ethics

Choose Well

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

I can understand how bad the economy is for all of us. Many people, even former good citizens are turning to money crimes, sadly. They don’t see any other way to get funds. So they turn to illegal means to survive. The really awful thing is how temporary that gain can be! Once the “deal with the devil” is made, one has lost their way, spiritually, as well as character, ethics, purity and samaya. Then when the money is gone, no more happy times remain. And one has lost everything, all virtue diminishes, and future poverty and suffering is assured.

Why is greed so difficult to overcome? Or the urge to gather power and be on top? Perhaps no true understanding of the law of karma? Some will even allow themselves to try to take what another has earned. Even to the point of destroying the victim. That is just the perfect method to destroy oneself. The fact is, most people dumb enough to commit crimes are actually made stupid by their own lust for gain and mostly get caught. Or their criminal friends turn on them. There is no honor among thieves, they cannot be trusted.

I’ve learned so much about this in my life alone. We should always remember that some people are very, very weak. And some people are very, very strong. It is almost impossible to tell the difference. Until the thief turns demonic. Then they are easily known. Remember this. And choose well!

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Discovering Your Personal Ethics – An Exercise

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An excerpt from a teaching called Walking the Talk – Ethics by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

We are going to be talking about ethics, our lives and the structure of our lives.  I want you to think about this for a minute and really see if you can come up with a correct answer, not the one you think I would want to hear.  What I would like you to do is write down the three most important, and most visible ethical principles that you hold dear. Please spend some time thinking about this.  What are the things that you try not to let yourself get away with too much?  What is really precious to you?  Try to be as honest as possible.

Some of you may have ethics that sound like broad, sweeping statements about something.  And some of you may have ethics that are very simple and they apply directly to your life, and both of them are correct.  We’re not testing your ethics.  We are testing your ability to hold to them.  Whatever you say is OK.

Write down how you have upheld your ethics in the past week. Write down three answers – one for each of the three ethics. If it was not this week, because the circumstance did not come up, but was two weeks ago, you can write that down.

When you are finished write about sometime in the recent past when you did not hold fully to your ethics or perhaps even held to the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law.  In other words, when you fudged on your ethics.  Write down one for each of the three ethics you have chosen.  For those of us that say, “I always keep to these ethics and I never fudge,” my suggestion is to go back and re-examine, because I guarantee, particularly if your mind is that rigid, that you have held to the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law.  Just look for it. I can assure that it is in there.

Not everyone’s ethical system looks like the next person’s.  Of course, there are fundamental ethical structures that we all have to adopt or we cannot live together as a community, as a world or as a society.  Yet, many of us have different ethical slants, if you will.  Sometimes it depends on the circumstances of our lives.  The ethics that a person holds dear, if they were born poor in a third world country might be different than the ethics we were taught to respect here.  One is definitely not better than the other; they are simply different.  In asking these questions I am not asking you to feel that your ethics ought to be a certain way. Ethics teach us how to live in our world. So they may look different.  There are certain fundamental ethics that we should all adopt but what I am asking you to do is to look at your ethics, the ones that you hold dear, the ones that you really wholeheartedly agree with and hold precious.  So, they may not look like the next person and that is all right.  That does not matter for the purposes of this request.

Once you have written down some particular ethics that are precious and meaningful to you, ask yourself how you came to the conclusion that these are ethics that you want to hold?  What did you notice about your life? Be honest with yourself.  What made you arrive at these conclusions and when in your life did it happen?

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Walking the Talk

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Kapala relic from Genyenma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Walk the Talk – Ethics by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, June 8, 1994

There is a direct relationship between a person’s ethics and their stage of development, spiritually.  If a person has a very loose, wobbly and insufficient ethical system, you can count on the fact that they have not trod very far on the spiritual path.  I think that is very clear.  However, before you make such a judgment it is not a good idea to get into the habit of evaluating people spiritually. Different people have different kinds of ethical responses according to their development.  What you want to see is whether the person walks their talk  – not necessarily what their ethical system is.

