A sacred space for everyone
The following is a full length video teaching offered by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo in Sedona, Arizona:
While the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas offer the feast of Dharma and beg us to eat, we hold our egos and samsara on the thornes of our hearts instead. We are begged to adhere to the teachings of the Buddha and take real refuge, binding our hearts to the Three Jewels.
© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo All Rights Reserved
An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series
There are many Dharma practitioners who practice for many years, go on retreat, and even take ordination. Then at some point, some karmic switch flips in their minds and suddenly they’re finished with Dharma! They don’t want to do Dharma anymore. They’re on to something else. We may think that’s strange, but it has happened, especially to Westerners. It’s not uncommon for a Westerner to practice Dharma sincerely and then flip tracks, and go back into a very ordinary kind of life. That need not happen to you. But it could. You should face that possibility.
The antidote for that event is to cultivate compassion in your mind every day. If you move along the path of Buddhadharma and become overworked by it, thinking, “I just can’t practice that many hours a day. I cannot do this activity that propagates the Dharma anymore. It’s just too much.” If you become dry inside, if you think you just can’t go on, there’s only one way that that could happen to you. You have forgotten the suffering of others.
You must cultivate the memory that even in this visible world where beings can be seen, there is suffering that you cannot comprehend. You must think that there are children being abused everywhere, that there is starvation and poverty. You must think about the terrible diseases that afflict the body, speech and mind. You must think about the horrible things that come along with suffering, and the depth of suffering that exists, even in the realms that you can witness. If you think about that everyday, more about that than you do about yourself, you will not fall off the path of Dharma. When you become weak, when you waiver, that is when you forget. That is when you think the path is all about you. It’s when you forget that you are practicing for their sake, and that you are practicing also to liberate your mind so that you can be of benefit to others.
A non-Buddhist practitioner might say, “I’ve got another idea. Why don’t I do what I know how to do best. I’ll go out and make some money, and then I’ll feed everybody. I can do that.”
I’ll tell you a story about when I went to India. In our innocence, we thought, “Let’s go see Bombay; this is really going to be great.” So we got in a taxi and we went through the streets of Bombay thinking that we were going to see the India on the postcards. What I saw were streets so filled with sickness – leprosy, deformity, unbelievable poverty – that I couldn’t see anything else. I know there were beautiful buildings. I know there was beautiful scenery, but I couldn’t see those things.
Every time the taxi stopped, people with only part of a limb and open sores of leprosy would stick their arms in the car and beg. Mothers would hold up their babies that they had done something to, saying, “Help us, help us.” So I started passing out dollar bills to everyone. I soon realized I was in deep trouble as I only had a limited amount of money, but that didn’t stop me.
I was traumatized by this. I was crying to the depth of my heart, because I had known that suffering existed, but I was used to my brand of suffering. I had never seen anything like this. I continued to pass out dollar bills, and finally the taxi driver stopped. He turned around and said, “Lady, don’t do this anymore. What is one dollar going to do for these people? Maybe they’ll eat today. What will you do for them tomorrow? And if you give out one dollar to everyone you see, there are so many people like them in India, you couldn’t help them all.” His saying that shocked me; he was right. Even if I could manage to become wealthy, I couldn’t feed the world. And hunger is only one kind of suffering. How can you help the other kinds of suffering? This kind of ordinary compassion ultimately does no good.
Why are those people suffering in India, and why were you born here in the West where things are relatively comfortable? Why are there animals and why are there humans? Why are there other realms of existence? Why is there so much suffering in one place, and much less suffering in another place? It is because of karma. That is the reason for all of this. Yet there is a cure for negative karma, which is the kind of karma that causes suffering. Ultimately, it is the only cure that will work. That cure is the eradication of hatred, greed and ignorance from the mindstreams of sentient beings. And the root of hatred, greed and ignorance is desire.
This doesn’t mean if we see starving people we shouldn’t feed them, that we should immediately teach them the Dharma. That, of course, won’t work. We have to be skillful. If people are hungry, we feed them first, and then we teach them. But your job now is to do neither. You might not have money, and you might not have the ability to teach just yet. But you can do something. You can practice Dharma in such a way that you, yourself, become free of hatred, greed and ignorance. You can practice so that you can liberate your mind from cyclic existence for one reason and one reason only: that after liberating your mind, you can emanate in a form that will continue to benefit beings. You can liberate your mind from desire to such a degree that you have only one hope, and that hope is that you will be born again and again in a form that will bring this antidote to other suffering beings. That’s what you can do.
© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo
From The Spiritual Path: A Compilation of Teachings by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
All Dharma, your practice, your teachers, and everything you have ever encountered that has brought you closer to enlightenment—is only one thing: a manifestation or an emanation of the enlightened, compassionate intention of the Buddha. That is why this path appears and why we are able to practice Dharma. If you wish to follow this path, abandon your drunken, compulsive need to be right, approved of, admired. You must rely on the Buddha’s great intention. And after you finally arise in the awareness of your own primordial-wisdom nature, you will of necessity appear again and again to benefit beings. For it is the nature of that state to do so. That pristine state appears in an emanation phase—a spontaneous, natural movement that we may call love.
Who stops the love? You do. Every moment you believe that you are inherently real, you stop loving. Every moment you focus on your “self” and its needs, you stop loving. As your churning desire compulsively creates a deluge of thoughts, you stop loving. As long as you hold on to a “self” and the idea of its eternal existence, you will never be anything but a cheap imitation of the supremely awakened mind. I asked a wonderful yogini in Nepal, “What would you say to women in America who are practicing?” She said, “Well, this applies to everyone, but especially to women. Have courage.” Your practice is meaningless—it amounts to nothing—unless you have courage. You must be strong. You must not let anything stop you. With that fearlessness, you can break through the lethargy in your life; you can break through the barriers that keep you from practicing sincerely; you can even break through the old ideas that keep you mired in garbage. You can understand that by believing in a surviving, eternal ego, you are following a fool off a cliff.
© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo
From The Spiritual Path: A Compilation of Teachings by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
As human beings, we avoid looking deeply at our ingrained habits and beliefs. We avoid testing them for the qualities needed to develop properly on the Vajrayana path. It’s easier to “go with the flow.” We dislike challenging ourselves. Most of all, we dislike change. We are somehow more comfortable with remnants of our old beliefs, translated into Dharma terminology.
Eastern philosophy is difficult for Westerners to understand. There are so many major differences, including the basic premise and the value system. Though the various motivations for practice set forth by the Buddha are universally true, people tend to select what resonates most with what they learned while growing up. Your culture strongly influences your reasons for practicing Dharma—and how you under-stand it. Those whose needs are generally satisfied react very differently from people who have seen war, suffering, and famine. The latter tend to hang on to Dharma for dear life. But many Dharma-practicing Westerners complacently think: “If I can just get another precious human rebirth, I’ll be okay.”
Not so for those who have seen intense suffering. They are apt to think: “I want out. I want my mind to be free of the causes of suffering. I am sick of revolving helplessly on this wheel. I’m tired of watching my loved ones go hungry and die young.” When you have seen war, you know that death could be just a moment away. But we Westerners rely on medical marvels. We have faith that if someone can just get us to the hospital in time, we will be saved.
The great blessing here in the United States is that many people have a strong karmic relationship with compassion. Thus, I talk more about compassion than about suffering. But it may not be enough to practice Dharma because you feel a sense of mission and purpose—however pure your intention might be. That is not the same as hanging on to Dharma for dear life. If you have not understood in the depths of your being how impermanent this life is, if you have not really understood the terrible prospect of revolving endlessly in cyclic existence—you tend to be much more casual in your attitude toward practice. You may not challenge yourself to do your best.
Westerners need a constant shot of inspiration. We seek it out. We eat it like candy, and we love it! But just like candy, it soon lets us down. And even if we practice with the intention to help sentient beings, there is still a catch: our practice gives us a sense of identity. Right now, your sense of identity determines why you live, what you do, what is important to you. But it also makes you a traveler who is standing still. We can move very fast in our practice and yet remain quite stiff inside. If we practice because we want to be a good person who helps others, we become comfortable with that identity. We do not feel the urgency of someone living with the constant threat of being bombed—or someone who has known hopeless hunger.
We may adopt some new ideas, but our beliefs are basically unchanged. And so is our predicament. We still believe that we will exist as we are forever, if not in the same body, then with the same consciousness. We hope to attain the goal of realization as ourselves. We believe we can keep ourselves intact, and then, we will somehow appear in a celestial form in order to benefit beings. As to what we will actually do, we vaguely envision bringing love and light to the world, the bounty of our great wisdom. And to do that, we will continue to exist in some way that is recognizable to us.
