Compassion

Increase Your Capacity to Love

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An excerpt from a teaching called Dharma and the Western Mind by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Having taught Westerners I can see that the ones that last on this path, the ones that change and gentle and deepen in their practice are the ones that are motivated by this intensity of loving.  The ones that will do almost anything to end suffering, these are the ones that make it.  These are the ones that I have hopes for.

It is a Buddhist tradition that we should pray for the ones who have hopes of us because we have many karmic connections. Each one of us have karmic connections, it’s just like a giant web of connections, and some day each one of us will attain supreme enlightenment just as Lord Buddha did.  Surely we will, because our nature is the same as his.  We are the same and we will some day become awakened to that nature.  And on that day, those with whom we have connections, those who have hopes of us, will rejoice because at last they have a chance.  You should think right now there are those who are waiting for you, whose future it is, whose karma it is that when you achieve supreme realization they will depend on you as your disciples and you will be their teacher. You will be the one by which the door to liberation is opened for them.

Some day you will be reborn as a teacher that opens the door of Dharma, or makes the path available and you will be the cause of the end of their suffering.  You should think about them every day.  You should pray for those who have hopes of you.  It is a very important thing to think about and in teaching Westerners I find that they must remember this.

Even if all of the concepts associated with the Buddha Dharma are difficult, even if the idea of devotion is difficult, even if the idea of doing prostrations is difficult because we are unfamiliar with these things, we can do anything in order to benefit beings.  We can accustom ourselves to any idea in order to benefit beings.  Once your mind has been gentled and softened by that kind of loving you can begin to understand that the most important thing is to eliminate suffering.  You can understand also that the idea of doing what is unfamiliar to you – repetition of mantra, practice of different kinds, meditation of different kinds, sitting for a very long time, doing prostrations, developing a relationship with the guru, these things, that are not common in our Western society, become acceptable because we can see that they bear fruit and gentle our minds.  They increase our capacity for loving and they bring us closer to enlightenment.  Then we can do it.

©Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

The Stream of Bodhicitta

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

AH – May all beings be free of suffering.
May they recognize what to accept and what to reject, and pacify the root causes of suffering.
May we joyfully and lovingly accomplish compassionate activity for the sake of all sentient beings in all realms.
May the stream of Bodhicitta flow deep, strong and sweet, to quench the thirst of all beings.
May the fruit of merit ripen in our mind streams, nourishing all who are hungry.
May all who are homeless be sheltered, who are cold be warmed, who are sick be healed.
May all who are lonely be comforted, the helpless be raised up, the poor be satisfied in every way.
May our land be purified of hate and greed.
And may a song of freedom be heard throughout this and all nations.
May we join as one life, which is our nature – and be unbound by hatred, greed and ignorance.
May there be peace and joy throughout the 3,000 myriads of universes!
And may I myself bear in love, the suffering of all. Now and in the time to come.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo. All rights reserved

Light of Compassion

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

Somehow you have found yourself in this fortunate, amazing position where this feast of possibility is laid before you. How did you come to this point? How is it possible that you have this option? You must have done something right in the past, and I suggest that you now build on it. If you don’t cultivate the mind of extraordinary compassion and such a burning love that compassion is the most important force in your life, then the natural inclinations of a mind filled with desire will overcome you. This is Kaliyuga, the age of degeneration, and that’s how it is. You must practice and cultivate that mind of compassion, of love, so thoroughly that you are moved to the core by even the faint possibility that you might achieve liberation in order to benefit beings. You think of nothing else. You must cultivate that until you burn with it. Don’t be afraid of that kind of love.

In the West we are taught, “Be cool. Hey, I’m an intellectual, I don’t think like that. I’m kind of special.” That’s what we’re taught, that’s our value system. That is the same value system we will take to our graves, and only the selfishness of that kind of idea will survive, not the intelligence. There is one thing that will survive this life, and will create the karma for your next life. It is the purity of your mind and the degree of love that you have accomplished. This will be the determining factor for how you will return time and time again in a form that will benefit beings until someday there is no more suffering.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Eyes Wide Open

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

You may ask, “Why do I have to think about suffering? Why is it that the Buddha talks about suffering and nobody else does? Why is it that today’s New Age thinkers are saying, ‘I want to be me. I want to be free,’ and the Buddha is still talking about suffering after thousands and thousands of years?” It is because the Buddha has a teaching that is very logical and very real.

