Guru

Booboos and the Guru’s Blessing

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An excerpt from a teaching called Viewing the Guru:  The Seven Limb Puja by Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo on October 18, 1995

Since we are in the face of the Guru constantly the next posture we should keep ourselves in is beseeching the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and the Lamas to remain.  Where would you be now if suddenly your root Guru disappeared?  You should ask that question of someone who has experienced the horrible, horrible occurrence of knowing the death of their Guru.  There are many students who have actually experienced the death of the Guru.  If you think practice is hard now, you should think what it must be like to go through the pain of knowing that your Guru is no longer in the world.  Then one has to reach even more deeply, and if you think that we are weak now, try to imagine how it would be if we have to reach even more deeply, in a more profound way, into our practice: knowing that the Guru is no longer in the world, knowing that there will not be physical teachings forthcoming.  How can we find the Guru?  It’s very frightening; it’s very scary, to think that there might be a time like that.

On one level we think how awful it would be not to be in the physical presence, the here and now presence, with constant teachings occurring from the Guru in a physical way. But now we should think in a broader sense.  What would it be like if our Gurus had simply attained realization, and then gone on and remained in nirvana?  What if they had attained realization and then never appeared in samsara again?  What would that be like?  Well, that would mean that in samsara there would be no teaching.  There would be no method.  There would be no means by which to accomplish Dharma.  There would only be the means to accomplish non-virtue.  There would be endless suffering that would be constantly compounded every single moment as though it were like a geometric progression — constantly increasing, with no leveling off, with no cessation, with no chance, no opportunity, no change.  Life would be constantly miserable.  All of the poisons: hatred, greed, ignorance, jealousy, pride, war, suffering, all of the results of those would only be ripened.  And there would be no relief, no method by which to accomplish relief.  We can’t even imagine that: no means by which to accomplish virtue.  We can’t even imagine that.  It is so unthinkable that we can’t even imagine that.

And yet, we can’t even give a moment to think how miraculous it is that our Guru has returned to face us in the world in our confusion.  Because we can’t see the Guru in our mind, because we can’t see the Guru in our inner channels, winds and fluids, because we can’t see the Guru in our nature, the Guru then appears to us through the shit and thickness of our stinking delusions and in this face, with this skin, this flesh, appears as the miraculous.  And we don’t even have a minute to request that this never be any different; that it is always the case that the Gurus, the Buddhas, the Bodhisattvas will return for the sake of sentient beings.  We never think how miraculous it is, how marvelous it is, how unequalled by any other gift or any other miracle. So concerned with our own superficial lives we have not even a moment to spare to thank the teacher for returning to us.  To thank them.  Think what they did!  They did not pass into nirvana. But it doesn’t mean that they haven’t accomplished their practice.  It doesn’t mean that, in truth, they do not actually spontaneously abide in nirvana now.  But it also means that they appear in the world, under samsaric conditions, for our sake.  And we don’t even have a minute a day to rejoice in that, and request them to remain.  We should contemplate on what it would be like to remain in the world without any source of liberation.  We should constantly be thinking what it would be like if the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas did not enter into samsara for us, did not enter into the world for our sake, did not appear among us, as us, in a form that we could understand, and digest, and empathize with.

We should think what that would be like, and having contemplated on that, realize it would be unthinkably, horribly, worse than any suffering we have ever experienced or could ever imagine experiencing.  Try to imagine what it would be like with no help.  Having thought about that, with that kind of energy, the energy that comes from that, every time we see our teacher, we should think in our mind, “Please remain in the world.  Oh, please, remain in the world.  Oh, please remain in the world.”  We should be thinking like that when we say our teachers long life prayers.  We should think like that constantly, be in the posture of constantly requesting the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, those who have attained realization, to remain within the world; constantly requesting that.

Now, how would you be constantly requesting that?  By expressing, knowing and facing with purity and honesty your dependence upon the Guru for liberation.  A little child lets its need of the mother be known.  A little child has a booboo and brings it to the mother to be kissed, and the mother knows– the mother knows even if the child doesn’t say, “I love you” how much the child needs the mother.  The mother knows; it’s a natural communication that they have.  And when the child says to the mother with total confidence, “I am hungry,” the mother knows.  There are no spoken words of love there, there’s no effusiveness, but the mother knows that the child is utterly and completely dependent.  The mother knows that the child is confident, that the child sees the mother as a fountain of blessing.  The mother knows that the child’s life would be lost without the support of the mother.  And so the mother knows that love.  And when the child is cold, the child goes to the mother and asks to be held, warmed up.  When the child is lonely and afraid, the child goes to the mother and asks to be rocked and loved and sung to.  And even though the child may not say, “I love you, Mother,” still, the mother sees the child’s need and understands the relationship.

