devotion

Guru Yoga: From “Excellent Path to Enlightenment” by H.H. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

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GuruRinpocheThankgaJAL-M

The following is respectfully quoted from “Excellent Path to Enlightenment” by His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche:

In the so-called preliminary or foundation practice, the most extraordinary section is Guru Yoga, or “union with the Guru’s nature.” It is through this practice that primordial wisdom can arise instantly in one’s being.

Guru Yoga is the way to pray to an authentic teacher and express our deep and unchanging devotion. Through devotion, our minds and the Guru’s mind become one. Why is this practice necessary? Because there is not a single Buddha in the past, present, or future who has achieved or will achieve enlightenment without relying on a spiritual teacher. Whichever of the nine vehicles of the Buddhist teachings we practice, we have to rely on a spiritual teacher, receive his or her teaching and practice according to his or her instructions. There is no other way.

Even if we have met a teacher and received his instructions, however, we will never be able to receive his blessings if we do not have fervent devotion and complete confidence in him and his teachings. And without his blessings we will not progress along the path. First of all, therefore, we need to generate devotion.

Devotion rarely comes spontaneously in the beginning. We have to generate and nurture it. First, for example, when we hear about the teacher and his life, we think about his marvelous enlightened qualities. Then, when we meet him, we see that those qualities are authentic, and our confidence and faith grow stronger and stronger. Our prayers become more and more profound, and his blessings begin to penetrate us more and more deeply.

All accomplishments are due to the Guru’s blessings. We are not referring here to minor accomplishments like obtaining good health, long life, or wealth, but to the supreme realization of the Guru’s enlightened nature, which is none other than our own Buddha-nature.

THE VISUALIZATION

As an aid to generating devotion, the text contains the following verse:

Before me in the sky, in an expanse of rainbow light,
Is my root teacher, Pema Thötrengtsal,
Surrounded by the ocean of Knowledge Holders of the three transmissions.
He is the union of all objects of refuge.

The Power of Devotion: Wisdom of Kyabje Drubwang Pema Norbu Rinpoche

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The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, quoting her Root Guru, His Holiness Penor Rinpoche:

From His Holiness Penor Rinpoche:

In the Tantras it is stated again and again the importance of relying on the Lama as the source of blessing in one’s practice. Regardless of the particular prayer that the student offers to the Lama, regardless of how small and insignificant it may be if it is based upon the student’s complete trust and faith in the Lama then the blessings of the Lama are always accessible to the student. In the Tantra of the Ocean of Timeless Awareness it states that it is much better to recite one small prayer to one’s own Lama out of pure faith and devotion then it is to perform hundreds of millions of recitations of Diety Mantras. The effect of prayer is far more powerful when it is truly an expression of one’s own faith and devotion in one’s Lama.

Heart teaching from Kyabje Drubwang PemaNorbu Rinpoche

Renunciation: Poem by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

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The following is respectfully quoted from “Journey to Enlightenment” by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche:

Though you perfected the qualities of the three kayas,
In order to liberate beings of the impure realms
You manifested as a supreme renunciate;
Lord Pema Vijaya, I miss you from the depth of my heart.

The feeling that this precious support, a free and blessed human body,
Will be lost to the enemy, the bandit Lord of Death,
Overwhelms my mind with anguish,
Like a frightened little bird falling to the ground.

The abyss of the lower realms is hard to fathom, and
This present comfort and happiness in the higher realms
Is like a rainbow in the sky that’s about to vanish;
Remember the spreading, dense rain clouds of wrongdoing!

A delightful palace may be magnificent,
But it can’t guard against fear of the Lord of Death!
All food and drink may taste delicious,
But they might become the cause of drinking melted copper!

No matter how much I cherish this body covered in soft clothes,
It’s uncertain when it will start to smell like a rotten corpse,
A handsome, youthful body may gladden my heart, but
When the eyes dissolve into the skull, it’s useless.

My shiny jewelry may be a charming object,
But it can’t seduce the wrathful grimacing Lord of Death;
Though my fame may pervade the whole country,
It won’t help me when body and mind separate!

Though prestige and power may frighten everyone,
They won’t protect me when going alone;
A powerful rank and status may be impressive,
But it’s impossible to avoid the Lord of Death’s court of law!

Large crowds of people are the cause of likes and dislikes;
By the time I go to the bardo I’ll be alone.
Remaining far away from the affairs of this life,
I’ll stay alone in a secluded, rocky shelter!

Living like a wounded deer,
My heart’s desire is to watch the snow of mind within;
All past siddhas stayed in remote rocky mountains too,
Capturing the kingdom of experience and realization.

Remembering the life story of Milarepa,
When I’m hungry I’ll eat the food of samadhi,
When I’m cold I’ll wear cloth of mystic inner heat;
In the company of birds and wild animals,
I’m going to cloudy, mist-shrouded mountains!

In a cave that’s not altered by people,
Nourished by leaves that need no cultivation,
Drinking the clear and cool water from rocks,
My heart’s wish is to just be with mountain birds.

