Buddhism

Finding a New Well Within

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From a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:

Things are splendid these days. And I am thrilled to be able to say so at last! We have endured some terrible times, to put it mildly. But now the light at the end of this tunnel is clearly visible.

Have any of you gone through horrible stuff that seems unending? It is hard to stay centered, hard to not be afraid, it is debilitating, ruins your health, etc. When the end can be seen it feels like liberation from chains and shackles being removed, although it really takes time to heal. I thought when some relief came I’d bounce right back. Not so. Takes time passing, medical help, counseling, learning to see yourself as whole, good, worthy, etc. I’m working on this, and I want to reach out to all and tell you if you are violated and attacked, your person or vocation, it will end. Nothing is permanent! You will recover! You can get help, emotional support, medical support, legal help, and you should nurture yourself, give yourself the love and self-respect you have lost. It is still in there somewhere, I believe.

As for myself I don’t feel I will ever the same. I will be well, but a different but it will have to be a new well. After so much hate and abuse it is not possible to be your “old self” again. It is damaged. So a new inner person must emerge. Again, it is still oneself. But changed. I feel, for me it will make me stronger. Must deal with bitterness, grief, rage, self hatred, feelings of betrayal, of being violated. That done we are free again to craft a good, wholesome, valuable life. One of benefit.

I want it all back, and will do all it takes to be well and real in every way! Thanks for listening!

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

This Precious Opportunity – What Causes Are You Creating?

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From a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:

Sometimes I surf twitter to see what’s up, who is where and what is going on. It is really interesting to find new friends, people with similar interests or those with news.

There is one thing I have noticed and is fairly common. Here I see people who are amazingly rude or cruel, abusive. Then after that they turn around and whine about how people are mean to them. There seems to be no awareness of cause and effect. No thinking in full equations, or understanding “if this then that.”

Then, of course there are so many who “get it” but don’t live it and swear therefore that compassion and simple kindness is not helpful to them. It reminds me of people who practice Dharma and re-work the methods Buddha taught, and then cry when Dharma does not “work” for them. Or they remain unchanged, their minds hard as stone. I often wish to reach out and help them understand or show them how to apply method correctly. It doesn’t work though – most that practice like that have so much pride they cannot hear. So much ego-cherishing they don’t want to transform one bit. Yet they suffer due to their habit and qualities.

You see, if one is kind and generous, compassionate toward others, develops empathy, is humble – that will work if practiced long and well. Then the same kinds of good people are attracted to the kind practitioner. On the other hand if one has the habit of self-serving meanness with the intention to harm and hurt others you can bet your life that karma will play out in an exacting way. One will draw the same kind of people, mean spirited and self- serving. That is why people remain, then, unhappy with what they end up with in life. If one is harmful to others the karma ripens in the next life rather than this one; it is almost impossible to recognize the truth when someone is cruel to you. You earned it. Maybe this life, maybe in a future life it will appear with no warning or apparent reason. So it is necessary to practice Dharma correctly and to purify the defilements of mind, heart, and body. If not done there is no result, no true recognition of awakening as opposed to dream walking within one’s own mindstream, or karmic bubble, if you like. Still an ordinary sentient being caught in the net of Samsara.

Some think developing Bodhicitta is for beginners. Ridiculous and ignorant. Some think purifying inner poisons is only for those “less evolved” just Dharma nobodys – so beneath your “highness!” Could not be more wrong than that. It is a trap to avoid completely.

Compassion, or Bodhicitta, and Wisdom, or recognition and view are the two legs upon which Dharma stand. If one does not accomplish both there will be no precious awakening any time soon. These are the hallmarks of success in Dharma; this is recognition. This is what Buddha taught. And the Buddhas are those who have crossed the ocean of Samsara, and went to that other shore. At that time they return for our sake. EH MA HO!

You must work the path, as we never know when the opportunity will be taken away. Soon I’ll be offering Phowa for a young man who just died of a heart attack at age 20. 20 yrs old. So take this life, turn it around, practice Buddha Dharma well! It is your precious life, and the brass ring, the gold ring is the awakening. You have been given the teaching. Work out your Liberation for all our sakes!