If that is so with ordinary mothers and ordinary children, then if we express our need for the Guru, without shame, without pride, without fear of being humble, if we constantly express our need and our appreciation and our confidence in the Guru, then in that way we are also expressing that we wish the Guru to remain.  But if our hearts are hard and we say, “Oh, nice teaching.  Now I’ll go and do what I need to do,” and there is no relationship of that intimate nature, like a mother and a child, then there is no practice.  And there’s the question:  is the love so strong in your heart, is the understanding so profound and so wise, that, in fact, you really do wish the Buddhas to remain in the world?  We don’t know.  There is the question.  And the practice I’ve just given you, the way I’ve just given you to hold your mind and hold yourself, this would be the answer to that.  Think of yourself like a child and the Guru is like your dear, dear mother who gives you everything.  We bring all our booboos, our coldness, our loneliness, our fear, our hunger, our hurt, everything.  These things we bring, because in the face of the primordial empty nature, in the face of luminosity, in the face of the great miraculous Bodhicitta, these things disappear, and all our booboos are kissed.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Rest in Wakefulness

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An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo on October 18, 1995

What is it that we actually see when we see the Guru?  First of all, the Guru is perfection.  The Guru is perfect. The Guru arises very naturally, is spontaneously liberated; there is nothing about this appearance that has become tainted or impure.  There is no conceptualization.  There is no contrivance at all.  We are seeing a natural display of the Primordial Wisdom State.  We are literally seeing, in a non-dual way, the union of emptiness and luminosity. Now, of course, because of the way our samsaric minds work, we are not able to understand the non-duality of emptiness and luminosity.  We are simply not able to understand that.  To us they appear as two nouns.  Emptiness is emptiness.  We can describe that.  Luminosity is luminosity.  We can maybe describe that, and so: emptiness-and-luminosity-are-non-dual.  The best way to come to that is maybe to say it real quick! That’s about as well as we can do!

What is this non-dual display, this non-duality called emptiness and luminosity?  Well, first of all, we must understand that the Lama represents the primordial empty nature, that nature which is completely free of any kind of distinction or contrivance, any kind of ideation, any color, any form, anything that becomes something.  The Lama is the display of that which is without beginning and without end, of that which is primordially pure with no change, no movement, no contrivance or distinguishing factors whatsoever.  The Lama represents that pure emptiness.  When we talk about emptiness in that way, Americans have a difficult time with that; that’s why I’m trying to explain it in common ways, rather than using the traditional buzzwords.

When we think of emptiness, we think of a minus in a sense; like, an empty room is a room without things in it.  We think of an empty glass as a glass without liquid in it.  That’s the way that we understand emptiness, but in this case, you should understand that emptiness doesn’t mean an “absence of.” Emptiness, in this case, is more like freedom, more like liberation: liberation from conceptualization, liberation from contrivance.  The mind does not catch on, the mind does not hook, the mind does not hold in a package – anything.  You see?  Here, emptiness is liberation. Suppose you were capable at this moment of losing all the fetters, allowing the mind to abide spontaneously, allowing the mind to simply rest in wakefulness.  Rest in wakefulness.  That is perhaps the closest to how we might understand emptiness.

Luminosity is something we think about as a plus, like a light being on.  A light is on or it’s off.  Luminosity, we think of as something luminous, so it must be glowing. Of course, that’s not what we’re talking about here either.  Let’s say you could attain in your practice that true understanding of emptiness: if one could rest in innate wakefulness, free of contrivance, without any kind of distinction or super-structuring or building or grasping or clinging. Try to imagine a mind such as that.  Try to imagine a posture such as that, in a sense, even free of the condition of mind.  Try to imagine a posture such as that: innate wakefulness.  Then suppose that nature, free of contrivance, were to show itself:  gossamer, free, buoyant.  There are no words in English to describe it.

 

From the profound, innate wakefulness that is empty of contrivance, should a display show itself that was like that nature, inseparable from that nature in every single sense;  that display was not leaving the state of emptiness in order to show itself; completely indistinguishable from emptiness in the same way that the sun’s rays are completely indistinguishable from the sun itself; that there is no way to tell what is actually the tight hard ball of the sun, and what is the light and heat that comes out of it; that there is no way to tell the difference really: if we could imagine such display, we might call that luminosity.  We might say that this profound view of emptiness, this spontaneous, innate wakefulness that is complete and yet unbegun, could somehow show its face in a gossamer, uncontrived inseparable display that you can’t call light, you can’t call movement, you can’t call anything because it has not moved out of that nature. Because we need to use a word we say luminosity, but you must understand that this emptiness and luminosity are indistinguishable from one another.  We must also understand that this is what the Lama actually represents.

The Lama represents, therefore, the Primordial Wisdom State: that which is the wakefulness of Buddhahood in dance, in display, in radiance; not separate from the innate nature, yet arising in a completely pure display that is the primordial nature.  You have to say “indistinguishable from.”  That is what the Lama actually is. You could say that the Lama represents the union of emptiness and movement, or display.  You could say that the Lama represents the union of wisdom and method.  Guru Rinpoche appears to us always with the dakini.  He is always in union with the dakini.  Even when we see him in the pictures that we have of him or statues that we have of him, we may see him seeming alone; still, he has in the cleft of his left arm the symbol of the dakini.  So in his nature he is never without the dakini.  That is a teaching, a very profound teaching for us, as to how to understand the Lama.  The Lama, then, is understood as the appearance of the primordial nature, and the display of that nature appearing in our world, in our eyes, in our samsaric existence.  The Lama, then, represents the union of emptiness and luminosity.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Following in the Footsteps of the Guru

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An excerpt from a teaching called Viewing the Guru:  The Seven Limb Puja by Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo on October 18, 1995

While we are constantly in the face of the Guru, we should remain constantly in the posture of understanding that we should return the favor of the Guru’s kindness.  What kindness is it, I wonder, that would cause the Buddhas to appear, having emanated from the state of nirvana, in the world for the sake of sentient beings, experiencing all the conditions that are worldly and ordinary?  Experiencing all those conditions, for the sake of sentient beings, rather than remain constantly in the bliss of nirvana.  Amazing and wonderful, isn’t it?  What kind of kindness would that take?  When we think of the Bodhisattvas who remain poised on the brink of realization, emanating constantly into the world, endlessly:  because how long will it take to empty samsara?  These holy ones know that we are talking about what seems to sentient beings like forever.  What kind of love would it take?  We think about the kind of love it takes for a mother to suffer and bear her young. We think of the kind of love it takes for a mother to feed and care for her young.  We think of the kind of love it takes for a mother to patiently explain, patiently teach, patiently go through what needs to be gone through.  We’re talking about the quintessential mother, and this mother would patiently explain, because all the mother would care about is raising the child so that it is fully functional, fully competent, fully happy, fully blossomed in every conceivable way.  Now that’s a lot of love, isn’t it?  Just think what kind of love it would take for a loving parent to give, give, give in that way.  Hardly any of us can imagine such a thing because the samsaric parents that we have, although their kindness is evident because we are here, many of them have not known how to love.  They simply haven’t known how.  And so their love was never perfect, not any of them.  But we’re talking about a perfect mother.  What would that be like?  What kind of love would that be?

Then, if you can imagine that, which is practically unimaginable, how much more so would it take to imagine the kind of love and compassion that it takes for the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas to appear in the world for the sake of sentient beings under ordinary conditions again, and again, and again uncountable times?  What kind of love is that?  We who give and take love like we change our underwear; we who give and take love according to what’s in it for us, we can’t even understand that.  And yet we must try.  We must try to understand that level of compassion.  Not only do they return for our sake, but they practice for our sake.  These Buddhas and Bodhisattvas have accomplished supreme realization, many under terrible conditions, going through terrible tests and trials, which is part and parcel with their coming into their own.  They’ve crossed this ocean of suffering under extreme effort.  Lifetime after lifetime of practice and accomplishment, and they did so for the sake of sentient beings.  They literally did so for the sake of those who have need of them, who have hopes of them.  And then, having accomplished that, on top of that they return again and again and again for the sake of sentient beings and would return for even one, for you.  What kind of love is that?  What kind of compassion is that?

We should contemplate and meditate on that, and then we should think that we must repay that kindness.  In order to repay that kindness we have to think: what is the goal of the Lama?  Why does the Lama appear in the world?  Of course the answer is, for the sake of sentient beings; because it is unbearable that sentient beings remain suffering in the world; because the Lama cannot bear it; because it is unthinkable that sentient beings should continue to wander helplessly in samsara.  It is for that reason that the Lama returns to the world, that the Lama appears in the world.  Therefore, every bit of merit that we can manage to accomplish, merit that we have accomplished in the past, in the present, and even counting on the merit that we will accomplish in the future — we call that ‘the merit that we have accomplished in the three times, past, present and future’ —  this we should constantly offer for the liberation and salvation of all sentient beings.   We should be constantly looking for ways to accomplish merit, constantly looking for meritorious activities so that we can offer that for the liberation and salvation of all sentient beings.  We should never think, “Oh, that was good.  Got some!”   We should never think things like that, ever, because that’s not how the Lama thinks, and we are wishing to repay the kindness of the Lama.

Dedication of merit in this case can be understood as repaying the kindness of the Lama.  The Lama has given the nectar to you.  You must, in turn, find a way to give the nectar to the Lama, to the same degree that the Lama has done.  We’re not talking sloppy.  That doesn’t mean, “Oh, the Lama has given me the nectar so I’ll practice and I’ll dedicate the merit.  Period.”  Doesn’t that kind of thud a little dully when it hits the floor?  We are talking about going through the same extraordinary activity that the Lama has gone through in order to accomplish their practice; achieving supreme realization, and then returning for the sake of sentient beings.  This you must do in order to repay the kindness of the Guru.  And this is the ultimate dedication of all merit to the liberation and salvation of all sentient beings:  the gathering together of extraordinary merit, the accomplishment of meritorious activity, and the returning for the sake of sentient beings, offering that merit as a gift, as a feast, just as you have been offered the feast of Dharma by the Lama.

So instead of the lovely feast that we have offered to the Lama so far: that feast of hatred, greed, ignorance, jealousy and pride, now we pay homage; we make offerings; we offer confession; we rejoice in the capacity of those who have accomplished; we request the nectar of the teachings; we beseech the Lama, the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas to remain in the world for the sake of sentient beings; and we pay back the great kindness of the Guru by dedicating all the merit that we have ever accomplished, or will ever accomplish in the three times, for the liberation and salvation of all sentient beings.  And we make the commitment here and now — not a moment from now, but right now, right this moment that we ourselves will not rest until we achieve supreme realization so that we can return for the sake of sentient beings:

“Following in the footsteps of my Guru, I will accomplish.”

This is the prayer.  This is how we practice.

This teaching and the others from Viewing the Guru:  The Seven Limb Puja (type “Viewing the Guru” into the blog search bar to find all related posts) contain pointing-out instructions that I would consider to be concentrated, important and many-layered teaching.  If you really comb through it in a responsible way, extracting from it every single bit of nectar that you can, you will receive a lot more than perhaps you have even received reading it.  Please read these teachings and accomplish the practice in that way and think that this is how you should be from this moment forward: in this posture, in this way, inside, this is your practice.  You need not look any different at all on the outside.  In fact, it would be best if you didn’t!  Because then if you were, I would say that it was an act.  There doesn’t have to be any words, there doesn’t have to be any show.  You don’t have to walk around saying, “Oh yes, I’m doing this!”  The thing should begin within you, quietly, in a deep and profound way, indicating that, at last, you have entered into the well of your own natural mind, and have begun to draw up the nectar, the nectar of the Guru.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

The Spiritual Mentor: From “A Spacious Path to Freedom”

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RagaAsay

The following is respectfully quoted from “A Spacious Path to Freedom” by Karma Chagmed with commentary by Gyaltrul Rinpoche

The Twenty Precepts states:

Accept a spiritual mentor who abides by his precepts,
Who is knowledgeable and capable.

–In Tibet, occasionally people took novice of full monastic precepts without even knowing what they were, and some of them never did learn. Whatever precepts you take, whether lay vows, novice vows, or full ordination, it is important to know what they are, so that you truly arrive at their essence. Similarly, the cultivation of the spirit of aspiring for awakening leads to the spirit of venturing towards awakening. Moreover, tantric practice becomes meaningful only if you learn about the generation and completion stages. Engaging in such practices or taking precepts without understanding makes it difficult to penetrate their real significance–

The Ornament of Sutras states:

A teacher of supreme beings
Is one who is gentle, free of arrogance and depression,
Whose knowledge and understanding are lucid and broad-ranging,
Who goes everywhere without material compensation,
Who is endowed with the Spirit of Awakening and great learning,
Who sees the truth, is skillful in speaking, and is merciful.
Know the greatness of this sublime being,
Who is not despondent.
Expansive, having cast off doubts,
And revealing the two realities, he is worthy to be accepted.
This one is called a superb teacher of Bodhisattvas.
Devote yourself to a spiritual friend who is peaceful, subdued, and utterly calm,
With superior qualities, zeal, and a wealth of scriptural knowledge,
With realization of thatness and with skill in speaking,
a merciful being who has cast off depression.

Longing for the Guru

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

Longing for the Guru is something that each of us experiences.  Each of us experiences that longing for the Guru in many different ways.

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

As we grew up, each of us 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 deeply, we would discover that somewhere in our childhood there was a longing, which was the seed or the residue of something that we experienced in a previous incarnation. Probably when we grew up, we never heard of a Teacher. We never heard of a Guru. Because it was not consistent with our culture, and it was not sympathetic with what our culture views as proper, we may have diverted that longing 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 given instructions, or to find something that we knew we would find.

Some of you might have felt you were waiting for a time in your life when an understanding would come. You might have felt a recognition that someone or something would come into your life and bring about change. You might have felt as though there was something incomplete and that completion would come later. You might have had a sense of waiting. So even while you were extremely busy in your life, there were certain things that you could have done that you didn’t, because you were waiting. Did you at some point hold back because you felt as though part of you was waiting? Maybe you even felt as though you were the ball in a roulette game, that was still going around without falling into the slot yet.

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, searching for a fullness that you never found. It could be that you even went from a self-help group to an insight situation to a church to various 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, 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.

One of the great difficulties we have as both practitioners and people involved in a materialistic culture is that we have very little understanding of that longing. But in a culture that has a spiritual foundation, that recognizes the role of the Guru, or that recognizes and approves of a tendency to long for spiritual fulfillment, it is much easier to put a name and a label on that longing. For instance, in Tibet you could simply go into the monastery and know that you would find the answer there. Even if you didn’t understand which deity you were longing for, or what Guru you would find, you knew that the first thing to do was go into a monastery and with faith, the guidance would appear.

But, in our culture, in order to survive that kind of longing, you have to make believe that it’s something else. You have to pretend that it has to do with human relationships, or with prosperity, or with a certain lifestyle. You have to pretend that it has to do with intelligence, or with mental health. You have to pretend all sorts of different things in order to put the longing into some slot that our society recognizes. Because if you don’t, as you grow up, especially in the formative years, it’s crushing when you know in your heart of hearts that you are very different from others. No one else seems to have quite the same feeling that you do.

And so, because it’s so crushing, and so lonely, often, the very people that long the most are the ones that have diverted that longing into, perhaps promiscuity, or perhaps becoming almost fanatical about one idea or another. Maybe they diverted that longing into drugs or alcohol. Perhaps they made themselves into a way that they are not, such as superficial, or hard or tough or dull or even dead. They might have pretended that they had no feelings at all in order to deal with the ones that they did have.

Now, it’s true that lots of people have these same feelings and these same ways of dealing with feelings. For instance, it’s very possible that someone whose mother or father didn’t love them could become promiscuous simply for that reason. Yet, that does not preclude what I’m saying. You should listen to your life — what you did and what was underneath it. And you should come to understand that perhaps there was something a little different in your heart and in your mind, and it was always with you.

By the time you have grown and begun to find your path, you have already lost yourself somewhere. You don’t understand yourself any more. You have already done things for which you do not forgive yourself. You have already substituted something else for the longing that you felt. You have already substituted something else for your Teacher. In having done that, it is difficult to find your way home. It is difficult to reach what was originally very pure in your mind. It is difficult to rebirth what was very pure and tender inside of you. And now, you can’t just say, “Oh, I found it at last. The longing is finished. I found what I’m looking for. I found my path, but in the meantime, I’ve been promiscuous and I don’t forgive myself”, or “I’ve become tough, numb, or materialistic.”

What happens is that we see that what’s in front of us is so precious and it’s just what we’ve been waiting for. Now, instead of being able to just grab it and eat it, what we do then, is try to deal with the numbness, the hardness. the promiscuity, or the materialism. This is because we have become used to this feeling of longing. So the longing remains, and we are not able to truly be one with the path and with the Teacher.

We’ve forgotten how to satisfy ourselves. We’ve forgotten how to do anything except blame ourselves and be angry. We make lots of mistakes. We compulsively make mistakes. We do not follow the path purely and with a full heart. We have to ask ourselves if the person who says, “I’ve got to get through with my Three Roots practice today,” is the same person, who, as a child, was waiting hungrily for something. It’s not the same person. We feel differently now than we did back then and we don’t know how to get back to that original place of purity. We feel something is amiss when we think we’ve found our path because we feel angry, guilty and dirty. We feel different, impure. Then we end up approaching the Teacher, the teaching, and the path itself, in an impure way, because we believe that we are impure somehow.

Having longed for the taste of our own nature for such a long time, now when we look at the Teacher and the teaching, we see it as something altogether different. We see the Teacher as just a human being and we try to get close to that human being. And why do we do that? We do that because we spent our whole lives trying to fit that longing into an acceptable picture and now we’re still trying to do the same thing.

We are afraid to experience the depth of our longing, and instead, we try to get close to the person. We are afraid to experience the bliss of the union between the meditator, the meditating mind and the nature that is meditated on. The bliss of that union is so strong and we are afraid to experience it. So instead, we long for some kind of union with the person who is now our Teacher. It is even common to feel a strong sexual urging for our Teacher. It doesn’t matter if the Teacher is the same sex. Students can have dreams and strong sexual urgings for the Teacher. If you think of the Teacher as a mother figure, or a father figure, or an authority figure, or a therapist that you come to with your ordinary stuff, there will never be satisfaction, because that isn’t the truth. That is not the nature of the Teacher. That longing becomes a perpetuation of the suffering that we had as a child where it was not understood, where it was diverted, and where it could not be satisfied.

We misunderstand the feeling of longing. The longing is for union, not for sexual behavior. Because it is misunderstood, what generally happens is a feeling of rejection, because the Teacher does not comply with our wishes. We feel guilty and wonder what’s wrong with us. We feel a lack of acceptance of ourselves, or a lack of confidence, or a feeling that we are somehow impure in our motivation. The longing sometimes becomes so strong that we are unable to practice.

You want the Teacher to hold you and love you or you want the Teacher to be with you as a friend. You are unable to practice because you are so busy watching how your Teacher acts towards you. Does he or she smile at me? Does he or she hold my hand when I’m lonely? Does he or she notice when I’m ailing? Does he or she come after me when I’ve strayed? You’re so busy noticing that that you do not practice. The practice is the caring for you. The practice is the coming after you when you have strayed. The practice is the taking you home where you accept and awaken to your true nature. The teachings that you receive are your relationship with the Teacher. They are the fruits the Teacher brings to you. If you are longing for union with the Teacher, when the Teacher teaches you from his or her mind, and offers you the essence of what they know, that is the union, far more so than any physical friendship could ever be. There is nothing more intimate than that.

Yet, we continue to not understand. We continue to divert the longing, to not accept ourselves and to blame ourselves. We continue to create a bad relationship with our Teacher. If we understood what was happening, we would run to the teacher, run to the path, run to the experience of being on the path and of practicing in order to achieve enlightenment, with open arms and with an open heart. But instead, we are doing other things that do not accomplish the awakening that we wish.

And so, if you feel that you have become deadened to that longing, if you think that you don’t long for your Teacher or long for the Buddha, if you think that you don’t have a heartfelt longing for that awakening, then you should try to remember your childhood and the different feelings that you had. What were 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 really based on something that you could hardly remember, but remember that it was sharp and poignant?

If you can remember that time, you should become reacquainted with the purity of that urging. Cultivate that longing. Don’t cultivate it in a false or contrived way, but search for what was already there. Feel what was felt. Don’t make up a feeling. That’s important because if you do, 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 it was your karma to be born a culture where what you felt was not acceptable and you tried to fit-in in 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 then you have to forgive yourself.

In order to be able to fully forgive yourself, you have to confess. 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.” Your true confession is your lack of understanding the nature of the Guru. Your true confession is your not understanding what you are. That’s your real confession and the real sin you 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 suffering that came from that point.

You should allow yourself to remember the longing that you felt and learn to live with it. In living with it and having it be the warmth in your heart, 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 constantly cover that up with feelings of impurity, so long as that continues, the longing cannot be satisfied.

If you feel that longing purely, and if you can manage to get your ego out of the way, then that longing can be the very bread that nurtures you to continue firmly on your path. That longing can be the way that provides the actual, undeniable connection with your own Root Guru. It perfects that relationship so that you can realize the nature of the primordial Guru. You can understand that what you see in front of you is the miraculous touch of Lord Buddha. Your relationship with the Teacher, the path, the teaching, and your own practice can only be a result of the miraculous intention of the Buddha. So long as you continue to understand the teaching and the path as something external, you will never understand its nature. You will never be able to truly drink of the taste of that nature. Instead, you will continue to feel separate from the mandala.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Viewing the Spiritual Master

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The following is respectfully quoted from “Treasury of Precious Qualities” by Longchen Yeshe Dorje and Jigme Lingpa as translated by Padmakara Translation Group:

Spiritual masters have already accomplished their own aim. It is now their task to labor for the sake of others. It is important to understand that their various activities are displayed as appropriate to the inclinations and feelings of different beings and are the inconceivable operation of enlightened activities. Bearing this in mind, one should refrain from misinterpreting them. The siddhas of India like Saraha appeared for the most part as social outcasts. They adopted the way of life that was conventionally disreputable and lived without concern for purity or impurity, getting their livelihood as menials of the lowest caste or as “sinful” hunters and fishermen–living in the humblest way possible. But since their minds were undeluded, their actions were never wrong. We, by contrast, are as deluded as if we were under the power of hallucinogenic drugs. If we have not gained freedom through the three doors of perfect liberation, and have not realized the infinite purity of all phenomena, ascribe defects to our teacher, we commit an immeasurable fault. Bhikshu Sunakshatra committed to memory the entire twelve collections of the teachings, but, overpowered by his wrong views, he regarded as perfidious and underhand the actions of Buddha Shakyamuni himself, who was utterly without fault and possessed of every excellence. We should take all this to mind and confess and repair the slightest fluctuation in our faith.

 

Your Guru

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Ven Gyaltrul Rinpoche

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

In Vajrayana Buddhism, the Teacher is the cornerstone of all practice. The Teacher is everything—the underlying strength and the means by which transmission and understanding occur.

Let us compare the Teacher’s function with the function of various other objects of refuge. All people—not just Buddhists—have such objects. Try for a moment to determine your own. If you think that the accumulation of material wealth is the way to happiness, money has become your guru. The material things you treasure are your guru. If, on the other hand, you choose the beer-and-sports routine, watching ESPN every night until you fall asleep, you have accepted the TV as your guru. It pacifies you. It makes you temporarily happy. You betray yourself: these things are unreliable, impermanent, and deceptive. Yet you put your trust and faith in them. Nothing in our impermanent realm of phenomenal existence can lead to happiness. Nothing—even if it seems ideal, like the perfect job or the perfect relationship in a perfect split-level, with 2.5 perfect children surrounded by a perfect white picket fence. At the moment of death, you are alone.

According to Buddhist teaching, there is a lasting happiness: enlightenment. It is the only end to all forms of suffering, including impermanence. Enlightenment cannot be tainted; it cannot be eaten by moths. It cannot rust; it cannot be destroyed. Enlightenment is the true source of refuge, the only thing that will not allow you to be betrayed. True happiness cannot be taken away. It is permanent and unchanging—the steadfast, stable reality of the enlightened mind. When you achieve enlightenment, what is revealed is your own primordial-wisdom nature. Some people think that they must give birth to enlightenment or that they have to find it. Actually, the primordial-wisdom nature has never left you, nor is it unborn. It remains in the way that a crystal is still a crystal, even though covered by dirt and mud.

Once you accept enlightenment as your goal, you should understand that the Guru is someone who can get you there. What should you look for in a Guru? A Teacher should not be seeking power or personal gain. Your Guru should have profound compassion, profound awareness. Most important, your Teacher should be able to transmit to you a true path. Suppose you go to a psychiatrist who helps you to be happier, more effective. This is very useful, but it is only a temporary way to cope, whereas the Guru offers you supreme enlightenment. This has nothing to do with coping. In fact, it has nothing to do with satisfying the ego.

Do not be fooled by charisma, saying: “I can tell by my feelings. This is the Teacher for me!” Instead, ask: Does this person teach a path that has been proven, time and time again, to stabilize the mind to the extent that miraculous activity can occur? Does this Teacher offer a technology that can stabilize the mind during the death experience? Can this technology result in miraculous signs at the time of passing? Are there indications that others have had success with this path and can now return in an emanation form in order to benefit beings? Look at the people who have practiced before you. Look at their successes or failures. Examine the history of the path, including the accounts of any enlightenment it has produced. At their passing, practitioners may produce miraculous signs: rainless rainbows, sweet scents, the transformation of the body into a rainbow of light, leaving only the hair and nails, the mysterious formation of relics or other unusual substances. On the Vajrayana path, such miraculous signs have been witnessed and recorded by many. People have seen the rainbow body; they have smelled the sweet scents; they have seen these extraordinary events.

The Buddha Himself said that we should use logic in choosing a Teacher or a path. After that, however, you begin to rely on the Teacher for everything. Why? Because you make a god out of your Teacher? Do you lose your brains and become a drone or a bliss ninny? Not at all. We Americans like to think we are unique, important, the best in the world. We think that to be happy, we must develop our individuality, so the idea of following a Guru is unappealing. But a teacher should not be chosen with blind faith or rampant emotion. You should exercise both intelligence and surrender. They are not in conflict. They can coexist very comfortably within the same mind, the same heart.

Note that you do not surrender to a person. It is not about a person. Your Teacher represents the door to liberation, the path that leads to enlightenment. Your relationship with the Guru is the most precious of all relationships. This is you talking to you—and finding out that you are not you at all. This is a glimpse, a taste, of true nature. At last we have arrived at the correct way to understand the Teacher.

Cultivate the precious relationship with your Guru through devotion. Make sure, however, that it really is devotion—not merely the kow-towing to a physical being. Devotion is an understanding of refuge, an understanding of your goal, plus the courage to walk through the door you have chosen. Choose only once, and choose correctly. From then on, allow yourself the grace to love deeply and gently.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Paying Homage

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An excerpt from a teaching called The Seven Limb Puja:  Viewing the Guru by Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo on October 18, 1995

Since we find that we are, in fact, in the presence of the primordial Guru at every single moment, what is the posture that we should take?  You should refer to the practice called the Seven Limb Puja.  The Seven Limb Puja appears in many different practices in slightly different variations, but it has certain common denominators, and these should be studied and looked at as a guide of how one should practice now that one is coming to understand that the eyes of the Guru are our eyes; that the heart of the Guru is our heart; that in our nature, that is the nature.  That is the nature, and we are indistinguishable in our nature from that.

 

Practicing in that way we should think like this.  First of all, in the face of the Guru, knowing that the face of the Guru is always with us, we should practice paying homage constantly.  Constantly paying homage to the Guru, this will antidote our pride, our ego, that habit that says, “Oh, well, look at that!  The Guru has faults.  He or she must be human.” And, of course, that is the statement that keeps you from practicing pure devotion and pure surrender, and the same statement that prevents you from achieving realization.  So this is the antidote that helps you to give rise to that spiritual posture that makes it possible for you recognize the nature of the Guruas the absolute non-dual display of emptiness and luminosity; and to give rise to profound devotion at last, rather than the superficial stuff that we’ve been passing out as devotion.

We practice paying homage.  We pay homage to the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas; the Lamas are in that number.  The Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are all represented in the Lama.  We should think that we pay homage to the Buddhas because they have crossed the ocean of suffering.  Therefore, they are capable of captaining us across the ocean of suffering.  So we pay homage with that kind of regard, as though we needed to cross an ocean of suffering and the trip is scary and long and hazardous and difficult and so a qualified captain is required.  Otherwise, we can’t make it.  So that is the kind of recognition of the superior quality of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, of the Lama.  Recognize every moment, this is a vajra command, that when we think of ourselves in our samsaric state and then we think of the Guru, we should think that the Guru is like a precious diamond, beyond compare, because the Guru is capable of helping us cross the ocean of suffering. We cannot do that ourselves.  That will antidote the kind of pride that we have when we try to put ourselves above everything, in subtle or gross ways, whatever it happens to be.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

The Silent Chant

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An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo on October 18, 1995

We are talking about the Lama as being our own precious nature.  Someday when we die and all the elements fall away, what will arise naturally is the natural state, free of contrivance.  And they say for the practitioner there is realization, simply because, the practitioner that has meditated properly will recognize that natural uncontrived state as the very primordial mother from which they have sprung.  And like a child who has been separated from his mother for a while runs to the mother with happiness and joy, and practically rips open his heart, and sits on the mother’s lap and doesn’t wish to separate from the mother at all —  like that, if we are meditators, we will run to that nature.  We will recognize with fervent regard, but so much more than that.  I don’t even have the words.

Here in our lives, due to the force of our fortunate meritorious karma that we have accumulated in the past, when here in this life, that same uncontrived nature, that same pristine quality appears in samsara to speak to us, to see us with its eyes, to hold our hand, to teach us how to practice, and how to recognize in our practice, we’re drunk, light in the head, stupid.  We can’t care, we can’t get it together.  Our minds are just weak that way.  And yet, even with all of that, even with all of our terrible practice, we are still hoping that when we die and those elements that make up our samsaric existence begin to disintegrate and fall away that somehow, magically, we will recognize the primordial wisdom nature.  Boy, are you thinking like Peter Pan!  That’s what I call magical thinking.  The only way it is going to happen is if we can begin to recognize that nature now.  And the only proper way to recognize the nature of the Guru is to simultaneously recognize our own nature as well, and to know that they are indistinguishable.

It is not possible for us to look at the Guru and find fault, because that would mean that we are acting with samsaric intention, with samsaric mind, and the result is samsara.  There is no practice there.  That is nothing.  You do that all the time.  You do that every moment.  That’s not practice.  But if we think and practice in the way that I’ve just discussed with you, then instead, when we see the Guru we see literally the face of salvation.  We see literally:  “I am that.  That I am.”  Even though, of course you can’t say “I.”  “I” separates us, but in the beginning, we have the intention of understanding: that is the nature that is my nature also.

And so inside — instead of judgment, hatred, greed, ignorance, jealousy, pride — there is a soundless chant that says, “Holy holy holy.” and that is the practice.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

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