Buddhism

Longing for the Guru

by

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

Longing for the Guru is something that each of us experiences.  Each of us experiences that longing for the Guru in many different ways.

In order to be with your Teacher — however good or bad that Teacher may be — you must have spent a great deal of time making wishing prayers that you would never be separate from your Teacher. Especially if you are in a situation where you are consistently close to your Teacher and have a great deal of relatively intimate guidance, you must have spent a great deal of time longing for the Teacher. It’s the only karma that will allow this situation to exist.

As we grew up, each of us must have experienced the seeds of that longing. If we look back at our earlier lives, we may not understand that. It’s very difficult to understand how we ended up practicing Vajrayana. We certainly weren’t brought up this way. We certainly had no idea in our younger lives that we were going to be Buddhists, that’s for sure.

Yet, if we were to look deeply, we would discover that somewhere in our childhood there was a longing, which was the seed or the residue of something that we experienced in a previous incarnation. Probably when we grew up, we never heard of a Teacher. We never heard of a Guru. Because it was not consistent with our culture, and it was not sympathetic with what our culture views as proper, we may have diverted that longing into different paths. We may have felt the longing as a need to find ourselves, or we may have felt a sense of waiting to be given instructions, or to find something that we knew we would find.

Some of you might have felt you were waiting for a time in your life when an understanding would come. You might have felt a recognition that someone or something would come into your life and bring about change. You might have felt as though there was something incomplete and that completion would come later. You might have had a sense of waiting. So even while you were extremely busy in your life, there were certain things that you could have done that you didn’t, because you were waiting. Did you at some point hold back because you felt as though part of you was waiting? Maybe you even felt as though you were the ball in a roulette game, that was still going around without falling into the slot yet.

For instance, it is possible that you felt a sense of searching and perhaps went from relationship to relationship, searching for someone who would be intimate with you, searching for a fullness that you never found. It could be that you even went from a self-help group to an insight situation to a church to various kinds of situations that you thought would bring you the answer and you had no idea that it was a spiritual search. But now in retrospect, do you think that perhaps you were looking for something you didn’t find because you did not understand exactly what you were looking for? Surely, if you examine your life, you will find something of that longing in your past.

One of the great difficulties we have as both practitioners and people involved in a materialistic culture is that we have very little understanding of that longing. But in a culture that has a spiritual foundation, that recognizes the role of the Guru, or that recognizes and approves of a tendency to long for spiritual fulfillment, it is much easier to put a name and a label on that longing. For instance, in Tibet you could simply go into the monastery and know that you would find the answer there. Even if you didn’t understand which deity you were longing for, or what Guru you would find, you knew that the first thing to do was go into a monastery and with faith, the guidance would appear.

But, in our culture, in order to survive that kind of longing, you have to make believe that it’s something else. You have to pretend that it has to do with human relationships, or with prosperity, or with a certain lifestyle. You have to pretend that it has to do with intelligence, or with mental health. You have to pretend all sorts of different things in order to put the longing into some slot that our society recognizes. Because if you don’t, as you grow up, especially in the formative years, it’s crushing when you know in your heart of hearts that you are very different from others. No one else seems to have quite the same feeling that you do.

And so, because it’s so crushing, and so lonely, often, the very people that long the most are the ones that have diverted that longing into, perhaps promiscuity, or perhaps becoming almost fanatical about one idea or another. Maybe they diverted that longing into drugs or alcohol. Perhaps they made themselves into a way that they are not, such as superficial, or hard or tough or dull or even dead. They might have pretended that they had no feelings at all in order to deal with the ones that they did have.

Now, it’s true that lots of people have these same feelings and these same ways of dealing with feelings. For instance, it’s very possible that someone whose mother or father didn’t love them could become promiscuous simply for that reason. Yet, that does not preclude what I’m saying. You should listen to your life — what you did and what was underneath it. And you should come to understand that perhaps there was something a little different in your heart and in your mind, and it was always with you.

By the time you have grown and begun to find your path, you have already lost yourself somewhere. You don’t understand yourself any more. You have already done things for which you do not forgive yourself. You have already substituted something else for the longing that you felt. You have already substituted something else for your Teacher. In having done that, it is difficult to find your way home. It is difficult to reach what was originally very pure in your mind. It is difficult to rebirth what was very pure and tender inside of you. And now, you can’t just say, “Oh, I found it at last. The longing is finished. I found what I’m looking for. I found my path, but in the meantime, I’ve been promiscuous and I don’t forgive myself”, or “I’ve become tough, numb, or materialistic.”

