Guru Yoga | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

The Blessings of the Guru

July 28, 2011 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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!

The Importance of Oral Transmission

July 28, 2011 by anisonam

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by His Holiness Penor Rinpoche called “Guru Yoga” – reprinted here with permission from Palyul Ling International

Regardless of the particular level of teaching or practice that we are discussing in the Buddhist tradition, whether it be Hinayana, Mahayana or Vajrayana, the process of spiritual development is one of the student relying upon a teacher. We may call that teacher a lama, a guru, or whatever, but the essential point is that there is an oral transmission that takes place in which a teacher teaches the student: the student listens to the teachings, absorbs their meaning and puts them into practice.
There is a reason for this emphasis on an oral transmission. From the time of the Buddha up to the present day, the buddha dharma has always been transmitted and meant to be transmitted orally, ensuring that there is a living tradition that is still embued with the blessing and power of the original teachings. It also guards against the possibility of so-called teachers simply coming up with their own ideas. Instead, the teacher passes on a proven tradition of teachings.

This makes the buddha dharma different from other kinds of learning where it may be possible for people to innovate. In such realms of learning it may be appropriate to come up with new systems of thought or to introduce new ideas. But when we are talking about the buddha dharma, every teaching must connect with the original teachings of the Buddha in order for a teaching to be valid. The teachings cannot be something that someone is simply coming up with on their own. The teachings are something that the teacher passes on.

Similarly, in other types of human knowledge it may be permissible to present information in a manner as entertaining and pleasing as possible. But although it is important for dharma teachings to be presented in a manner which is pleasant to hear, it is most important that the transmitted teachings have the power to bless and influence those who hear them in a positive way – not only in this lifetime, but in future lifetimes as well. So even though the teaching of the dharma should be elegant and well-presented, what is most important is the blessing of the essential message.

The Flawless Captain

July 27, 2011 by anisonam

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.

His Holiness Penor Rinpoche – The Guru Above the Crown of My Head

July 25, 2011 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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!

Evaluate Your Spiritual Teacher

July 17, 2011 by anisonam

The following is a YouTube video teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:

Overcoming Life’s Obstacles

January 9, 2012June 10, 2011 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called Turning Adversity Into Felicity

Ours is not a religion that believes you can get through a room full of obstacles—which life basically is—without turning on the lights and seeing where the things are that you might trip over. Our religion is one where we turn on the light, we look with our eyes, we do not absent ourselves from the responsibility of clear thought, of the reality of cause and effect relationships, of engaging in those practices that will clear the obstacles.

In our lives, perhaps, we might suffer from the loss of fortune. Let’s say that we have a certain situation where we were very wealthy, we had everything that we needed, and suddenly bam! Misfortune hits. It happens, doesn’t it? It happens a lot. Misfortune hits and suddenly we are no longer wealthy. Perhaps it isn’t about money. Perhaps it’s about relationships. At one point, for the women, the prince rides up on the white horse and everything looks like it’s going to be happily-ever-after, you know, the Dream. For men, the Queen of Sheba has landed in our lap somehow, and here she is with all her blazing glory.

So maybe that kind of thing has happened. But eventually we will find that the cloud definitely has another side to it. It has a silver lining, yes, but it has a little rain in it as well. For many of us, we would experience some loss. Perhaps we might think that we have everything we need, and then simply it is lost. That might occur with our health. Many of us, we don’t plan to die, we don’t plan to get sick, but suddenly, perhaps even at a point where we thought we were young enough and sturdy enough to have been healthy, we find that our health slips and we can no longer rely on our health. And then, for others of us that survive all these other things without too many disasters, eventually we will get old and we will die. So there are these situations that must be dealt with.

Now when we deal with them, should we just paste some sort of unthinking, syrupy, positive statement on top of it and therefore make it acceptable? Should we say, “Ah, well, you know I’ve lost the great love of my life, but hey, it’s not so bad. What’s the big deal? I can do this!” Or, “Once I was rich and now I’m poor, but hey, I’m a positive thinker and wealth will come to me soon, I’m sure.” Do we think like that? I don’t think so.

We are taught by our teachers to engage in creating the causes by which our suffering might end. Clearly if you do not have enough fortune or money in your life, the causes by which that might come to you have not been created, or they haven’t been created in sufficient amounts. So we turn to the guru, not with an empty prayer of, “Gee, hope you’ll land a few thousand in my box. Just stick it in the mailbox. I’ll pick it up tomorrow.” You don’t pray like that. You don’t pray to win the lottery. That isn’t how it goes. In our religion, the difference is that we actually pray for guidance and we use the teachings that the teacher gives us and we begin to create the causes by which we can overcome the obstacles in our lives.

