Buddhism

The Nature of the Teacher

by


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

The most important thing you can do to develop spiritual discrimination is to elevate the Root Guru. The Root Guru is the source of how you have come to the path, is the root teacher who gives you the preliminary teachings, is the one who hooks you onto the path.  For these reasons you elevate your teacher in such a way that you begin to awaken.  You are not awakening to the appearance of the teacher, but to the nature of the teacher.  Again, eventually, you will be able to see, not your own appearance, but your nature, and that’s the goal here.  That is the point of practicing Guru Yoga.  Otherwise no one else would care, because certainly the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas don’t need it.  They’re happy the way they are. The Lamas offer themselves to be used in that way. We have this extraordinary opportunity.  So it behooves you to accept that offer and use the Lama.  It behooves you to take the opportunity to see that this is the appearance of Dharma in your mind, of Dharma in your life, and to lift it up within you in your mind. Lift it up and see it differently from the other ordinary things that are in your life and be able to distinguish that.  You want to be able to get past the point where you say, “Well now, I like this about the Lama; I don’t like that about the Lama; I do like this about the Lama, I don’t like this about the Lama, blah, blah, blah.”  That’s what you’re doing about everything.  That’s what we do about each other and, most of all, about ourselves.  This mind training is meant to wean us away from that kind of conceptual proliferation.  It is meant to allow us to begin to taste the nourishment of pure View.

Those who have known me for any length of time know that my practice is all about Guru Rinpoche.  There are many reasons for that.  One is that I have a strong connection with Guru Rinpoche. That’s my great fortune and my great blessing.  In my mind and in my heart, there’s nothing else.  I don’t see anything else.  I’m not saying that I’m a great practitioner, but I’m giving an indication as to how this could work and what kind of formula we can develop in our own practice and in our own quest for mindfulness.  When I think about my practice with Guru Rinpoche, I look for him everywhere.  I look for the speech, for the method, for the intention of the Guru everywhere.  My experience has been that when I ask Guru Rinpoche for help, for receiving strength, receiving health, receiving whatever it is that I need in order to be strong enough to be of benefit to others, it is always there.  Even though I haven’t had the training from childhood that many other Lamas have had, when I ask Guru Rinpoche for help, it is always there.  There have literally been times when I have not known what my class was going to be about until I got there to teach, and sometimes those are the best classes, because I know that I am nothing but a vessel that Guru Rinpoche’s blessing simply pours through.

We are not talking about being falsely humble.  Remember that when you do prostrations, you always get up.  We don’t lie on the floor for hours!  We get up, and the reason why we get up is because that’s what’s supposed to happen.  Through prostrating the body, through practicing this with body, speech and mind, it is our nature that rises up.  The ego gets laid down.  We lay that down, and the nature is what rises up.  Symbolically that’s what’s happening with prostrations.  It’s all about learning to have View in a different way.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

A Mind of Compassion

by

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

If you’ve never practiced the Buddhadharma before, or if you’re interested in practicing, or if you have practiced some general meditation and you feel it’s time to move on to a path that is more stable or well known, then you’re in a perfect place for this teaching. You can start practicing one of the most important teachings of the Buddha right now. You can begin to cultivate the mind of compassion. How might you do this? First of all, you might look around and examine physical existence.

In America, we hide our suffering. We have very little knowledge of real suffering, and I think that’s one reason why it’s very difficult for Westerners to practice a pure and disciplined path. We think we understand suffering because we have experienced loneliness, or because when we were kids we had the measles, or because we have gone through marriages and divorces. Or maybe we’ve seen some sickness or poverty. For these reasons, we think we understand suffering, and we do to some extent. These are valid sufferings.

But there’s a funny thing about our culture that we must understand. We are actually hidden from the sufferings of our culture. When people are deformed, handicapped, mentally or terminally ill, they are taken away from the mainstream of society and they are hidden. Or if we are considered unpresentable to most people, we have plastic surgery or we have some kind of therapy that makes us like everyone else. In fact, if we examine the healing process in American medicine, part of that process is to become like other people.  We are made to look like other people.

In other countries around the world suffering is more evident, for many different reasons: those countries may not be as technologically advanced as our country, or their culture may be an older society in which suffering has become more the norm and it is not such a shock to see it. Or perhaps poverty is a factor.