An extreme example might be if a person lived a very simple life and was very poor and the circumstances of their life were very cut and dried, such that when they milked the cow they got the milk.  There are many, many cases of great bodhisattvas that, for whatever reason not only manifest as the farmer that milks the cow, but sometimes manifest as the cow.  In any case, when you see someone who has developed enough spiritually to have a set of ethics that they simply do not transgress, then you know you have got something to work with there.  Or, at least the person has a set of ethics that they try hard not to transgress and they are mindful of that whole situation.  That is important. To the degree that a person keeps their commitments, to that degree, you are looking at spiritual advancement, spiritual development or distance on the path.

I gave you the ‘simple person’ extreme example. What about in the case of a lama? The one that comes to my mind immediately is the first Ahkön Lhamo.  Generally speaking, the stories specifically about her are about when she would be sitting in her cave doing whatever and people would come to her with some life threatening illness or something like that, and she would beat them with sticks to remove their obstacles.

Now, most people think, particularly if you are a nurse, that if a person comes to you with a life threatening disease, beating them may not be the best thing!  Did Ahkön Lhamo not hold to her ethics, whereas the simple person held to their ethics more strongly?  Well, of course not.  In the case of Ahkön Lhamo, she was removing obstacles to their lives and that was her method.  That was simply her method so that in the case of a very advanced bodhisattva or lama, you cannot look at the ethical system – you cannot even understand it, really.  They will hold to a different view.  It is as though you were looking at the world from a street corner – from the world on a street corner, you can see the street and you can see stoplights and you can see the cars coming from different directions.  You can see the buildings going up.  But the Lama might be looking from the top of the building, or maybe even up in a helicopter somewhere, looking down, and the lay of the land is quite different.  Where the person on the street may think that the big thing they have to do right then is to buy a loaf of bread on the way home, the one who is looking from the helicopter may be seeing that the big thing they have to do right then is stop a tragedy that is about to happen three blocks away and they might forget the bread.

It is a question not necessarily about determining what the ethics are or making a judgment according to that, but rather looking and seeing that whoever you are looking at is able to walk their talk, is actually able to live in such a way as to obviously display that they have a strong ethical system.  That is what you want to look at.  And in the case of sentient beings, there is often a very huge distance between our ethical systems that we have through even our own simple logic to understand and our performing of the ethics and holding and sticking to them.

For those of us that feel that we have strong ethics and feel that we always hold to them, then I have to say, unless you are a living Buddha, either you are lying to yourself, or you are not deep enough and not sufficient in your search of your own mind, which you should know better than a book by now.  I would say to you that you have not searched your mind and your heart, that you have not really observed yourself truly.  I would say that you are fundamentally being dishonest and you may not know it.  It is not possible for sentient beings to keep closely and truly their commitments easily. It is not that it cannot be done, but it is not easily done.  Generally when people do, they hold the commitment up like a shining bauble and they find circumstances that match up easily with their commitment and they are able to fulfill them and say, “See, I’ve done this” and they wear it a bit like jewelry or some sort of gaudy bauble.  In that case, you would say that that person is maybe, in a few cases, holding up the letter of the law about their ethical equation, but not the spirit of the law. The spirit of the law is much deeper than that.  The spirit of the law requires you not only to be happy when your life situations easily match up with your ethics, but rather in every circumstance.  When you practice your ethics deeply you look for a way to display your ethics in every circumstance. When that begins to happen, you are also going to look at your ethics and think they are not big enough, because you want to live a bigger life than that and you will be hungrier as you develop; hungry to live a bigger, broader spectrum of spiritual development.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Right Livelihood

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

Right livelihood is in the ethical conduct section of the Eightfold Path, and it means that one should earn one’s living in a righteous way. Wealth should be gained legally, and peacefully.  It sounds pretty simple, but it’s not so simple in today’s world, because you really have to look at what you do.  Lets say you own a liquor franchise.  You might want to think about selling that business and going into the Tofutti business.  You know? If you think about it, many people suffer due to what your product is.  Maybe you’re making lots of money at your liquor establishment, but then you see the poor people stumble back and forth on your street, and you have just got to ask yourself, are you doing the right thing? Upon contemplating right livelihood, one will come to understand that this is not correct.  This is not a good way to make one’s money.  Sell the franchise, and go into Dunkin Donuts or something, they make a decent coffee.  Something even better would be something that benefits sentient beings like a health food or some other product.  Right livelihood is like that.

