama did was to cut out an obstacle and that is kind of miraculous activity because there was awareness there, there was a skillful means that ordinary sentient beings don’t have.  There was also a pure motivation.  That Lama wasn’t really interested in yelling at this poor guy, but he saw there was an obstacle close to the surface and if it were cut out in some profound way it would be pretty clear sailing after that.  That is also possible.  I don’t know if there is such a Lama or such a situation, I don’t know if any of these things are true, but I do know what I am describing is the difference between ordinary perception and extraordinary perception, the difference between ordinary human kindness and true compassion.

Human beings want to follow human rules; we want to be kind in the ways we are taught.  We think that is the answer because we don’t understand cause and effect.  We don’t understand that in order to change the effect we are seeing now you cannot simply mess around with the effect some more.  You have to remove the causes. If you have that pristine awareness, if you have that awakening, if you have that quality of knowing that comes with that kind of realization, you might be able to see the causes.  Through skillful means, with pure enlightened intention through the perfect stability of the union of wisdom with pure compassion in your mind, you might be able to bring about the causes to end the particular suffering he is experiencing. So maybe the man turns around and maybe it’s not because of the reasons that you think.

Our job is to develop these extraordinary skills, and although I think in my case it is going to take an awful long time, still I think we have to do our best to understand that what is needed to accomplish the end of suffering are not ordinary techniques.  They must come from the mind of enlightenment, they must lead to the mind of enlightenment, they must exhibit the qualities of the mind of enlightenment and they may not be exactly sympathetic to some of the human beliefs we may hold true.  We have to accept that this may be a challenge for Westerners.  Ordinary human kindness cannot be discounted.  It is a part of what we must do.  Actually ordinary human kindness is included in the miraculous compassion I just described, as not only did the Lama have the skill to know what was wrong with this fellow, not only did he have the ultimate compassion to care deeply that he accomplish his practice and achieve supreme enlightenment, but he also had ordinary human kindness. He cared about the guy and wanted him to be happy.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

The Bodhisattvas

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An excerpt from a teaching called Compassion, Love, & Wisdom by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The great Bodhisattvas alive on the earth at this time, as well as all the Bodhisattvas that have been and all that are yet to come, are in that number.  They appear in order to be of benefit to beings.  They appear in order to come back and teach a pure vehicle that provides a way to achieve supreme realization.  They live lives that are an inspiration and an example to us. They act as catalysts and bring about causes that institute the result of enlightenment for other beings, and they do it in different ways.  But one of the primary and necessary things that must be accomplished is bringing to the world a pure path that can accomplish supreme enlightenment: the union of the pure natural state of pristine awareness, the realization of the primordial wisdom state, that realization of emptiness, united with pure compassionate intention and the skillful means that is the result of enlightenment.  This perfect union is the union that we must consider our own personal ideal as we practice this path, because the goal must be not only to accomplish enlightenment for our own sake but to have the skill and the miraculous pure intention to display or incarnate in emanation form in order to bring about the enlightenment and salvation of all sentient beings.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

A Natural Purification

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An excerpt from a teaching called Compassion, Love, & Wisdom by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

One of the techniques commonly practiced on the Vajrayana path is generating oneself as the Deity. When generating as the Deity one actually arises in a pure form, a form that is free of desire, a pure and fully enlightened form.  Through mantra and visualization and recitation you allow yourself to arise naturally in a form that is an enlightened form and is considered a form of the Buddha.  Arising in that pure state the mind is free of all the impurities such as desire and conceptualization and of the things that it does, and all perception is then seen as pure as well.  We visualize the perception in a pure way and come to understand that the perception we have is innately pure. From that a natural purification takes place.

Many techniques are used and the result of these techniques is the wisdom we seek, not the techniques themselves.  We are not collecting techniques.  We are not collecting empowerments, we are not collecting things.  That is not the wisdom.  The wisdom we seek is the result of the pacification of constantly arising desire within the mindstream.  It is the pacification of the mind expressing itself in an impure form.  It is the pacification of the results that we constantly experience of erroneous belief.  That is pure wisdom.  Having obtained that wisdom one is actually liberated from cyclic death and rebirth.  How is that?

Well, we have this idea about what happens. You collect all this wisdom and then some guy shows up. It’s probably going to be a guy, because guys are big this year.  This guy shows up and is probably going to wear white.  Don’t you think that white is good?  I mean in this culture we think about white a lot so he is going to wear white. He is going to show up and he is going to say you have accumulated enough wisdom and now you are – sounds like Bill Cosby doesn’t it – and now you are fully enlightened.  I bet it is Bill Cosby.  So now you are fully enlightened and having been fully enlightened then I am going to take from you the need – now I am beginning to sound like an evangelist – now I am going to take from you the need to reincarnate in some future existence.  We have some kind of dream that something like that is going to happen:  we will be anointed and we will have stars on our crown and all this kind of thing.  According to the Buddha’s teaching that is not what is going to happen.  I am sorry.  The Hallelujah chorus is a beautiful piece of music, but they are not going to play it when your moment comes, so don’t be waiting for a sign like that.

When we talk about the kind of wisdom that is necessary to accomplish the awakening that is so treasured and so desired, we talk about the elimination and pacification of all things that produce the causes of cyclic existence.  The Buddha says that we actually take rebirth in a compulsive way and that compulsion is based on desire.  When that desire is eliminated and pacified because the nature, the true nature, is understood and the belief in self as being inherently real is done away with, that very cause for us to take rebirth in this compulsive way is gone. There is no necessity to take rebirth.  However, the Vajrayana path contains all of the Mahayana hopes and ideals; we achieve a state of realization that is ultimately of benefit to all sentient beings, not only ourselves.  Having achieved that stability of mind, the realization of the natural state through practice, having poised ourselves on that pristine moment of pure cognition, that which is called innate wakefulness and yet has within it no conceptualization, we then can choose to return again and again and again in an emanation form in order to be of benefit to sentient beings.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

The Coffeepot Thoughts

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An excerpt from a teaching called Compassion, Love, & Wisdom by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Practice takes a long period of time.  You will be practicing till the end of your life.  In order to be successful you must be consistent in your practice, you must keep your commitments, you must cultivate the mind of pure intention, and you must cultivate the purest kind of love to keep the fires burning and to keep yourself motivated. After practicing for a good long period of time the mind itself will change and will become more and more stable.  Those momentary feelings or experiences that you have in your meditation will become longer and longer.  They will become more and more normal.  When they become longer and longer it isn’t just that they become longer and longer in time but they become deeper and wider in their intensity and in their content.  They become more a part of the way that your mind naturally functions. The goal of course is for that process to continue, because true realization is not a momentary ‘aha’, true realization is not something that you realize, that is knowledge.  True realization is not an experience. That is a ‘something.’  True realization is awakening to the natural state that is free of all conceptualization. The mind needs to become stabilized in that state.  How does that happen?

You must practice a technology or a path that causes your mind not to constantly run away with you, not to constantly run after things.  It is desire that causes you to run after things.  If you have ever tried just sitting and meditating you will discover that at first it is extremely difficult. Actually for a long time it is quite difficult. When you try to think of nothing or you try to remain poised or balanced in that natural state, try to simply let your mind be relaxed and to realize emptiness or to not think of anything, whatever it is that your technique happens to be, pretty soon, as in a split-second, your mind will be running down the block and you have to go run after it to catch up with it.  You will find that you have thought of something that bubbled up out of the pool of your mind and that you followed it. You follow it by making all kinds of conclusions from what came up in your mind – judgments, opinions, developments. For instance, perhaps when you first sit down to meditate you may come up with, “Oh I left the coffee pot on.”  And then immediately you are going to come up with, “That’s going to stink up the whole kitchen.”  Then you are going to come up with, “Then it’s going to boil over.”  Then you are going to say, “Well that wasn’t a very good coffee pot anyway, and well I always leave it on, I don’t know why I leave it on, there is something wrong with me, I’m kind of worried about it,” and then, “It’s just like me I sit down to meditate and here I am thinking about the coffee pot.  Doggone it, I am not thinking about the coffee pot again.”  By the time you find yourself you are in the next county, probably the next city.  You are way down the road. That is what will happen in the beginning of your meditation.