If we want to exit a room, but there is a chair between us and the door, we have a number of choices. We can say that the chair is not there. We can pretend that the chair is not an obstacle to our passing through the room and that it’s not important. Or we can notice that the chair is there and get on with our journey by walking around it. That is the essence of the Buddha’s teaching. The Buddha doesn’t stop at saying, “There is suffering.” The Buddha follows that by saying, “There is a way out of suffering.”  And that’s the ticket.  You cannot motivate yourself to follow the path out of suffering until you generate the commitment through the realization of suffering. You can’t make yourself walk around the chair to get to the door until you face the fact that the chair is blocking your way. You have to look at the chair.

It isn’t only about walking around a chair so that you can get to the other side of the room, so that you can get out the door. There’s more to it than that. You must understand that your commitment is two-fold. In order to become the deepened practitioner that you must be, to really sink your teeth into the Buddhadharma, you must have compassion for others that is so strong and so extraordinary it will nourish you even when you are dry.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Compassion – The Foundation of the Path

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An excerpt from the Vow of Love Series by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

In a superficial way the idea of compassion can seem very simple, and we might make the mistake of thinking that we understand it. But if we study compassion deeply, eventually we will come to understand that the ultimate view of compassion is enlightenment itself. It is the natural, primordial wisdom state itself. That’s why compassion isn’t truly known until we reach supreme enlightenment.

Compassion is the foundation of the Buddhist path. Without it, like any house that does not have a firm foundation, the house will crumble. It will not stand. One’s motivation to practice must be compassion. If your motivation is not compassion, it will be very difficult to firmly stick to the commitment to practice and meditate every day. I feel for those who say, “I’d really like to practice. I would really like to have a time in my life everyday to meditate, and yet I don’t have the discipline. I don’t have the strength. I don’t have the commitment.”  If you have the right motivation, if you want to do this solely and purely from the point of view of compassion, you will find the time and you will find the commitment and you will find a way to do it. For those who have tried to meditate everyday or be consistent in their practice, if they can’t do it, my feeling is somehow the foundation of compassion isn’t strong enough.

If we could make the idea of compassion so strong that it becomes a burning fire consuming our hearts, until we are nothing but a flame. If the need to benefit others becomes so strong that it’s irresistible. If the understanding that others are suffering so unbearably in realms that we cannot even see, let alone the realms we can, that we cannot rest until we find a way to be of some lasting benefit to them. If these things can truly become part of our minds, we will find the strength to practice.

How do you find the strength to breathe? “Well,” you say, “that’s easy. Breathing is a reflex. I have to breathe. If I don’t breathe, I die.” What if you could cultivate the understanding that all sentient beings are filled with suffering that is inconceivable in its magnitude and that there are non-physical realms of existence we are not even aware of, filled with suffering? What if you could cultivate this understanding so deeply that, because of your realization, compassion and profound generosity became as much a reflex as breathing?  That is possible.

“Well,” you say, “I don’t have that kind of understanding. I’m just not like that. I can’t make myself really buy into that.” Let me comfort you with this awareness. Unless you are supremely enlightened you are not born with that perfect understanding. No one is. No one is born with enough understanding of the suffering of others, and an affinity with the idea of compassion, to create that perfect discipline naturally. That understanding comes only through its cultivation, and we must cultivate that understanding consistently every day.

Deepening on the Path: The Importance of “Caring”

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The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called, “Bringing Virtue into Life”

If your eyes are open at all, you have seen that you have often boxed your own ears, that you have often hurt yourself by engaging in non-virtuous activity that has brought you suffering.  Maybe you’ve had time to see a little bit of that.  But I’ll tell you that according to the Buddha’s teaching, and this is the truth, every bit of non-virtuous behavior that you have engaged in will bring about unhappiness. So it’s not logical to engage in non-virtuous behavior and that includes the lesser non-virtuous behaviors.  The big ones like killing, we can get that.  Killing, stealing, that sort of thing, but what about simple selfishness?  What about judgment of others?  What about just not giving a big flip?  Not caring?  What about reading the newspaper and thinking “Wow millions of people are starving over there.  Too bad.”  You don’t think that’s a non-virtue?  That’s how we read the paper, every day.  Of course that’s a non-virtue. We’re not caring.  We’re not praying for them.  We’re not sending them anything.  We’re not doing anything to help.