The Buddha mentions four specific activities that harm other beings that one should avoid for this reason.  Dealing in weapons.  They hurt.  Dealing in living beings, which includes the slave trade, prostitution, and raising animals for slaughter.  That is wrong livelihood.  It is wrong to the core of the path.  No one should ever enslave another being.  No one should ever raise beings to die.  This is what the Buddha has taught, and to the degree that we go against that and harm sentient beings in this way, we ourselves will be harmed, if not in this lifetime, then in the next lifetime.  I tell you, folks.  What goes around comes around.

More wrong livelihood that should be avoided is working in meat production and butchery, as well as selling intoxicants and poisons, such as alcohol and drugs.   Furthermore, any other occupation that would violate the principals of right speech and right action should be avoided, so again there’s that blend.  Right speech, right action, they are both in that ethical category.

Ethics are so important and they are really not taught in many religions.  And in fact if you go right to Vajrayana, you may even miss these teachings.  But ethics are the foundation, the underpinning of the path.  You cannot go into highfalutin practice without good ethics.  Your whole house will fall apart.  It will be like a house of cards. We start here in the world, here in the mirror, looking at ourselves. Taking account before we go onto the fancy stuff.  You must examine your own methodologies, and to make sure that you have established good ethics and right view.

© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The Teenager and Ethics

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An excerpt from a teaching called Walk the Talk – Ethics by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, June 8, 1994

How do ethics come about in our personal lives?  Study sociology and you can find out how ethics evolved in our society.  Study developmental psychology and you can find out how ethics developed within us as individuals.  I would like to focus on that a little bit so that we can relate to it as individuals.

How many of you remember something about your teenagerhood? If you remember much about your ‘teenagerhood’, and you if you ask your parents, they will agree with you; that was the time when you were most disgusting and obnoxious. Most parents will think that their teenagers really should be put to sleep when the hormones start raging and put in stasis and reawakened later on.  As a parent, I can certainly see the wisdom of that.

That’s one shining example. When you finally left your teenagerhood, did you look back at yourself and think, “My God, I was the most selfish creature that ever walked on the face of the earth.  I was completely selfish.”  No, because it is normal at that age.  When you are a teenager it is as though biologically, physically, and a little bit of your mental and emotional development has started to take on the image of an adult.  Your body is changing, your mind is changing, the heart is changing, everything is changing, but it is all in flux.  Your hormones are going crazy.  Your body does not look the same from one week to the next; it is doing things underneath you that you do not understand, and so you are not in total agreement with your body at all times.  Your emotions are raging.  You have found out about all the things that you can have in the world and the forbidden fruits are suddenly becoming more reachable.  You have just figured out that you can say no and you are big and tall enough now to get away with it.  You know how to walk away. You know how to run.  You can learn how to drive a car.  There are all kinds of power that you have that you did not have before.  But what you do not have as a teenager is the emotional maturity to deal with it.  You have all kinds of power and new things that you can do and a new body to do it with and none of it is under control. Basically, as a teenager, you are out of control.  Your mind is out of control.  You are not mindful.  You are not conscious of your environment.  You are not aware of what other people think or what other people feel.  You are simply absorbed in these raging developments that are happening in your body and in your mind.

What begins to happen as you move out of teenagerhood is that you go through a lot of pain.  Do you remember how painful your teenagerhood was?  It is an extremely painful time.  Once again you found out about all the things in samsara that you can have, but you also found out that you couldn’t have them all.  The minute you found out about sex you found out not everybody wants it with you.  And when most people do want it with you, you find out that there are definite drawbacks.  There are all kinds of things that happen.  Basically you are an older version of what happens in the terrible twos, when two year olds learn how to say no.  They did not know how to say that before, but at two, they can say no.  And it seems to have some effect on the world and they are giddy with the realization of this.  That is actually what happens to teenagers.  They are simply giddy with what they can get away with.  If they can get away with a lot, if the parents do not have the strength to control or help them or if the parents are out to lunch, the kids are down the road in destructionville, setting themselves on fire because they can say no, again.  That is the big realization that has come into their lives.  They can say no.  So, they are going to say no to everybody.