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

The Root Teacher: Cutting Through Concepts and Giving Rise to Compassion

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From a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:

It never ceases to amaze me how many meditators and Buddhists continuously argue that altruism and compassionate activity are not part of the Buddha Dharma. And that one need not develop virtuous qualities or purify in any way. That one need not do charitable good works or even offer even ordinary human kindness. In Vajrayana Buddhism conduct is just as important, and going beyond that one must pacify their inner poisons. So this is harmful thinking and will only muddy the waters. There is a kind of arrogance that has students thinking there is simply no work to be done on the path whatsoever. Or worse, that one has learned many intellectual concepts about Dharma (and can quote them over and over) so that one is “locked in” to their own learning and intellectualism and cannot see they have totally lost their way.

Then there are those who have decided that the practice of Guru Yoga is not necessary to achieve liberation. Not so. Guru Yoga is the heart essence of Vajrayana. Compassion and altruism are the very heart of Buddhism. If one tries to change that one is no longer practicing the Vajra path. If one guts the Dharma as it was passed purely from Guru to disciple there is a terrible breakage of the Buddha’s great intention as re-installed by Guru Padmasambhava when he brought Vajrayana to Tibet.

Now the newest “fad” (sad) in Vajrayana is to throw out the Tulkus and Lineage Masters entirely. How then, would the teachings and traditional wang transmissions be passed on? From student to student based on their promise to keep it free of defilement? That is a joke, if you know American Pride and self love. Have you seen what passes for wholesome Dharma on the internet? Some pure ones are there. Mostly there are self-serving people looking for adoration and praise while offering nothing.

There are many who feel one can truly understand Dharma from books. Books and traditional text is needed and most be studied. However the Guru, the very root of accomplishment is the greatest necessity in order to achieve any result. And it isn’t enough to repeat like a parrot the quotes of one’s teacher. How shallow! One uses only the quotes one likes best. You know, that fit the old lifestyle, and are hip.

Re-making the Dharma is the most heinous breakage of samaya with the Three Jewels, and with the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of the ten directions. Upon bringing Tantrayana; Vajrayana to Tibet, Guru Padmasambhava said “I will appear as your Root Guru, and will remain as you call for me.” How does one do away with that blessing, that method, so sacred? Not without consequences, and dire ones at that. It is like feasting with a hollow gutted corpse, instead of sitting to the feast as the bride of the precious Guru in honor and dignity. Unwavering in pure love!

And how does one tear the heart out of Dharma by having no pure intention, just another bloated ego to feed. Without Bodhicitta there is no Dharma recognizable to any Buddha! The two precious eyes of Buddhadharma, Mahayana, are wisdom and compassion. If one neglects kindness and compassion one has forgotten the instruction of every qualified Guru since Guru Padma at the beginning of every teaching or empowerment: motivation. “This I do for the liberation and salvation of all sentient beings from the endless wheel of death and rebirth.” This is why we practice Buddhism – to benefit all sentient beings. This can never change until all beings are liberated.

If one has to climb up over the corpses of those weaker to feel special or precious, if this sticks here in the west in these modern times, we really are at the crossroads, where blessings are lost; where corruption is the flavor of the times. And we are lost, utterly lost. We cannot allow this. One should follow the Root Guru purely – even at the cost of one’s very life. I take this seriously. So I will never stop, never shut up. Plot against me? Okay. But I will never stop preserving the Dharma for the future. I will never break Guru Padmasambhava’s great blessing. I am for you, beloveds as He is. Until all are free!

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

The Test

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An excerpt from a teaching called The Dharma of Technology by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

You should come to respect the root of Dharma, which is bodhicitta or compassion, as the most profound teaching at whatever level you are practicing.  You should come to understand that if you accomplish only that, then you have a right to wear your robes and you have a right to call yourself a Buddhist.  But it is by far the most difficult of all of the vows. You have to think about compassion like this.

If you can pass this test, then you have accomplished Dharma, even if you don’t know how to do a single mudra or ring a bell, even if you don’t have any arms or legs to do it.  Here is the test.  Ask yourself,  “If Lord Buddha Amitabha came to me right now, giving me an opportunity and saying, ‘I’m going to make you a deal.  You could take on all the suffering of all the six realms, every bit of suffering that every sentient being carries, meaning that you have to take on and absorb all the causes of their suffering – hatred, greed and ignorance, desire.  I can give you that, and you could take all of that onto yourself and absorb it completely so that you will suffer endlessly in the most extreme, horrible way until time has run out and in doing that there would be no more suffering in the six realms.’”  Would you do it?