The Buddha also taught us that virtuous behavior brings about happiness, but we have exactly the opposite idea.  Most of us don’t like to practice, for instance.  We don’t like to sit down and practice.  Who likes to sit down for two hours at a stretch?  I don’t know about you, but I get fanny fatigue big time.  Two hours at a stretch.  That is not how I want to spend the day.  So we think like that.  We think “Oh, you know, if I sit down today and practice for two hours, I’m really going to suffer!”  So we have this weird idea that virtuous activity like practice is going to bring about unhappiness, and it’s because of our lack of understanding.  What we don’t realize is that yes, while we have maybe the antsy-ness or the fanny fatigue or whatever it is that we get, ultimately that two hours of practice will ripen. And when it ripens it will be like a precious jewel within your life.  At some point there will be an event or a change or a lift or a gift or something that you very much need in your life. It will appear as though out of nowhere. and it can be directly traced to previous virtuous behavior.

The Buddha also teaches us that if we offer even something, if we’re very poor and all we have is something simple like a candle or a butter lamp. If we offer only that, placing it on an altar and with a full and generous heart visualize it as being everything that we have, everything that we could ever have and offer it to the Buddha and the Dharma and the Sangha and particularly to the Lama as the representative of all three, then let that merit be used to benefit sentient beings.  What we don’t realize is that while that took some time out of our busy day, yes, and we did have to prepare a butter lamp or light the candle or whatever hardship we had to engage, still we have created unbelievable happiness for ourselves. Actually, the Buddha has taught that if we could manage to make that offering with complete and total absorption in the expanse of that generosity, then we would be reborn eventually in unmovable samadhi, complete happiness, because we are engaging in the kind of activity that creates the habitual tendency of supreme generosity.

We are taught also to make offerings of our body, speech and mind.  For instance, we visualize that our body becomes like food and we offer our bodies.  Of course, we don’t cut off pieces of ourselves.  Nobody would want to eat that anyway, I don’t think. But we do visualize our body as being transformed into this nectar that nourishes all sentient beings, and without holding on to ourselves, we offer ourselves in that way. So we offer our bodies to benefit sentient beings.  We offer our speech to benefit sentient beings.  We practice so that what comes out of our mouth will be of benefit to others, such as mantra or teaching about Dharma or some spiritual advice.  We try very hard to give our speech to benefit sentient beings. And we offer our minds as well to benefit sentient beings.  We make that offering. The way that we practice that offering is by no longer using our mind as a vehicle by which to accomplish nonvirtue. Instead we use our mind as a vehicle by which to accomplish virtue for the sake of sentient beings. That is the true meaning of offering our body, our speech and our mind.

Many practitioners unfortunately say that.  They say “I offer my body, speech and mind” and they make all kinds of grand gestures but, boy, when it comes down to the clinch, they ain’t offering nothing, and that’s the truth.  Not a thing.  It isn’t happening.  So we, as Dharma practitioners, have to learn how to practice more deeply than that in order to assimilate the causes for true happiness.  It is that kind of virtuous activity that we have to engage in.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Pitfalls and Excuses

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

It is difficult in our world to practice regularly, with firm resolve. Some people say, “I’d really like to do that, but I don’t have the discipline, the commitment.” But if you are motivated by compassion, you will find the time and the way to do it. What if you are just too tired? Well, how do you find the strength to breathe when you are totally exhausted? You do it automatically, don’t you? What if you could understand, through a process of deep cultivation, that innumerable sentient beings are constantly in pain, that they go through endless rounds of torment, that there are non- physical realms of existence filled with unimaginable suffering? What if, because of this realization, compassion and profound generosity became so much a part of you that they were an automatic reflex, like breathing? Then there would not be a moment in which you did not practice with the utmost compassion. You would never think only of yourself and your needs, pursuing temporary gratification.

In order to become a deepened practitioner, you must have compassion for all others—so strong, so extraordinary that it will nourish you even when you feel “dry.” Unfortunately, some people practice for years, perhaps taking both retreat and ordination; then, suddenly, some karmic switch flips in their minds. They decide not to “do” Dharma anymore. They move on to other things. This is not uncommon for Westerners. It need not happen to you, but you should face the fact that it could. You could become dry inside. If so, you must face the cause: You have forgotten them.

