Buddhism | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

Extraordinary Technology

December 15, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

Let’s say that a practitioner has dedicated their lives to practicing everyday for the sake of sentient beings, for the happiness of sentient beings. Maintaining their samaya or commitment practice very purely, practicing everyday for the sake of sentient beings. That’s extraordinary compassion. Even though you are doing it here on earth, the method for doing that did not come from the earth. It came from the realization and the awakening of the Buddha. If not for the Buddha’s awakening, the technology would not be here. And so it’s extraordinary compassion. And as we progress along the path, the first thing that we do is to practice ordinary and extraordinary compassion. These are the two feet of the path. This is what gives you the ability to go the distance. If all you’re concerned about is yourself and your own delusions and illusions and your own BS, and really not out there for the sake of sentient beings or doing your practice every single day for the sake of sentient beings, then you’re not there yet. And that’s why we call it practice.

Nobody comes here ready to fly. Nobody. If that were the case, you wouldn’t need to come here. But you come here with a taste. There must be some old habit in you, some karma. Something that you’ve given rise to in the past that puts you here in this moment. I beg you to take advantage of it. Because in order to get to the point where you can sit at the feet of your guru, and listen to the precious Buddha dharma, and then go to New York and hear His Holiness teach the precious Buddha dharma, you must have made so many wishing prayers, and must have done so much virtuous conduct in the past. And if your path goes smoothly, then you know that you’ve done it before. And if you give rise to the Bodhicitta, then you are not a stranger to it. And this is how we know where we’ve been, and what we were like simply by looking at ourselves.

If we’re poor, we didn’t give enough. If we’re sick, we did not see to the welfare of others or caused them harm. If we are mentally incapacitated, then we caused someone or many people mental suffering in the past. Those that die young have either killed others young or caused others to die young. So these are the things that we are looking for and these are the things that we can overcome by practicing the Buddha dharma. It can be overcome.

Creating Happiness

December 14, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

If all we want is happiness, how do we do it? It’s a little, but there’s a real trick to it, but you can create happiness. Here’s how it’s done. First of all, all sentient beings are equal. And in our nature, we are not only the same, we are one. From the point of view of Buddhahood, if the Buddha were to look out at everyone, and look from the mind of awakening, in the state of enlightenment, it would not be possible to see where one of us ends, and the other begins, because our true nature is pure, pristine, primordial light. It’s not visible light in the way that we understand light, because when you see light then you are standing away from it. You would call it undifferentiated, nonconceptual illumination – radiance. That is our nature. So when we defile that nature in our relationships with others, and cause harm to others, we suffer. If we could do the opposite, and try to benefit others, we would create happiness.

It doesn’t seem to be the truth because we think, “Gimme, gimme, gimme.” This is what America has taught us. This is what our culture says to us. “Gimme a car. I’ll be happy. Give me a boyfriend, I’ll be happy. Give me another boyfriend, I’ll be twice as happy.” That’s what we’re taught. We’re taught that gimme, gimme, gimme is the way to happiness. It’s kind of the modern mantra, isn’t it? “Gimme, gimme, gimme hung.” We try very hard, and it doesn’t work that way.

What we find out is that in our oneness, we must uphold one another. We must not only practice kindness towards one another, but practice recognition. So, let’s say in my desire to be happy, I decide the only thing that’s going to work for me is a new car. In my materialistic American psyche that’s what I’ve decided. I saw this new car on TV, and I’ve got to have it. Whatever I do to get money for that car, even if it’s honest, even if I go to my credit union, and borrow, make my payments, and I do everything right, it’s ordinary. It’s just regular. It’s the stuff that you move around when you move an apple from here to there. It’s nothing but ordinary, worldly gobbledygook.

So you go to your credit union, and you get the dollars, and you get the car, and then what happens? You’re happy for a little while, and then the car gets old. The baby throws up in it. The dog shits in it. You spill milk in it. You drive it, and it gets old, or you smash it up. Or now that you’ve bought it and gone to the credit union and cleaned all your money out, you don’t have money for gas! This is not the way to create happiness. Even though the car might cheer you up for a little while, it is not going to change your life. It is not going to do what you hope it’s going to do. And it’s the same with the big ticket items – the house. And the non-buyable items like relationships, and marriages, and boyfriends, and girlfriends and all that stuff. All are like band aids in samsara – quick fixes. When you’re unhappy and you grab for something like that, your intuition tells you you’re going to feel better, but the real solution is counterintuitive.

Ordinary or Extraordinary?

December 13, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

In the Buddha Dharma there are mainly two kinds of compassion. There is ordinary compassion, and there is extraordinary or sublime compassion, also called ordinary bodhicitta or sublime bodhicitta. Bodhicitta is the great display of compassion, which is our own primordial nature. Ordinary bodhicitta is the caring for others through the means that we can find on this earth. In other words, caring for others through ordinary means. Like for instance, if you see somebody that’s hungry and you give them a sandwich. That’s compassionate, but it’s ordinary compassion because you know you didn’t get the sandwich from the sublime realms. You got it from a kitchen or you bought it somewhere. It’s ordinary stuff that went into it – baloney or salami or peanut butter and jelly. It’s ordinary even if you make 150 sandwiches and you pass them out to the hungry homeless. That’s a real good day, but still ordinary compassion because it’s easily attainable.

There are many hungry people now in Burma. No matter what the junta says, the people are not eating, and they are sick and dying. Let’s say somehow we magically can put together everything they need, and just bust through the blockades and give it to the people. Let’s say we airdrop everything they need, and the whole place is satisfied. The people have tents or homes or something to live in. They have the means to get food. They have food. They have bedding; they have everything because of this magnificent airdrop that you made. Let’s say that’s possible. That would take an awful lot of money, but still in all it’s ordinary human compassion. We never see ordinary humans doing that very much, and that goes to show you the pickle we’re in. But it’s still ordinary human compassion.

Now, what is supreme or extraordinary compassion? That is compassionate activity that concerns and offers that which is not of this world. The great bodhisattvas that return again and again are considered to demonstrate the great bodhicitta, because the nature of the bodhisattva is such that once they attain certain bhumis, which are levels of realization, then at that time they can step into enlightenment or step into nirvana and attain the rainbow body at any moment. But they hold back because they wish to benefit sentient beings. They look at the suffering of sentient beings. They see this terrible suffering and it moves them, and they return to earth to show them the way out of that suffering. That is considered extraordinary compassion. So then translating, teaching, creating the books of Dharma, offering these ancient teachings in a modern world so that modern people can continue to benefit from something that would ordinarily be lost to them, that is considered extraordinary compassion.

When I held my little new born son in my arms, I thought, “I would do anything for you. I will care for you. I will keep you warm. I will give you my milk, and when you’re done with that, I will bake pies. I’ll do anything for you.” And then I realized I was lying to him, because if my son were to get gravely ill, I would have no power to help him. Or if my son were to die, even though I told him I would never abandon him, I would not be able to follow him into the next rebirth. I would not be able to see to his welfare. So, there’s my baby in my arms, and I have lied to him.

That was one of the main things that made me practice really hard when I was young. I made it my business to learn how to provide the Phowa, which is the transference of consciousness from one level to the next, or from one life to the next rebirth. I made myself learn to do that so that I could help people, and dogs, and cats, and anybody in the dying process, and so I could even follow my own child into the next life, and make sure that his rebirth is good. I’ve attained that goal. And I’m very happy for it. Do you see the difference there? A mother’s love is so powerful, so extraordinary. You would feed your child your own body if they were hungry. And you look in the eyes of your child and you think, “Never has there been love like this. I would do anything for you.” But until that compassion applies to all sentient beings, and we have the skills through our own realization, we are lying. And we are not able to do very much for those we love. That is the one of the differences between ordinary and supreme bodhicitta.

Like a Seesaw

December 12, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

We tend to do things that give us a rush, but it doesn’t make us happy. For instance, let’s say we decide to drink some alcohol, and we decide to do it a lot, and we decide to get loaded every weekend, and we think, “Boy, you know that gives me something to look forward to because all week long I can be a good person, and then on the weekend I can get loaded, and then I’ll be happy.” Of course, it doesn’t happen. Generally, what happens is your body gets sicker. You get dependent on alcohol in order to feel anything. And you know eventually the mind just churns in samsara and no new habits or no new understandings or anything that will actually make you happy occurs. We just get drunk. And then we sober up on Monday. And that’s it. That’s all that happens. But we keep thinking that if we do it every weekend, and if we do it better every weekend, then eventually one weekend it’s really going to make us happy, and it’s going to last. And of course, that’s foolish because it never works. There’s something about human consciousness that makes it difficult for us to learn from experience. It’s like banging into the wall constantly. And we go on with behavior that actually makes our situation worse rather than easing it or making us happy or making it better in any way.

For instance, let’s say you really feel that you would be happy if you had more money. I can’t say that I haven’t thought that. And I’m sure if I’ve thought that, pretty much everybody has thought it at least once. And so we think, “Wow, if I had some money, I could do some things, and I would be happier. I’d really like to go on vacation this summer, and there’s no money to do it with so wouldn’t I be happy if I could go on vacation.” It’s that kind of thinking. Let’s say that you put a lot of energy into getting this money. Let’s say in fact that you put so much energy into it that you’re not quite kosher about it. You’re not quite above board. Let’s say you lie a little. Somehow that brings you a little money. Let’s say you cheat a little. Somehow that brings you a little money. Let’s say you steal a little bit. Somehow that brings you a little bit of money. You may get the money. You may go to jail too. You may get the money and you may go on vacation, but guess what? You have set yourself up for more suffering than you could possibly imagine, because even if the vacation goes well, the moment that you took from others, and were dishonest and acted selfishly, at that very instant when you gave rise to a negative cause, the result was also born. Did you know that? We think we get away with it until we get caught. And it’s not true. The moment we create a nonvirtuous cause, the result is born – at the same moment.

In our lives it seems different because it seems like time is linear. And it seems like you were really nonvirtuous on Thursday but by Saturday it is still looking good for you. So you think, “I got away with it.” No, it doesn’t work that way because you gave rise to the cause, so the result is already there. Just because it didn’t ripen on Saturday means nothing. It will happen. You will have karma with the person that you were dishonest with or that you stole from or that you harmed in some way, and that person will harm you in the future, whether they want to or not, it will happen, because karma is exacting. It’s cause and effect.

If you can understand how a seesaw works, you can understand how karma works. If you can understand how you could drop a rock on one side of the pond and feel the vibration on another side of the pond, then you understand how karma works. Although we can’t see it manifesting in front of our eyes, that’s our great loss because we still think we get away with it. And it’s simply not true. Let’s say we go ahead and steal, we go on vacation, and we think it all works out, and then six months later, something dastardly happens to us. And maybe it reminds you a little bit of the situation in which you were not nice to somebody, and maybe it doesn’t. If you do catch the connection, bully for you. You’ve learned something and that’s excellent, but if you don’t catch the connection, and most of us don’t, then it’s unfortunate.

What We All Want

December 11, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

When we study Buddhism, the first thing we come to understand is the equality of all that lives. This is a direct teaching from none other than Shakyamuni Buddha himself. He taught that all beings are essentially equal in their nature and that they all have the same exact desires that we have. We want to be happy. We strive for happiness in our own way everyday. We go here and go there to be happy. We rest to be happy. We wake up to be happy. We have our weekends to be happy. We hope the weekdays will be happy. It’s something that’s a theme in us and whether we consciously realize that we are striving for happiness or not, it is an underlying fuel that runs the machine. And when we are not happy, we are filled with desire. And when we are not happy, we are suffering.

The Buddha taught us that each and every sentient being – humans, animals, and even nonphysical beings mainly wish to be happy in the simple way that we do. I watch MSNBC news sometimes, and I watch Chris Matthews and Keith Oberman. And Chris Matthews always says in one of his commercials, “This is something uniquely American. This is something that really shows us who we are.” We are Americans, because in America there is the hope that this day is going to be the best day. And that this is going to be our favorite day, and that we are going to be really happy today. And so we wake up in America with that hope because we have the freedom to gain that happiness. We’re not oppressed or starving or homeless or something where there is no real potential for true happiness, comfort, or ease. I disagree with Chris Matthews even though I am a fan. I don’t think that only in America do we wake up with that thought. Maybe in America it seems more attainable. But the truth of the matter is, no matter where we are, what diseases we suffer from, what poverty or hunger or disability we endure, or what oppression or warlike conditions, every single person has the wish for the freedom to be happy, and wishes for happiness.

When we realize that all sentient beings are exactly the same in that way, an understanding comes up in our minds. It is a sense of the equality of all that lives. Perhaps it is a sense of budding compassion or understanding. That’s the goal anyway.

So, how does that work? Sometimes we hear about really terrible situations, and really terrible people, such as a serial killer who has murdered like Jeffrey Dahmer. Have you ever heard about him? He was a serial killer that used to cannibalize people, and live with their dead bodies, and stuff like that. Now, of course our understanding of that is that the man was extremely sick. We can understand that, but do we understand that as strange and abhorrent and bizarre, and as ghastly his behavior was, he was striving to be happy? But the confusion, the delusion in his mind was so thick, that in order to be happy, he had to completely dominate another life form. Yet underlying that, even while killing, maiming and torturing people, he was striving to be happy. That’s a bizarre thought, but it helps us to understand a little bit about the nature of suffering sentient beings.

Then we think about animals. For those of you that don’t know, I just adore animals. I feel very close to them, and I have a bunch. They are my family. Animals suffer too, and I have come to understand through my own experience, not just from the teachings, that animals also strive every day to be happy. I see my dogs move from a hot place to a cool place, from a cool place to a warm place, and it’s about wanting to feel comfortable, to be happy. Whenever you buy them a new toy or a new treat, they are gung-ho on it because they want to be happy. I’ve seen for myself that desire for happiness in humans and in animals. And so I absolutely and totally understand that what the Buddha has said is true. While we are striving to be happy, we have absolutely no understanding as to how to go about it. And therein lies the rub, as they say. Therein lies the problem.

Practical Bodhicitta

December 8, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

All of our suffering is brought about because we have desire in our mindstreams. Having desire, we have attachment and aversion, hope and fear. Examine your own thoughts. Every one of them is either a thought of hope or a thought of fear. There isn’t one that doesn’t have as an underlying cause of hope or fear, attraction or aversion. Every one. That is the way the mind of duality works. So all of the experiences that we have, according to the Buddha, are caused by the karma of desire. Making wishing prayers to return in a form in which you can benefit beings purifies the mind of desire. You will find that desire rules your mind less and less. Compassion is the great stabilizer of the mind.

Never stop cultivating aspirational Bodhicitta. While you are practicing aspirational Bodhicitta your mind becomes firm and stabilized. You are so on fire that you need to practice, in the same way that because you are determined to live, you always remember to breathe. With that intensity, you should be absolutely determined to accomplish compassion and benefit all beings. You always remember to practice and be mindful. Then you begin to practice practical Bodhicitta.

Practical Bodhicitta has two divisions. It has a lesser and greater division, or personal and a transpersonal division. Compassion on the personal level is what we call ordinary human kindness. It is invaluable. There is never a time in your life that you should not practice ordinary human kindness. I am sometimes dismayed at people who have a high-fallutin’ idea about compassion and how to practice the Vajrayana path, and they know how to do the proper instrumentation and they can chant and they can do all these wonderful things. But they aren’t kind to one another. How you can think of yourself as a real practitioner and not even be nice to the person next to you? How can you be arrogant?

Ordinary human kindness must be constantly practiced. If you know of someone who is hungry, you should do your best to feed them. If a starving child were in front of you, wouldn’t you feed him or her? If someone that you loved really was lonely, wouldn’t you try to help them? Of course, these are ordinary human kindnesses. We’re not even perfect in that, are we? I mean, we let ourselves and our families down. We let everybody down on a regular basis. Sometimes ordinary human kindness is impossible to achieve.

Ordinary human kindness is not lesser in its fabric or nature, but it touches less people. For instance, let’s say you needed a friend. If I were to stay with you for some period of time, we would talk and we would share. Maybe I would teach you to meditate, if I were to discover that you’re the kind of person that would really respond to that. But if I don’t do that, maybe I’ll have the time to teach a large group of people. Essentially I might be able to benefit many people as opposed to benefiting one person, even though you are very important and precious to me. Yet even teaching a larger group of people is actually an intermediate level of practice. There are only so many people that can fit in this room and can be taught.

What is the highest level of compassion? What is the highest level of Bodhicitta? You have to go back to the Buddha’s teaching to figure this one out. The Buddha says that all sentient beings are suffering and that there is an end to suffering and that the end to suffering is enlightenment. That’s the only true end to suffering. If you fed every one that’s hungry everyday and provided them each with a companion so that they’re never lonely, gave them nice clothes, they still will experience old age, sickness and death. There’s nothing you can do about that. And you have no control over how they will be reborn in their next incarnation. They could come back in a form in which they still suffer. The only end to suffering is to eradicate the cause of suffering from the mindstream.

The root cause of all suffering is the belief in self-nature as being inherently real. It’s the mother of all-pervasive desire in the mindstream. The children are hatred, greed and ignorance. The mind of duality causes us to act in certain ways that create the karma so that our lives manifest in certain ways. If we suffer from hunger or old age or sickness or death, whatever it is that we suffer from, the root cause for those sufferings is the belief that self-nature is inherently real. How can you possibly uproot all of that from your mindstream? How can you rid the very seed of suffering from your mindstream? According to the Buddha, that is to achieve enlightenment. To help sentient beings remove these causes from their mindstreams, we must ourselves first achieve enlightenment. The purpose of self, which is to achieve enlightenment, is the same as the purpose of other, which is to achieve enlightenment. They are the same, in the same way that we are non-dual, these purposes are non-dual.

To What Do You Aspire?

December 6, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

In the Vajrayana tradition one contemplates very deeply on certain thoughts before you ever go on to any deeper practice, and these thoughts are called the ‘Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind.’ The idea is that your mind becomes turned in such a way that your intention to practice is firm, like a rock. If you were wishy-washy about why you should practice meditation, your meditation will be wishy-washy. There’s no doubt about it. If you were convinced that your job could bring you more eternal and natural happiness than enlightenment, you would practice your job with greater fervor than you would practice enlightenment. Therefore you try to turn your mind so that it has a firm foundation, hard as a rock, upon which you can build your practice.

It’s that way with aspirational Bodhicitta. You have to turn your mind in such a way that you understand the value of compassion and you have to actually ignite your mind. You have to set it on fire, and that fire has to be stronger and hotter and fiercer than any other feeling or idea that you have. It has to burn so strongly that you can’t put it out.

In order to practice aspirational Bodhicitta, you must first of all look around you with courage. Because we Americans, even New Age Americans, don’t like to look around and see that others are suffering. We hate to think about that. We think somehow it’s bad to think like that. According to the Buddha, it isn’t bad to think like that. In fact, you must think like that in order to go on to the next level of practice. You must look around you and be honest and be courageous. If you don’t see suffering in your life, if you don’t know that the people around you are lonely or getting old or getting sick, that they live with worry and with fear, then what you need to do is go to the library and check out books about other cultures and other forms of life, and see what the rest of the world is like. Have you ever seen pictures of Calcutta, India? Have you ever seen pictures of Bangladesh? Have you ever seen pictures of Africa? If you don’t believe that suffering exists in the world, you’ll see it there. Have you ever studied the lives of people who continually do non-virtuous activity? Even though they might look like they’re tough and in control, they are deeply suffering. It behooves you to be courageous enough to examine that. You should look at other life forms. You should look at animals. You should look and see how oxen are treated in India. I speak of India a lot, not because it’s a bad place, but because I’ve been there, and I was shocked. I had no idea how sheltered Americans are from suffering. I had no idea until I saw lepers in the street with no limbs and with open sores.

Having studied these things, you will come to understand that there is suffering in the world. You should cultivate in your heart and mind a feeling of great compassion. You shouldn’t stop until you’ve come to the point that you are on fire and you cannot bear that they are suffering so much. The Buddha says that we have had so many incarnations in so many different forms that every being you see, every one, has been your mother or your father. Whether you believe that or not, it’s a great way to think. Because you look at other beings and see how they are suffering helplessly, with no way to get out of it. And that they, at one time, had given you birth. In that way, you can come to love them in a way that you can practice for them.

You should allow yourself to become so filled with the urgency to practice loving that your heart is on fire and there’s no other subject that interests you as much. Even if it’s uncomfortable; we Americans think we should never be uncomfortable. Sometimes discomfort is very useful. Be uncomfortable and let yourself ache with the need to practice Bodhicitta. Cultivate in yourself that urgency and that determination. You might get to the point where you feel something, and you feel sort of sorry for all sentient beings. You might think, “Okay, now I’ve got it. I’ll go on to the next step.” No, you haven’t got it. You should cultivate compassion from this moment until you reach supreme enlightenment.

Unless they are supremely enlightened no one is born with the perfect mind of compassion. I, and everyone I teach and everyone I know, including my teachers, practice aspirational Bodhicitta everyday, reminding ourselves that all sentient beings suffer unbearably and that we find it unbearable to see. You should continue to cultivate compassion every moment of your life. It will begin to burn in your heart. It’s like love. It’s beautiful. You won’t want ever to be without that divine fire in your heart. It will warm you as no other love can. It will stabilize your mind as no other practice can.

Walk In Recognition

November 25, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from the Mindfulness workshop given by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo in 1999

Practice deeply and mindfully every minute of your life. I’m asking you, I’m pleading with you: don’t practice like a robot. If you can only start with just moments of Recognition throughout the day, start there. Even one. It will increase, I promise you. It’s like building muscle. What a noble and honorable way to live. How amazing! Rather than just clinging to our egos, constantly defining them, and reacting to everything else, practicing some sort of profound Recognition, some sense of the sacred — I mean, is it a real choice? You can see that one life is so much more precious than the other, so much more meaningful, so much more profound, so much more useful for sentient beings.

I hope that you will, in your practice, begin to institute a way to be mindful, not only when you’re sitting down. Sometimes we’re not even mindful when we’re doing our sit-down practice. But to not only be mindful and stretching for that sense of Recognition when we do our practice by carefully, nicely accomplishing the visualization and really discovering its meaning, but also in our lives, to Recognize the nature of appearances, to Recognize that everything is the face of the guru, everything is an opportunity to practice – perhaps that’s a little deeper than walking around saying “Everything is beautiful, everything is love and light.” I hope that you will practice in that way.

I invite you to go deeper and deeper every moment. As a practitioner, every moment that you live with this consciousness, with these precious Dharma teachings in your hands, each moment is like a gift. Each moment is like a Christmas present. Most of us have them, and we just squirrel them away. We just take our moments, we move through linear time collecting moments. But as a practitioner, you can open that package. Each and every gift has Guru Rinpoche’s face in it. Each moment as a practitioner has the capacity in it, the ability and the responsibility, to move into a state of recognition, to awaken.

When you find that you’re thinking, “Oh, some of these monks and some of these nuns aren’t so good,” and, “Now I’m really pissed off at my teacher because she moved to Sedona and then not only that, but it’s my week to clean the bathroom” — when you think things like that and you have these ideas about how it should be and you’re judging this and feeling bad about that, what are you doing? You’re practicing the mandala of self-absorption. You’re putting that ego right in center stage. How amazing instead to turn it around and, should you see that you have some reaction, to question your perception. Question the depth of your practice. That’s where you have potency.

That’s what makes this practice of Buddhism so amazing: the ball is in your court, the practice is in your hands. You’re not waiting for salvation; you’re learning to Recognize it. What’s so potent and so powerful about understanding that is that no one can take that away from you. There is no power that can take Recognition away from you, no power that can take the face of the guru away from you.

I hope you will include this in your practice. I hope you will walk a sacred life. Whatever it takes to remind you, walk a sacred life. Walk in Recognition, not in ignorance. When you use these practices, use them throughout all of your experience.

Watch It

November 19, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from the Mindfulness workshop given by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo in 1999

You’ve heard this so many times in Buddhism: watch your mind. That is an indication to give rise to a state of recognition, the ability to discriminate the nature of phenomena. When we begin to practice in such a way that we can get a little spaciousness in between the assumption of self-nature as inherently real and the reaction to the tree, there is a natural pause that develops. It’s a very small pause, but as you continue to practice, it will grow. That moment of spaciousness will grow. Then you are empowered to do something that you couldn’t do any other way, and that is to get ready to start dealing with your emotions and seeing them for the empty phenomena they actually are.

You know, we have all kinds of techniques for dealing with our emotions. We take Prozac, we go to therapy, we drink – self-medication – we suppress our emotions. Some of us are just champs at that. We repress our emotions, or we divert them. We divert them into something else entirely, and then we’re completely crazy. There are all kinds of different ways to deal with our emotions, but one way to deal with your emotions, if you’re really going to practice this path and you’re really going to treasure this idea of recognition and treasure this idea of practicing mindfulness, you’ve got to watch the mind. You have to watch; you have to perceive the nature of experience, perceive the nature of appearance, perceive the nature of phenomena.

Instead of suppressing emotion, diverting emotion, glossing over emotion, the thing to do here is to practice when we are very relaxed so that when we are in a highly emotional state we can begin to insert that same wedge, that same bit of spaciousness. It’s not that you judge yourself harshly and say, “God, I’m just such a terrible person. I’m just so angry all the time. I hate that about myself!” I actually have a student that does that to herself. “I just hate that about myself!” Well, that’s a solution, isn’t it? “I just hate that about myself.” Instead of doing that, you can simply observe. Observe like a mind that is calm like a lake. You’re observing. That’s all you’re doing. You don’t need to do anything else. Watch yourself in the equation. Watch yourself clinging to the idea of self-nature as being inherently real. Watch yourself assuming that everything else is out there, and watch yourself react to, with hope, fear or neutrality, everything. Watch yourself also go into that emotional state which is really only the elaboration of that original equation. That’s all it is. It’s just an elaboration of the original equation. We think our emotions are us; they’re so precious because we areour feelings, and that’s what makes us unique. That is bull hockey. I don’t know how better to say that.

Instead we have to begin to realize what these emotions are. They are just the continuation or elaboration of that original equation: ego-clinging reactiveness, that equation is simply a more elaborate form. In order to insert the spaciousness that is required, what we have to do is find a way to observe. Even when you’re getting ready to kick the dog and throw the kid through the wall, technically speaking it’s very, very hard when you’re in that state to do much about it. Once you’re there, just wait for it to go away. That’s all you can do. Once you’re there, it’s very difficult, but even if in that aroused, inflamed state we are able to observe ourselves, that is the unique capacity of human beings. Won’t you use it? It’s what distinguishes you from the rest. If there’s anything that makes you special, that’s it: the ability to put that spacious moment in there through observing the reaction. We can just say, “That’s just like me. Yeah, that’s just like me. I do that.” And then maybe questioning oneself later on and understanding, “Well, I do that because I’m protecting my turf; I’m protecting my space; I’m not wanting to change anything; I’m wanting to be powerful and right, so I need to put everybody else down.”

Whatever it is, simply observe, just observe, and you’ll find out that if you do that as consistently, deliberately, honestly, truly and deeply as you can, that after a while – and it doesn’t come immediately, so please don’t look for immediate results necessarily – there will be a spacious moment. It might be just a little moment between you and your reaction, but eventually in your practice, by practicing Dharma, by using generation and completion stage methods, you will be able to recognize. In that spaciousness, you can begin to recognize the emptiness of both the ego and that which affects it. But it takes a combination of things. It takes the ability to practice Dharma the way that our teachers teach us in generating oneself as the deity and practicing completion stage practice, but it also takes this deliberate, walking, waking mindfulness. This is part of the path.

Another Glass of Samsara?

November 18, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from the Mindfulness workshop given by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo in 1999

Do you ever sense that there is a thickness in your mind, almost like pudding? We can’t break through it. It’s like we go through these sleepwalking motions, and you lose days, hours, years. You just lose time, and that thickness is because we already decided, way back somewhere else, that one of the goals in life was to get such-and-such, and in order to get such-and-such, we have to act thus-and-so. Once we decide that, we never think about it again, not really. We never stop to reevaluate. That is the unique thing about our brains. It’s something we really need to understand. Once you come to a conclusion and you conceptualize something, that’s it. You act by rote afterwards. You have to break through that.

In order to really give rise to true compassion, one has to recognize the faults of cyclic existence, and be in a state of recognition. In order to awaken to a state of recognition, to begin that process of discrimination, you have to rouse your mind from going through these preset patterns which are based on deluded ideas that you were given somewhere early on that you’ve never bothered to change. If you don’t change those, you will still try to attain the same type of goals, but you’ll be wearing Dharma clothes and doing Dharma activities when you do it. If you got the message that you have to be a star, be powerful, be smarter, or be some kind of special person, then when you practice Dharma, if you don’t go back and reevaluate that in a mindful and discriminating way, you will simply do the same thing with Dharma clothes on, with Dharma words in your mouth. Basically what we’re doing there is continuing to practice sleepwalking.

This discrimination that I’m talking about is not like a generalized, euphoric state where you walk dreamily outside and you say, “I’m mindful of the Buddha nature and everything.” That’s not what we’re talking about here. This mindfulness is requiring of yourself, stimulating yourself, rousing yourself to rethink, to reassess, and to try to give rise to some recognition of what is precious and what is flawed; of what is extraordinary and what is ordinary.

We can equate the condition we are in ordinarily to be like drunkenness. It’s exactly like drunkenness. Some of my best students –Best with a capital “B,” as in Buddhist – are recovering alcoholics. Recovering alcoholics have a wonderful opportunity because having emerged from the cocoon of constant, chronic alcohol consumption and the cycle of craving and the response, the recovering alcoholic has the opportunity to put aside the drinking and go through the process of picking up one’s awareness again and focusing it. They have the sense of knowing what it’s like to do that for the first time. I’ve talked to many recovering alcoholics, and they always say the worst time is the first time. The worst time is right after you quit drinking, and you notice that you have no mind, and you try to get one going. You try to punch start it somehow. You try to teach your mind how to think in a way that does not always go back into obsession, compulsion, and desire. Recovering alcoholics have this magical understanding of what it’s like when you first get sober and the difference between that sober state – even if it’s a little raw and painful at first – and that other state. They realize that they were not functioning. They understand that they were not “there.” There was nobody home and they were being driven by craving alone. There was nothing else going on. There was nothing in your head but buzz, and the buzz got louder when you walked away from the liquor store, and it got better when you walked toward the liquor store. The opportunity to experience what that’s like, to awaken to sobriety, is a fabulous teacher because it gives one a sense that all sentient beings are alcoholics. We may not be drinking alcohol, but we are guzzling down the samsara! We are high on ego! We don’t ever want to get off that. If we ever, in just one day, spent as much time on our practice as we do on our ego, we would be changed forever.

Having that experience of suddenly awakening to a sober state is not so different from moving out of the drunkenness of preconceived patterns and ideas, with all of their judgments, reactions and habitual tendencies of doing what you thought you were supposed to be doing, and into that sobriety that one attains when one begins to move into a state of recognition. At that point, one begins to discriminate what the problems of samsara are, and what the difference is between what is extraordinary and what is ordinary. One begins to see what’s really going on here. That state of discrimination is just like the very beginning of sobriety, and like the beginning of sobriety, it can be a little raw and painful. In the drunken state, you try to stay comfortable in the time and space grid where you are in ignorance, saying, “Oh, I’m sitting here right now, so I’m not dead, therefore I’ll never be dead. I’m sitting here right now and I’m middle-aged, therefore I’ll never be old.” To awaken from that kind of deluded thinking and say instead, “I’m middle-aged now and I used to be a kid. Uh-oh, that means there’s a progression happening here. Whoa! Where’s that taking me?”

We don’t like to think like that. As sentient beings, we try to keep ourselves in a safety zone, thought-wise, don’t we? One day you look in the mirror, and you say, “Wow, what happened to the flesh that used to be up on that cheekbone?” And although you see it, and you think it’s kind of funny, you know it’s happening, but you tell yourself it’s not really happening. You tell yourself it’s just that you had a potato chip last night so you had too much salt. We try not to think that any of this is happening, and we stay in our comfort zone. We spend most of our calories trying to stay in this comfort zone.