What happens is that we see that what’s in front of us is so precious and it’s just what we’ve been waiting for. Now, instead of being able to just grab it and eat it, what we do then, is try to deal with the numbness, the hardness. the promiscuity, or the materialism. This is because we have become used to this feeling of longing. So the longing remains, and we are not able to truly be one with the path and with the Teacher.

We’ve forgotten how to satisfy ourselves. We’ve forgotten how to do anything except blame ourselves and be angry. We make lots of mistakes. We compulsively make mistakes. We do not follow the path purely and with a full heart. We have to ask ourselves if the person who says, “I’ve got to get through with my Three Roots practice today,” is the same person, who, as a child, was waiting hungrily for something. It’s not the same person. We feel differently now than we did back then and we don’t know how to get back to that original place of purity. We feel something is amiss when we think we’ve found our path because we feel angry, guilty and dirty. We feel different, impure. Then we end up approaching the Teacher, the teaching, and the path itself, in an impure way, because we believe that we are impure somehow.

Having longed for the taste of our own nature for such a long time, now when we look at the Teacher and the teaching, we see it as something altogether different. We see the Teacher as just a human being and we try to get close to that human being. And why do we do that? We do that because we spent our whole lives trying to fit that longing into an acceptable picture and now we’re still trying to do the same thing.

We are afraid to experience the depth of our longing, and instead, we try to get close to the person. We are afraid to experience the bliss of the union between the meditator, the meditating mind and the nature that is meditated on. The bliss of that union is so strong and we are afraid to experience it. So instead, we long for some kind of union with the person who is now our Teacher. It is even common to feel a strong sexual urging for our Teacher. It doesn’t matter if the Teacher is the same sex. Students can have dreams and strong sexual urgings for the Teacher. If you think of the Teacher as a mother figure, or a father figure, or an authority figure, or a therapist that you come to with your ordinary stuff, there will never be satisfaction, because that isn’t the truth. That is not the nature of the Teacher. That longing becomes a perpetuation of the suffering that we had as a child where it was not understood, where it was diverted, and where it could not be satisfied.

We misunderstand the feeling of longing. The longing is for union, not for sexual behavior. Because it is misunderstood, what generally happens is a feeling of rejection, because the Teacher does not comply with our wishes. We feel guilty and wonder what’s wrong with us. We feel a lack of acceptance of ourselves, or a lack of confidence, or a feeling that we are somehow impure in our motivation. The longing sometimes becomes so strong that we are unable to practice.

You want the Teacher to hold you and love you or you want the Teacher to be with you as a friend. You are unable to practice because you are so busy watching how your Teacher acts towards you. Does he or she smile at me? Does he or she hold my hand when I’m lonely? Does he or she notice when I’m ailing? Does he or she come after me when I’ve strayed? You’re so busy noticing that that you do not practice. The practice is the caring for you. The practice is the coming after you when you have strayed. The practice is the taking you home where you accept and awaken to your true nature. The teachings that you receive are your relationship with the Teacher. They are the fruits the Teacher brings to you. If you are longing for union with the Teacher, when the Teacher teaches you from his or her mind, and offers you the essence of what they know, that is the union, far more so than any physical friendship could ever be. There is nothing more intimate than that.

Yet, we continue to not understand. We continue to divert the longing, to not accept ourselves and to blame ourselves. We continue to create a bad relationship with our Teacher. If we understood what was happening, we would run to the teacher, run to the path, run to the experience of being on the path and of practicing in order to achieve enlightenment, with open arms and with an open heart. But instead, we are doing other things that do not accomplish the awakening that we wish.

And so, if you feel that you have become deadened to that longing, if you think that you don’t long for your Teacher or long for the Buddha, if you think that you don’t have a heartfelt longing for that awakening, then you should try to remember your childhood and the different feelings that you had. What were some of the things that you did? Were you promiscuous? Did you become involved in drugs or alcohol? Did you become very materialistic in certain ways? And if you can remember the beginning of that, was it based on longing? Was it really based on something that you could hardly remember, but remember that it was sharp and poignant?

If you can remember that time, you should become reacquainted with the purity of that urging. Cultivate that longing. Don’t cultivate it in a false or contrived way, but search for what was already there. Feel what was felt. Don’t make up a feeling. That’s important because if you do, you’ll blame yourself again. Instead, try to remember that feeling, even if it just numbs you to think that you have gone so far astray. You should not be ashamed because it was your karma to be born a culture where what you felt was not acceptable and you tried to fit-in in ways that were acceptable. Those ways did not work for you and then you shut down. You should try to go back to that original feeling and then you have to forgive yourself.

In order to be able to fully forgive yourself, you have to confess. Don’t confess, “Oh I’ve been a bad girl or I’ve been a bad boy, I’ve done this and I’ve done that.” The confession that you should make to the primordial Root Guru is, “You were everywhere and I tried to find you here.” Your true confession is your lack of understanding the nature of the Guru. Your true confession is your not understanding what you are. That’s your real confession and the real sin you committed. Yes, karma happened. But that core confession and purification can bring about the end of all the karma that arose from that, truly. It can bring about the end of all suffering that came from that point.

You should allow yourself to remember the longing that you felt and learn to live with it. In living with it and having it be the warmth in your heart, that longing will bring the proper result. So long as it is diverted, so long as you refuse to feel it, so long as you do not allow yourself to be pure and constantly cover that up with feelings of impurity, so long as that continues, the longing cannot be satisfied.

If you feel that longing purely, and if you can manage to get your ego out of the way, then that longing can be the very bread that nurtures you to continue firmly on your path. That longing can be the way that provides the actual, undeniable connection with your own Root Guru. It perfects that relationship so that you can realize the nature of the primordial Guru. You can understand that what you see in front of you is the miraculous touch of Lord Buddha. Your relationship with the Teacher, the path, the teaching, and your own practice can only be a result of the miraculous intention of the Buddha. So long as you continue to understand the teaching and the path as something external, you will never understand its nature. You will never be able to truly drink of the taste of that nature. Instead, you will continue to feel separate from the mandala.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Merit & the Karma of Happiness

by

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

You are able to practice because you had the karma to receive teachings. Merit has come to the surface of your mind; good karma is ripening. But linked with some of this ripening merit are some bubbles of not-so-good karma. So what happens? You sit down with the intention to practice, but now you’re just too tired. You start to fall asleep. Or you decide that you need to do some other things. You externalize what you think are the causes for your inability to practice. Maybe you even begin to doubt that you’re happy in the Dharma. You wish you were surfing in California, and this thought is like a little rat, gnawing in your head. It gnaws at you slowly and steadily.

You need to understand that good karma is ripening, but some negative karma is linked to it. Embedded in your mindstream is some non-virtuous activity associated with the intention to practice. Now you have repeated that pattern, in seed form, and it will ripen in the future. Sometime in the future, you will again sit down with the intention to practice, and you won’t be able to do it. So the sensible thing to do is to persevere, to push through as well as you can. Understand that your tiredness, sleepiness, and other excuses have no basis. They are puffballs.

When you find yourself making excuses why you are unable to practice, why you don’t really want to hear the teachings, the best thing to do is to break through by accumulating merit. By doing virtuous things. Study Dharma. Pray. Practice kindness and generosity. Meditate. Contemplate the teachings. Try to understand them more deeply. Be attentive. Make offerings. Repeat the Seven Line Prayer many times. Repeated with faith, it is an antidote that can end all your suffering. It can, the teaching says, lead to enlightenment. All these things are ways to accumulate merit. You must understand how merit (and lack of it) works, or you will have a difficult time maintaining potency on the Path. It will even be difficult, on an ordinary level, to have a good life. For you won’t have any way to understand what is happening to you. You will always blame external things, other people. It is true that when you encounter misfortune, other people are usually involved, and you may well have some mixed karma with those people. But the karma arises within your own mindstream; it isn’t somewhere outside.

Pull out of your addiction to reaction. Think of your mind as something like a mechanism, and you yourself as a mechanic. Understand that you can work with its levers, pulleys, and gears. To most people, their own minds are a mystery, a complete mystery. And they search for someone who can understand them.

What should you do? Persevere in your practice. What else? Create more merit. The big mystery of “me” is solved. Almost reluctantly, too, because it’s so lovely to remain a mystery. It’s so pleasant to think that there is something mysterious, special, and unique about us. How often we try to obtain something that seems just out of reach. Or we have it in our hands, and it slips away. What is going on here? Lack of merit, of course. And yet we keep on reaching and grabbing and forcing, all in vain. Sometimes we think we have made something happen by forcing it. And yet, we have merely rearranged our karma. The basic problem remains unsolved. Suppose you want a new car, but the cost is just out of reach. Both merit and lack are coming to the surface. Even if you contrive to get the car, you will still have, ripening, some non-virtue associated with lack. That lack will always show up somewhere—with the car itself, or in your relationships, your health, or in missed opportunities. So the key, whenever you lack something, is to accumulate merit.