If an extraordinary, burning love is not the most important force in your life, the natural inclination of a mind still influenced by desire will be to reassert itself at some point. This sounds harsh, but it is true. This is a time of increasing degeneracy. You must practice and cultivate this mind of love so thoroughly that you are moved to the core even at the faint possibility of achieving liberation in order to benefit beings. Do not be afraid of that kind of love. In the West, we learn to be cool, rational and detached. We value this highly. When we go to the grave, however, only the selfishness of this ideal will survive, not the intelligence. What will also survive and create the circumstances of your next lifeis the purity of your mind and heart, the degree of love you have accomplished. And if your love is so strong that you return even after attaining liberation, you are the hope of the world.

If you have the love to make a commitment to benefit beings at any cost, a sense of joy is born in the mind. This joy is stronger than ordinary human joy. It begins as a tiny seed but eventually grows to become a profound sense of bliss.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

The Door of the Heart

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

It is difficult when we love one person especially. Might as well poison yourself, grief comes. Love all beings equally, you will never be alone. There is nothing outside your own heart that will make you truly happy. Without training our hearts to love altruistically we will never recognize love. The door of heart opens from within.

Why do I say this? Because I love you. You, you.

Why do people doubt the motivation and truth of love? Because they cannot feel it. They cannot imagine it. To some, love is the enemy; the proof that all sentient beings are equal. One ego is nothing.

In truth without altruistic love we are not truly alive. This is the mark of a human life! Our capacity. Oh, Father Sun, Sister Moon kindly bless us and our Mama Earth at this time of change, deciding and endurance. Prayer needed.

May wind come as a caress. May rain gently cleanse and nurture. May the sun show his wisdom. May all sentient beings be happy.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

The Missing Link

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The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Marrying a Spiritual Life with Western Culture”

What is the missing link?  What causes us to shunt ourselves off in that direction and create a scenario whereby we either don’t relate deeply to our path or it cannot nourish us, or we find ourselves feeling dead inside? How does that happen? One of the things that you have to remember—and it’s really important to think about—is that it is more and more prevalent in modern society to not see some of the natural currents of life. This is particularly true in our country with our level of technology and all the civilizing factors that have come together to make us what we are.

For instance, here we are so technologically advanced and removed from certain natural occurrences that we rarely have the opportunity to see the beginning of life carried all the way through to the end of life. Unless we ourselves have had a baby and daddy went into the birth-giving room and mommy had a mirror—unless we do that—birth to us is a mystery. We do not see what birth looks like. We have pictures of it. We may have seen a movie, but the direct sensual experience of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling, we have not experienced. Even those of us who are parents are somehow absent from this experience because many people do not have a real direct experience of their own birth-giving. They go to sleep during it or they’re drugged or something like that.

Neither do we have an experience of dying. When we die, we will have that experience; but until then, it’s hidden from us. We have no way to prepare ourselves for the reality of death in our society. We have no way to understand what is gained and what is lost during a life.  Watching someone die is an interesting experience because you can see that everything material is left behind. You have a sense, once that consciousness has left the body, has moved on, that there is a really distinct difference between what the body is like at the door of death—even if it was unconscious—and what it’s like after consciousness has actually left. It’s quite different. Any of us who have seen loved ones immediately after their death will know this. You know that there is nothing in there, unless you’re completely out to lunch, which I also have seen! But you can see that something essential has left and that everything material has been left behind. It’s such an eye-opener, particularly if the person who has died is not very old.  Perhaps they were still at the point in their life where they took a great deal of pride in their body or thought of themselves as being very vital. You might remember different things about the person. You might remember that the person didn’t like their figure, felt that they were too fat. Maybe you know that during the person’s life they obsessed about this. They felt really bad about being fat and they tried to do things about it without success. Then you see that person die. When the consciousness leaves, you realize that everything they struggled with doesn’t matter. Whether that body was fat or skinny, it didn’t go with them.

An understanding of how superficial such a struggle is occurs when you naturally see the rhythms of life and death. Do you see what I’m saying? There is a natural understanding that no one else can teach you. You have to see it yourself.

To understand what we are, it’s also good to see a number of babies being born. Babies are different when they are born. Hospital nurses who care for babies right after they’re born can tell you this for sure.  Babies are not blank slates.  Some babies are very aggressive and very active, and you can tell that they have tiny, little, confrontational personalities already. They’re just that way.  And then other babies are just wide-eyed and open. They’re like little jelly fish. My two sons have always been polar opposites—from the first moment they were born.  A mother who has had more than one child can tell you that’s how it is.

