Buddhism

Fire and Gentleness

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An excerpt from a teaching called Dharma and the Western Mind by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo given on January 29, 1989

Adapting Dharma for Westerners is not difficult if you understand what our needs are.  The first thing that a Westerner has to do is to become stable in this path.  You have to remain stable and you have to remain stable for the right reasons.  I have seen old time practitioners that have seen the best Lamas and had the best opportunities and the most glorious teachings, but I am not impressed with the stability of their path and I feel that the reason for that is that they have not come to the point where they have really cultivated a gentleness of mind.  They haven’t really cultivated the necessary fire in the heart that keeps everything going.  They haven’t lit that dynamo that makes them remain passionate about loving.

Sometimes I am disappointed in when I see old time practitioners doing the Dharma talk and walking the Dharma walk and spouting this name and knowing that term but their hearts are unchanged.  There is a hardness there. The most tragic thing about that is that even though they are hot and heavy on the path now they may not remain firm on the path.  And time has born that out.   There are many Western Dharma practitioners who were really on and now they are really off.  I think that the reason why this happens is because they did not take the time to build a foundation based on compassion. We cannot consider that it is a baby teaching.  I talk about bodhicitta and compassion all the time.  If bodhicitta, which is the term for compassion, were ice cream you would come here and you would get a different flavor every week.  That is how I teach.  And I teach it as many different ways as I can. I try to be creative and sometimes I pull rabbits out of hats and sometimes I whisper it and sometimes I shout it and sometimes I give it to you to read, but it is always about Bodhicitta.  It is always about compassion, it is always about love in some form or another.

I really have had old time Dharma students say, “Hey I have had Bodhicitta already, and I am tired of Bodhicitta.” I am so sad when I hear that because if you can get tired of that subject then you don’t know it at all. You think that it is a baby subject yet it is the very union of the wisdom of realizing the emptiness of self-nature and the compassionate self that is truly the awakened mind.  There is no time when you are finished learning about compassion.  There is no time when you are finished learning about love.

Westerners who have been to college, to university and have papers are the worst problem we have in this country when it comes to practice, because we think that having got papers we don’t need to be learning about this simple stuff.  We say, “I need the real teachings.  Give me some Dzogchen.  Give me some heavy stuff.  I want the real stuff, because I am an American and I can deal with it.”  The problem is that as Westerners, no matter who we are, if the mind is not prepared, it is like the ground not being cultivated.  You drop the seed and it goes plunk on the top and if our minds are not gentled and deepened we go plink.  We may be able to memorize a wonderful Dzogchen teaching, we may be able to read the text but we are still plinking merrily away.  We have to have these foundational teachings and they have to be with us always.  There is never a time, no matter how advanced you are that you should forget that the greatest Dzogchen teaching, the most pure and pristine understanding of the Nature of Mind is an understanding of the nature of compassion. The most pristine, achingly beautiful understanding of the Primordial Wisdom State is the awakening to love.  There is no difference: the two of them are inseparable.  You can’t have one without the other.  And you may think to yourself, “What comes first the chicken or the egg? Can’t I learn to love after I am wise already?”  I don’t think so because really the mind has to be prepared for these precious deeper teachings.  It has to be gentled.

There is a confession that His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche gave to us and the translation that I have says, “That my mind is as hard as horn.” And I think about that all the time because at any stage it is possible for the mind to become hard as horn, to become so impressed with its prowess in playing with Dharma terms, to become so impressed with how we can sit straight when we meditate, to become so impressed with how good we live and how sorry we are for every one else, to become so impressed that we are hard. It is important for us as Westerners and as part of the human family to cultivate gentleness so that we can truly accomplish Dharma.

©Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Living the Sacred Life

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An excerpt from a teaching called Intimacy with the Path by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

What if it were possible to live in such a sacred way that instead of thinking of ourselves as separate human beings who want to go there and get that, we were able to see everything in the world around us as the same as us, a display of an underlying primordial natural state.  What if we could see that all things are the display of a fundamentally empty and yet full primordial nature, not separate from Buddhahood?   Supposing that, instead of clinging to what we see and putting ourselves in the posture of acceptance or rejection, like or dislike, or hope and fear—the hope that it will work out well and someone will love you, or the fear that it won’t and no one will.  Instead of approaching life with that kind of idea, which wears us out and does us in, supposing we could live a truly sacred life?

Supposing when we see a tree, a person, something beautiful or not so beautiful, supposing we were in a quiet way simply to know that this too is a display of the Buddha nature.  Supposing that when we see something that delights our eyes, we would think of it in a more sacred way as something that can be offered to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas for the sake of sentient beings, rather than clinging and grasping.