When you hear me say this, you are going to say yes.  You get carried away with emotions.  But if Lord Buddha Amitabha really appeared to you, red and sitting on his lotus, and he really said that to you and he showed you the condensed suffering of all the six realms and you knew that the six realms of cyclic existence appear to be like an endless ocean, and have been going on for uncountable eons, then if you had to accept all that suffering onto yourself, knowing that your mind had to change from the nice thing that you think it is now into a monster filled with hatred, greed and ignorance from all the six realms, but in doing that all of the six realms would be emptied, would you do it?   If you were shown this horrible poison of suffering, this cauldron, this endless sea of suffering and Lord Buddha said to you, “Eat it for their sake and become for an uncountable amount of eons a horrible thing suffering in agony for their sake.”  Would you do it?  Would you open your mouth and start eating?  More than that, would you be happy about it?  Would you be able to do that?

You should try it sometime.  You should test yourself in that way by really thinking that it is possible.  Would you take on every bit of the suffering?  Would you become so grossly misshapen and ugly because of the grossness of all of that suffering?  Would you become so unrecognizable to what you are now?  Would you be willing to do that, knowing that as a result there would be nothing in the six realms of cyclic existence except for you?  There would be nothing.  There would be no more suffering.  The karma of all of those minds, uncountable minds would be purified so that they were free of desire, free of all karma.  Would you bite the big one?

If you think that you would do that, then you know less about yourself than you think.  But to accomplish Dharma you have to get to that point where you would gladly, joyfully, willingly start to eat an ocean of suffering for their sake.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Stop the Madness

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An excerpt from a teaching called Perception and Karma by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

In order to pacify the karma of our mind, we need to employ the methods of Dharma.  These methods consist of generating oneself in a pure form, free of attachment and desire, meditating on the nature of emptiness, contemplating the nature of emptiness, engaging in compassionate and pure activity in order to pacify the karma of our minds.  We engage in all of these things.  These are the means by which eventually, over a period of time, the karma of our mind will change.  It will change.  How quickly it changes is up to you.  No one can predict that.  It really depends on you. It depends on how diligently and deeply you practice, how clear you are about what you want, how deep you can allow your understanding to go, and how much you put into it. There is no law or force outside of you that pushes you to have progress at a certain level or in a certain way.  It is purely up to you.

The experience that we have, however, and the habitual tendencies we have are so strong, that even hearing this is a little bit like riding a Ferris wheel.  When you ride to the top of a Ferris wheel you can look down at the whole world.  You can see the horizon, you can see the lights, you can see the buildings and you can see people, and you go, “Oh, it looks like that, does it?”  Then the Ferris wheel comes down and you get off and you’re on that ground level.  You are in it, walking the streets.  You forget that there is a horizon.  You forget that there are millions and millions of sentient beings per square block. You don’t have any view so we continue with that habitual compulsive tendency to act and react in the ways that we do.

These teachings sound disturbing and they should be disturbing for people that have no access to dharma.  Within that circular, compulsive, experiential procedure there is no end to it.  One cannot do something that will end the phenomena because the more you do the more you interact between self and other.  The more you interact between self and other, the more that you try to accomplish, the more effortful your efforts are, the more engaged you are in cause and effect relationship.  The more cause and effect relationships you engage in, the more karma continues, the more exaggeration continues.  The process does nothing but give birth to itself.  There’s no end to it.

For those who have the opportunity to practice the path that is brought about, not through ordinary means of cause and effect, not through using ordinary techniques of manipulating phenomena and increasing exaggeration, but rather by using techniques that are birthed from primordial wisdom and that bring about the pacification and the end of cause and effect relationships, you should thank Buddha because there is an end to suffering.  Having seen the impenetrability of this tight constant delusion, having seen how it simply gives birth to itself and does more and more and more, having understood this, you should look at the path that comes from the primordial wisdom state and that offers the necessary technology to bring about the end of cause and effect relationships, and feel tremendously relieved. It is like you have been sifting through garbage for many lifetimes, and suddenly you have come upon a precious jewel.  Suddenly you have found the wish-fulfilling jewel.  With that you should develop some sense of determination.

That determination can be a very illusory thing. I’m talking about really understanding for yourself, not just hearing my words, but taking the time to contemplate and understand how useless it is to combat this thing you’re in with the ways that you do.  To really contemplate on how useless your actions are to end something that can’t be ended.  To really contemplate in such a way that you look at the way you’re manipulating phenomena and see that it’s nothing.  You might as well do nothing.  In fact, you’re getting yourself in deeper and deeper.

Contemplate that in such a way that you become armed with a foundational view or foundational understanding that says to you that this stuff is stupid.  It’s not only stupid, it’s deadly, it’s horrible and there’s no way out of it.  To be involved in cyclic existence is horrible beyond belief.  Be determined to examine the nature of your mind.  Watch yourself as you engage in it, and from that point, use these techniques to begin to pacify the causes of the experience that you’re having, which is karma.

That determination is the kind of determination that doesn’t make you practice a little bit more for a few days and then waste away again.  It’s the kind of determination, for instance, as a monk or a nun that would make you say, “Look at these robes, I will never abandon them.  How precious that I have found the supreme vehicle.” Even if men or women came dancing naked through the room and they were all gorgeous, it wouldn’t affect you at all.  You wouldn’t need the world to hide itself so that you could maintain your vows.  You would have that kind of renunciation. You would understand and even if the most delightful sensual experiences were to present themselves to you, they would be nothing to you.  What is it?  It’s nothing.  It’s garbage.  It begets more of the same. You can’t have anything without losing it.

For those of us who are renunciates in different ways, you should have the same experience.  You should look at whatever experience you have in your life and know that it can’t dupe you anymore. It’s not that you won’t achieve, it’s not that you won’t have money; it’s not that you won’t have the experiences that people have but it just won’t dupe you anymore.  You can get married, you can have money, it doesn’t matter what you do, but it won’t dupe you anymore because you know what it’s about.

Having this sense of renunciation, you develop a kind of unshakeable discipline.  It’s not the discipline that means I should do so many mantras per day.  This discipline should go even deeper than that. You should be practicing constantly.  You should be constantly developing some space in the middle of that hard core perception of self and other. You should be developing some space in the middle of all your reactions.  Develop the spaciousness and the relaxation that is based on understanding what’s what, and then develop it through your practice.  Please refer back to the teaching on Monday night.  I hope that all of you will try to hear that teaching again. The constant revelation in every piece of phenomena is the heart of emptiness.  That is its taste.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Me, You and Karma

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

Every single kind of perception that we have, no matter what it is, is based on the false presupposition that self is inherently real.  The belief in self as being inherently real, absolutely lays out that other is inherently real. Once that idea of self has been borne and is fixed, you must develop walls of ideation and conceptualization to surround it and maintain it.  You must constantly separate other.  In order to separate other, you must continue to determine how other and self interact.  That’s the basic process.  Having done that since time out of mind, you are involved in cause and effect relationships complete with lots of exaggeration. The residue and reality of that is experienced as karma.

Karma is nothing other than cause and effect.  That’s all it is.  It’s not somebody up there making check marks in a book. It’s simply cause and effect.  It’s as simple to understand as a leaf falling from a tree.  There are irrefutable laws of cause and effect.

The experience that we have is based on this karma, which has been based on a long-term relationship with cause and effect, which is based on the underlying belief in self-nature as being inherently real.  Why then, hearing this, can’t we just stop?  Why can’t we just stop reacting?  Why can’t we just stop judging things?  Why can’t we do this?

We can’t stop because we are no longer in a position where we are truly cognizant of the choice between self-nature being inherently real or not.  It is now automatically so.  It is now so rigid that survival has become a big deal. You believe that this is what you are.  You must continue that continuum that you think is survival because you do not know that there is anything without the continuation of self-nature. It is so far buried, it is such a primal experience, it is so beneath reason, so much deeper than reason, due to the constant building up of cause and effect relationships, of karmic relationships and the constant exaggeration that has occurred since time out of mind, from the first perception that implied self.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Statement About the Karmapa

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From a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:

I’d like to mention that many people are asking me the details of the issues with His Holiness the 17th Karmapa. My answer – I don’t gossip or judge other lineages. Gossip is not my way. To gossip about another lineage is not what I’m about. It causes dissension and anger in the sangha, harms the Three Jewels and causes only bad result. Buddhists should reject gossip as wrong speech and ignorance.

I do know about the situation, but not one word of of gossip or slander about His Holiness the 17th Karmapa or the Kagyu lineage will come from my mouth or activity, I have no secret or inside knowledge.  Anyone asking should find those that gossip, not me.  Any other lineage besides Palyul is not for me to pass judgment on, simply not my job. I have nothing but respect for the Kagyu lineage and His Holiness the 17th Karmapa.

For all my students I advise not to gossip and pray we will all keep our own practice alive and well.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

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