We have now come to a delicate but crucial distinction, and we must tread carefully. We pray to retain awareness throughout the process of death—so that during the bardo transference we can achieve realization or, at least, rebirth in a most fortunate way. We also want to come back in an emanation form in order to benefit beings. However, we may not yet have really challenged our ideas of foreverness and sameness. That is, we haven’t given up on ego, on surviving. This is a product of our culture. Christians aspire to survive death and go to heaven. A Buddhist, however, hopes to remain awake and not faint during the time of transference in the bardo state, but understands that what remains is not the self or the ego: it is awareness itself, the pure, essential mind-nature, unobscured, un-hindered by dirty winds and channels. It is not the natural state of you, the person you are right now. If you are hoping that this “you” will remain intact, you have a different religion programmed into your brain. The correct goal is not to survive in an eternalistic way, reaching a heaven-like Dewachen and then returning as a Buddhist angel to help people.
When you pray for others, do you wish for all sentient beings to know love and light? As Buddhists, we can no longer have this as our prayer. Why? When you do that, you are wishing for sentient beings to remain intact forever, revolving in a state of impermanence. This is very different from praying that the causes for suffering will be erased from their minds, that they will realize the primordial-wisdom state.
What should you as a Buddhist hope for? That when you enter into the bardo, or into your prayers, or even into the next moment, you will instantly come to know the emptiness of all phenomena, the emptiness of self-nature. Self-nature is like a puffball. You should pray to see it for what it is: poof! Just like that. You should pray with all your heart to realize the primordial, natural, pure view—the Nature which is free of all concepts, all mind-chatter. That Nature miraculously survives beneath all the garbage we pile on top of it. That Nature is pure, all pervasive, with neither beginning nor end. When you attain that view, form and formless are seen to be the same, and self is only luminosity.
© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo
The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:
Nowadays so many people describe themselves as Buddhist but aren’t, as they do not practice what the Buddha taught. And don’t understand. I hear it is like that with other religions, philosophies, as well. It is easy to use the words, and much more difficult walking the talk.
It seems to me that if you have an enemy you fight with, then in truth, you have already lost the war. That is because the “enemy” is actually within; the real problem is our own poisons. Hatred, pride, greed, ignorance, jealousy, doubt, these are the true enemies, the real cause for all wars. I dare say that if we all conquered our “inner demons” our outer troubles would be defeated also, as what we perceive “outwardly” is our own consciousness, our own mind stream. Cause and effect, karma. We literally are trapped in a bubble of our own delusions.
Yet, people call themselves Buddhist with no attempt to pacify their own hurtful and negative tendencies. Some deny rebirth saying Buddha never taught it. Some feel that even though in Buddhism the path is considered “life after life,” Enlightenment can happen instantly, with no causing factors. Nothing happens instantly with no cause!
One guy I read sits under a tree every day, thinking he is Buddha. Yet if anyone disagrees with his words he is rude and hateful. And the rant begins. There is seemingly no understanding that compassion and kindness have anything to do with practicing Dharma. I enjoy watching this kind of thing as a “case study,” wondering how a person could fall down so far. And how it can happen that Buddhism is so misunderstood by people who call themselves great practitioners, scholars, etc and never look in the mirror to see what is really going on. These are the prisoners of their own, self-made war.
The prison is samsaric delusion. Even in a jail cell a person can be free. If the situation is such, change the mind to dissolve the bars that harm us all! Altruism is the way, charity, love, ethics and a genuine caring for the welfare of all beings equally. The inner jail always falls before the “outer” jail ever does!
OM MANI PEDME HUNG
OM AH MI DEWA HRI
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo. All rights reserved
The following is from a twitter conversation between Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo and one of her followers:
Questioner:
Yet peace must begin with self: smrti, samadhi, prajna. Paradox or universal elegance?
I mean, am I missing something, or isn’t this dynamic at the very core of engaged Buddhism in the 21st century?
Jetsunma:
Yes, I do think you are missing something. There are outer, inner, and secret views. Outer we must practice altruism. Inwardly one must practice Buddhism for the sake of Liberating all beings ultimately. Secretly, one must awaken Bodhicitta, and understand that all appearances are fundamentally empty of self nature, there is no object or subject. Yet we are operating with relative view and there is suffering to be healed. Our very nature is Buddha, and that is the Bodhicitta. We must actively engage yet be fully aware of emptiness, and train the mind.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved
The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:
I personally know a story about a young lady who took robes of ordination as an Ani years ago. Deep habitual tendencies caused her to fall off her path and break the vows very seriously, more than once. As a lay woman she continued the pattern, there was so much rage in her, the events seemed neurotic, obsessive. She was determined to ruin her Teacher, as she imagined the downfall was her Teacher’s fault. The breakage seemed to spiral and worsen until she lost friends, and suffered terribly, as did the ones she attacked. It was a terrible mess! But she went to other Lamas and asked for advice, and to become their student. All told her she must return to her own Tsawei Lama and make amends.