I will describe how I felt when I first went to India. I couldn’t bear it. I don’t claim to be so compassionate; I too have to cultivate the idea of compassion every day. But I remember seeing people walking the streets with arms and legs missing, eaten up by leprosy. I saw mothers and fathers maim their children, not because they hated them or because they were cruel to them, but because that would give them a deformity they could use for begging. That would be the only way they could ensure their survival. There was no other way for them to get food. What do we do for our children? We might send ours to school. In the streets of India, they have to prepare them in a different way.

Suffering is a part of the fabric of the society in India, and it’s very evident. I remember walking down the street in Delhi. There was a young boy who must have been twelve; it was hard to tell, he was so small. He was lying on a rag, a tattered blanket, and he was dying. He was so thin that he looked like the pictures of starvation we see from Ethiopia. He was beyond thin. His bones were sticking out, his belly swollen, his tongue hanging out. And next to him were a few coins and a candy bar. Someone had thrown them down for him.

We don’t see that in our culture. We don’t understand it. We think that the things we’ve gone through – the divorces, not being able to pay the light bill, the heartbreak of psoriasis, the things we consider so awesome – are the real sufferings of the world. But they are not all the world has to endure.

Look at the animal realm. We know what our animals are like. They get fed everyday and they have it pretty good. But not all animals are like them. If we go to different countries, we see beasts of burden that are treated in horrible ways. We see animals that are denied their natural environment.

Humans and animals are only two life forms. According to the Buddha’s teachings, there are many different life forms, many of which are non-physical. How we appear, how we manifest, what form we take has to do with the qualities of our mind. If we are filled with hate, we are reborn in a hell realm. Why is that so hard to understand? When you are filled with hate now, even as a human being, aren’t you in your own private hell? Have you ever gone through a period where you were so filled with anger that everything you saw became ugly and you managed to distort it somehow? Each of us has lived in a private hell. Why is it so hard to believe that we are capable of living in or creating a situation like that? If your mind is capable of having a nightmare, then rebirth in a hell realm is a possibility.

Have you ever been needy? Have you ever gone through a period in your life when you needed approval, or love, or some kind of nourishment so badly, that you were in a state of despair? When people did reach out to you, they couldn’t get through? Each of us, for at least one moment in our lives, has experienced this. Why then is it so hard to understand that these kinds of existences really do exist?

Having understood that this is logical, having examined your own mind truthfully – and truthfully is the key – and found the residue of these experiences in your mind, you can allow yourself to go more deeply into the recognition that the Buddha was right. There is suffering in cyclic existence.

We have to think also of our own suffering. We must think that even if we have a TV, a car, a house, and all of the things that we are taught to desire, there will be a point at which we cannot take them with us. There will be a point at which they will do us no good. That point, of course, is death. All of the efforts that we’ve gone through to get those things will have been wasted.

Long-time Dharma practitioners may think, “I really wish she’d get on with it. I know this.” I have to tell you, if you really knew the truth of suffering, there would not be one moment that you did not practice with the utmost compassion. There would not be one moment when you thought only of yourself and your needs, and of the temporary gratifications you think you must have. Yet you still have many of those moments.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Seeing As The Buddha Sees

by
Palyul Refuge Tree

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

You do not see as the Buddha sees, with a mind that is natural, uncontrived, and relaxed. You do not know the natural state—your own Nature that is beneath the conceptualizations you force upon it. In essence you are the same as the Buddha. Why does He see Buddhas and Bodhisattvas without number, and you do not? Why is the Buddha’s mind free of action and reaction? The difference is one thing only: the concept of self to which you cling.

The concept of self is the effortful contrivance that results in all forms of suffering. Once your “self” is established, it is vulnerable to termination. It now has a beginning; therefore it will die. A tension arises. As a baby, you cried when you were hungry, and your mother probably responded. If she did not do so immediately, you sensed a threat to your survival. If you smiled and cooed, perhaps your mother paid more attention. You tried to protect the fabric of self. You began the long process of learning to attract, to have power over, other people. You developed tendencies to dominate, to be submissive, or to survive in other ways.

These habitual tendencies take time and effort to perfect. They become part of the fabric of our being. We call them our individuality and take pride in them. These subtle, habitual tendencies will stay with us over many lifetimes—unless they are somehow purified from the mindstream. In fact, the longer we accumulate assumptions about the self, the more deep-seated and complicated these subtle tendencies become. Ironically, those who pride themselves on their uniqueness and individuality are often in the most trouble. For even though the brain and the personality end at death, the karma remains. In fact, every moment of the perception of self has within it enough seeds for eons of cyclic existence. And these seeds have only to be watered by certain kinds of activity to ripen.

The original tightness or tension that accompanies the concept of “I-ness” is desire. This is why the Buddha taught that the basic cause for all suffering is desire. Some think that because they have learned not to desire a mate or a car or money or beauty, they have become true renunciates. They think they have overcome desire. They could not be further from the truth. Desire is simply too pervasive. It is what holds the concept of “I-ness” together. This concept becomes as invisible and familiar as the air we breathe. Everything we do supports and maintains our ego. It is only in the enlightened, realized state, with natural, uncontrived view, that activity is spontaneous, free of conceptualization, and therefore free of tension.

You, however, cling to your contrived thoughts, and the odd thing is—you love them. You are fascinated with the activity of your brain. You enjoy being opinionated. You love the excitement—so you think—of the tension that surrounds conceptualization. Every perception you have is made of tension born of desire.

Why is it so difficult to annihilate desire from your mindstream? You desire desire. Otherwise, you could snap your fingers and say, “I am through with it.” Why do you desire? Because you have so much investment, such a strong belief in your “I-ness” that your primary religion is not Buddhism but the preservation of your ego. That is your gut-level religion. You make offerings to it every moment. You take refuge in it every moment. The preservation of your ego and all the assumptions that go with it have been the love of your life, your soul mate.

How then can you even conceive of being free of desire, much less manage it? You may hear the teachings of the Buddha and want to be free, but another part of you is absolutely in love with yourself. And you love to be in love, so you are helpless. This is why the powerful Vajrayana path is so necessary and efficient. It would take extremely long to purify your mindstream by progressively renouncing every thought, every activity that increases desire, until you are basically doing nothing but watching your breath and annihilating every assumption and tension as it comes up in your mind. The Vajrayana path will do that, but it has another dimension: you purify your entire view. The five senses are purified through generation-stage practice. In it, you are not imagining a deity; you are not pretending it is there; you are not even visualizing. Certainly that may be where you start, but when it is done correctly and the skill of concentration is fully developed, you are actually disassembling and re-manufacturing the incorrect perceptions that permeate your every thought, word, and deed.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

The Path: Are We There Yet?

by

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

When one begins to understand some of the ideas that are presented in Dharma, one realizes that the goal that we are engaged in “moving toward,” if you’ll forgive that bad choice of words, is actually Buddha Nature itself. We tend to consider that the path is like a thing that goes from here to there, like a movement toward, and it’s very hard not to conceptualize it in that way. But, in fact, when one practices Dharma, the ability to practice Dharma is actually based on the understanding of the innate Nature. If we did not have within us right now the seed of Enlightenment, if we did not have within us the potential to actualize ourselves as the Buddha, there would be no point of practice. The very basis for practice is that understanding. This is what the Buddha himself taught – that all sentient beings have within them the seed of Buddha Nature, that that Nature is their true Nature, in fact. However, they have not awakened to that Nature and so, in order awaken to that Nature, one engages in the path.

The path should not be considered a ‘thing’, a straight line that connects from here to there. The path should be understood as a method that one uses in order to awaken to that Nature which is already our Nature; which is complete, unchanging, and will never get any bigger or any smaller. One should understand that Dharma is actually an activity that is meant to awaken that potential. But the ultimate goal that one wishes for when one engages in Dharma, is, of course, Enlightenment itself.

© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Changing Habits

by

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

Many people have gone to teachers and said, “What was I in my past life?   What kind of being am I?” thinking that they are different somehow and that this is important.  It’s really not the case.  We are all exactly the same.  But a lot of times the people will go to the teacher and ask questions like that.  Buddha Shakyamuni’s answer was, “If you want to know who you were in your past life, look in the mirror.”  Not necessarily at your physical appearance, and how your mascara is and that sort of thing.  Look at who you are.  Look at your life.   Look at what you’ve accomplished.  Not what you’re spinning in your head that you’re going to accomplish, but what you have accomplished.  Then you can begin a certain analysis.

Let’s say that you are chronically poor.  You tend to work wage jobs, and can’t get the big jobs, and just can’t make the money thing work.  It’s a chronic condition.    Most people think that the best thing to do is to go looking for the fabulous job or meet the fabulous man with the big money or something like that so you can get rich.  That kind of thinking will keep you in exactly the same position you’ve always been in, and it will never change.

If you find yourself in a state of chronic poverty, you must understand that cause and effect relationships are operating here.   You are now reaping the result of a cause that was created maybe early in this lifetime, more likely in another lifetime.  This is why it’s so hard, because you can’t see it.   We don’t know what happened in our last life or ten lifetimes ago.  We really don’t know what the cause is.

Again the Buddha says that this is where analysis is very useful.   So, we look and we say, “Well, I’ve always been poor.  It’s always been an issue.   So, what can I do to solve this problem?”  Is hoping for a rich person or a rich job to come along really the solution?  Actually, not.  What you should start doing if you are chronically poor, is to give all you can to the poor.  The shirt off your back if you have to.  Now, people will try that and they’ll come back to me and say it didn’t work.   How long did you try it?   It took you lifetimes to get this habitual.   You’ve got to work at it awhile.  You can’t expect to just be kind for a couple of weeks, and then boom!  We’re home and dry.   It’s not like that.  You have to actually take the grasping energy that you’re feeling, “I want the money.  I want the money.  I want the money.”  And turn it around into “I give what I can give.”  If it’s a quarter, if it’s twenty cents, if it’s a penny, if it’s a hug, if it’s some extra clothes to people who don’t have clothes, or a warm blanket in the wintertime.  Anything.  It doesn’t have to be big bucks, but you develop the habit of generosity to the degree that it outweighs that graspiness that says, “When am I gonna get rich?  When am I gonna get rich?  When am I gonna get rich?”  By the time you’ve changed that habit, things are changing in your life.  But until you change the habit, nothing will change.  It’s all about our habitual tendencies.  There is nobody that knows this better than a recovering alcoholic.

I think recovering alcoholics make the best students, because they understand what habitual tendency is all about.  And they understand what addiction is all about too, including the addiction to “gimme, gimme, gimme.  I want it.  I want it.  I want it.  More, more, more.”   That’s an addiction.

We begin to break our habitual tendencies and turn them around, and we change the addiction.  At that point, we begin giving.  When you start giving to others, generally, you give to people who have less than you.   And one of the first things it does is make you realize how much you actually have.   Because we don’t generally realize how much we actually have.  Impoverishment is in here.  So, when we begin to act kindly and generously towards others and give what little we have, the grasping hand turns around and becomes a giving hand.   The mind relaxes about the issue of having.  And that clears the way for the ripening of virtuous karma.  Virtuous karma will bring us happiness, joy, money, whatever it’s tuned into.  Whatever it is the result of.  But it’s the graspy neediness that keeps us from giving and makes us so unhappy.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

The Karma of a Cup of Water

by

An excerpt from a teaching called Perception and Karma by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, July 19, 1989

I’d like to illustrate some very basic teachings on the six realms of cyclic existence by looking at a cup of water.  In the human realm, this is a cup of water and it has lemon in it.  I know that it’s water because it smells like water.  It tastes like water with lemon.  I know what that tastes like.  I can tell the difference between tastes.  I know that water is good for me; I know that it will quench my thirst.  The reason why I’m having this experience is because of my karma.  In the animal realm, a dog would also experience that.   Let’s say a dog or some kind of lion or tiger or bear would experience that as water, also.  They wouldn’t know what the lemon was, they would think there was something funny in there, but they would experience it as water.  They don’t taste very much.  They know the water by smell.  They can’t taste the difference between city water and country water.  They might be able to smell a difference. But they know it to be water, and they instinctively drink it when they are thirsty.  They don’t think much about whether it will do this or that for them.  They don’t think about how much they need.  So their experience with water is similar, but different.

In the hungry ghost realm, beings are horribly thirsty and horribly hungry, and their mouths are very, very tiny, so they’re not able to take in food.  Someone from the hungry ghost realm would experience that as a cup of pus and would not be able to drink it because their experience is that it’s pus, it’s horrible and it isn’t drinkable, it isn’t water.  It smells foul and is foul.  It is not something you would drink.  So, they do not drink and they continue to be extremely  thirsty.  This is my cup of water, I know that it’s not pus but in the hungry ghost realm it would be experienced as pus and they would be terribly thirsty.

Why do they experience it that way?  Are they jinxed?  Did some magician go to the hungry ghost realm and transform all the water?  Is someone out to get them?  Had they just not looked in the right places? Should they keep on checking around? Should they think positive? What would happen if they could get it down?  Would it act like water?  No, it would act like pus, right?  Even if they could drink it, the water would act like pus to them.  No matter what they do, it remains pus and they remain thirsty.  That’s really disgusting, isn’t it?  Why does that happen?  It happens because of the karma of their mind.  Their perceptual experience that they have, the construction that they abide within has that reality or that quality because it is an emanation of their mind.  It is the karma of their mind.  It’s as real and as solid to them as the fact that this is water to me.

What about someone from the hell realm?  Depending on which hell realm it is, it would be either a cup of fire or a cup of ice.  Unfortunately, it would be a cup of fire if they were in the hot realms and it would be a cup of ice if they were in the cold realms. The difficulty is that if they held their nose and said, “I really think this is probably water.” They would drink fire and be burned. It’s very real, very real to them.  Why is that the case?  It is the case because that is the karma of their mind.

On the other hand, if this were experienced in the god realm, it would be experienced as a cup of elixir, the nectar of long life, or the elixir of infinite power, or the nectar of infinite beauty.  The gods would drink it and live a long time, anyway.  Nothing is forever in the god realm.  They would take it and it would be like an elixir that would put them into a state of absolute bliss for a while.

Well, I drank that water.  I drink lots of water, and so far, no bliss.  So it isn’t happening to me.  That’s because the gods have the karma of their minds and that’s how it works out for them.  Each one of these different beings that I have described arises from emptiness.  They are the same as emptiness; they are inseparable from emptiness.  Each cup in those different realms, no matter what was in it, arises from emptiness, it is the same as emptiness, it is inseparable from emptiness, and yet the experiences are totally different.  The experiences are different due to the karma of our minds.

Everything that you have ever experienced is completely relative, completely artificially constructed and totally experiential. Everything that you have experienced is like that, and yet what do we do?

Let’s think about the poor old guy in the hungry ghost realm with a cup of pus.  That’s really disgusting, isn’t it? Let’s say that he picks it up and he sees that it’s pus, and he puts it back down. Now what is the next thing he does?  He sits there and he feels really miserable.  He feels agonizingly miserable and thirsty.  Then he thinks, “Why does this happen to me?”  Then he thinks, “Everywhere I go, there’s this stuff.”  He thinks, “There’s no relief.”  He goes on and on and on and continues with the experience.  The experience does not stop when he decides not to drink it.  He continues with the experience.  He reacts to the experience.  The karma is that he experiences pus.  He’s in the hungry ghost realm and he’s experiencing phenomena as he experiences it, which is pretty disgusting, and he’s experiencing also this great longing for nourishment and help and respite from his suffering.

Then, after he doesn’t drink it, he continues with this process of saying, “Why doesn’t anybody love me and give me something to drink?  Why do I have to suffer this way?”  And then goes on with, “I’m so hungry, I’m so thirsty, I’m so ugly” and so on. What I have just described is an elaboration process that branches from the original karmic occurrence.  That elaboration is a very important factor and a very important thing for us to look at and understand.  It is the process of exaggeration.  Now, it sounds really far fetched to talk about this guy in the hungry ghost realm, but I use that example because it’s so solid, you can really understand how that might happen.

What about us?  Let’s use for example the experience that we have when we lose our job. We lose our job, and it’s not the first time we’ve lost our job.  The karma of that particular relationship that you had in order to have the job, ended. Maybe it just ran out because it was time.  Maybe it ended because you ended it but the karma of that particular relationship ran out.  What happens after you’re fired, though, is a process that continues and becomes more a part of you than the actual firing or even the job ever was.  That process is the process of exaggeration and elaboration.  You begin to elaborate on the process.

The first thing that happens is you begin to make an entire scenario about what really happened.  What really happened has a certain flavor.  You have perceived it in a certain way.  You have lost your job and you have the perception that your boss was kind about it, or your boss was mean about it, or it happened in this way, it happened at midday, it happened at night, it happened in the morning, it happened when it was a good time for you, it happened when it was a bad time for you, it happened before your car payment, it happened after your car payment.  You have your own kind of perception about it.

Spinning off from that, you have your determination, which is a more subtle process, about what the real story is. In other words, you’re always going to decide for yourself whether you should have been fired, whether that was righteous, whether you should be treated meanly or whether you should be treated nicely.  You’re always going to decide for yourself whether things happen as they do for good reasons, and then you’re going to make up a whole story about how it should have happened.  Probably you spend the next few days, weeks or months reworking the entire thing, and imagining what you might have said to your boss under different circumstances.  You have your own particular belief about how things should have happened.  From that you continue to elaborate and exaggerate situations, working it into the roots of your being, thinking ultimately, after you really work it down the pike, I’m a failure.  “Nobody loves me. My mother didn’t love me.  My father didn’t love me.  I’m destined to be poor and I am deeply flawed.” You know what you do.  I don’t have to tell you. You go into the entire scenario of all the different things that you feel are absolutely true.  So the experience doesn’t end with the cessation of a certain job opportunity, it continues with an elaboration process and that process is as real as the actual experience.  The exaggeration process usually is the one that sticks with you, longer that the experience itself, often longer than the job itself.  That is the experience that sticks with you.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Be Careful

by

An excerpt from a teaching called Perception and Karma by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, July 19, 1989

The subject of perception – how perception relates to the nature of emptiness, how perception occurs, and the antidote to impure perception – is very difficult to understand.  In truth, it can’t really be taught effectively.  When it is taught, it is communicated in such a way that one has a taste of it.  However, in order to truly understand something about the perceptual process, that all phenomena, all experience, all feeling, as well as all sense of self, is merely an artificial construction and experiential phenomena, one must have something of an understanding of emptiness.

When you hear these kinds of teachings, you should know that at worst what you’re getting is no understanding whatsoever – like a bowl turned over where the water hits and it bounces off. On an intermediate level you may hear the teaching and have some intellectual or theoretical understanding.  Since we have not practiced on the most profound levels, the best that could happen under these conditions is that we will hear the teachings, have something of an understanding intellectually, and through one’s contemplation, develop a sense of insightfulness as to what this might mean.  The best thing that could happen is that in one’s practice one might have a moment of space or a moment in the generation process or perhaps in the dissolution process, where there might be a recognition of what I’m talking about, or a feeling that maybe you stood on the ground floor of that understanding and somehow you have a broader view of it, that you have ascended into a more profound level of understanding.

However from hearing these kinds of teachings, we do not understand the nature of emptiness.  We do not understand phenomena.  We do not get that the experience that we have of phenomena is that it is a perceptual process.  We do not stop relating to “thing” as thing, we do not stop relating to “self” as self.  You should not make the mistake that many practitioners have made, of thinking that hearing teachings like this, you have come to understand emptiness.   You should not, and this is the worst possible scenario, take these teachings and think that you have a profound understanding, and then act like you do. That’s the worst thing that you can do with the teaching.  There is nothing worse than that.  It is also the most common, unfortunately.

In acting as though you understand what these teachings are about, you might fall into the trap of reinforcing your sense of self, reinforcing the ego-clinging and ideation, as well as the clinging to phenomena as being real.  Ultimately, these ideas are phenomena, just as all things are phenomena.  When realization is attained, even the most profound teachings, even the deepest dharma is understood to be merely phenomena, and also empty.

You should be very careful. You should watch your mind and watch how you assimilate these teachings.  Be very, very watchful of yourself, and be certain that you literally understand that no understanding will come without sincere effort and contemplation.

The best way to increase one’s understanding of these kinds of teachings is to practice Guru Yoga.  When you practice Guru Yoga you increase your connection with Guru Rinpoche.  You increase your awareness of his teachings.  You begin to develop a sense of union and therefore the ability to receive the empowerment of his enlightened intention.  You are able then to hear teachings from your own teachers better.  All of the auspicious conditions that can occur will occur when you practice Guru Yoga.  If there’s any teaching being given out that is profound and worthwhile, then perhaps the best thing to do in order to increase your understanding is to practice Guru Yoga, and that includes the Seven-Line Prayer.  Practice in any way that will increase devotion.  Devotion is like a golden highway that connects your heart with Guru Rinpoche’s heart, your mind with Guru Rinpoche’s mind.  It allows his enlightened intention to bring forth empowerment, and that is the same with our own root teachers.  In practicing Guru Yoga, in practicing all practices that have anything to do with devotion, the connection with our root teachers is established. The connection is established and one realizes one’s root teacher to be inseparable from Guru Rinpoche, and therefore inseparable from the nature of emptiness itself.

These are some of the methods that you might use so that you can have a deeper understanding. I, also, wanted to give you some insight as to how not to hear these teachings and how not to accept these teachings.  This is of the utmost importance.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

The Teenager and Ethics

by

An excerpt from a teaching called Walk the Talk – Ethics by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, June 8, 1994

How do ethics come about in our personal lives?  Study sociology and you can find out how ethics evolved in our society.  Study developmental psychology and you can find out how ethics developed within us as individuals.  I would like to focus on that a little bit so that we can relate to it as individuals.

How many of you remember something about your teenagerhood? If you remember much about your ‘teenagerhood’, and you if you ask your parents, they will agree with you; that was the time when you were most disgusting and obnoxious. Most parents will think that their teenagers really should be put to sleep when the hormones start raging and put in stasis and reawakened later on.  As a parent, I can certainly see the wisdom of that.

That’s one shining example. When you finally left your teenagerhood, did you look back at yourself and think, “My God, I was the most selfish creature that ever walked on the face of the earth.  I was completely selfish.”  No, because it is normal at that age.  When you are a teenager it is as though biologically, physically, and a little bit of your mental and emotional development has started to take on the image of an adult.  Your body is changing, your mind is changing, the heart is changing, everything is changing, but it is all in flux.  Your hormones are going crazy.  Your body does not look the same from one week to the next; it is doing things underneath you that you do not understand, and so you are not in total agreement with your body at all times.  Your emotions are raging.  You have found out about all the things that you can have in the world and the forbidden fruits are suddenly becoming more reachable.  You have just figured out that you can say no and you are big and tall enough now to get away with it.  You know how to walk away. You know how to run.  You can learn how to drive a car.  There are all kinds of power that you have that you did not have before.  But what you do not have as a teenager is the emotional maturity to deal with it.  You have all kinds of power and new things that you can do and a new body to do it with and none of it is under control. Basically, as a teenager, you are out of control.  Your mind is out of control.  You are not mindful.  You are not conscious of your environment.  You are not aware of what other people think or what other people feel.  You are simply absorbed in these raging developments that are happening in your body and in your mind.

What begins to happen as you move out of teenagerhood is that you go through a lot of pain.  Do you remember how painful your teenagerhood was?  It is an extremely painful time.  Once again you found out about all the things in samsara that you can have, but you also found out that you couldn’t have them all.  The minute you found out about sex you found out not everybody wants it with you.  And when most people do want it with you, you find out that there are definite drawbacks.  There are all kinds of things that happen.  Basically you are an older version of what happens in the terrible twos, when two year olds learn how to say no.  They did not know how to say that before, but at two, they can say no.  And it seems to have some effect on the world and they are giddy with the realization of this.  That is actually what happens to teenagers.  They are simply giddy with what they can get away with.  If they can get away with a lot, if the parents do not have the strength to control or help them or if the parents are out to lunch, the kids are down the road in destructionville, setting themselves on fire because they can say no, again.  That is the big realization that has come into their lives.  They can say no.  So, they are going to say no to everybody.

What happens as you begin to leave this really lousy age? Nobody is exempt.  I was very selfish as a teenager.  And I felt I knew it all, too.  I was supremely omniscient until the age of about 21 when I realized there were others that had thoughts as well.  That is just how it is when you are a teenager.  You know everything.  You have had your first rudimentary thinking process as your tiny little brain buds begin to develop a little growth, and so, at that point it is a big deal.  Then when you realize that other people are having complete thought processes, thinking in total equations, you realize were not doing that at all.  At that point, you are turning 20 or 21. This is not a joke. This is what happened to you.  Can you remember? You are just beginning to rise from the primordial ooze around the age of 20 or 21.

Often at that point, kids that are well raised and basically fundamentally secure, happy in their homes and have good communication with their family, look at their parents and say, “Ooh.  Sorry.” They really do.  They look at their parents and say, “Gee, I was a real jerk for five years.”  And the parent says, “Yes” and it is all made well.

That particular growth process is extremely important, because teenagerhood is filled with suffering.  Do you know what the suffering is about?  The suffering is less about raging hormones than we think.  It is actually more about the fact that these poor sentient beings do not have the capacity at that age, to have or hold to any kind of ethical system. They do not have the capacity really even to see or sense what other sentient beings are experiencing or to empathize sufficiently to be able to gauge their own behavior.  One of the things that happens at about 20 or 21 is that it actually dawns on the person that they have been hurting others.  They actually learn from hurting their parents.  Unfortunately, as parents, you have to understand that. If you have teenage children, one of the things that you have to commit to; that they are going to do as teenagers, is hurt you.  It is necessary.  It does not mean you let them get away with it, because if you do, you are both dead.  They are going to go down into self-destruct land and you are going to go down in to schmuckland, not able to ever relate to your child in a strong way.  You do not let them get away with it.  You have to have firm discipline.  Those of you who are parents who do not have firm discipline in your homes, will know about it now, because if your kids are old enough, they are already out of control and it was because you did not have firm discipline.  It’s really cute to be that way with your kids when they are younger, but when they are teenagers, they must have the habit of firm discipline or they will not be able to manage, and you will not be able to help them.  Because when they are teenagers, they are going to hurt you and if you are not in control, they are going to hurt you badly.  And it is what they need to do.  That does not make them bad people.  They are not different from you.  They simply have to do that to learn.  They have to learn by your response.  They are going to learn.  When they crumble, when they watch you cry for them, when they watch you come back at them with the same vengeance they came at you with, or whatever it takes.  They are like little computers, taking that in.  I mean, some of them are not little computers and they are still kids. If you can imagine they are almost like little creatures that are learning the size of the room they are in by throwing things against it, seeing how long it takes to bounce back.  It is not so different, again, from the baby in the highchair that we all know and love, who loves to drop his fork or his spoon or his food just to see how long it takes to get to the floor and how long it takes you to pick it up.  They need to do that.  It is about learning.

That is what teenagers do, and at that point, they come up with rudimentary ethics.  We learn ethics through our own pain.    As teenagers you learned ethics through seeing other people hurt.  You learned them through watching. What really happened was when you were a teenager, you got hurt; you got blistered by what you saw.  May not be when you were 21, it may have taken you a while longer, but at some point you decided it is not good when people hurt me.  But later that comes to mean I cannot hurt anybody either.  But it really starts right around that time of teenagerhood and it starts by watching how the world responds to what you’re dishing out.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

A Garland of Utpala Flowers

by

From the speech treasury of Padmasambhava

The Longevity Supplication of Lhacham Ahkön Lhamo called

A GARLAND OF UTPALA FLOWERS

EH MA HO  ORGYEN DU MA THA LA’I ZHING KHAM NE

EH MA HO   In the pure realm, Dumatala’i of Orgyen,

KHA CHÖD KHANDRO’I TSO MO DRÖL MA KAR

White Tara is the principal Dakini of Khachöd

DAKI LHACHAM MANDARAWA NYID

Whose nature is the Dakini Lhacham Mandarawa

BÖD YÜL AHKÖN LHAMO CHANG CHUB DRÖN

Appearing in the land of Tibet as Ahkön Lhamo Changchub Drön,

KU SUM ZHING NA TRO DU DZED PA’I GAR

Performing the dance of radiating and reabsorbing from the realm of the three Kayas.

AH KAR ÖD DZE LHAMO ME TOG DRÖN

Beautiful light of the white AH, Lhamo Metog Drön (Goddess Flower Light),

CHI LING KYE NUB DREN LA SÖL WA DEB

I supplicate you to save beings in the Western realm.

TSHE DAG RIG NGA TSHE YI PHO NYA DANG

The five classes of the owners of life and the messengers of longevity,

PEMA KA RA GYA GAR RIG DZIN GYED

Padmasambhava and the eight Vidyadharas of India

NE YÜL ZHING KYE PA WO PA MO’I TSHOG

And the assembly of Dakas and Dakinis of the realms of the sacred places and countries,

CHI DAG PUNG JOM KHYED NAM DEN TOB KYI

By your power of Truth, overcome and defeat the Lord of Death.

AH KAR ÖD DZE LHAMO ME TOG DRÖN

Beautiful white light of AH, Lhamo Metog Drön,

KU TSHE’I GAL KYEN BAR CHED YING SU SÖL

May the conflicting circumstances and obstacles to your life expectancy dissolve in the sphere

of Truth.

DÜL CHA’I KHAM LA DÜ SUM TAG ZHUG SÖL

Throughout the Three Times, pray, remain firm in the realms of beings to be tamed,

GYAL TEN DZIN KYONG PEL LA NÜ TOB GYE

Ever increasing your strength to hold, maintain and increase the Buddha’s Doctrine.

ZHAL JAL SUNG THÖ ZANG NGEN GANG DREL CHE

May whoever sees you, meets you or hears your speech,

MED JUNG KU ZHI’I LING DU WANG JOR SHOG

Be it a positive or negative connection, become a sovereign of the unsurpassed realm of the

Four Kayas!

Samaya            ku sung tug kyi gya

This supplication prayer was revealed by the well-known incarnation of the Indian Mahasiddha Trilwupa, Tertön

Pedma Tumpo.   May virtue prevail!

 

WP2Social Auto Publish Powered By : XYZScripts.com