What happens as you begin to leave this really lousy age? Nobody is exempt.  I was very selfish as a teenager.  And I felt I knew it all, too.  I was supremely omniscient until the age of about 21 when I realized there were others that had thoughts as well.  That is just how it is when you are a teenager.  You know everything.  You have had your first rudimentary thinking process as your tiny little brain buds begin to develop a little growth, and so, at that point it is a big deal.  Then when you realize that other people are having complete thought processes, thinking in total equations, you realize were not doing that at all.  At that point, you are turning 20 or 21. This is not a joke. This is what happened to you.  Can you remember? You are just beginning to rise from the primordial ooze around the age of 20 or 21.

Often at that point, kids that are well raised and basically fundamentally secure, happy in their homes and have good communication with their family, look at their parents and say, “Ooh.  Sorry.” They really do.  They look at their parents and say, “Gee, I was a real jerk for five years.”  And the parent says, “Yes” and it is all made well.

That particular growth process is extremely important, because teenagerhood is filled with suffering.  Do you know what the suffering is about?  The suffering is less about raging hormones than we think.  It is actually more about the fact that these poor sentient beings do not have the capacity at that age, to have or hold to any kind of ethical system. They do not have the capacity really even to see or sense what other sentient beings are experiencing or to empathize sufficiently to be able to gauge their own behavior.  One of the things that happens at about 20 or 21 is that it actually dawns on the person that they have been hurting others.  They actually learn from hurting their parents.  Unfortunately, as parents, you have to understand that. If you have teenage children, one of the things that you have to commit to; that they are going to do as teenagers, is hurt you.  It is necessary.  It does not mean you let them get away with it, because if you do, you are both dead.  They are going to go down into self-destruct land and you are going to go down in to schmuckland, not able to ever relate to your child in a strong way.  You do not let them get away with it.  You have to have firm discipline.  Those of you who are parents who do not have firm discipline in your homes, will know about it now, because if your kids are old enough, they are already out of control and it was because you did not have firm discipline.  It’s really cute to be that way with your kids when they are younger, but when they are teenagers, they must have the habit of firm discipline or they will not be able to manage, and you will not be able to help them.  Because when they are teenagers, they are going to hurt you and if you are not in control, they are going to hurt you badly.  And it is what they need to do.  That does not make them bad people.  They are not different from you.  They simply have to do that to learn.  They have to learn by your response.  They are going to learn.  When they crumble, when they watch you cry for them, when they watch you come back at them with the same vengeance they came at you with, or whatever it takes.  They are like little computers, taking that in.  I mean, some of them are not little computers and they are still kids. If you can imagine they are almost like little creatures that are learning the size of the room they are in by throwing things against it, seeing how long it takes to bounce back.  It is not so different, again, from the baby in the highchair that we all know and love, who loves to drop his fork or his spoon or his food just to see how long it takes to get to the floor and how long it takes you to pick it up.  They need to do that.  It is about learning.

That is what teenagers do, and at that point, they come up with rudimentary ethics.  We learn ethics through our own pain.    As teenagers you learned ethics through seeing other people hurt.  You learned them through watching. What really happened was when you were a teenager, you got hurt; you got blistered by what you saw.  May not be when you were 21, it may have taken you a while longer, but at some point you decided it is not good when people hurt me.  But later that comes to mean I cannot hurt anybody either.  But it really starts right around that time of teenagerhood and it starts by watching how the world responds to what you’re dishing out.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Sweep, Sweep: Cultivating Compassion

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

I sincerely pray for those with bitterness and hate and very little hope.
OM AH HUNG VAJRA GURU PEMA NORBU SIDDHI HUNG

For you who have lost your way in the sublime Ati Yoga and abandon Guru Yoga, I dedicate all merit in the three times. OM VAJRASATVA HUNG I pray for you.

For all who have failed to contemplate the suffering of Samsara, you have abandoned the true reason for the path. Develop Bodhicitta. OM TARE TUTTARE TURE SOHA!

I pray for those who are incapable of developing a good heart. OM MANI PEDME HUNG. Try, for the sake of sentient beings.

One doesn’t have to be a Buddhist to have my respect or be my friend. It takes ethics, character, kindness, honesty.

When you consistently harass or malign someone they have won – whatever battle you think you have is over. Your hate has defined you.