Some people are unaware that it takes merit to be happy. Have you ever noticed that some people just seem to be happy, no matter what? And others … well, happiness seems to elude them. And it’s because there is no karma of happiness, no karma of having made others happy, ripening in their minds. You can’t even lighten them up with a joke. They just don’t have any happy bubbles ripening to the surface. “How are you today?” you ask them. “Not so good,” they reply. “Umm … Nothing seems to go right.”  But if we haven’t got the karma for happiness, whose fault is that? Who did it to us? Someone else? No, but it’s a problem we can fix. The problem is within our own minds. We can create the karma of happiness by creating merit.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Wishing Prayers

by

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called Compassion is the Only Lasting Antidote to Suffering

In Vajrayana Buddhism (literally the Diamond Vehicle), which is the form of Buddhism preserved in Tibet and Mongolia and the one followed in my temple, one of the foundational teachings is the understanding and practice of compassion.  I personally find that a religious philosophy based on selfless compassion is deeply satisfying, and I believe that it strikes a chord with many Americans.

However, although there are many people who embrace the idea of compassion as love and a deep caring for others, they do not realize that to actualize the mind of Great Awakening requires a deliberate and disciplined path.  Human beings are not born with great compassion automatically realized.  Thus, the Diamond Path can be described as a technology for spiritual development.

From the Buddhist point of view, there are primarily two ways to approach compassion: aspirational compassion and practical compassion.  When one begins to practice on the Diamond Path, one begins straightaway to make wishing prayers, cultivating the idea of being of benefit to beings who are revolving helplessly through cycles of existence.   This is aspirational compassion.

Every practice in which we engage, every teaching we hear, every empowerment we receive, every prayer we chant, can all be dedicated to the liberation of all beings from all forms of suffering. Thus, aspirational compassion is practiced in the beginning by many repetitions of wishing prayers.  These prayers are meant to benefit beings through developing the sincere desire to utilize all one’s activities — from the mundane to the sublime — as a means of eliminating the causes of suffering in all its forms.  One prays for the cessation of war, poverty, sickness, death and rebirth, loneliness, hatred, greed and ignorance.  One adopts a posture of pure intention based on the idea that every portion of this life, as well as future incarnations yet to come, might somehow be useful to sentient beings.

As an example of this type of wishing prayer, I will paraphrase a famous practice:

If there is a need for nourishment, let me return as food.  If there is a need for shade, let me be a tree.  If there is a need for shelter, let me be a house.  If there is a need to cross over, let me be a bridge.  If there is sickness, may I manifest as the doctor, the medicine and the nurse who restore health.  May I be land for those requiring it, a lamp for those in darkness, a home for the homeless, and a servant to the world.

While this may sound very kind and loving, the intention here goes far deeper than the apparent words because one must strive to be of benefit not only to fulfill the immediate needs of beings, but also to bring future benefit.  Providing things such as food, housing, and medicine bring about benefit, of course, and this type of kindness is profoundly virtuous.  We should all strive to meet the needs of others in just these ways.  Yet, from a Buddhist perspective, being able to practice only this type of compassion does not bring ultimate benefit.  For instance, if it were possible to feed an entire nation or perhaps even the world and completely eliminate hunger and hopelessness, we still would not be solving the root of the problem.

According to the Buddha, there is no condition or circumstance without a cause.  Just as the fruit does not manifest without first appearing on a tree, which came from a seed, neither does any circumstance, good or bad, in which we find ourselves manifest without a cause.  These causes may not be found in this life only, but may come from previous lifetimes.

It is not possible for people to be born randomly into difficult circumstance or to suddenly experience the onset of tremendous suffering and upheaval.  These events are always the result of a tapestry of cause-and-effect relationships (karma) woven around the delusion involving the definition and maintenance of an ego.  Thus, to solve the immediate needs of beings may bring some relief, but it does not guarantee that they will not experience great difficulty in the future, because it does not break the continuum of cause and effect that ripens unexpectedly and constantly.  This continuum originates from the belief in an ego self and the desire that results from that belief.  It is through the pacification of desire that one can begin to transform one’s karma.  When the delusion of ego begins to dissolve, karma also begins to dissolve.  But if the mindstream is not purified of the karma of suffering, the potential for suffering remains.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

The Ultimate Technology

by

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called Compassion is the Only Lasting Antidote to Suffering

We were raised to believe that reality can be manipulated.  Our libraries are filled with books of great American success stories.  These tend to be about material successes.  But the spiritual aspirant must ask: Will this success last?  Even if it lasts for an entire life, will it survive death?  If we had the power to bring peace to the world, to disarm nations and maintain order and harmony, would that peace last beyond our lifetime?  Many leaders have exhausted their lives forging great nations and empires only to have them destroyed shortly after their deaths.

To provide beings with the ultimate benefit of freedom from all suffering, one must apply the ultimate technology.  The aspiration to be of benefit to beings, the cultivation of pure intention, the continued observance of human kindness, the making of wishing prayers, and constantly hoping from the core of one’s mind and heart to be of lasting benefit to others, are practices to develop compassion.  Yet at some point the ultimate step must be taken.  This begins with the realization that temporary happiness is not enough, that feeding and clothing people, along with other acts of kindness, are not enough.  These things cannot undo the certainty of death, which puts people beyond our reach.  How can we follow them into future incarnations to ensure their safety?

There is only one way to cease the ripening of the seeds of suffering: enlightenment, which dissolves the belief in ego, pacifies all cause-and-effect relationships or karma, and reveals one’s true primordial nature.  The Diamond Path utilizes many techniques to purify the five senses and the mindstream itself.  When these practices are engaged in, not only for one’s own benefit but also to purify the karma and suffering of others, the practical aspect of the Awakening Mind — practical compassion — is engaged.  This is “practical” because it is the technology to completely rid oneself and others of the causes for suffering.  Buddhists view this type of compassion as the act of ultimate kindness.

While ordinary kindness is a valid undertaking and should be part of the activity of every spiritual aspirant, one must address the question of ultimate benefit, of eliminating suffering at its roots.

We should take to heart what the great Indian Buddhist Shantideva wrote a thousand years ago.  “May I act as the mighty earth or like the free and open skies to support and provide the space whereby I and all others may grow.  Until every being afflicted by pain has reached to nirvana’s shores, may I serve only as a condition that encourages progress and joy.”

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

It’s Your Mindstream

by

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

Certain aspects of the Buddha’s teachings are foundational to the way Buddhists think.  My purpose here is not to render any teachings in a complete form but rather to discuss why Buddhists think the way they do.  My hope is that you will take the responsibility of keeping these ideas in your minds and that they will have the effect of shaping the way you think.  The best way you can use these teachings is to allow them to permeate your thoughts, reminding yourself of them continually.  This will take some effort on your part.  The result will be changes in your view of things––and in the decisions you make.

You must understand that any problems you have in being able to embrace your practice are caused by the karma of your mindstream.  The obstacles to your practice are really a reflection of very old habitual tendencies.  You have developed them, and you carry them with you.  There is no one to blame––not society, not anyone who keeps you from your practice, not your non-Buddhist parents, not your jobs that take too much time.  What we’re really looking at is an externalization of the content of the mindstream.

We must understand that we are looking into a mirror.  If we’re too busy to practice, if we’re too materialistic to see the big picture, if repeatedly we stumble over these problems, we need to understand them as reflections of the content of our mindstream.

So what should you do?  You should apply the antidote.  For some people, this would be jumping onto the Path hog wild, really going for it––even though they may need to slow down a little later.  Some people need time to adjust to the pace that is naturally best for them.  Others can only take one tiny bite at a time.

You start where you are, and that has to be okay.  Therefore I suggest three cardinal rules: 1) Do the best you can.  2) Give yourself a break.  3) Don’t let yourself get away with murder.

These rules are not the Buddha’s teaching; I made them up and take full responsibility for them.  They actually work very well.  You are where you are.  Do what you can do.  And watch yourself––because you will try to get away with murder.  This is the way you should approach the Path.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

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

Enlightenment is Awakening

by

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

In their Nature, all sentient beings are essentially the Buddha––all humans, all animals, even all the microscopic little beings   running around on the tips or our noses.  We should regard that Nature as the basis or seed of the Path.  The Buddha’s revelation of the Path came directly from his awareness of this Nature.  Even though we ourselves are this Nature, we have a fixation on self-nature as inherently real.  Any idea we have now, any conceptualization, anything that comes from us, arises from thinking of ourselves as a self.

The Buddha gave the Path after he attained Enlightenment, and it arose from his Enlightened intention, from Enlightenment itself.  The Path is considered to be “the method.”  All the Dharma teachings you receive, even the commentary teachings I may give, all derive from the Buddha’s teachings, or have as their basis the Buddha’s teachings.  They are considered precious because they are the “method” that arises from the mind of Enlightenment.

You can only achieve the result of Enlightenment if the method you use arose from the mind of Enlightenment.  And you can be certain that this is the case only if you know that the result has been proven again and again.  This is because we ourselves cannot recognize the Buddha Nature––not in ourselves, not in any other being.  Not yet.  All we have to go on is a proven, result-bringing method.

The basis, or cause, brings forth the method, or Path, which is not separate from the goal, the fruit––which is the Awakening into our inherent primordial wisdom state.  These three (the basis, the method, and the goal) are inseperable, indistinguishable one from the other.  Therefore, we Buddhists never consider that we are moving towards an external goal.  We never make the mistake of those involved in a more Western idea of linear development––thinking that they are building a higher self, or even making a connection to a higher self.  And we never make the mistake of thinking that we are becoming great beings, or Masters, as those who are involved with linear thinking may do.  From our point of view, we haven’t moved at all.  Attaining Enlightenment is not gathering together a bunch of facts, as you might do in college.  Nor is it the gathering of a bunch of experiences.  We are indeed the total of our experiences, but only in a karmic sense.

Enlightenment is actually the “Awakening” to the naked state––the state that is free of all experience, the state that is pure luminosity.  We don’t go anywhere.  There is no building, no tearing down.  There is nothing of the accumulation we value in our life.  We have only pacified our chronic, compulsive fixation on self-nature, the fixation we have had since time out of mind.  This constitutes a profound difference between Buddhist philosophy and Western metaphysical or religious thinking.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

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

It’s About Awakening

by

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Sometimes I am afraid for others, because they are following a spiritual path that is very new — perhaps 10, 20 or maybe even 100 years old — a spiritual path that was simply developed by a great thinker, great philosopher or great psychologist.  Although these paths mean well, and they do produce some good — in that people who are tied up in knots get untied a little bit — I’m not sure they actually produce enlightenment, because the source is not enlightened.  Even if the founders of these paths were to describe themselves as being enlightened, I would want to see if the paths actually produced enlightenment in someone following them, because there are many people who are practicing paths that have not yet produced enlightenment in one single person.

So I adopt a wait-and-see attitude.  I’m really hard-nosed about that.  I want something that will awaken me to my nature.  I want something that will produce enlightenment. I won’t give you a dime for back rubs and affirmations and good feelings because those things have not proved to me that they will produce enlightenment.  I want what works.

I’m not saying there’s only one path, and that’s the Buddha’s path.  I’m not saying that another path could not be revealed.  I’m not saying that no one else has the answer.  I am saying that if I’m going to travel across the ocean of suffering, I’m going to do it in a boat with no holes.  I know that I want to practice a path that has as its source the mind of enlightenment, and I also want to practice a path that has produced enlightenment in many other sentient beings.  That, to me, is a boat with no holes.  You’re not going to catch me — I’m a very, very practical person — leaving shore in a boat with holes.  That’s not going to happen; I’m too much of a coward.

And in my having the special joy that I feel, the most happy part is that somehow I seem to have the karma of being in the position to help propagate this path.  Now believe me, I have no idea how that happened.  I’m just happy that it is so.  If I have the opportunity to do anyone some good, if I have the opportunity to afford someone a place to be comfortable and to be trained and to feel at home so that they can practice such a path, then I’m really happy about my life.

So, when someone says to me, “I don’t know how to deal with your change to Buddhism,” I can only say, “Don’t even bother, because you have enough to deal with already.  You have to deal with cyclic existence.  You’re a busy person.  What you need to think about is not what I’m doing.  You need to think about how you are going to achieve enlightenment.  How are you going to liberate your mind from the very conceptualizations that you are expressing to me right now?  How are you going to free yourself from the rigidity and the restriction, the confines of your own feelings, that run you around the block the way they do and never produce enlightenment?  That’s your problem, and it’s not my job to worry about it.”

My job is to do what I am doing now.  I hope to do it better and better.  But this path isn’t all about me; it’s about awakening.  And so I really don’t waste a lot of time thinking about how I feel or how you feel or what feelings are all about.  I mostly try to rest my mind in something that is like calm abiding, because the Buddha didn’t teach me to worry.  He didn’t teach me to have preconceived ideas, he didn’t teach me to be rigid, and he didn’t teach me to have lots of ideas about things.  He taught me to realize the nature.  And at the core of every experience, including my feelings or yours, is that nature.  And it is my intention to spend the rest of my life accomplishing the full awakening to that nature and dispelling attachment to everything else.

So, you see, I am not a convert to the Buddha’s teaching.  I am simply one who wishes to cross the ocean of suffering and to take everyone with me.  I simply want to experience the end of suffering, and I want everyone else to have that experience too.  If that makes me a Buddhist, then I am a Buddhist.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Why I Chose Buddhism

by
HH Penor Rinpoche & Jetsunma in 1985

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

I never cease being surprised when someone is personally challenged by my path, especially since I never try to convert them.  I don’t understand why it should bother one person what religion another person practices.  Or how one person can take it as a personal threat when someone else doesn’t believe in their god.  I cannot for the life of me see where unity argues with diversity.  In fact, I think that a lot of the world’s problems, at least from the relative point of view, arise because people have no tolerance for one another.

Since I have listened to many people describe to me their heartfelt feelings about what it was like for them when I chose Buddhism, I would now like to tell you how it was for me when I chose Buddhism.  I think turnabout is fair play.

First of all, from my perception, there was never any conversion process.  There was never a time when I converted from something else to Buddhism.  The reason why is that since the time of my adulthood, I have never formally identified with any religion.  There was never a time that I felt that I was going to an external god; and yet I have a very spiritual and religious sense of there being a goal, a path and a reality that is absolute or true.  And I knew that that reality had no describable nature, that that reality was essentially free of all conceptualization, that that reality wasn’t a reality in a sense, because reality implies thingness.  I knew that there was something that was beyond; and that beyondness was free of any ideas of here or there, or high or low, or self or other.  It was free of any contrivance

I didn’t use the word emptiness at first because I didn’t know the word, but I used to think of it as being vibrationally zero.  That is to say, there was no artificial construction within it, no contrivance, no conceptualization.  I knew that any conceptualization or idea that one had was delusion.  And I knew that there was an awakened state in which one realized one’s nature, and that nature was essentially free of all limitation.  That nature is not separate, it is not other; it is not something that one must go to or even progress toward.  That nature is the true nature, and one needs to awaken to it, and that awakening occurs naturally.

In order to describe that philosophy, at first I had to use general metaphysical terms.  There were no other terms for me.  I never had anything to do with Buddhism.  I had never even read a book about Buddhism.  When I met His Holiness Penor Rinpoche and I began to hear about the Buddha’s teachings, my sense was not of changing at all.  Nothing of the Buddha’s teaching seemed strange to me.  From the deepest part of my heart, I felt that I had come home.  My sense was, “At last, here’s the vocabulary I’ve been looking for.  Here are the words that I’ve needed all this time to describe what I’ve been trying to teach.”  And so gradually I began to absorb and introduce the vocabulary into my teaching, because I already had students at that time.

Now Penor Rinpoche says that I’m an incarnation of somebody that used to be Tibetan 400 years ago.  I don’t really know if that’s true or not.  If Penor Rinpoche says what he says, then that is due to his wisdom and his kindness, and I can’t take any credit for that; and I have nothing to do with it, other than that I rely on it.  I feel like I am just an ordinary person and I’m doing my best.  I believe in the Buddha’s teaching.  I believe that compassion will save the world.  I believe that enlightenment is the end of suffering.  That’s what I know.

So I’m not going to pull an ego trip and say, “Oh, when I heard the Buddha’s teaching, I recognized it, I knew it, I remembered it,” in some hokey way.  I’m not going to say to you, “Oh, immediately upon hearing the Buddha’s teaching I came into my own, and therefore I knew all these amazing things.”  It wasn’t like that at all.  It was something like the joy you might feel if you recognized music that had been in your heart for a long time being played on the radio.  There was a part of me that could recognize this truth as being truth.  It wasn’t really a change.  It was more like finding the right suit of clothing for my size.  So if any of you are uncomfortable with the fact that I’ve changed, please don’t be; I’m certainly not.  I’ve always been a Buddhist.  I just didn’t have the words.

Now, I would like to tell you a little bit about what I felt in my heart when I found the Buddha’s teaching.  I felt humbled to have the opportunity to practice a path that has been around for more that two and a half millennia and that has brought people to enlightenment again and again and again.  Ordinary sentient beings, through the intensity of their devotion and their practice, have achieved not theoretical, but exacting, reportable and repeatable physical and psychic signs that indicate enlightenment, such as bodies producing relics at the time of death and other miraculous signs.  This has happened again and again and again to guys like you and me.

Sometimes I stop and I think, “What can I have possibly done to have this opportunity?  What good fortune has befallen me?  What circumstances have come together over ages and ages of time to give me this chance to practice a path that really works and has worked again and again and again?”

I am awestruck that I don’t have to follow someone’s advice who is not enlightened, because I am following the Buddha’s teaching.  The Buddha knows what he’s talking about because it brought him to the state of supreme realization, and it has produced enlightenment in so many beings.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo


The Benefits of the Awakening Mind

by

1000 Armed Chenrezig Mandala

Here is another excerpt from the first chapter of A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life called “The Benefits of the Awakening Mind.”  May these words written by Shantideva inspire all who encounter them.

#26

How can I fathom the depths

Of the goodness of this jewel of the mind,

The panacea that relieves the world of pain

And is the source of all its joy?

#31

If whoever repays a kind deed

Is worthy of some praise,

Then what need to mention the Bodhisattvas

Who do good without it being asked of them?

#32

The world honors as virtuous

One who sometimes gives a little, plain food

Disrespectfully to a few beings,

Which satisfies them for only a half a day.

#33

What need be said then of one

Who eternally bestows the peerless bliss of the Sugatas

Upon limitless numbers of beings,

Thereby fulfilling all their hopes?

#34

The Buddha has said that whoever bears a harmful thought

Against a benefactor such as a Bodhisattva

Will remain in hell for as many aeons

As there were harmful thoughts.

#35

However, if a virtuous attitude should arise (in that regard),

Its fruits will multiply far more than that.

When Bodhisattvas greatly suffer they generate no negativity,

Instead their virtues naturally increase.

#36

I bow down to the body of those

In whom the sacred precious mind is born.

I seek refuge in that source of joy

Who brings happiness even to those who bring harm.

The First Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

by

Jetsunma Ahkham Lhamo was an emanation in human form of Arya Tara, the holy mother of all the Buddhas. She was born in the province of Do Kham, in Ah Chog Drolhey village in the Bubor Mountains of the Palyul region of Tibet. This place has all ten positive auspicious signs present. Her father, Dorje, came from the highly revered family heritage of Mutshaga, and her mother was a wisdom Dakini named Gurutso. She was born around the later part of the eleventh Rabjung (according to the Tibetan Calendar), which corresponds to the later half of the seventeenth Century A.D. She was the youngest sister of Rigzin Kunzang Sherab.

She started her education with reading and writing at an early age, and she learned without much effort. Together with Rigzin Kunzang Sherab, she received many teachings from Terton Migyur Dorje and Khedrup Karma Chagmed, who was the emanation of (Lotsawa) Chogro Lhuyi Gyaltsen, as well as teachings from many other scholars and accomplished masters. With them, she perfected her study and practice of both Sutras and Tantras beyond any doubt.  She entered with perseverance into single-pointed practice at various undisclosed places, and many meditational deities appeared to her and gave instructions to her. Through her practice she purified all illusory phenomena into primordial non-conceptual pure awareness, and became a ruler of the realm of Kuntuzangpo.

She lived on the mountain ridge towards the east of Palyul Namgyal Changchub Chöling (Palyul Monastery) and unceasingly turned the wheel of Dharma to a large community of Ani disciples, gradually turning that place into an expansive Ani Gonpa. Thus the location was called JOGONGDONG (nunnery on the ridge) and because of the huge numbers of nuns with red robes, that whole area has been called DRONGMAR TENG (red knoll village) ever since that time. In short, through turning both wheels of Dharma – both teaching and practicing – Jetsunma trained numerous students, not only as Buddhist scholars but many of them became highly realized practitioners.

The “AH” on the skull relic

When she saw that her activities to benefit the doctrine and her students had reached the limits of this lifetime, she passed into the peaceful Dharmata. While her holy body was being cremated, her skull flew over and landed on top of the throne of Rigzin Kunzang Sherab in the place where he used to give Dharma teachings. Since that time, that place has been used as a sacred cemetery and to this day, all the revered Lamas of Palyul Monastery have been cremated there.

Additionally, her skull has been used as THOEYAB during all major accomplishment ceremonies in Palyul Monastery to invoke the blessings even up to the present day. I heard there is an awakened reincarnation of her who has been born in America.

Ven. Gyaltrul Rinpoche carries the Kapala

 

Excerpted from Palyul Namgyal Changchub Chöling Ge Denrap, a history of the Palyul Lineage, written by Mupo, a contemporary Tibetan scholar and historian. Originally published in China, May 19, 2002, Seventeenth Rabjung Iron Horse Year. Reprinted in Taiwan. [Ed note: The first Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo has sometimes been referred to as Genyenma Ahkön Lhamo]

 

 

 

WP2Social Auto Publish Powered By : XYZScripts.com