When you get a little bit further in your practice you will learn a technique of letting go of those things, of just dropping them.  You are not making a judgment about it, but just dropping it.  Like if coffee pot comes up you let coffee pot go.  You don’t run down the block thinking about coffee pot thinking this about myself and that about myself and this about coffee pot and that about coffee pot.  You learn the technique of simply dropping it.  Coffee pot comes up and coffee pot goes.  The next thing that will begin to happen as you practice is that your mind will say, “Hey, I am not getting away with this anymore so I am going to try harder,”  and the talker in your head, the one that never shuts up, is going to pop up and say, “We’ll get dramatic then, I’ll get her attention.”  And so it jumps up and says, “Axe murder, Axe murder.”

Well immediately you run away with that thinking, “I thought about an axe murder. I’m not a very spiritual person.  I thought about this in my meditation.  This meditation is bad for me, but maybe not, maybe there is just something wrong with me.” There again you are off in the next county and of course you have to learn the same technique of dropping the axe murder.  When that doesn’t work it will try something even more fun.  It will say, “You are really a good person, you’re meditating now.”  Or it will say, “You just had a good experience.” And you will think, “Yeah, that was a great experience, if fact I think that was like the nature of emptiness she is talking about because I didn’t think about myself at all for a minute, in fact I’m not thinking about myself at all right now I’m just thinking about that experience that I had.” And then you think about what a nice person you are and that comes up and, “I have not missed my meditation, not once for weeks and weeks now, I am so good I can’t believe it.  Can you believe it? I am just so good.  I’m so pleased with how this is going.  A year ago I never thought this could happen to me, that I could sit here and mediate on emptiness as I am doing now.”  Your mind begins to sound a little bit like Lilly Tomlin.  You are sort of down the road and that begins to happen.

The techniques the Buddha advises you need to master are those that will eliminate the whole walkie-talkie scene. To eliminate that particular kind of thing you have to learn how to disengage from the desire that causes you constantly to define yourself.  What is happening in that kind of state is the thoughts that come up in your mind as a result of your belief in self-nature as being inherently real. They are a result of your need to constantly redefine and cause yourself to be, because you think that is what you are.  You are actually shoring up all around yourself.  It’s like you take concepts and create a nice receptacle for you to live in so that you understand yourself.  There is a funny kind of mechanism that happens when you do that. You really think that is what you are, this receptacle that you have built, this four squared thing that you have built with your bricks of conceptualization. That’s what you think you are. The Buddha teaches us that that isn’t our nature at all.  The phenomena that arise within our mind, as well as the phenomena that we experience as external, which are not different from the phenomena that arise within our mind, and the belief in self-nature, these things are all inherently empty. They are puff-balls.  I don’t know that Lord Buddha used the word puff-balls, but I think it is a good word.  You can argue with me if you want.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Being True To Our Nature

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An excerpt from a teaching called Compassion, Love, & Wisdom by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The Buddha considers that the point is to turn the mind to such a degree that you will not be shaken from your determination to practice pure Dharma that leads to the ultimate goal.  You have a choice to practice in different ways.  There is the Theravadin point of view, there is the Mahayana point of view and there is the Vajrayana point of view.  In this Vajrayana point of view the path is difficult. You have to have a great deal of courage. But it is swift and it is certain, and we have an amazing history of beings who obtained realization in a very visible and provable way.  Stories of Lamas who achieved truly miraculous signs through the power of their practice, who were able to perform in ways that were not ordinary, to accomplish things that were not ordinary and who also were able to display for our benefit extraordinary signs at the time of their death so that we would have faith.

Thinking that we should accomplish this ultimate goal, then we have to determine how we intend to accomplish that goal. We have to stay on that goal and we have to be true to that goal, in the same way that we can learn to be true to ourselves.  When I say ‘to ourselves’ I don’t mean the self that we think we are, I mean the self that we really are, which is no self at all.  The truth of our nature isn’t about ‘selfness’ at all.  Our nature is that which is free and uncontrived, that which is awake and to which we have never been true, dancing around with phenomena as we do. Learning to be true to ourselves in that way, learning to be true to that nature, is the first time that we love.

I think that in one way it is the Mahayana view that we love ourselves too much and we are always trying to get something for ourselves. We are always trying to do what’s right for us and be gratified in some way.  And that is true that is the Mahayana view.  That is absolutely the truth.  We should instead think of others.  But I think there is another way to understand it; we seem to be running around constantly trying to destroy ourselves rather than loving that nature enough to allow ourselves to realize it, to be true to it.  I think it is important to understand that in order to obtain true wisdom we have to learn to love that nature, we have to learn to love that nature in such a way that we can be true to that which we really are.

Having reached some awareness of that nature and having practiced sincerely, remaining stable within that nature and within that awareness is the next thing to be considered.  It is common that during experiences of meditation you will have momentary experiences that can seem very blissful.  They can seem very exciting, they can seem very peaceful, they can seem for one moment as though you had forgotten yourself and there was a sense of liberation because of that.  These are all things that happen as you practice, but if they become the place where you stop or if you desire them or grasp them to you in such a way that you can go no further, you lose it immediately. Why? Because the minute you try to do that you are no longer with it.  The minute you try to take that conceptualization in an iron clad way, wrap that conceptualization around the experience that you just had, you just lost the natural state.  It is no longer natural.  It’s contrived.  You made it up and so you lose it immediately.  But also if you use that particular experience to increase your desire and pride, or even to increase the grasping that comes with loyalty to memories or experiences, if you use it in that way it becomes something opposite to that which leads to Enlightenment. You take a side path and end up not going in the direction you wanted. You end up losing that pristine, poised balance in which the mind needs to remain in order to remain steadfast in that natural state.  It becomes important to remain stable in your practice.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Who Can Be a Guru?

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An excerpt from a teaching called Compassion, Love, & Wisdom by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

According to the Buddha we continue in cyclic existence and suffer as we do because of desire, and that desire is born of the belief in self-nature as being inherently real.  Therefore the cessation of desire, in all its forms, is synonymous with enlightenment. That state of enlightenment is a pure awareness, pure recognition of the natural primordial wisdom state free of all contrivance.  That state is both blissful and awake or alive.  It is described as having the quality of innate wakefulness, which means when we describe that state as empty of self-nature, we are not describing something that is dead and dark and cold.  It has the quality of innate wakefulness.  In that state of pure awakening, free of the contrivance of desire, free of the very causes of hatred, greed and ignorance that arise within the mindstream once one has desire, free of these things that are seeds for all future sufferings, we are limitless and free in our capacity to be of benefit to beings.  If the Buddha is correct, and I know that he is when he says that all sentient beings are suffering because of desire and hatred, greed and ignorance that are results of desire, then who can help us?  Who can be a Guru? Who can benefit us if they themselves are not free of those causes, if they themselves are not free of desire, if they themselves are not free of hatred, greed and ignorance, in the sense that humans experience them?  Looked at this way, how can an ordinary sentient being lead us to enlightenment if they themselves have not obtained enlightenment?  How can they guide us to be free of the causes of suffering if they themselves are filled with the causes of suffering and will continue to create more and more results that are suffering?  So, if it is not possible, and I don’t think it is, for an ordinary sentient being with ordinary means at his disposal to give us what we need, then we need to look to a guide who is free of such things.

When I look at the Buddha and his life I am satisfied that he has achieved that pristine state of pure cognition.  I am satisfied that he experiences wisdom.  I am satisfied that he reaches the state, or has reached the state, that is wisdom itself. The pure natural uncontrived primordial wisdom state.  When he was asked, “What are you?  What manner of thing are you?”  he said, “I am awake.”  It is that state of innate wakefulness, that pure uncontrived realization, which must be considered the goal.  Therefore to help us accomplish our goals, to help us accomplish our path, we should only look to one who satisfies those questions and who has those qualities.

The Buddha teaches us that in order to be of benefit to sentient beings it is necessary to experience the pure uncontrived nature of one’s own mind in its natural state without the grasping of desire, without the limitation of the sufferings that are caused by that grasping, without the constant attraction and repulsion that we experience every moment, and without the resultant hatred, greed and ignorance. In order to be of use to sentient beings we must ourselves attain these qualities.  He describes wisdom in that way, putting a tremendous emphasis, through meditation and practice, on having a taste of that pure state. That taste so precious, without it we cannot know.

There is no way that I can tell you how to know the awakened state.  There is no way I can say to you, and have you really understand it: this is what you must do in order to be of benefit to sentient beings, to bring about the end of suffering, to yourself be free of suffering.  Because what I am telling you is only that which can lead to the accumulation of knowledge.  I have given you things and you know something, if you are listening, that you didn’t know before. If you use that which you are hearing to practice, and if you practice in such a way that your mind becomes deepened, and you really work at intensive and sincere practice for a great period of time and accomplish just what the teacher tells you to do, and you utilize a path that is pure, that has consistently proven results and brings about the necessary changes that lead ordinary beings, such as ourselves, to experience the natural state, then after some period of time you will have a taste of that nature.  That is the wisdom being spoken about; it is not the same as something you learn.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

It’s Simply Phenomena

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An excerpt from a teaching called Compassion, Love, & Wisdom by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

It is difficult to see the many different spiritual systems prevalent in our country that are based on the accumulation of knowledge. The thought is that at some point you will have enough knowledge, as if you can get a big bag of it and you can get enough in the bag that finally you have enough knowledge. At that point some sort of change will occur, a switch will flip and you will have enough, and there it is.  Why is that not possible, according to the Buddha?  Because according to the Buddha what you are accumulating as you accumulate knowledge is a contrivance in itself.  It is the necessary road we must take in order to reach certain conclusions, in order to understand in the ordinary human way.   Because of the way our minds work, I can’t even talk to you about Dharma without using language. I can’t talk to you about the primordial wisdom state without describing it. The tricky part is that the moment I describe it, that is not it.

Every bit of information that you gather, whether it is good information or bad information, whether it causes you to draw good conclusions or causes you to completely ruin your life, whether it causes you to give up drinking and smoking or whether it causes you to go off the deep end and cut off the tip of your nose, whatever bit of information you get from the primordial wisdom state it can be viewed as phenomena, exactly the same.  It is hard to understand because we really think things need to be judged by high and low, good and bad, here and there, up and down, and we have our criteria for judgment. We think that this is meaning. Yet from the pure state we must understand that all phenomena is the same – it is simply phenomena, good or bad, high or low, it is all a contrivance.  It is all an encumbrance upon the natural view.

Ironically, if you cut off the end of your nose and it causes you to realize the suffering of sentient beings, and because of that you practice, then that is good phenomena.  Likewise, if you get on the wagon and give up your drinking and womanizing ways, and you live a good life and become an upright person, causing you to become satisfied and think that is enough, you become a little rigid. That causes you to become a little egotistical and that causes you to get a lot of pride going, and that causes you to never to look any further than yourself, and if it causes you to think that it’s important what a good person you are, then that is the worst kind of phenomena.  So from the natural state, phenomena only has importance or any meaning in relation to the ability you have to become awake and to realize the primordial wisdom state.  The only thing that is meaningful is that which leads to the ultimate goal.

If you take that standard and really learn it and adapt yourself to it, and you look at the life you have lived so far, you should think about the many different things that were important to you.  I look at my own life that way and I see that I have placed importance on things that have no meaning because they did not lead to supreme enlightenment. I can look at the lives of all sentient beings and I can see that we spend a hundred and ten percent of our energy doing that which you cannot take with you when you die.  We are all involved in doing things that are, from that point of view, utterly meaningless. Also meaningless in the sense that not only do they not lead to the supreme goal, but they do not empower us to be of any benefit to sentient beings because we do not remove from our minds the causes of suffering: desire, hatred, greed and ignorance.  I think this is true of everyone.  I don’t think anyone is exempt unless they were born supremely realized, born on a lotus, and I was definitely not born on a lotus.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Undefiled Awareness

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An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhists Think by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

As Buddhists, we are not as infatuated with the idea of gods and goddesses as people in some other religions.  Why not?  Because we think of them as part of cyclic existence.  Long-life gods can grant blessings.  But can they get anybody enlightened?  No!  They don’t have Enlightenment.  You can wait around for someone to give you a blessing––or you can practice Dharma.

Neither are Buddhists impressed by talk about going to heaven or going to God.  For us, all this is just part of perceptual experience––just phenomena.  I’m not saying that phenomena don’t exist, but the goal of a Buddhist is beyond all phenomena, beyond the fixation of being caught up in cyclic existence.  It is not a goal that can be externalized.  It is pure, awakened Awarenes.  We talk about being reborn in Dewachen (which can sound similar to “being reborn in heaven,” and in one sense it is), but what is actually meant by that is to be reborn in the Dharmakaya state––to be born in a state of pure, undefiled Awareness.  To shed ignorance and to be reborn in undefiled Awareness is the only goal of a Buddhist.  It is not a conceptual process.  It is liberation from all the components of suffering.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

To download the complete teaching, click here and scroll down to How Buddhists Think

Life is Fleeting

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An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhists Think by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Have you ever seen someone made completely  miserable by neediness?  Some people are like a big gaping hole,   and all the love you could pour in there would not be enough.  Haven’t you ever gone through a phase like that yourself?  We’ve all had extremely needy, hungry-ghost-like phases.

Have you ever been prideful, arrogant?  Deludedly thinking that you’re better than other people?  Have you ever felt yourself so attractive that you thought you were hot stuff?  Do you ever think you smell better than other people?  I do.  I wear Estee Lauder.  Many people have that kind of pridefulness.  Haven’t you seen people being arrogant––while you wondered why they considered themselves so special?  It’s a kind of dream-like delusion from which they’re not able to wake up.

We have seed-like causes planted within our mindstream that we may be unaware of, among them our jealousy and competitiveness.  Have you ever been so angry that you were hell-bent to get someone’s goat?  That was all you could think about until you realized that you had put yourself in a kind of hell.  Have you ever seen other people living that way, continually frothing at the mouth and hell-bent on being right?  We can detect these things in our own mind––the impressions of them, like footprints in the sand.

The Buddha taught that these six realms exist and that we all have the karma to be reborn in any one of them.  He also taught that we have the right, the power, and the responsibility to produce the causes to ripen auspicious karma––to be reborn in an auspicious way.  In other words, there is no predestination.  No one is doomed.  No one is jinxed.  We all have both beneficial and unfortunate karmic potential in our mindstreams.  To the degree that we decide, we can engage in the ten virtuous activities which produce an auspicious rebirth.  No one is special, no one is flawed, no one is damaged, no one is brain-dead.  While you’re human, you have many options.

Having understood that rebirth in any of these realms is possible for each of us, we must make the best use of our time now.  There is an urgency in Buddhist thinking: you are asked, please, to make use of this fortunate human rebirth.  Don’t waste your time.  If you feel pushed to do as much as you can, the purpose isn’t to entrap you or to tell you that “there is only one right way.”  It is only to urge you to use your time effectively and courageously––because there is so little of it.

Buddhist teachings describe this human life as a waterfall.  Now, where is the drop of water that even a moment ago was at the top?  That’s how our lives are.  They appear stable, but they go by in a flash.  We need to use our opportunity.

 

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

To download the complete teaching, click here and scroll down to How Buddhists Think

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