One can define a “Master” by their complete inability to hate and abuse others. The hate only defines the hater.

To the victim of such abuse, remember: the ignorant and blind will follow their kind. They cannot distinguish a fake from a diamond. What you see is a broken mind needing to hurt you for reasons you may never know. But they have only defined their lives around you. You win.

In brief? Study and practice the path of Dharma. Sweep, sweep, pay the dirt no mind. Be happy.
OM MANI PEDME HUNG

Stay Real

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From a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:

Hello all- I’ve been sick all day yesterday and today, that’s why I haven’t been on. Been rough, but I hope there is some good purpose. I always pray and ask that this illness result in health for all and Mother Earth. That this imbalance will provide balance for all. I hope so. Time is short, and we just don’t know.

Just ate the first food today. Tasted good, hope it stays that way! Still little energy. OK, done whining for now. OM MANI PEDME HUNG! I also think some solitude, a trip, some change would help. Shake the sillies out. Work out the bugs outta the system…. Right now, however I am needed here, stuff to do, projects going on. Later, and sooner than later would be fine.

Seems like many Speakers, Lamas, Gurus, Earth protectors, Shaman, etc are having difficult times, because we work to protect Mother Earth. And here is a hard cycle. We, Bodhisattvas, all must do all we can, including supporting the strength of each other, and all beings.

What is sad, is that even in these times when we so need each other- false dark minded “teachers” do not help with compassion. Yet they speak of accomplishment while spewing hate, gossip, arrogance, toward all. That is accomplishment? Buddhists are Sangha family.

If anything causes suffering it is innocents watching “teachers” wallow in mud and shit. This is what causes the downfall of Buddhism, USA. For our own purity we must avoid such types. They only lead to more downfall. As we are all taught, stay clear of samaya breakers. Stay real. If we cannot keep our vows and guard our purity, everyone gets hurt. We all suffer as we see. Japan lies and the world is at risk. For all. We must be less selfish, more ethical. More loving, less hateful. More spiritual, less material.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Upholding the Dharma by Abandoning Gossip

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From a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:

I am still being asked why I won’t comment on His Holiness the Karmapa’s situation given how Palyul and I were dragged through the filth of slander and lies. Given this was done as well to my Guru His Holiness Kyabje Penor Rinpoche, you all know I’m sure, the answer, again, is I hold myself to higher standards. My Guru taught me better. I have no wish to see any Vajrayana Lineage sullied; no wish to harm the Buddha Dharma in any way. The Dharma is far too noble and needed in the world.

Every level, teaching, given to us by the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas is beyond reproach because it came from the Buddha’s mind and enlightened intention. For an ordinary person to “comment” (which shows the ignorance of their minds) would be slapstick funny if it weren’t so tragic to the Dharma. What intention is that? The intention to feel worthwhile by stepping on Lamas and Buddhism in general? No, not me. This gossip and self cherishing is to be abandoned. Those that want to know what I think will then truck their little behinds somewhere else and ask “that” Lama for opinion. And will shop around until they like what they hear, even if they have to go to the sewers to get it. They will of course find what they want. There will always be ego-maniacs that will prostitute themselves for attention, to make a mark in the world, even if it is fingerprinting with shit on the Dharma.

Not me. I am here to bring truth, purity, view, wisdom and kindness. Not cruelty. Not lies. Not slander. Yes, I feel that I am above it. This kind of darkness brings religious hatred and wars. I will do everything within my rightful authority to prevent this at the cost of my very life. I would never do to another what was done to me and mine. I will never sink so low. I believe in ethics, respect, dignity and character. I would never slime anyone else’s Guru, as I know that the “Words of My Perfect Teacher” are spoken for all. Just as yours may speak perfectly for you, I will not dirty my nature nor stain my pure Lineage or the perfection of my Guru by kicking dirt on someone else. It would only harm others, and I would then be a whore.

None of my students can gossip or they have broken their samaya with me and with Kyabje His Holiness Penor Rinpoche. Don’t do it. Don’t spoil the pristine quality of the Buddha’s; of Guru Rinpoche’s extraordinary and powerful gift to all beings.

OM BENZAR SATO HUNG!

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

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