How terribly difficult when so much damage to so many had been done. But she persisted. Correcting lies, doing purifying practice, applying the proper antidotes. She went to retreat and was welcomed and treated kindly. Her Guru had already taken her back. Except for one elder Lama who, when she served tea, poured it on the ground and said “you may not serve me!” as he himself had witnessed what she’d done personally, and had known the effect on all. She accepted and bowed low, wondering why everyone didn’t treat her just the same. But it was through that Lama’s activity she was instantly able to see the depth of her betrayal and was able to make confession without leaving out any details at all. She was given kind instruction from His Holiness Palyul Karma Kuchen Rinpoche and is now taking advanced teachings, much happier and her mind continues to be freed from the imprisonment of the cycle of hatred, greed and ignorance. Stage by stage she grows more free!
She repeatedly asked why she was so compelled, so intensely obsessed with harming her Teacher and Dharma. The answer, repeatedly, was a real kicker. In past lives she had made up her own path and convinced (skillfully) others to follow and practice what she taught. So in this life, although she is skillful and brilliant, it was impossible for her to keep the robes of the Buddha or to follow the path of Buddhism nicely or purely. It will take time to repair, but she is diligently applying herself. She was instructed to tell truth always and make an unshakable commitment to never behave that way again.
There is always a way to purify mistakes, but so much better to never make them in the first place. To try to teach a made-up path that causes downfall for others results in great mental instability and even insanity. Emotional equilibrium is lost. And it continues into future lives. Suffering of others is experienced by the false teacher. You will always know them by their current lives and experience. Sadly, still ignorant, they cannot see it for themselves. Karma is real, if you believe it or not. And you are experiencing it right now, and will continue until Supreme Enlightenment.
One more thing. I am so proud of her. And love her so deeply, she is a miracle.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved
The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from Palyul Ling Retreat Center in upstate New York:
From the three syllables in the Lama Guru’s three places white, red, and blue light rays emerge.
OM…the white ray from Guru’s head to the disciple’s head, blessing one’s body.
AH…The red ray from the Lama Guru’s throat blesses and purifies the disciple’s speech.
Then HUNG….the blue ray from the Guru Lama’s heart pours forth to mix with the disciple’s heart.
The precious Tantric Initiations are just so! In this way blessings and ripening are conferred from Guru to student directly, like milk from mother to child. May the precious Guru remain and the Lineage and transmissions remain unbroken for countless aeons, and may all without exception be Liberated from suffering!
May Palyul remain the perfect source of refuge and stainless Dharma activity in the world!
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved
From a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:
Nothing referred to as “precisely” or “exactly” is anything other than conceptual proliferation. These subtleties can only be truly understood with Guru-disciple transmission, maturing mind with Empowerment, directly. It is necessary to receive pointing-out instruction from an awakened “Sublime Being,” fully qualified. Too much talk about emptiness or primordial view is no good, misleading. All such talk leads to concepts, one becomes deluded.
The problem is this: After direct transmission, empowerment, and instruction, one must experience empty nature for oneself. If one talks or preaches endlessly about emptiness, there is no direct experience, the secret transmission is lost. If one adheres to such false talk, putting trust in such false teaching, they will be lost, like blind leading blind. To cross the ocean of suffering, one must have a perfect ship (method) and a flawless captain (Guru Buddha) who has crossed many times.
This teaching is without the stain of pride, and in the spirit of loving kindness, may we all accomplish.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved
The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo while on retreat at the Palyul Retreat Center in upstate New York:
Tulkus are precious jewels in our tradition. They are the realized and awakened, like Kyabje His Holiness Penor Rinpoche and the inheritor His Holiness Karma Kuchen, both have given many incarnations for the sake of Dharma and all sentient beings. His Holiness Penor Rinpoche and His Holiness Karma Kuchen are the “kings,” one from the other. The rest, we are to serve them.
No pride here. Kyabje His Holiness Penor Rinpoche is the Tsawei Lama who came to USA to find me, thus bringing Palyul here after building Namdroling. This is history. Beyond Kyabje His Holiness Penor Rinpoche and His spiritual heir, where is our treasure? His Holiness Penor Rinpoche is the rock, the treasure. He is my treasure, Without Him we have nothing.
May I always have strength to follow Tsawei Lama! May I always have knees to kneel voice to sing for Him, and carry on for him, the Guru above the crown of my head! Gathering all virtue I have accumulated in the three times, Guru, precious beyond all measure, return! I beg for the sake of sentient beings! May all blessings be dedicated to the liberation and salvation of all sentient beings!
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved