Alyce Zeoli | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

Prayer – Potential for the Miraculous

January 12, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called Coming Alive

Whether you are a beginner or an advanced student–if you are a good student, you are innocent and you are pure, and when you practice, you taste and feel and open your heart. You meditate on purpose. You give rise to new and fresh longing, almost like re-opening an old wound. How marvelous if you realize, really, the finiteness of life. How marvelous because then you are empowered to pray as you have not prayed before.

There have been times when my temple was in danger. There have been times when I had the experience of teaching a class in which I realized hardly any of the people in the class had the capacity at that moment to really hear my teaching on compassion. At these times I went to my altar, threw myself down and did repeated prostrations saying, “Please, I gather together all of my virtue in the three times–past, present and future–and I offer it to these students, that their capacity to hear Dharma may be ripened.” Afterwards, I would go back into the same group and give the same teachings, and they were changed. Their faces were changed. They were alive. They were hearing it. I know the power of praying like that.

I also know there have been times when my children have been in danger. Do you want me to really pray? Scare me with my children being in danger. I’m not only talking about my physical children, but also my spiritual children. I have seen amazing life-changing experiences happen through that. And I have also felt the suffering of praying by rote, I’m sorry to say. But I will never have that feeling again if I can help it. If a prayer comes out of my mouth, I’m going to be there with it. And I would suggest that you do the same. However you pray, whatever you do, pray as though it were the last time you had that opportunity. Pray as though you were in front of the miraculous. You know, that old joke about climbing to the top of the Himalayas to see that guy sitting on the rug so that you can ask him what is the meaning of life? Pray like that. Pray as though you had just climbed the mountain and you were looking at the old guy on the rug and he could tell you the meaning of life. Pray as though it were your last moment to pray, as though you were going to lose your tongue after that. Pray as though everything depended on it, because it does.

Pilgrimage to the Root of One’s Power

January 11, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called Coming Alive

I want to share about the experience I had going to Tso Pema in India and meditating in Mandarava’s Cave. I just knew by being there that it was where Mandarava prayed and offered herself for the liberation and salvation of all sentient beings again and again and again. That is where she cried and tore out her hair and meditated on the suffering of sentient beings and could hardly bear it. She went through it in that cave. That cave was her spiritual incubator. Oh man, the way she prayed! I wish today I could pray the way Mandarava prayed then, and I will continue to try for that.

When I planned my trip to India I had specific goals to connect with the root of my power. Now periodically I’m supposed to go back to my mother monastery, connect with my root guru and get additional training and refreshment, but I decided not to do it in the traditional way. I felt like I had to birth something new. I felt like I had to connect with this power that I know is there, at the root. In this lifetime, because the Dharma is being taught in a foreign land where things are completely different, I sometimes feel like a stranger in a strange land. The conditions of ordinary samsaric modern reality are just a little confusing sometimes, and one can lose sight of the root of one’s power.

I went to India thinking I was going to connect with this power, give rise to myself in some way, and I was not going to give up until it happened! I swear I had this idea I was going to sit on a rock somewhere and just freeze to death. I knew that something needed to happen. I felt that I was starving, and that I needed nourishment. So I spent only two weeks at the mother monastery–even though my precious root teacher was there and even though his kindness and the nourishment that he lavished upon me was inconceivable. I felt that I needed to go someplace where I was in charge, where I was responsible, where I knew what was going on, and where I had only myself to answer. I knew what I needed to reach for.

I wanted to go to the holy places of Mandarava and Guru Rinpoche. I wanted to reach for what had happened at that time. When Mandarava and Guru Rinpoche practiced, they literally changed the world. Of course, that isn’t reported now. We only hear Western white man’s history and story. But, in truth, Mandarava and Guru Rinpoche changed the spiritual world, as we know it, because in their practice they gave rise to the empowerment of immortal spiritual life, and they accomplished the deathless wisdom state. They never died. When they left the world in that lifetime, they rose up to the sky and disappeared. Hundreds of people saw it.

It was preordained that Guru Rinpoche would accomplish the siddhi of immortal life, and it was with Mandarava that he did it. At the time of their accomplishment, Amitayus Buddha, the Buddha of Long Life, came to them and recognized Guru Rinpoche as Amitayus Buddha and Mandarava as his consort. So their empowerment was complete because they became the deities in union. This revolutionized spiritual practice, as we know it, because now there are options for one’s spiritual practice. If one practices deeply enough and heroically enough- not just casually–one can prolong one’s life and even realize immortal spiritual life or the deathless state. One can accomplish that.

I was going to go to Tso Pema, recognized as an incarnation of Mandarava. I trusted and believed it because it came from my root guru, who is my heart and my mind; yet I needed to feel it myself. I needed to touch it. I wanted to smell it. I wanted to own it. My intention, when I went into that cave, was to feel that “this is happening now.” I had that sense of wonder and strong determination that you get when you are faced with the option of a miracle. When you know that, you are a different person.

I went into that cave with determination like I’ve never had before, and I sat down and I got everything that I asked for. The consciousness of Mandarava came to me. I realized it was indistinguishable from my own. I realized many facts and qualities about Mandarava. I realized much about her practice with Guru Rinpoche. My current mindstream and the mindstream of Mandarava began to blend, and I had such a powerful life-changing and potent experience at that time that my astrological horoscope changed. It was a spiritual rebirth.

We are talking about, not only a life-changing experience, but also a change in one’s method, one’s purpose, one’s sense of accomplishment, one’s sense of self, one’s orientation. Little by little, in the same way that a child grows, this new empowerment is growing. It is realized. It is present. It is alive in the world. It is reincarnated. To me, that empowerment was stronger, more profound and more fruitful than any of the traditional empowerments that I’ve had.

Is that because traditional teachings and the way they are conferred are inferior to what happened in the cave? Of course not! That would be like saying that one side of the Sweat Lodge is more powerful than the other. That would be ridiculous. Here’s the bottom line. Once you get to the fat cat stage, you’re dead. No matter what you’re doing spiritually–if you’re keeping your samaya, if you’re practicing eight hours a day, if you’re dusting the temple, if you’re cleaning out the bowls and making offerings–if you’ve gotten to the fat cat stage where you think you’re in charge or you own the business or you’ve seen it all, you’ve lost your practice. It’s gone. You’re practicing by rote. I have a cockatoo that can be trained to do the same thing.

Practicing by rote is so superficial that we hardly realize that we have gone spiritually dead inside. We are afraid to ask ourselves the question, “What is my practice? When I put on my robes or when I pick up my mala and I open my books, do I do so in the same way that I sit down to a bowl of cornflakes in the morning?” I use this example because you have to eat something before you leave the house, and cornflakes are soggy. Do you feel soggy when you do your practice? Soggy is a pretty good word for it, wouldn’t you say? When you sit down, is it like sitting down to an exquisitely prepared meal for the first time and you’re really hungry. What is your experience when you practice? Do you practice with childlike delight, with fervent regard, with an awareness that’s on the front burner–that all sentient beings are suffering, that they do not understand the causes of this suffering nor how to stop them, but that there is an end to suffering and there is a method.

When you hear this beautiful news and marvel, that delight and the hunger provided by that delight is what makes your path work. The period of turning your mind towards Dharma should never end. In fact, the older and more fat cat you get, the more you must give rise to it continuously, reminding yourself of these fundamental truths and delighting in this information. Take nothing for granted while you are on the spiritual path, because the moment you do—whether it is your practice, the result, your community, your environment, your teacher, or even the fact that you have leisure to practice–you are no longer practicing. The academic who hears all this information, memorizes it and learns how to practice very well with all the bells and whistles and ritual implements may not be even close to the practitioner who goes around the stupa, knowing his or her life is in danger, and prays Om Mani Padme Hung in a heartfelt way. In that expectation and hope a miracle might happen. Another practitioner who is superior to the fat cat is the one who has really studied and come to the path seeing that all sentient beings are suffering and has decided that enough is enough. To this one, the suffering is unbearable. And with that heart ripped open, this practitioner circumambulates the stupa and says Om Mani Padme Hung.

Open Your Heart & Call Out

January 10, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called Coming Alive

Here’s a wonderful way for each of us as older practitioners to evaluate ourselves. Do we feel fresh and new any more? Not much, right? We keep thinking that maybe soon some kind of refreshing experience will come to us. Oh when oh when will that be? Will it be this teacher? Will it be that teacher? Will she finally teach the way I think she ought to teach? Will she finally teach as much as I think she ought to? Will she ever give me what I want? All these kinds of thoughts come up.

Once in a while we have some kind of experience that gets our attention, and it really reaches into us somehow. How does that happen? Is it a mystery? Is it magic? Is the moon in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars? No. Somewhere there was an intention. Somewhere you called out. Somewhere you asked. Somewhere you opened the door. You forgot that you did that, but somehow you were ripe for it.

These causes are interconnecting. If your heart is not open, no matter how many hooks are sent at you, they’ll never connect. Somewhere inside you had this precious moment of intention that you probably forgot about. It wasn’t magic, believe me.

Spiritual Refreshment

January 9, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called Coming Alive

Back in the 1970s a number of famous healers were brought together to participate in a test. It was done in a very scientific way, and the rules were very strict. These famous people were known for their capacity to “lay on hands,” and many had a lot of clients. They had really gained a name for themselves. The researchers also got together an equal number of ordinary folks.

Then the scientists said to the famous healers, “Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to do your healing thing, whatever it is, on this glass of water and transform it into medicine. Okay?” The healers said, “Well, all right. That’s do-able.” The message is that with love all things are possible. Unfortunately, when you’re really impressed with yourself, often it’s “with me” all things are possible. But, anyway, they were told to do that.

Then the ordinary people, who had never heard about this before, who were not even that spiritual, were given some interesting common and scientific data that showed that if we have a good intention towards something, then often things get better. The researchers also explained that if you put your hands on either side of a glass of water, you can run energy through it that harmonizes it. This turns the water into medicine because it is in harmony with the body. They explained this in a very pseudo-scientific way.

So the scientists had the two groups do their stuff. The people who were not accustomed to this were asked to do the very best spiritual praying they could do. “If you have any mystical bone in your body, please apply it here,” they were told. They said, “Well, okay, if you say so,” or “Well, I’ll do my best.”

Everyone spent the appropriate amount of time. The healers did their healing thing, with all the bells and whistles; and each one of them had their particular way of doing it. One was a shaman. One was simply ‘’hands on” and so forth. The ordinary people simply put their hands together and prayed. It was reported that “you could see a lot of knit brows.” They were praying really hard. They were really trying to make this thing happen if it were possible.

I don’t remember all of the details, but some of the people, both among the healers and in the ordinary-people group, had some on-going physical or mental problems. They were divided into a subgroup where they were asked to drink their own medicine–their own water–and then report the results over a period of two days.

People who didn’t have any problems gave their medicine to other people who had problems but didn’t produce the medicine, and no one knew which group it came from. The group knew that it was water that had been prayed over, holy water, but they didn’t know any other details. So this group drank the medicine over a few days.

The results were phenomenal. A larger percent of healing, comfort, relief and benefit was reported by those who drank the water prayed over by the ordinary people. Those who drank the water prepared by the healers reported a 20 percent recognition of benefit. Those who drank the water that was prepared by ordinary people, reported a 90 percent recognition of benefit. There was a remarkable difference.

There was also another test that was done as part of this study. Although this is not mainstream science, the results are interesting. The medicine water was subjected to different kinds of energy photography. Again, the water that was purified by the nonprofessionals was filled with energy that could be photographed, whereas the water that was prepared by healers had some energy but it wasn’t anything like the remarkable level of energy in the water prayed over by the ordinary folks. Even the study participants–both the healers and the ordinary people–had to admit that when they drank some of each water, they felt more energy from the water prayed over by ordinary people.

It was a remarkable study. I think that scientists could find all kinds of ways to throw the study out of court, but I, for one, find things like that fairly convincing. The results sounded real to me.

In my experience as a teacher I have seen many students travel around, hearing more and more teachings from all the best sources sometimes obsessively, who get into what I call the ‘fat cat’ stage. The fat cat stage is where you sit back on your laurels and you say, “I know enough now about Dharma to be impressive. So I’m going to impress you.” They’ve gotten to the point where the magic is lost. The romance is over. They’re not really taking in the teachings anymore.

Often these students have a funny inner posture. When they hear the teacher, they think, “Oh I know that,” or “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before,” or “Oh yeah, that’s the teaching on such and such” or “Well, interesting that she’s teaching that teaching today. I wish she would also include X, Y, and Z fact.” If this kind of non-surprise, non-delight, non-taste, non-involvement is going on when you hear the teachings, you can be assured that not much is going on inside, not much is happening at all.

On the other hand, if you are one of the newer practitioners or at least somehow have magically managed to keep yourself in this pure posture of childlike innocence; when you hear the teachings, they’re like delicious morsels. They roll around in your mouth and in your mind and in your heart and you think, “How amazing, how delightful is this logic. How delightful is this information. How different from what I know and from what I’ve heard.” It’s like a child tasting something for the first time, such as orange juice or mashed banana. The infant rolls it around on the tongue to a point where it almost becomes foreign, incapable of being taken in. That kind of delight provides a way for the teaching to become part of oneself, part of one’s attitude, one’s mind, one’s reality, even one’s habitual tendency. It can even begin to change our habitual tendencies, because we are impacted by it. It can be used as an antidote to something that is troubling us.

The mistake we make is in thinking that the teacher is responsible for keeping our love alive, that the teacher is supposed to come up with a new and interesting way of presenting the same old data every week so that once in a while we can hear it. That really isn’t true. That’s not the teacher’s responsibility. It’s one’s own responsibility to maintain a sense of innocence.

Let’s talk about what that might look like. I would like to use some of my own personal experiences. When I was in Sedona, I went into a Sweat Lodge.

The Sweat Lodge was very traditionally run, and I was really interested in seeing what it would feel like to participate in a Sweat Lodge in a place where almost no one knew me. I knew I wouldn’t be recognized. The only one who knew who I was was the leader of the Sweat Lodge. I wanted to experience the Sweat Lodge without my Dharma community around, so that my experience would be more uncontrived, more natural, more relaxed. There is something to be said for being in a place where you’re completely anonymous and completely free to do exactly what you would do naturally as opposed to being around people who have expectations of you.

I went into the experience wondering what it was going to be like. I had two ideas. First I thought, “Well this could be really hokey! It could be chanting Indian chants I don’t know or understand, and so I would just be making meaningless noises. Or it could be that everyone has an act going on, and I don’t know what the act is. I’m just a little Buddhist girl. I don’t know anything about Indian stuff. So it could be really strange.”

On the other hand, I thought to myself, “This could be really magical. Just think about what it would be like to go into this Sweat Lodge, which traditionally is like going into a womb-like environment, almost like the womb of Mother Earth, and re-inventing yourself.” Sweat Lodges were traditionally used either to solidify one’s purpose or to completely re-invent oneself and put oneself on a new track. The idea of sweating was to let go of old toxicity–of old stuff inside of you—and then letting yourself drink new fresh water. In a sense that’s like letting go of old habitual tendencies and drinking in new purpose, aligning yourself with the four directions. This is something that is in common with Buddhist philosophy. So I thought, “This could be amazing. This could be pretty terrific.”

I went into the experience with both ideas. I placed myself in a position of neutrality and left myself really open in a very innocent way. I went there thinking, “Ultimately it doesn’t really matter if this experience is like this or like that. What matters is that I’m going into this experience with a pure intention. I really intend to cleanse myself in every way. I really intend to let go of anything old and afford myself new opportunity. I really intend to have this be in alignment with my own personal quest, which is to never fall into old habitual tendency or mindless method, but rather to constantly keep my spiritual practice new and fresh and on point. That’s my intention. That’s what I really want to do.”

The experience was really interesting in many different ways. Yes, there was chanting. Yes, it was very, very hot–hot to the point where it seemed unbearable. Because it’s so hot, people wear very little clothing. This is very different from a Dharma experience. There were many things that were different and many things that were predictable, but I found that I had exactly the kind of experience that I went in there to have. I was able to let go of something. I was thinking that this was an opportunity to reinvent myself, that is to say, to enter back into the symbolic womb of my experience and then to come forth again. And so I was determined to use that experience with a great deal of strong and purposeful intention.

In the Sweat Lodge each person has the opportunity to speak his or her prayers, hopes and dreams out loud. If you do that by rote, that could be a really tacky, cheesy experience; but if you really do that from the heart–reaching in and asking yourself sincerely what’s in there, what needs to be reinvented, what has to be done, and really rip yourself open–it could be a very profound experience. In fact, it could be a life-changing experience. You don’t need a Sweat Lodge to make such a life-changing experience, if you have the intention and purpose of truly ripping yourself open as though you were newborn.

I realized that both of these experiences were possible, and I made myself remain in this posture of innocence and really get as much from the Sweat Lodge as possible. I was really going to go for it. When it was my opportunity to say my prayers, I was a little surprised at what came out. I was surprised that I could hear myself pray like that in public again. When I pray in public, it’s in front of my students who have expectations. I’m supposed to be the leader.

There I was able to pray in public the way I really pray in my heart of hearts. I found myself crying when I was praying. I found myself begging for beings. That’s what I do when I pray. In my prayers I really reject and renounce any comfort or safety for myself, any request that might make my life better or easier. But I always go into great depth about the suffering of other sentient beings. I really think about it. I really regard it. I really beg for beings. I had the chance to do that in this wonderful environment where other people came to be supportive. When you really make an extraordinary heartfelt prayer, the Sweat Lodge leader and the other participants support you through some sort of verbal encouragement. Those who are used to the Indian tradition, say something Indian, like “Ho.” People who are not really accustomed to that kind of Indian experience will say something like “Yes, that’s right. Go on.” or “We’re with you.” The participants in the Sweat Lodge support you.

I can’t remember when I last had an experience like that in a very innocent and non-teacher way. That was really wonderful for me. I went through all of the cycles and all of the different elements. They built on themselves, and I came out of the experience really happy because I was able to approach my path that I love so much with my whole heart once again. This extraordinary, almost-newborn experience, which I and some others who were also new to Sweat Lodges had, contrasted with the experience of the older participants in Sweat Lodges. There were even a couple of times where these older participants would lean over and say, “You can lean down and escape some of the steam if you want to” or “Sometimes the fire is hotter than this.” Here I am praying my guts out with my eyeballs wrinkled and nothing left in my body to sweat out, reaching for everything I’ve got, and these other people are telling me, “Don’t worry kid, sometimes the fire’s hotter than this.” I’m thinking to myself, “Wow this is really something!”

I came out of that experience really moved, really refreshed. When I spoke to the leader of the Sweat Lodge, he said, “Well, that’s the best use of the Sweat Lodge. The Sweat Lodge is what you make it. What you’re looking for is actually within you, not within the Lodge. For you to be refreshed is to have something new, something that gives you the courage and the power to move on.”

Innocent Intention

January 8, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called Coming Alive

I would like to talk about innocence in one’s practice–not in a traditional way but from direct experience. This is not a new theme. Other religions have spoken of it each in their own way. For example, in Christianity there are statements about “entering the kingdom of heaven like a child.” There are many different interpretations about what that phrase means. I would imagine that, depending on the branch of Christianity one practiced, the church one attended and the minister or preacher one went to hear, one would probably get a slightly different interpretation. I would like to talk about the topic from a Dharma point of view, because the need to remain innocent and childlike in one’s approach to the spiritual path is fairly universal.

Think back to the first moment you met with Dharma and what impressed you about it. Was it the unique look of a Dharma center, compared to other American institutions? Our altars are different. Our colors are different. Our books are different. Our uniforms are different. Dharma practitioners are different; and according to mainstream American culture, we are unusual. So when you first met with Dharma, you probably had some awareness of the difference, of the exotic feeling. If you had been exposed to this kind of thing before or if you have some particularly strong karmic relationship with the path, you might have had an immediate feeling of connection. You might have felt, “Oh this is more like what I understand than the stuff you usually see in America.” Although some people have felt like that, there was still some reaction to the exoticism or uniqueness of Dharma.

Then you might have heard some of the ideas of Dharma, and you might have become excited. Often people feel uplifted when they first hear that by practicing Dharma one can achieve realization within one lifetime or immediately upon death. Vajrayana Buddhism has the capacity to offer this great result, and this is unique and tremendous, particularly considering that we live in the time of Kaliyuga or degeneration–the time when it is very difficult to practice Dharma purely and when karma ripens very quickly. The result of one’s actions, perhaps even from the very distant past, are often ripening now; and there is a great deal of confusion, as you know. If you don’t know that, all you have to do is read the newspaper once in a while. Confusion is rampant in every way, shape, manner and form.

What happens when one is really impressed with a new idea and a new opportunity? An assumption that one might make upon meeting something that is sweeping, dramatic and profound and has been shown to offer this tremendous unmatched result is to think, “Oh this is something very precious. This is something that I must take note of! This is something that I have to regard very highly. I’ve got to pay attention here.”

Most people recognize–I’m sure you’ve had this thought–that many things in life seem cyclical. They come up again and again, habitually. Many issues in life seem unsolvable. It seems as though there are many ways in which we simply go round and round and round. So when we hear about something that can make a dent in that cycle or end that strong habitual tendency or re-occurring compulsive phenomenon, we become excited. If we were to go to psychotherapy at a very difficult time in our life, we might think, “Oh, this is an opportunity.”

When we first come to Dharma, we label our Dharma experience as being an extraordinary opportunity. This is the time of great innocence. When we receive teachings, we look at what’s being offered, and we really hear it. We follow the logic of it, and the logic is new and fresh. If the teacher is a good teacher, that new, fresh logic will be presented over and over again in many different ways and forms until there is some confidence that the logic has been heard and followed.

When we first come to Dharma, we can really follow the Buddha’s teachings. At that time we’re really up for them. We hear that all sentient beings are suffering and other foundational thoughts. These are the thoughts that turn the mind towards Dharma, and these are the original teachings of Lord Buddha. So we think, “Oh this is really something! All sentient beings are suffering. We are all suffering from desire.” Well, that’s new information. We didn’t really understand that before. We just knew that we were suffering. It almost seemed as if we were afflicted with a disease that was eating us up, and we didn’t know where it was coming from. So we hear the news that it’s all really based on ego-clinging or desire.

Then we hear the good news that there is an end to suffering. Now who would have thought of that? We are so accustomed to suffering. It’s like being born on a merry-go-round. Because we’ve always been going round and round all our lives, we wouldn’t know what else to do. How we have suffered is characteristic of our personalities, it’s the way we determine who we are. So a sense of wonder comes up. At first we can’t take in the idea that there is an end to suffering. We wonder what it means.

Then the Buddha goes on to say, “And that cessation of suffering is called enlightenment.” He then outlines the method of the eightfold path. In Vajrayana that path is condensed into two accumulations, that of wisdom and compassion or Bodhicitta. Wisdom is the realization or awakening to the primordial empty state, and Bodhicitta or compassion is the understanding of our nature as being fundamentally compassion. This is a new thought.

When we first meet with this series of new thoughts, the sense of wonder is enormous. Unfortunately, what happens later on is that we never really hear it again, and that’s a problem. It’s the biggest problem that we have. I don’t know how many times I have marveled at the difference between old-time Dharma practitioners, who are no longer hearing these fundamental teachings that are so precious and essential in order to build anything further, and new practitioners, who are shocked to hear about suffering and that there is something they can do to end it. The new practitioners may only know one mantra like Om Mani Padme Hung or the Seven Line Prayer, but they have understood that the mantra or prayer is very powerful, potent and remarkable, and their level of practice is unbelievable.

The Bliss You Want

January 7, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called Longing for the Guru

We’re all sleeping until we reach supreme enlightenment, but most beings are really sleeping in a very profound way. In that coma, they are not even able to say, “I want.” They merely act out in different ways. While we are still asleep and until we achieve supreme realization, the fact that you are reading the teachings, is the evidence that you have felt that longing. You should find it within you and relate to it purely. You should encourage it because it is a dynamo of energy you can use to really touch the nature that you are seeking, the bliss that you want — the union between the student and the teacher.

You are so ashamed to feel that feeling directly, because you’re so macho, you’re so tough, or you’re so cool or you’re so advanced. You are so ashamed to feel that feeling that you want to say, “Oh, the longing for the Teacher is only me longing for my own nature.” Well, yes, it is that, but you should face directly the longing for the Teacher on the deepest level. You should not be ashamed of that. You were ashamed of it as a child and you were taught not to feel it and so you made a lot of mistakes. You should not be ashamed of that now.

I have that longing. It is so strong that I cannot imagine another longing like it. I live with that longing constantly. I use that longing to provide the means to accomplish Dharma and kindness for all sentient beings. I realize that the truest longing is the longing for the Guru. It’s the longing for my Teacher, for the Guru on all of the different levels, on the apparent level as well as the deepest, most primordial level. And I realize that I will only find that longing satisfied so long as I try to live the qualities that are my Guru.

So, if I were to turn away from students saying, “Oh, I don’t want to do this anymore, I’m tired.” Or, “I’m lonely doing this. I don’t want to do this anymore.” If I were to do that, I would never find my Guru. I would never be with my Guru, because those are the qualities of my Guru. My Guru never leaves me. He cannot turn his face from me. And so, that being the case, if I were to turn my face away from anyone that had hopes of me, it would be hopeless. I would never find the Guru. The longing would never be satisfied, because I would have turned my face away.

You must begin to practice in such a way that the face of the Teacher is understood in everything that you do. No matter what you experience, whether it is loss or having, joy or sadness, life or death, sickness or health, poverty or wealth, whatever you experience, you should think that everything is a blessing from the Root Guru.

The Root Guru has given you this blessing because you can use any situation to practice. You should never question that the blessing is good. You should practice understanding the mind that sees the difference between poverty and wealth. You should practice understanding who the taster is. You should practice understanding what desire is. You should practice understanding that all things have the same taste.

If you practice faithfully in that way, then you will never be separate from the Guru. See the Guru in everything. Everything you touch, everything you taste, everything you smell, everything you wear, everything you say, your life, every experience, both internal and external, is the Guru. This is the Guru at play and at work. You are constantly in a blissful union with the Guru, if you use every life situation to practice and understand that all things are a blessing from the Guru.

You will never be able to practice that way if you do not go back to the original longing, because you need that longing as a motivator. You need that longing to help you willingly approach that kind of marriage. You need that longing to help you approach that kind of meaningful and blissful union. It’s of the utmost importance. Think about this teaching and try to get it right.