In the cool shade of excellent trees,
In a relaxed and carefree state of mind,
With the cool shelter of a fresh breeze, my health will be good;
All by myself, my activities will be in accord with the Dharma!

On the summit of high rock in the immense sky,
Developing strength in realization of aware emptiness within,
When rays of the smiling sun and moon above reach my heart,
I enter the inner space of the six lamps of space and awareness.

Sometimes clouds and mist appear,
Thunder and red lightening flash like a playful dance,
Roaring wind swirls around black clouds,
Reflecting the sounds, lights, and rays in the threatening bardo.

In the pure meadow, around gently moving water,
My companions, young wild sheep, play and climb the rocks;
Sweetly singing, shiny blackbirds develop strength in flying,
And white vultures circle around at leisure.

Except for the mother dakinis that gather here,
Wicked people never pass by;
The vast expanse of a blue lake full to the brim
Indicates the four modes of freely resting awareness within.

The company of small swans,
Sweetly singing and training their wings,
Reminds me of practicing the different types of loving-kindness;
In my estate of this empty valley,
Relying on the pure, cool water from snow mountains,
I’m going to capture the kingdom of experience and realization!

I decided that from now on I don’t need anything;
The countless joys and sorrows of this life,
Whatever I experienced in the past, are like drawing on water.

Except for accumulating habitual tendencies for samsara’s depth,
Look at this present body to see if there was any benefit or not!

With hope and fear of making a living for the future,
Life runs out with a stock of karmic activity;
The very moment one is captured by the foe, Yama’s rope,
Reflect on whether it is any use when you exhale your final breath!

Though I am naive and immature,
As my father, the Dharma lord Lama Gyaltsap,
Let his blessings enter my heart, I conceived the urge to escape
And see activities for this life as confusion.

Unable to bear that all-consuming thought, the urge to escape,
I wrote it down as it slipped from my mouth;
Though thoughts in an ordinary person’s mind are impermanent,
Bless me to be free of adversity and obstacles.

With the root of all Dharma, renunciation,
Steadfast like an engraved rock,
May I become like the protector Pema Vijaya,
The master of nonaction, yogi of the sky!

True Confession

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The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Longing for the Guru”

If you feel that you have become deadened to that longing you once felt, if you think that you don’t long for your Teacher or long for the Buddha, if you think that you don’t long with a heartfelt longing for that awakening, then you should try to remember your childhood and the different feelings that you had.

What are some of the things that you did?  Were you promiscuous?  Did you become involved in drugs or alcohol?  Did you become very materialistic in certain ways?  And if you can remember the beginning of that, was it based on longing?  Was it based on something that you could hardly remember, but remember that it was sharp and poignant?  Was it really based on that?

If you can remember a time like that, you should spend time becoming reacquainted with the purity of that urging.  Cultivate that longing.  Not cultivate it in a false way or in a contrived way, but search for what was already there.  Feel what was felt.  Don’t make up a feeling.  That’s important, because then you’ll blame yourself again.  Instead, try to remember that feeling, even if it just numbs you to think that you have gone so far astray, you should not be ashamed because your karma is that you were born into a culture where what you felt was not acceptable and you tried to fit it into ways that were acceptable.  Those ways did not work for you and then you shut down.  You should try to go back to that original feeling and find a way to forgive yourself.  You have to confess in order to be able to fully forgive yourself.  Don’t confess: Oh, I’ve been a bad girl, or I’ve been a bad boy, I’ve done this and I’ve done that.

The confession that you should make to the primordial root Guru is: You were everywhere, and I tried to find you here.  The true confession is the lack of understanding the nature of the Guru.  The true confession is the lack of understanding as to what you are.  That’s the real confession, and that’s the real sin that was committed.  Yes, karma happened.  But that core confession and purification can bring about the end of all the karma that arose from that, truly.  It can bring about the end of all sufferings that came from that point.  You should allow yourself to remember the longing that you felt and learn to live with it.

In learning to live with it and having it be the warmth in your heart, allowing yourself to be with that and to live with that, then that longing will bring the proper result.  So long as it is diverted, so long as you refuse to feel it, so long as you do not allow yourself to be pure and then constantly cover up with feelings of impurity, so long as that condition continues, the longing cannot be satisfied.

That longing, if it’s felt in its pure way and if you can manage to get your ego out of the way, can be the very bread by which you are nurtured to continue in a firm way on your path.  That longing can be the way that provides the actual, undeniable connection with one’s own root Guru.  It perfects that relationship so that one can realize the nature of the primordial Guru and realize that they are the same.  You can understand that what you see in front of you is the miraculous touch of Lord Buddha, that the relationship with the Teacher, the relationship with the path, the relationship with all of the teaching, the relationship with your own practice can only be a result of the miraculous intention of the Buddha.  So long as we continue to understand our teaching and our path as something external, we will never understand the nature of it.  We will never be able to truly drink of the taste of that nature.  Instead, we will continue to feel separate from the mandala.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

What Are You Looking For?

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An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Longing for the Guru”

In order for you to be with your Teacher, however good or bad that Teacher may be, if you are in a situation where you are close to your Teacher and consistently so and have a great deal of relatively intimate guidance, you must have spent a great deal of time longing for the Teacher.  It must be that you have spent a great deal of time making wishing prayers that you would never be separate from your Teacher.  There had to be a great deal of time spent in that consideration and with that intention.  It’s the only karma that will allow for this situation.

Each of us, then, as we grew up, must have experienced the seeds of that longing.  If we look back at our earlier lives, we may not understand that.  It’s very difficult to understand how we ended up practicing Vajrayana.  We certainly weren’t brought up this way.  We certainly had no idea in our younger lives that we were going to be Buddhists, that’s for sure.

Yet, if we were to look in a penetrating way, we would discover that somewhere in our childhood there was a longing.  That is the seed or the residue of something that we experienced in a previous incarnation.  Because it is not consistent with our culture, because it is not sympathetic with what our culture views as proper, probably when we grew up, we never heard of a Teacher.  We never heard of a Guru.  We may have diverted into different paths.  We may have felt the longing as a need to find ourselves or we may have felt a sense of waiting to be told or to find something that we knew we would find.

For instance, it is possible that you felt a sense of searching and perhaps went from relationship to relationship, searching for someone who would be intimate with you, a certain searching for a fullness that was never found.  It could be that you even went from a self-help group to insight situation to church to different kinds of situations that you thought would bring you the answer and you had no idea that it was a spiritual search.
But now, in retrospect, if you examine that, do you think that perhaps you were looking for something you didn’t find because you did not understand exactly what you were looking for?  Surely, if you examine your life, you will find something of that longing in your past.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Cosmic Lover

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

Eyes gaze, mind clear, nothing is seen.
He is beautiful, the Guru.
In the space between molecules non existent he appears,
I feel Him.
His regal stance, His tenderness, the gentle King of all Dharma,
The second one comes in image – again to my heart,
Oh Beloved, your face
Is the nectar I crave and cannot forget, the blessing I crave and hold.
If I cannot see you everywhere I will not see at all.

Yours are the eyes I gaze into, the sea in which I swim,
Never abandon any of your followers!

I offer body speach and mind
To touch the honey, sweetness only possessed by you.
I am yours life after life,
You who are the silence and ecstasy,
I follow you always, my heart..

Cosmic Lover, I am yours.
I will follow you and practice.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo.  All rights reserved

The First Object of Refuge

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The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Essence of Devotion”

Although the Buddha that we remember as Siddhartha, Gautama Buddha, Shakyamuni is not present in his physical body as we understand it right now, we look at the Lama as the embodiment of the qualities, intentions, compassion and activity of the Buddha in the world.  Our Lamas, those reincarnate Lamas who are recognized as reincarnate Lamas, are considered to be the Nirmanakaya form of the Buddha.  They are the Buddha in the world. So we look at the Lama as being the embodiment of the Buddha.  We look at the Lama as being the embodiment of the Dharma because, if we were to try to study Dharma on our own, even though all the books in our bookstore are written with the commentary of a qualified Lama, when you read those books you must also have first of all the teachings from the guru that deepen and ripen the mind ..Empowerment, lung, commentary teaching, the taking of vows, those teachings that deepen and ripen the mind, can only be given by the Lama, only be given by the Lama, and you must have them.  You must have your mind ripened.  A mind that is not ripe may delude itself into feeling spiritual and may even be able to speak spiritually.  However, if it is not ripe, it cannot fulfill itself.  So we should consider like that.

The Lama is considered to be the path.  The Dharma is given to us by the Lama.  The Lama connects us with the Dharma.  The Lama ripens us in the Dharma.  The Lama is the Dharma in that sense.  The Lama is also the Sangha because without the Lama there would be no Sangha.  It is the Lama’s qualities and compassionate activities that sound the note that eventually calls the Sangha.  When one of the Sangha has come to practice in some way, there is a personal and private circumstance that has called them, has pulled them in some secret inner way, particular and unique only to them, and their response is like a bell tolling somewhere deep in their minds—very unique, very individual, very present.  That is the gathering of the Sangha and it is done through the influence and compassionate activity of the Lama.  So the Lama is the first object of refuge, and the supreme object of refuge on the Vajrayana path.  That is our view.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo.  All rights reserved

The Students Call

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

Wasn’t feeling well last evening, so students lined the driveway reciting 7-Line Prayer:

Here’s another photo of students calling:

Despite the pain in my back, couldn’t resist the student’s call. Here they are lining the driveway waiting:

Though I couldn’t get out of the car, was able to offer blessings. Here offered blessings to one of the youngest sangha members:

Here are students receiving the Blessings:

Photos courtesy of Ted Kurkowski.

© copyright Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo All rights reserved.

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