Many of us are completely separated from these natural events, yet they teach us very profound things about how to approach spirituality. Even the story about the Buddha indicates this. At first the Buddha was prevented by his father from seeing the suffering of old age, sickness and death. After having witnessed these sufferings, he found the strength to go on in his path because of compassion, because of the deeply felt recognition that occurred to him on some subtle level.  That’s a metaphor for the problem of our society. What a display Lord Buddha gave us when he showed us that, because on several different levels we are prevented from seeing suffering by our society.

We take dead bodies away and put make-up on them. (Can you believe  that? I want all my make-up on my body before I die. I do not want someone to put it on after I’m dead.  All of you can remember this? That is not the time for a face lift.) On an internal level, because of these subtle messages that we get, we do not come in contact easily with any real internal processes. We avoid them in the same way we are taught to avoid them externally. We’re told, “Don’t go there, it’s not safe. Just don’t go there!”

We are told not to approach things in a really intimate way.  Now in the story about Lord Buddha’s life, when he saw the suffering, it bothered him, hurt him, upset him, scared him and shocked him, and he had to—oh my—go through transformation, that “T” word that scares us so much.  Transformation is related to change, the other word that really scares us.  So, yes, he had to go through all of that, but what was the result?  The result was he became deeply empowered and was able to make some very difficult choices.

He decided not to live an ordinary life in which he was extremely happy. He was a prince with all the blessings. He loved his family. He had a beautiful and devoted wife, and they were very close, very intimate.  He had a beautiful newborn child and was not a distant or absent or unconnected parent. He loved his greater family as well, his father and mother—the king and queen. But for the first time he saw the suffering of old age, sickness and death, and it moved him to his core and enabled him to make choices that are very difficult. He came to the point of deep knowing within himself, that if he wanted to really love his wife and his baby, he had to find the way to liberation for their sake. The phrase “for their sake” became real to him.  It’s not real to us.

 

Cultivating Courage on the Path: Advice from His Holiness Penor Rinpoche

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The following is an excerpt from a teaching by His Holiness Penor Rinpoche on Mediation, reprinted here with permission from Palyul Ling International:

The Bodhicitta we can generate right now, however vast, is beneficial. In the future, when one attains Enlightenment, according to the vastness of that Bodhicitta, that many sentient beings can benefit and liberate themselves from the sufferings of Samsara. Right now we cannot really perceive all that fruition, but if we continue to practice, then in the future we will realize it as a direct perception.
Buddha Amitabha, for example, ultimately achieved that kind of result from his generation of Bodhicitta and his accumulation over many countless years of practices of commitments and aspiration prayers. So even as the Amitabha Buddha achieved Enlightenment over a long time based on aspiration prayers and the commitment to benefit all sentient beings, so we as practitioners must constantly apply the practice of the six perfections to benefit all other beings.

The Buddha Amitabha did not just do these aspiration prayers once or twice, or make this kind of commitment just one or two times. It was over many aeons that he practiced these aspirations and commitments, such that whoever hears the Amitabha’s name and does supplication prayers to Amitabha, they will instantly be born in his pure land. If one has single-pointed devotion to Amitabha Buddha and one carries through all of these supplication prayers, then even oneself as an ordinary person with an afflicted mind can be reborn in his pure land. It is all because of Amitabha Buddha’s special aspiration prayers. So although there are countless Buddhafields, the Amitabha Buddha’s pure land is very special because of these reasons.

We all could also achieve that kind of completion when we attain Enlightenment if we continue on the path and carry through our practices, generating Bodhicitta in as vast a way as possible. So we should not lose courage, thinking, “Oh, I cannot do it. I could never attain that kind of Enlightenment.” It is not good to lose one’s courage like that. Think instead that all these past Enlightened Beings, all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, they also attained Enlightenment and ultimate realization by beginning the same as us, standard beings, and if they could attain Enlightenment, we can also attain that same kind of realization.

So today, though there is much that has been taught, if one can just try to keep in one’s mind to have one hundred percent devotion to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, and if one will train one’s mind by generating Bodhicitta and carry though the practices, then one can definitely have this kind of fruition. We can all do aspiration prayers, that in the future we can all attain Enlightenment within one mandala through these Great Perfection (“Dzogchen”) meditations. Just as in the past such great Great Perfection (“Dzogchen”) realized masters like Garab Dorje and Shri Singha and so forth attained Enlightenment through these Great Perfection (“Dzogchen”) practices, similarly we can also have that aspiration prayer to attain Enlightenment.

For a short Amitabha Practice by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo click here.

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