The Original Longing

January 6, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called Longing for the Guru

There are three different levels on which you can recognize your Teacher. One is an extremely poor level — a common and ordinary level. One is an intermediate level in which you see that the teacher holds the teachings purely and gives the teachings purely and you really admire and feel a great respect for the Teacher. That is still only an intermediate level of recognition. The deepest and supreme level of recognition is recognizing the Teacher not as a person but rather, as a door to liberation, as your own nature.

This supreme level recognizes the Teacher as one’s mind, as the miraculous intention of the Buddha, appearing in a manifest way in order to benefit beings. It recognizes the Teacher as that original longing that was felt to know that nature, to recognize the Teacher as the answer, to recognize primordial wisdom itself in some incarnate form. In this way your own relationship to the path becomes not an ordinary thing, but a very profound and mystical thing, a thing of truth, a thing able to bring about awakening.

With Loving Concern

January 3, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called Turning Adversity Into Felicity

The result of poverty and not having enough is due, according to the Buddha’s teachings, to not having been particularly generous or forthcoming in our support or caring for others in the past, perhaps even before this lifetime. So we might look at our lives now with a sense of honesty. Is that the case now? Perhaps it’s also the case now, and we just haven’t thought of it that way. Or perhaps if we really look in our heart of hearts we might discover that there is a certain dark corner in there somewhere that has a strong element of selfishness and lack of giving. We might see it sneak out every now and then. Maybe not all the time, but it’s in there. Or we might discover that perhaps in our past, in our deep past, we have been less than generous.

So, in order to create the causes of having plenty, to open the doors and liberate the conditions under which support and wealth and prosperity would come to us, we would create the causes, by transforming our minds through practice into that which is supremely generous. If we have only $5 to our name, a good idea is to give maybe 50¢ of that, maybe a dollar of that, to somebody who doesn’t have 50¢ or a dollar. If you have nothing, I’m sure you can get it together to have enough to place a simple candle on the altar and make prayers that the merit generated by offering this light would help all sentient beings see their way through the darkness. A small offering like that and prayers to benefit sentient beings begins the process of creating the causes by which our suffering or lack begins to change, and as well our minds begin to transform into that which is filled with kindness. We begin to create the habit of caring for others, of kindness.

The idea is that we proceed with confidence in the teachings and in the teacher who has given them to us. That’s how you have faith in the Guru—not by making some bland statement with no depth, not by faking your way through samsara, not by controlling your mind with positive thoughts so that delusion only increases and you have no idea what you are perceiving—but instead by creating the causes through acts of generosity.

On the other hand, if we have experienced great disappointment in love, let’s say, the first thing that we think is, “Oh, now I’ve lost my boyfriend, or girlfriend or whatever, so I have to do everything I can to get them back.” Grasp, grasp, grasp! And when that doesn’t work—it doesn’t, you know—then what you do is you make prayers to the Guru: “Oh please, oh please, oh please!” And we hope and pray that the lotto will come for us on the romantic level. And then we even think stupid thoughts like, “Oh, please deliver him or her to me now! Along with the check, put him in the mailbox. I’ll pick him up tomorrow.” You know that’s the kind of thinking that we have. It’s like magical thinking, but that’s a different religion. That’s not our religion.

In our religion, if that had happened, we would look for the causes. What are the causes of such a loss? Perhaps I have not been kind and loving. I’ll tell you how it is, if no love is given, no love will be received. It’s like that. If we do not invest in generosity and caring and loving concern and regard for others in an unselfish way, there will not be a great deal of love forthcoming freely into our lives because we have not created the causes. We have not held up our part of the bargain. And so we begin, therefore, to create the causes: a real concern, a real interest in the welfare and well being of others. Not just the one you want back. That’s easy. Others, all others, with kindness and love and generosity coming forth from our hearts. That’s the investment that’s needed here, that we ourselves would be responsible for not abandoning and leaving without comfort, loved ones and friends, not just the one we want, but all our loved ones and friends. And then take it further than that. Not only our friends and loved ones, but also our not-so-friendly friends, maybe the people we don’t have much concern for, maybe even our enemies. A loving concern for them is what’s required here.

What You Can Do

January 1, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

From The Spiritual Path: A Collection of Teachings by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

There are no sugar daddies in this world. You cannot be the conquering hero, the savior, because you cannot conquer someone else’s mind. Each of us must purify and conquer the hatred, greed, and ignorance we hold in our own minds. No one can do it for anyone else. You can however, liberate your own mind from all egocentricity. You can follow the Buddha’s teaching and take a vow as a Bodhisattva to eliminate all poisons from your mind until the very idea of self-nature is abandoned. You can decide to liberate yourself from all desire. And you can promise to return again and again in any form necessary to help sentient beings pull themselves out of endless suffering. As part of every practice you will say: “May I attain liberation in order to benefit beings.” The compassionate motivation to be of true benefit provides us with the strength to persevere until we ourselves are awake, until we have completely transformed or purged even the tiniest seeds of poison from our minds. The motivation to be a savior has no lasting value. It requires feedback, or “warm fuzzies.” You must get beyond that need. Your love should not depend on feedback.

How can you develop love which sustains itself? How can you cultivate a fire that burns self-sustaining wood? That fire is based on the courage to understand. If your mind has deepened to the extent that you can no longer bear to be idle, knowing the profound despair of all those beings who revolve in endless cycles of suffering—you can become truly committed. Then you can begin to renounce your own causes of suffering.

Until you reach supreme Buddhahood, you must continue courageously to develop the mind of compassion at every moment. You must aspire to be of true and lasting benefit. You must offer yourself again and again. The prayer of St. Francis, “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace,” is a good example of the aspiration of a Western Bodhisattva. Eventually, your commitment may take the form of saying: “Let me be reborn in whatever form necessary, under whatever conditions, so that beings might not suffer. If there is a need for food, let me return as food. If there is a need for shade, let me return as a tree. If there is a need for a path, let me return as a teacher. If there is a need for love, let me return as arms.”

Your job then is to purify your mind through strenuous activity. The path of Dharma is difficult. Any path that leads to enlightenment will be strenuous because enlightenment is a long way from here. You are not after a psychological “Aha!” You are aspiring to the state of Buddhahood. Your first thought should be that suffering must end. Your only concern should be that sentient beings achieve liberation.

There is a profound and simple practice that anyone can do to develop this great compassion. It turns ordinary activity into vehicles for extraordinary love. When you awake in the morning, think: “May all beings rise from the state of ignorance and be liberated until there is no more suffering.” As you brush your teeth and bathe, think: “May the suffering and seeds of suffering be washed from the minds of all beings.” Or: “May all beings be showered with the blessings of a virtuous path.” As you enter a door: “May all beings enter the door to a supreme vehicle and finally walk through the door of liberation.” Everything you do should have meaning in this way. Your entire life should be understood as a vehicle for practice.

You should dedicate all your virtuous activity, no matter how small, to the liberation of all beings. Learn to dedicate everything you do, everything. Train yourself to the point that this aspiration is constant. Once your motivation is firm, you can begin training in actual practices, in practical compassion. If you have decided to accept and follow the Buddha’s teachings, you will begin the actual practice of Dharma. If you choose not to be a Buddhist, you must still find a way to purify hatred, greed, and ignorance from your mind and the minds of others. Free of these poisons, you can become awakened; in other words, you can position yourself to be of true benefit to others.

A word of caution: some practitioners take solemn vows and make vast aspirational prayers, but then they turn around and act unkindly to others. As His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche has suggested, practicing Dharma without kindness is like trying to get light from the painting of a lamp.

Beware also of what I call “idiot compassion.” Do you know a needy or troubled person, someone who is psychologically or emotionally disrupted? We often try to give such people what they say they need. This only increases their dependency. It gives them an opportunity to increase the garbage in their minds and lives. Sometimes compassion must be harsh. In Vajrayana, there are at least as many wrathful forms of the Buddhas as peaceful ones. Sometimes compassion must take a wrathful form. If you are pure in your motivation, you will know what to do. You will not get hooked on idiot compassion. It feels good to make others feel good. But feeling good does not always help.

If you can do anything to ease or end the suffering of beings, do it. But understand that these remedies are only temporary. Consider that your power is limited by the condition of your mind. Even though you have the karma to practice—which is very fortunate—you are still an ordinary sentient being. The Buddha, however, embodies the fully awakened mind. He does not experience the confusion or delusion arising from the belief in self. His enlightened intention is powerful in a way that yours cannot be. Despite your good intentions and efforts, if you constantly experience confusion and desire within your mindstream, you can be of little help. The best way to end the suffering of sentient beings is to liberate your mind from the causes of suffering. For if you become a realized Buddha and are then incarnated or experience rebirth in an emanation form, you can offer the means to accomplish Dharma by offering the blessing of a complete path leading to liberation. To follow the Buddha’s path requires a vast amount of merit and virtue, as well as a great deal of compassion, discipline, courage, and unselfishness. The path is arduous. To achieve the great result of Buddhahood requires great effort. But truly, there is no end to suffering except the cessation of desire. The only ultimately useful way to spend this precious human life is to attain enlightenment. You must consider from the depth of your heart that the aim of attaining enlightenment is not only to accomplish one’s own purpose, but also the purpose of others. When you have seen that all sentient beings endure needless suffering, when you cannot bear even the thought of their condition and are determined to bring about its end, you are ready for Dharma.

Karma: Virtual Reality

December 29, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Neurotic Interaction to Guru Yoga”

When you’re practicing to accomplish pure view, you realize that for you, the teacher is the appearance in the world of a method or a path, a means by which one can enter the door of liberation. This is what makes the teacher precious. The teacher can connect you with the path, can explain the path, can ripen and deepen the mind so that one can practice on the path, and is a spiritual facilitator of a very high caliber. Their activity is extraordinary, or beyond what is normally found in samsara. So you begin, in pure view, to recognize the teacher as being representative of your own true face, the ground of being that is your inherent primordial wisdom nature—that nature which is free of contrivance, free of distinction, completely empty yet completely fulfilled and spontaneously complete. You begin to understand that this teacher is a representation of that nature in the world. The teacher provides the path, the means, the method, the ability to practice, and connects you with that in a very extraordinary way.

Once you’ve determined that, the teacher becomes for you the appearance of the Buddha nature in the world, the appearance of the method or the path in the world, the appearance of the fruition or the accomplishment in the world, the appearance of your own true face in the world. Once the teacher becomes that for you, then to take an opposite viewpoint and to determine a difference of opinion is not a sin or a nonvirtue. It simply argues with what you have already determined for yourself. It’s almost like walking three steps forward and two steps back in your Dharma practice. It’s not that you should become brain dead and that you’re not supposed to have an opinion, but there’s a fine line there that has to be travelled, and it’s pretty difficult to understand what that line is. Now on the one hand you are, and have been raised to be, a person who has a mind that thinks, and you have the ability to connect cause and effect yourself. Hopefully on the path you are developing that clarity of mind more and more and more. Yet here you find a situation where you have also stated clearly “I have found my teacher. Here is this vajra master that I have taken teachings from. That vajra master has facilitated me on the path of Dharma. So how is it that I feel like I have a different opinion at the same time that I have said this is the ultimate, this is the face of the Buddha, this is the Buddhas’ wisdom? How do I negotiate that? What’s that look like for me? I mean, how do I do that?”

Well, let’s stop and think for a moment in a way that might be beneficial. Don’t answer that question right now, but keep it simmering. We’re cooking up some Thanksgiving dinner here. We’re keeping it simmering. Here’s the gravy. It’s simmering on low boil. So now we’re back with the turkey in the oven. But don’t forget, the gravy is still on the boil. You’ve got to keep watching that one! O.K., now, withdraw from that, but still think about answering that question.

Now think about this: You’ve noticed haven’t you, I’m sure you have, that throughout our lives we tend to repeat certain habitual tendencies again and again and again. Can we all agree on that? We have seen certain habitual tendencies. We have seen certain patterns, certain habits. It really depends on how old you are, how convinced you are of this. The older you are, the more time you’ve had to see these things repeat again and again and again. While you’re still young, you think, “Well I’ve only done this two or three times! Who says there’s going to be a fourth, fifth and seventy-fourth!” But by the time you get to be maybe midlife where I am, you’re going, “I’ve seen this movie before!! I have seen this movie before!” And you realize that these habitual tendencies kind of repeat themselves again and again and again, deeply ingrained.

And then if you’re the kind of person who is really insightful, you realize that you project these habitual tendencies onto the circumstances of your life, and without realizing it, will very much control situations and people in your life according to your preconceived notions and according to your habitual tendencies. A difficult situation where you may recognize this is, let’s say, a child that grows up in a house where the child is not given any dignity or any respect and the child feels not loved or abused in some way. So the child develops a certain understanding about that —I am not worthy or I am not lovable—and then goes out into their lives and tends to project some of the same information on others. Others might be perfectly willing to love, be perfectly willing to just do the best they can, not always perfect of course, but to do the best they can, loving them. And yet this person is unable to accept that love and sees the same outcome pretty much all the time and actually is engaged in that outcome. So that’s one situation.

Another situation is, for instance, that of a cat. A cat is actually so strongly habituated towards killing it seems instinctive. From the Dharma point of view, we understand this to be habitual tendency reinforced many many times, life after life, a karmic kind of situation. The cat will be reborn, and even if there is nothing to kill, if you throw a ball of yarn across the room, the cat will go after it. You know what happens when a cat sees flies against the window. If a fly is bumping against the window, the cat will go after that. Anything that scuttles, the cat is after it and their eyes get really big. Have you ever seen a cat look out the window at a bird feeder? Have you ever seen that? The cat makes these horribles noises like “I want those hamburgers! Give me those hamburgers!!” For them it’s like McDonalds in the sky. These animals are so strongly habituated towards killing, that even though they come into this life as a cute little fluffy kitty, those little ears and the little tail and those little feet, still and all, they are killers. They are habituated towards that and the first chance they get, any stimulation, any stimulation, such as the rolling of the ball of yarn across the floor, they will interpret as the hunter and hunted scenario.

Did you know that we do the same thing? We do exactly the same thing. We are so deeply habituated in our own particular tendencies, whatever they are, that we project in the same way onto external stimulation. If we have deeply habituated ideas, sometimes they are bordering on the obsessive and compulsive. Maybe not even bordering, maybe all the way in that country! Pay the toll, we’re in! What happens is once we are strongly habituated into habit, we interpret all stimulation outside as something that keys us into our habitual tendency. So what I find as a teacher and a female, for instance, is that many people interpret me as their mother. They think of me as being the authority figure, someone they have to answer to in that way. They can’t be bad around me. A lot of times the students will… I mean it’s one thing to have your Dharma manners going when you see the teacher—you hold that in respect, and that’s a really good thing—but what I found is that I can walk into a party and kill it, just like that! Because my students suddenly stop functioning. It reminds me of when I was a kid and my mother said ‘dust the living room.’ So I’d be dusting the living room, having fun, thinking about other things, like boys or whatever, and dusting and carrying on. My mother came into the room and I’d suddenly start moving fast! It reminds me a little bit of that.

And sometimes some of my students are habituated towards authority figures in a certain way, and since I must exude some kind of authority, they look at me and interact in the same way with me that they do with other authority figures. So there is this “has to be good girl, good boy or whatever, routine” and the blaming of the teacher and making all of those “I’m mad at you authority figures” kind of scenarios going on. There are all kinds of different gigs, You know what your gig is with authority. Everybody has one. And so they project that onto the teacher. But you see, what’s really happening there is you’re looking at your own habitual tendency—the way that your mind works, the way that it intersects with the time and space grid in front of you, and how you play with your own habitual tendency. What you’re really seeing there is kind of like a bounce-back phenomena that’s actually taking place within your own mindstream.

There is nothing external happening. There is nothing beyond you that is happening. There’s just nothing out there that determines your fate. You’re looking at a kind of almost internal bubble, or a virtual situation in a certain way. You can learn a lot from that kind of virtual reality situation. It’s almost a virtual internal situation that’s happening there.