Buddhism

A Wish-Fulfilling Jewel

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If you have ever walked into the Prayer Room at Kunzang Palyul Choling, you cannot have helped but notice the large collection of crystals.  And perhaps you have wondered, “Why do they have all of these crystals?  Is this typical of Buddhism?  What is their purpose?”

The Mineral Kingdom on a Mission:

The world is filled with uncountable minerals – crystals, ores, and gems.  Not only are they beautiful to behold, but they actually serve a vital function of maintaining the vibratory structure of the universe.  Originally brought into manifestation by rays of tone and color and vibration originating from the Primordial State of Awareness (the Absolute), they assure true communication and transmission of divine energies.  Crystals function to transmit peace, love, absolute oneness, absolute awakened consciousness.  They help to remind human kind of our own true nature, which is not unlike the clearest crystal and not unlike the most beautiful and radiant gems.

Each mineral or family of minerals has a specific attunement with different aspects of the Primordial Wisdom State that is the nature of all things.  If they were not present on our planet, many divine qualities would be lost to our memory.  But no mineral creates energy of its own.  They are transmitters, attuned to the cosmos.  They tend to refract universal energies into specific qualities.  If it seems that a crystal creates energy, it is because it has touched the Infinite and speaks of it, as though it had heard a song and continues to sing.

It is with this understanding that the crystals at KPC are utilized and upheld.  Walking through the Temple you will see magnificent specimens of all types:  clear and smokey quartz, rose quartz, amethyst, citrine, tourmaline, apophyllite, elestials, and so on.  Each type of mineral has a specific attunement to the Primordial State of Awareness, and together they work to absorb and amplify prayer energy and the presence of this primordial awareness (Buddhanature or God-consciousness) into the world.  Since 1985 KPC has maintained a 24-hour-a-day Prayer Vigil for the planet and all beings and the crystals are considered a vital part of our efforts.

How Do Crystals Fit Into Tibetan Buddhism?

While KPC is distinctive among Buddhist Centers in the number and unique use of crystals, they are indeed utilized within the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition.  In Tibetan Buddhist empowerment, the Lama will confer a special ‘nature of mind” transmission, wherein he holds up and students gaze upon a perfectly clear quartz crystal, symbolic of our Primordial Wisdom Nature.  Prayer beads (or malas) are also often made of semi-precious stones, from quartz to lapis lazuli, to amethyst.  The mala is blessed and empowered by one’s teacher, and serves as an aid to one’s spiritual practice.

Crystals, whether individual stones or prayer beads, in conjunction with a tried and true spiritual path can act as catalysts – bringing forth and ripening latent karmic potentials within your mind.  They may facilitate meditation and the breaking up of basic delusion.  But ultimately no mineral can give you anything that you don’t already possess.  They are supports to the spiritual path, not objects of refuge themselves.  On the path to enlightenment we have to find a way to catalyze the things that are most helpful to us, and that’s what crystals do.  That’s what they will do for a practitioner.  They should be an aid in our remembering – a support to realizing our true nature.

Something Truly Special

KPC’s crystals were chosen for their unique energies and strategically placed in order to facilitate the anchoring and transmission of prayer energy into the world.  Our spiritual director, Jetsunma worked to merge the energy of the crystals with one another and with the compassionate Buddha Nature.  Through twenty five years of continuous, unbroken prayer, the crystals have supported the mission of KPC and Jetsunma’s vision to bring benefit to countless sentient beings.

The Four Immeasureables

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In Tibetan Buddhism the idea of compassion is talked about by using the idea of “Bodhicitta.” Bodhicitta actually means compassion, but for Westerners, the idea of compassion is often that the “haves” give to the “have-nots.” There is a sense of one person having or being in a position to give, and another one being needy. In Buddhism it is different.  When one displays Bodhicitta, one understands that all sentient beings are suffering. One looks at cyclic existence and sees that it is impermanent; that all sentient beings, no matter how happy they are, temporarily, ultimately lose that happiness by experiencing old age, sickness, and death; that in the six realms of cyclic existence, there are many different forms of suffering due to impermanence and the mind of duality.

If you have no awareness of the impermanence of your situation, then you have no awareness of the fact that even though you may be happy at the moment, you are likely to suffer at some point in your life. If you tend to avoid that knowledge, you really cannot accomplish stability in your path because the motivation isn’t right. When you are suffering and you realize that you are suffering, your experience is intensified in such a way that you know that enlightenment is important. You know that this suffering that is happening to you is not good. Even if you are experiencing some temporary happiness like watching TV or feeling great when you’ve accomplished something, you notice that you feel not so great when that temporary satisfaction is absent.

According to the Buddha’s teaching, compassion and the determined cultivation of Bodhicitta is absolutely necessary in stabilizing and deepening one’s experience in meditation. Why is that so? First of all, we should look at the teaching that is called the Four Immeasurables.

The Four Immeasurables are loving kindness, compassion, joy, and boundless equanimity. Of these, the most foundational is boundless equanimity. This means the realization that all things are essentially equal. You learn to treasure your most loved one the same as those that you don’t know, including your worst enemy. How is this possible? If you look at why you care for your loved one more than you love your enemy or someone that you’ve never met, you can understand that the motivation for loving one more than another is desire. The desire that is felt here is the desire for approval, the desire for being recognized as an entity, the desire for the continuation of one’s awareness of self as being inherently real and stable. Believing in self- nature needs to continue once it is assumed, otherwise one will feel chaos or as though things are falling apart. Desire is inherent in all of this.  There is another thing that you can learn from realizing the difference you feel between the friend and the enemy, and that is the belief in the separation of self and other.

Buddha teaches us that we are actually empty of self-nature. This means that although we exist in a primordial wisdom state, what we experience when we experience self-nature as inherently real, is actually a series of conceptualizations that are contrived. They are inconsistent with the pure primordial natural state which is free of all contrivance.

Boundless equanimity is the opposite of this self/other contrivance because it is the realization of the loved one and the hated one as essentially equal. To realize this, one must rid the mind of attraction and repulsion, which according to the Buddha are the very causes of suffering. They are the children of desire; they actually begin the cycle of karmic cause and effect, and they occur every time you have a thought. If there is attraction and repulsion, there is always wanting or not wanting, there is always grasping or pushing away. When attraction arises, to the same degree repulsion will also occur because the ordinary mind exists in a state of duality. If you do not experience it at that very moment it will be experienced at some future time, perhaps next year or next lifetime.  Once a cause and effect relationship is set up it always realizes itself.

Equanimity becomes necessary, then, in order to have a profound and continuously stable experience in one’s meditation or practice, not floating on the ups and downs of attraction and repulsion.  Through equanimity one understands the equality of all phenomena.  The way that the Buddha teaches us to establish equanimity in the mind is to realize true nature, which is the underlying reality of all phenomena, including self-nature. The Buddha teaches us that the primordial wisdom state, or the ground from which phenomena spontaneously arise is clear — it has the quality of innate wakefulness. Yet the moment that you describe it you lose it, because to wrap concepts around it makes it a contrived, unnatural experience. Realizing the natural state comes through realizing equanimity, through learning how that natural state might appear or how it might be viewed, how it might arise. Then by eliminating desire from the mind stream one has the potential to experience the natural state in meditation.

How do you begin to attain this pure view of equanimity? First of all you should look at yourself in the mirror and ask, “Which part is self? Where exactly is self?” Maybe you think it’s in your brain. Imagine that you can open up your head. Can you find self there? Where’s your identity? Look at every little piece under a microscope. Where is self? Then look at something else you identify with. Do you have great legs? Look at your legs, take them apart.  Look at the bones, the muscle, the cellulite. Can you find self in there? Or look in your liver, or heart, or your chakras. Maybe self is in one of your chakras. You look inside, but you can’t find it. You take yourself apart and examine every single molecule under the microscope and you still haven’t found self. So you understand then that self-nature is a concept or a contrivance that is born of a certain type of consciousness which is actually an idea of separation — the separation between self and other. The whole thing is a conceptual proliferation. In examining the nature of self we understand that self-nature is inherently empty, that it doesn’t exist the way we thought.

If self is not real, maybe I should look and see if I can find “other.” Do the same thing with all the “others” in the world. Take everybody apart, examine everything. And after you do all of this you will find that many of the things by which you have structured your life are not as they appear. From that you can begin in a courageous way to determine what true nature really is. It is through meditation that you may come to sense or understand this primordial wisdom state that is free of all conceptualizations, free of any religious idea, free of any perception of self and other yet experienced and felt as luminous and awake.

How is it then that one’s loved one and one’s enemy become essentially the same? It is because they are understood to be the same nature, the same taste. Buddha teaches that all phenomena, when understood through pure view and the stabilization of one’s mind, are the same taste. It is only desire and the attraction to other that makes loved ones and enemies seem inherently real and separate in the way we always consistently experience them.

The equality of all sentient beings allows the arising of the purely loving viewpoint found in the other three Immeasurables. One of these three is loving kindness. This kindness is not about acting kind, or adopting a set of rules to be a nice person. Instead, the Buddha’s view understands that profound nature as having one taste, realizing that all beings are equal. Their happiness has exactly the same weight as mine, exactly the same importance.  From this viewpoint, one naturally develops loving kindness. There is no progress without it:  This exceptional quality of desiring the happiness of all sentient beings is what the Buddha means by loving kindness.

The next of the Four Immeasurables is compassion. Here one realizes the needs of others by realizing the intense suffering of others. One realizes the fragile nature of impermanence, the needs of sentient beings and how they suffer. The wisdom, stability and intensity of determination that comes through a solid realization of these things, the compassion that arises naturally from this is the second of the Four Immeasurables.

The third is joy. Ordinarily we grow up thinking that if we just develop a good attitude and if we are positive we’re going to look happy and therefore be happy. We’re taught, “I want mine and when I get mine then I’ll be joyful because I’ll be able to act joyful then.” But the Buddha talks about joy in the well-being of others. An example would be: if I hear that you have a new car I am happy for you because you have attained even a moment of temporary happiness. I don’t make a judgment like, “Well, you’ve already got three cars, or hey, there are lots of people starving and you have a new car.”

Instead, the practice is this: the happier you are, the happier I am. If even for one moment you have achieved some level of happiness I should bless that happiness and think, “May that happiness bring you to such a point of stability and regard, may it afford you the generosity to think about others and wish for their well-being to the extent that you attain realization. May that car be the cause for your realization, may you be free of suffering in all its forms.” Or, “I wish you could have six hundred cars; I wish you could have everything that makes you happy.” It’s the joy that naturally occurs from sincerely wishing for the happiness and well-being of all sentient beings, to the extent that whatever they are capable of in terms of achieving some degree of relaxation, peace, time out from suffering, or whatever they are able to achieve that is of any benefit or any use to them at all, I am sincerely happy for them because they are the same as me and inseparable from me.

Without the Four Immeasurables and the pure view that’s implied by them, there is no enlightenment. They can be developed in the same way that you have cultivated any of the talents or abilities you have developed during your life — through determination, through taking the time to really examine the emptiness of self-nature and the emptiness of phenomena, through meditation and stabilizing the mind through pure perception of the natural primordial wisdom state, through the determination to attain compassion. It does not happen effortlessly. So it does no good to throw your hands up and say, “I can’t do this, I just can’t think that way.” Neither can anyone else.

All the great Buddhas and Bodhisattvas began as sentient beings, in a state of confusion. Through the same kind of practice that you are embarking on now, they stabilized their minds and developed not only loving kindness and compassion, but the extraordinary pristine Bodhicitta that is the basis and the method for the attainment of enlightenment.

The ground from which you arise thinking that you are self and thinking that self and other are inherently real and separate, that ground is the same ground that gives rise to the most pristine compassion, the most glorious of spontaneous celestial awareness when realized with pure view. That ground is your nature, and in potential you are the same as all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Holding that in your mind, continue with determination, knowing that all things are possible.

© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Vajrayana is for This Time

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An excerpt from a teaching called Vajrayana’s Final Hour by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The tradition we practice here is called Vajrayana. This particular kind of teaching most greatly benefits people who are born in this degenerate aeon. There is something about Vajrayana that seems to burn the candle at both ends. When one practices generation stage practice for example, one does not suppress the compulsion to consider oneself a “self” or ego but rather uses that inclination. There is an energy associated with clinging   to oneself as an ego that is a lot like a rubber band. You can try to think of something else, but however much you stretch it, it will always come back to its original shape. That compulsion to consider self-nature as being inherently real is similar to the energy-that causes a rubber band to reform; we have that energy instinctively within our minds.

Vajrayana actually uses that inclination in generation stage practice. There we meditate on Emptiness, on the natural uncontrived primordial state of Emptiness. We consider that all elements of perceptual phenomena are broken into their natural component: sheer luminosity. Meditating on emptiness or shunyata, we then generate the deity using that same energy that causes us to consider self-nature. Generating ourselves as the deity, we generate the pure display having all the pure qualities of the deity. Arising from emptiness, we generate the pristine Nature in such a way as to be a phenomenal thing, a display. It is visible to our eyes and our consciousness. We use the very energy that causes us to cling to self-nature to accomplish realization. Vajrayana has that unique quality. Can you see how it burns the candle at both ends? We use what we have — that fire, that passion, even desire, to accomplish the Primordial Wisdom Nature.

In this time of degeneration, I am taught that there will come a time when there is no teaching in the world that can bring us to enlightenment. There will be no path, no Bodhisattvas that incarnate, and the Buddha will not be present in the world. It will be a time of great darkness and wars. And finally  there will be a time of night, of darkness.  Immediately after that the next Buddha will appear again.

Now while things are becoming darker and more condensed, one still has a shot. Things are lining up so that if one were to sincerely practice a technology that can lead to enlightenment and that has brought others repeatedly to enlightenment, if one were to practice that with fervent regard, devotion, and faith in a pristine way, then one could achieve the auspicious result — realization during the course of this lifetime, or in the Bardo, or an auspicious rebirth in order to practice purely and perfectly.

© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

What is Enlightenment?

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An excerpt from a teaching called The Seed of Your Buddha Nature Within by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

One understands that Enlightenment is actually the awakening to the Primordial Wisdom Nature, the awakening to the Buddha nature.  The Buddha never said that he was different from anyone else. He said simply, “I am awake.” He is indicating that he has awakened to the fullness of his own Nature and is able to abide spontaneously in that awakened state without any interruption or impediment. So, from that perspective, the basis of practice, the basis of the path itself is exactly the same as the goal. They are indistinguishable from one another. The path that one uses in order to achieve the goal is also indistinguishable from the basis, which is the Buddha Nature, and is also indistinguishable from the goal, which is the Buddha Nature. So, these three things, the basis, the method and the goal are indistinguishable from one another.

For us, however, it does not appear to be so, simply because of the way our minds work, involved in discursive thought as they are. We distinguish between what is potential and movement. We distinguish between movement and the goal. But in truth, you cannot distinguish between these three. If the basis for practice is the same as the goal, then anything in which you engage in order to achieve that awakening to your own Nature, must also be indistinguishable from your own Nature. The path, then, or the method, is not separate from the Buddha Nature.

Now, where we run into trouble is when we make our Dharma practice an outward movement that goes somewhere. When we do our practice, we project that there is going to be a certain result. That very subtle concept prevents the practice from doing all that it can do to remove obstacles from our own perception, because we cling to the idea of here-ness and there-ness, of such-ness and thus-ness, and in doing so, we cling to the idea of self. It’s very hard to understand that subtle difference, but that subtle difference is very important. If we did not view our Dharma practice as a subject, object, thing or as a linear movement in some way, we would more easily understand that the goal is the un-moveable, unchangeable, fully complete and spontaneously realized Nature itself, which is already present. The potential for the realization of that Nature would be much stronger in our practice, in terms of taking responsibility for our situation and utilizing our practice to its fullest capacity.

In order for us to consider our Dharma practice, or even the ability to listen to teachings, as a movement that ‘goes somewhere’– we have to be considering it in a very superficial way. But if the practice is understood as a natural and spontaneous manifestation, arising from the Buddha Nature that is our Nature, then the practice becomes less materialistic and more meaningful in a very profound way. In the same way, if we are in an ordinary environment and an ordinary teacher comes before us, we don’t respond as we would if the Buddha himself, with all the signs and marks, were sitting in front of us. If the Buddha appeared, we would respond with, “Whoa! Whoa! This is important! Something is happening here. The Buddha is here!” In truth, we should respond that same way to our own simple practice because that practice is indistinguishable from the Buddha Nature itself. The Buddha is here. But  the impact is different in the way that we consider and understand what we are doing.

© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The Big Picture

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An excerpt from a teaching called True Motivation for Kindness by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The Buddha teaches us that everything a sentient being does has a little hook on the end of it. And the hook is: I…me…always about me. So you have to watch when you’re being kind that you’re not being kind just to be a certain way. What you really want to do is to alleviate the suffering of sentient beings. It’s about them, not about you. Get the big picture. All sentient beings are suffering. Get that they, like you, don’t wish to suffer.

You can help others understand the value of kindness. You can demonstrate it. You can begin to show people the value of being of benefit to others. You can help people to understand in some simple way that there is something better than the superficiality that they are revolving in. You can pray for their enlightenment. Make prayers for the end of hunger, prayers for the end of war, prayers for the end of suffering in all its forms. You can do that, and in doing that, you have actually entered onto the Path. It’s just a baby step, but a good one. It is one thing that you can do quietly in your heart. No one ever sees it. You can do it without expecting anyone to pay you back.

The upshot of all of this then is to consider compassion in a new way, in a sense to consider it in an ordinary way, in that you can truly practice it within the context of your life. But more than that, know yourself! See what your motivation is. On this path your motivation is everything. Examine the faults of cyclic existence so that when you accept the hard work of this path, even if it’s just simply acting in a compassionate way, accomplish it for the right reasons.

Take into yourself the fundamental truth that cyclic existence is faulted, but that the Buddha said there is an end to suffering, and it is attainable to you if you open your eyes and act appropriately. Don’t waste your time gathering unto yourself things that you cannot take with you. Don’t waste your time. Practice the Path.

© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Je Lama

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Je Lama

Why don’t you tell me

What to do

I been thinking it over

And this I know:

That there is suffering

Everywhere I go.

And so I’m ready

Nothing else to do

Now is my time

I give it all to you

So I offer my

Body, Speech and Mind

And all I have

In the three times

Cause I know it’s holy

What we are inside

In that nature

Liberation resides.

© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, March 1992

Why We Die

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An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series

Did you ever watch yourself when you were young? Did you see what you did? Do you watch young people now? Look at the teenagers you know. They are invariably right. They know everything. I knew everything at that age, too, so I understand. They know beyond everything. If there is more than everything, they know it. They have all the answers.

We are also like that. We are locked within a time-and-space grid. When we drop something, it falls, immediately. What makes it so immediate? If it were to hang in the air for ten years, then fall, invariably we would convince ourselves it’s never going to fall. But since it falls immediately, since when we stick our hands in the fire, it hurts immediately, we believe that. Old age, sickness and death we don’t believe. We sort of get it, but it’s in the back of our minds somewhere.

Why is it we don’t fully believe in cause and effect, even though we take into account the passage of time? It’s because we are trying to be happy, so we convince ourselves that cause and effect is not absolute. Why is that? How is it that we can understand that we create the causes of suffering in our mind, and yet still convince ourselves it will not bear the fruit of suffering? It’s because karma appears to ripen in different ways. Karma can ripen immediately. If I drop something and it falls, this is karma ripening. I dropped it; it fell. Karma can also ripen in a different way.

Because of your belief that self-nature is inherently real, you have created the delusion of a self. Self has a beginning and it has an end, and that is the cause for death. The cause for death is the belief in self-nature as being real; that is why people die. Yet you will convince yourself it is okay to believe in self-nature, that there is no problem as long as you can find a way to make self happy. You think it’s going to be okay. But you are still going to die. We are doing this to ourselves, and we don’t even realize it. The self is a finite thing. It had a beginning, a time when it was conceived. There was a time when the thought of self-nature as being inherently real first manifested. Since that is so, then it also must end. If there is a beginning, there is an end.

In the same way, we are constantly engaged in creating things that are the karmic causes of our own suffering, but we don’t make a connection. The reason we don’t make a connection is due to the other kind of karmic ripening, the one that you don’t see in this life. The karma that ripens after a long time, an intermediate time, or even a short time, are karmic ripenings that you actually do not see in this lifetime.

Here then is a problem. Here is one of the reasons why it becomes very difficult to realize the unchangeable truth that all sentient beings wish to be happy, and yet not realizing how to create the causes of happiness, create instead the causes of suffering.

Many of the things that we have suffered in this lifetime seem to have been put upon us in an innocent way. We were innocent. Why is someone born with a cleft palate? Why are some of us born with a crippling condition, some handicap? Why do some of us become ill or die when we have tried to live a good life, when we have done everything we can to be kind to other human beings and have never killed anyone? It is because many of the causes that we see in this lifetime have come from a time before.

© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Many are More Precious than One

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A Teaching from Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Three thousand years ago Lord Buddha introduced the idea of great compassion to an unknowing world. After his enlightenment he was asked to teach others the means to supreme realization. Although he was tempted to simply leave — knowing that almost no one would be interested in his teachings, and of those who were, few would try to follow them and fewer still would succeed — he nonetheless replied, “For those few, I will remain.”

Buddha is the exceptional teacher who teaches the development of great and selfless compassion as part of the technology of the path to enlightenment. But to develop such great love, it is first necessary to familiarize oneself with the nature of suffering and especially with its causes. Amidst the array of spiritual teachings, this perspective is unique because most people do not understand the reasons for suffering or how suffering appears in the world.

The Buddha taught us that human happiness through ownership, eating, drinking, gaining love, stature, approval, or even the happiness of engaging in pleasurable activities is at best temporary. These experiences do not prevent suffering because between these happy times we can experience times of distress.

Nor do happy times solve questions concerning the nature of suffering and why it arises. The Buddha taught that the happiness of enlightenment is not composed of impermanent things but occurs when one cuts out the sources of all unhappiness. Through understanding and meditation, one liberates the mind into true awareness, a state free of conditions and defilements. This pure awareness is a lasting state.

Ultimately, the attitude of care-taking or being responsible for the wellbeing of others, of caring for planet earth, its inhabitants and all the 3,000 myriads of universes described in Buddhist cosmology  is the true cause for ultimate and permanent happiness. Being responsible for all sentient beings is a spiritual technology the Buddha taught to be the supreme antidote to selfishness, compulsive desire, self absorption and all other symptoms of the ego.

When we remain selfish and neurotically fixated in the ego, we remain deeply unhappy. When we are in a state of profound generosity, having a relaxed mental attitude and pure motivation, we remain stable in a state of joy. Yet if we view caring for others only as a medicine, we may miss the beauty of it.

No sentient being is born with pure, unconditional, constant love. In the beginning, selflessness and generosity require discipline. Like all things, they must arise from a cause. One must break old habitual tendencies, and this requires discipline. Initially, one must understand the values of generosity and the pitfalls of selfishness. One cannot then rely on one’s feelings, because they are products of an ego distorted by the self-centered habits that produce unhappiness and disregard for others. It is necessary to understand the cause and effect relationship here.

Happiness does not just appear. Enlightenment does not just appear. Neither do unhappiness or suffering just appear. When one understands this apparently simple truth, it is possible to make generosity part of one’s activity in a true and lasting way, because one has a basis of understanding that will support and uphold the discipline necessary in the initial stages.

Ultimately, through persistence one can soar. There is a point at which a great leap takes place and one moves into an experience of effortlessness. This is because ultimately, in the pure state, compassion is part of one’s nature. We each, in fact, live in a world of our own making and have the choice of living selfishly, trying in a futile way to get happiness through gaining or having more phenomena (whether external or internal)  or we can live a life of generosity and responsibility, cognizant that there are many more sentient beings than just our selves.

Because their value is equal, many pieces of gold are worth more than a single coin. So it is with sentient beings. Many are more precious than one. Fortified with that awareness, one can live and act accordingly with simplicity, generosity and respect for life. The attitude of cherishing all sentient beings as though they were truly the same as you is a deeply moving and personal experience. It is a life changer. It is also the cause of happiness.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Like Milk with Water

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An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhism Differs from Other Religions by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

When we begin to practice the Buddha dharma and really engage in practice, we begin by practicing generation stage teaching.  And what that means is you learn to generate yourself as the deity.  You learn to dissolve your ordinary constituents.  Boom.  You just dissolve.  This is your visualization.  And then you give rise to yourself as a seed syllable, and then from the seed syllable, you become the deity.  Tara, Vajradhara, Manjushri.  Any of those.  You become that deity, and you give rise to Vajra pride.   It’s not like “Ha Ha.  I’m the deity and you’re not.”  It’s the realization of your nature and the nobility of that.  And you become that very deity, and you begin to develop the qualities of that deity by reciting the mantra and practicing the hand implements.   Eventually when you accomplish the deity, at that very moment you come to understand that you are not separate from that deity and that deity is your very nature.

As we move on to practice the Guru Yoga, we realize that the teacher on the throne that we revere and think has great wisdom and great bodhicitta, has special qualities.   When you really accomplish Guru Yoga, you mix your mindstream with the Guru’s mindstream like milk with water.  And they become so inseparable that in the end you realize that your own root guru is the very display of your mind.  How amazing!  That’s how deep this path is.   And to practice it superficially is crazy.   You can do that anywhere else.  You can be superficial anywhere you want to, but to come here and practice, you should practice deeply.

Please take to heart aspirational prayers, and developing the habit of making aspirational prayers.  Please start there right now, and give rise to the understanding that all are the same in our nature, and that we all wish to be happy.

The happiest people in the world are people who are happy in their own mind.  Those that have awakened and have realized, are filled with the streaming bliss of the bodhicitta.  There’s no unhappiness.   There’s no drama.   There’s no BS.  You see?  And that’s how we know we’re making it.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Walk the Talk

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An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhism Differs from Other Religions by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The most glorious thing about the Buddha Dharma is that you don’t wait for a blessing outside of you for permission or the grace to ascend to the heavens for no apparent reason.  That’s the great thing about Dharma.  It’s real.   In the Dharma you are given the tools that you need to change the circumstances of your life, and to change the condition of your consciousness as well.  And the way that that happens of course is through our practice.

The difference between our own religion, which is basically a non-theistic religion and other religions, is that other religions see a blessing from outside.  They wait for a redeemer who will make it okay no matter what their activity is.  For instance, in my family my stepfather was Catholic, and he was an alcoholic and would beat us mercilessly.  We were brutalized as children.  It was a terrible situation, but then we’d all tromp off to confession.  Free and clear by Sunday afternoon.   So, I don’t have a good feeling about that, because they were never required to change.  Even the parish priest knew that my mother was getting the stew beat out of her all the time, and he would recommend confession.

We Buddhists are not like that.  We believe and understand in the relationship between cause and effect.  You can’t murder a handful of people and then confess and accept Jesus as your savior and be okay.  We don’t believe that.  You can’t accept Buddha as your savior and be okay.  You can’t accept me as your savior and be okay.  You have to walk the talk.  You have to walk the path, and you have to practice.

Your conduct matters a great deal.  What’s in your mind matters even more.  And if as you practice your path your joy increases and it smoothes out for you, you know you’re getting somewhere.

In the Buddha Dharma we do not wait.  We understand that there are the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas, and we are taught that there was Shakyamuni Buddha, Vajrasattva, Amitabha, and Tara.  We’ve got all these different statues, and they are symbols of the Buddhas.   Do they actually exist?  Yes.   Can you pray to them?  Sure.  Are they separate from you?  No.   That’s the difference.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

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