Supposing everything could be offered.  Supposing that every experience that happened to us could be offered, whether we liked it or didn’t like it.  Supposing we could develop a sense of everything being sacred, precious, having its own weight and depth and taste, and that each experience on its essential level can be offered.

Supposing that we grew in the awareness that every single thing that occurs, and every single thing that we see, feel, touch and taste within the context of our life is inseparable from this fundamental spiritual reality that is both our beginning, our ground or basis, our ultimate goal and result.  Supposing we could really practice deeply in that way.

Once you get past the point of being an effort, once you really begin to awaken to the interconnectedness and sacredness of everything, then within the mind there becomes a kind of simplicity that is the result of such thoughts.  When you’re really in the posture of making offerings for the sake of sentient beings, there is no sense planning on how you’re going to get everything.  Once the joy of that begins to catch hold, of seeing everything not as a materialistic, external, or attainable thing, but more as a display of everything you long for, then you begin to move into the understanding that it’s not the display itself that you want, but the underlying joyful, spiritual reality that is in fact the essence we all long for.

In every major religion in the world, there is something about approaching it with the eyes of a child.  Every religion has a different way of explaining that, but there is a simplicity and naturalness that if one can engage in that on their spiritual path, it is sustaining, joyful, and natural.  It gives us the means by which we will not separate ourselves from the path – having times when we feel that we are very spiritual, and times when we feel that we have other things to do.

If we begin to practice the path in that way, it is much simpler.  It is simply our life.  It is so inseparable that, in the same way that you cannot stop breathing and continue to move and have your being, neither could you even consider not having one’s spiritual path be the most integral, most core, most central, nourishing and profound element within your life.  And so you become empowered.

© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Confession

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[Adapted from an oral commentary given by His Holiness Penor Rinpoche in conjunction with a ceremony wherein he bestowed the bodhisattva vow upon a gathering of disciples at Namdroling in Bozeman, Montana, November 1999. —Ed.]

From beginningless time, throughout countless lifetimes, we amassed negative karma and nonvirtue before we encountered the dharma. As followers of the teachings in this lifetime, we still engage in nonvirtue and accumulate negativity. Consider all that negativity to be like [the result of] having ingested poison. Knowing that as poison that will certainly end your life unless you apply an antidote to neutralize it, you immediately apply the antidote. That is exactly how you should feel about the nonvirtue accumulated in the past and present.

With tremendous remorse, confess your accumulation of nonvirtue and vow that from this time onward, even at the cost of your life, you will no longer repeat the same pattern of negativity. Then focus on the objects of refuge in the space in front, the buddhas and bodhisattvas of the ten directions. Supplicate, knowing that in their omniscience they will always look upon you and bless and purify you. Pray to them with heartfelt faith and devotion, and with genuine remorse for your accumulation of negativity, feel confident that all negativity is completely purified. Confession is the antidote for anger. In anger, people commit many grave errors, such as even the taking of others’ lives.

From “THE PATH of the Bodhisattva: A Collection of the Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva and Related Prayers” with a commentary by Kyabje Pema Norbu Rinpoche on the Prayer for Excellent Conduct

Compiled under the direction of Venerable Gyatrul Rinpoche Vimala Publishing 2008

Relax Your Mind

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

Many people experience fear.  Confidence in your practice and confidence in your prayers to the guru, these things relax the mind and subdue fears.  So my suggestion is to practice in that way and to begin to cultivate the kind of confidence necessary to have the mind be more relaxed and calmer.  Everything about us, everything about our practice and everything about our lives in general tends to go better if the mind is not tense and tightly constricted.  If it is more spacious and relaxed, all of our perceptual processes, every aspect of our lives tends to go better.

We can take this understanding one step further. If in our lives we meet with a frightening obstacle—a health obstacle, an obstacle to our finances or to our living situation or something like that—our tendency, of course, is to tighten up and become tense and constricted.  Actually, you should know that when obstacles are rising, if our minds become tight and tense and constricted, the obstacles tend to rise with more venom, and to be much more difficult to handle.

In a way, if our minds are tense like that, it’s as though we are leaving ourselves open for obstacles to arise and bring all their friends with them.  It’s simply that when the mind is churned up it makes everything very fluid, and when obstacles are rising, that fluidity may not be the best thing.  That fluidity tends to make things ripen and catalyze very quickly.

The best thing to do instead, is to allow the mind to perceive the empty nature of all circumstances, to meditate on emptiness, and to see misfortune and fortune as being inherently the same in their nature.  That doesn’t mean you have to like misfortune as much as you like fortune.  Nobody likes it as much, and nobody feels that way.  But still, if you can begin to take steps towards meditating on the inherently empty nature of both phenomena, there is a lightness and a spaciousness that occurs within the mind that allows things to relax, that allows whatever obstacles that are arising to dissipate naturally.

When you begin to learn a little bit more about the nature of mind, you will come to understand that our perceptual process, our minds and the ego structure that reacts to any kind of fortune or misfortune—are all inherently empty in their nature.  As we begin to give rise to that awareness and meditate on that, the nature of experience actually begins to change.  Clearly, in times of great trouble many, many practitioners have found that if they avoid the temptation to say,  “Now I’m having problems, best I get busy trying to correct them,” and become more active, but instead, go more deeply into practice and actually rely on meditation as a solution, sometimes just backing off from the situation and relaxing the mind will cause the situation to arise much differently.  And that’s including, and even especially, physical sickness.

All sufferings have their roots in cause and effect, and most can be immediately traced to the way that we perceive and the way that we react.  Although it doesn’t seem like that when circumstances are really slapping us in the face, if we can sit quietly and meditate and have confidence in our practice, have confidence in the blessing of the Guru, have confidence in the blessings of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, then in this way many of the obstacles in our lives naturally begin to dissipate.  Many people have worked through tremendous personal obstacles by relying completely on their meditation, and they come out ever so much stronger.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

In a Dream

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In a dream I remember that I forgot what I remembered

I knew that I knew it was a dream.

I know I can stand still, in full presence and awaken

How odd that our uncontrived Primordial Nature dances with SO MANY mirrors, all sizes and shapes.

Splendid and devastating!

OM MANI PEDME HUNG

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Rest, Retreat and Compassion

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The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:
 

Hello all! I’ve now got my blackberry replaced. It died from a coffee spill. RIP li’l feller. 
 

Now at my destination I am resting and will soon begin retreat in earnest. All has been travel, stay overs, re-connecting with the people of Palyul — so good. 
 

Now resting, study, practice.I will be back eventually, when it is safe, I’m healthier, and justice is finally done. I look forward to returning home. Grateful for the love and care I have been shown. 
 

Photos newly dug up are now available. At last the splendor of Palyul is here for all!I have so much to share with you! Ancient stories, teachings, modern from the heart teachings too. Slowly, one step at a time.
 

I’ve asked my students to keep up with the Occupy DC movement, and to help them. For now, hearty Tibetan soup, called tukpa with barley dough balls. Best food there is. Can we get more support to feed vegetarians please? And boiled eggs always help. Plus fresh fruit and coffee! 
 

Here I am treated like a queen. And want to be sure all are treated so well. 
 

My back is pretty messed up so I have to stay off my feet some, and walk with sticks some. I must conquor this pain! 
 

But in every other way it’s all good. I’m so much less stressed not having to look over my shoulder to see if I’m being followed. This is pure bliss and peace here. And inspiring too. It feels like a whole new chapter of life, at least my life is about to begin. I just need the opportunity that comes with safety and Bodhicitta, and will do all I can for sentient beings. That is all that matters to me. To postulate about Dharma is useless. To bring the love is without question the way to awakening and peace! 
 

OM MANI PEDME HUNG!

Root It Out

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HE Mugsang Kuchen Rinpoche

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

How can you develop the kind of love that sustains itself? How can you cultivate compassion like a fire that never runs out of wood to burn? That never goes out. The fire of compassion is based on being courageous enough to come to an understanding of suffering. You have to come to a deep understanding that all sentient beings are suffering endlessly and helplessly, and bring yourself to the point where you can’t bear it. Cultivate the understanding that even though you know you can’t see all sentient beings, you can’t feel them, you can’t touch them, still, you want nothing more than to rid hatred, greed and ignorance from their minds, because you understand this is the cause of their suffering. You understand the whole dynamics of suffering: why it exists, how it exists, where it exists, how it grows, and at that point you become deeply committed.

You can begin by renouncing the causes of suffering yourself. If you have not renounced the causes of suffering, you can’t do a thing for anyone else, and so it takes a tremendous amount of courage. According to the Buddha, hatred, greed and ignorance in the mind are the causes of suffering. Hatred, greed and ignorance are preceded by desire. If there is no desire in the mind, there is no root from which these poisons can grow; there is no cause for hatred, greed and ignorance.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Desire Causes Suffering: Full Length Video Teaching

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The following is a full length video teaching offered by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo at Kunzang Palyul Choling:

 

We are suffering because of the desire in our minds. Meditation, and the other practices of the Buddha pacify the mind and bring happiness. The only one who can do this for us is ourselves. To look outside ourselves for solutions, only leads to more unhappiness. Take advantage of what you have in your hands, and use the teachings of Buddha to make your life better.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Like Vibes With Like

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

Let’s say that your immediate family consists of four people, so you have a particular karma with three others. Those three all have both negative and positive karmic seeds coming to the surface, just as you do. When you four came together, you did so because certain karma was ripening. You could not marry; a child could not be born to you, unless that particular karma was ripening in your mindstream, and in someone else’s. When this karma comes together, it has a kind of interactive characteristic. Like tends to attract or “vibe with” like.

Perhaps you have some horrible negative karma associated with cruelty to animals. You may have a child, or there may be someone else in your family, who has a similar negative karma. Though you won’t understand why, it is likely that something will happen to reinforce the catalyzing effect of your relationship. For instance, you might get a dog that both of you abuse. Or you might develop a terrible animosity toward animals that you would not have experienced so overwhelmingly, if you had not been with that particular person. In your past, you also have karma of being kind to animals. And had you come together with a person with strong kind-to-animals karma, that relationship might have catalyzed something completely different. Let’s say that you have a period of intense anger: the karma of anger is coming to the surface. If you let yourself fall into that anger, really wallow in it, then you will tend to ripen still more anger from the deeper past, and those bubbles will continue to come forward. On a superficial level, the anger will seem to feed on itself. You will feel compelled to be angry.

But suppose you do everything you can to overcome your anger. Though angry at someone, you tell yourself: “This person is suffering just as all sentient beings are, and doesn’t really mean to act that way.” If you truly try to circumvent the anger by reasoning it out, what will happen? Instead of having more anger ripen and come forward, you will ripen a different kind of karma. Perhaps the karma of clear thought. Basically, you can prevent future ripenings of negative karma by taking hold of yourself at any given point. You have a precious human rebirth; you have the Dharma; and you can think logically. You are able to choose how to cope with any anger that arises.

When some people have an unpleasant feeling, such as anger, hatred, or grief, they habitually cover it over. If they become angry, for example, they say, “I feel only love.” Or: “There is only love.” This is like slapping a Band-Aid on an ulcer, which only continues to ripen and grow deeper. By plastering one thought on top of another, you actually link them together. And what happens? Either your anger and hatred will remain inflamed on an underlying level (a frequent result), or you may ripen the karma of delusion. Your mind will be very unclear. Those who use such methods over a long period of time become deeply set in delusion. It seems as if they have gone somewhere else, and one is tempted to ask, “Are you still in there? Anybody home?” There are just too many layers of Band-Aids. What you need is to examine the contents of your mindstream. And begin to view your own mind as something you can work with, something you can take responsibility for.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Developing Pure View

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

Students who are flirting with, considering, or entering the path may become confused by the term “pure view.” Why? Because they register the ordinary meaning of these words, unaware that they will understand more later. If at this moment we were able to awaken in the primordial wisdom state, if we were somehow able to move into Lord Buddha’s posture of being awake to that nature, pure view would be instantly established. When we first come to the path, we are excited to have found something precious. It’s like waking up on Christmas morning and discovering a gift. We realize that Dharma provides tools we didn’t have before, deeper ways to understand. We realize that we are going to be let in on a vast secret…Something that will enrich our lives, change our lives.

We enter a romantic period. We fall in love. It’s quite normal: in some ways, it is helpful. Falling in love with a person enables you to see that person’s best qualities. You become open to that person and the same thing happens with Dharma. You become receptive. Some students fall in love with the very idea of being on a path, being part of a group experience, part of something that moves together as one body, and with the idea of having a teacher. Some students fall in love with the exotic things they encounter in their Dharma practice. “Hey, this temple looks like Nepal or something! It’ll be cool to bring my friends!” Silly and superficial as this sounds, it is absolutely normal when you first come to the path. It is also normal to begin “The Great Adventure Of Imitation.” Walking the Dharma walk, talking the Dharma talk. Trying to look serenely pure upon hearing the term “pure view.” Periodically rolling the eyes skyward to appear saintly. As we try to act in a way that we think is pure, we approach Dharma externally. Materialistically. Wait! How can approaching Dharma be materialistic? Isn’t it a religion of renunciation? Unfortunately, it is very possible to practice materialistically. It’s possible to collect Dharma—and things associated with Dharma—just as we collect rare stamps or works of art.

This is all sadly far from practicing pure view. What must be pure is the way you think. When real change comes, you have nothing to show off to your friends. The change is inside. It’s very subtle, very quiet. And it grows like a seedling coming out of the soil, at first almost invisible. That is how pure view should grow.

When you enter the Dharma, what you need to protect most is your innocence. You should come almost as a child, a seeker, as someone whose mind is open. The traditional Buddhist analogy likens the mind to a bowl. Some people have dirt in their bowls: judgment and preconceived ideas. Some complacently extrapolate their own religion. Some don’t really listen to the teachings. Their bowls are turned over. As the milk of Dharma is poured, it simply runs down the sides. Some come to the path with poison in their bowls: negative habitual tendencies and negative emotions. They have a hard edge. The way for a new student to practice in harmony with pure view is to relax the mind as much as possible, to have a mind that is gentle and receptive. Where you’ve been before, what’s happened before, and even your opinion of yourself, doesn’t really matter.

What matters is what you do today. Today you can focus on self-honesty. You can closely examine your mind, what it does, how it works. You can finally see how much of what you do results from self-absorption. How much of what you do is selfish, judgmental, and manipulative. And with your new insight, you can decide to examine yourself in the mirror very squarely. You can examine your own root poisons, and you can decide to eradicate them systematically.

The best way to do that, at first, is not to act any differently, and this is why. You may correctly realize that you are now lonely because you haven’t been kind in the past. But if you simply try to act kind all the time, you will act the way you think kindness ought to look. I have watched people try it. They learn a few things about what kindness ought to be and they conduct themselves accordingly. This hampers or prevents the necessary subtle internal change. Take a rubber band and stretch it all the way out. When you let go, it will snap back to its original shape. Now, if you yourself try to change on an external or gross level without examining the teachings and without letting your mind create a new, gentle internal habit, your mind will do the same thing as the rubber band. It has a natural shape, yes, and you can make it perform. In the past, you have made yourself jump through hoops. So you can do that, you can make your mind change. But the result will be temporary, because it’s happening in a gross and inappropriate way.

So it’s better to be gentle with yourself. Let your bowl be filled with some real milk. Absorb the teachings. Listen with a pure mind. This is like taking a rubber band and rubbing it with an oil to help it expand —perhaps only slightly. Then you rub and work it a little more, actually changing the fiber of the rubber band. Eventually, it becomes a much looser thing. Eventually, that will happen to your mind. It will become looser, more spacious. It will be more receptive to truth, a place where Dharma can live. So in the beginning, pure view for students is like an honest, gentle effort. Like an innocence. Like a relaxation.

Further along the path, pure view becomes something more meaningful, more profound. It actually arises from some of the meditational practices, specifically from what is termed “generation-stage practice.” One meditates on emptiness, which is our true primordial nature, on oneself having that nature, and then one gives rise to the particular meditational deity chosen for this practice. That is to say, one’s own self appears naturally as the meditational deity. The deity symbolizes the mind of enlightenment; meditating on oneself as the deity is actually a tool. When you engage in non-virtuous activity, you don’t have much respect for yourself, although you may cover it up with arrogance. Inside, sometimes way inside, there is a person crying because that person is not happy with non-virtuous behavior. When you do generation-stage practice, that crying is satisfied. And no matter what deity you are practicing, whatever his or her attributes, there is always the quality of kindness, and there are always the elements that produce happiness. In generation-stage practice, you begin to lose the tightness of your ordinary habitual tendencies, and you begin to develop the new habitual tendency of spontaneously abiding in pure virtuous compassion. And happiness begins.

After the generation-stage practice is completed, you pray that all sentient beings will be happy. Then you close your book and put away your mala, but your practice doesn’t really end, for you are now particularly involved with pure view. Through this practice, the mind has increasingly taken on the virtue and the attributes of the deity. Even when the practice is over, you maintain deity pride. This is not a personal pride, involving conceit or arrogance. Deity pride is different. It is confidence. Courage and a confidence that begins to change your life. If you practice the deity Chenresig, for example, deeply aware that Chenresig’s main attribute is benefiting sentient beings through compassion, you will maintain, in a solid way, an inner virtuous upright quality. You will maintain the idea that compassion is your lifeblood. That this is everything to you. You declare it. You wish it. You look for it in your mind. You try to bring it out. You do your best to live it. You create the habit of kindness.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

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