Wrathful Compassion and Dispelling Obstacles

June 4, 2011 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Your Treasure is Heart”

For Americans, the activity of the lamas can be confusing because sometimes the lamas will engage in wrathful compassion. This has happened to me and I know it has happened to my students as well. Sometimes because of the karma and the love and concern between the student and the teacher, the lama will see in their meditation that some terrible obstacle has arisen in the mind of the student, or in the path of the student, or in the life of the student in some way. Maybe it’s an obstacle to the student’s life. Maybe it’s an obstacle to the student’s path. Maybe it’s simply something like a brick wall where the student will meet up with their habitual tendency and not be able to make much progress. If there is the right kind of karmic relationship, if the causes have been given rise to and the devotion is there and all of the different catalytic necessities are in place, then the lama will often engage in wrathful activity in order to cut this obstacle.

Let’s say, for instance (and this often occurs), that the lama sees that within the student’s mind some negative, nonvirtuous karma has been catalyzed or drawn to the surface, or has begun to ripen. Then the lama will see that this could be dangerous and the lama will be very wrathful. How does that work? Well, first of all, the lama, knowing what the student’s capacity is, will do that skillfully in such a way that eventually, even if not at first, the student will fully understand the lama’s gracious activity; and even though wrathful activity has occurred, the student will remain fully devoted, fully respectful, fully loving and confident in the lama’s kindness.

That pure inner posture is a posture of true devotion, purity, spirituality in every sense of the word. When the lama takes all of your habitual tendencies and all of your issues and smacks you in the head with them, it takes a tremendous amount of vajra courage to continue with love and confidence. If the student is lacking in a certain kind of virtuous karma, or virtuous ripening at that particular time and is also, perhaps, having the ripening of some nonvirtuous karma, that interaction between the lama and student may turn it around, and can turn it around just like that, because of the student’s capacity, even in the face of such a difficult situation, to remain fully devoted, fully confident and fully vulnerable. Vulnerable means opened up and not protected. In order to continue on this path of compassion and wisdom, that determination, that vajra courage, is such a tremendously virtuous inner posture in which to remain, that often this negative tendency or negative event will be cut.

This has definitely happened to me as I described once or twice before, where my own teacher, out of the clear blue sky with no seeming cause, began to be very angry at me and accused me of something that I would never do. It would be the equivalent of my accusing you of murdering babies with chain saws. It was just so far from reality it could never be true. So my teacher began to be really angry at me and scolded me and raged at me to the point where I was shaking in my shoes. I was unbelievably terrified. Then when he felt the obstacle had been cut he just stopped and he said, “O.K., we’re done now. Try not to get mad. See you later.” Sort of like that. Try not to get mad! I was trying not to make my own gravy if you’ll excuse the expression. I was terrified. I’ve never been so terrified in my life. I barely shuffled myself out of the room. And then I realized that physically I felt completely different and that something had changed radically. I went to my other teacher who was also here (two of my main teachers were here) and he said “Oh yeah. His Holiness saw an obstacle to your health and he cut it.” Interestingly, from that time forward I felt about 10 years younger, the ultimate face lift. My love and respect and regard for my teacher, and also the courage to really make myself spiritually vulnerable to his care, grew by that situation because I knew in my heart that he had brought me great benefit. That’s the kind of thing that one sees on the path of Vajrayana.

Vajrayana Without a Guru?

May 31, 2011 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

Who said that? Vajrayana without a Guru? How do you manage Guru Yoga in Ngondro? Think of unicorns? When Empowerment is given, is it so ordinary that we all just stand up, clap and cheer? So who gives Empowerments and from which Guru and lineage? How does one receive any transmission? Do they all sit in a circle and transmit to each other? Blind leading senseless? How do they mix their minds with the Guru, like milk and water? Oh, right – no Guru, no way to do that. So they’ll just sit around stroking each other’s…egos? Here comes the downfall of Vajrayana in the West. Yesirree, the slide has begun. But not on my watch. And not in my Lineage. Some “pick” a Guru from a book, long dead, because it is easier being a pompous fool than a student. That is just ignorant, and indicates one who does not understand Pure Vajrayana.

To fully transmit teaching you can’t be a book or a fool. Sorry, you do not practice Vajrayana without the Guru. That is not possible, that is a tainted soup of yuk, and then you are the ass it comes out of. Nobody needs that ignorant poop mixed into the Triple Gem!

Contemplating the True Nature of the Guru

May 30, 2011 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

We should think in such a way that we know if we practice deeply enough, we will look at Guru Rinpoche and see that innate wakeful state which is the true face.

Guru Rinpoche said before he left, “I will appear as your Root Teacher.” What that means is we should practice considering that the teacher who comes to teach us and gives us blessing, gives us empowerment, gives us commentary teaching, who makes it possible for us to practice the path, is actually an extension of Guru Rinpoche’s activity. The teacher cannot be separated from Guru Rinpoche’s activity, and is Guru Rinpoche’s activity—an extension of miraculous enlightened compassion, enlightened intention.

If we, in our ordinary perception, separate the two and say, ”Oh, Guru Rinpoche is over here, and the Root Teacher’s over there, and I’m over there,” and practice in a superficial way, we won’t get very far. But if we see the whole event as the miraculous intention of the Buddha, as enlightenment itself, if we understand that the path is inseparable from the benefit, inseparable from the nature itself, and if we understand this activity to be this enlightened process, inseparable from the true face, and we practice focused in that way, the blessing cannot be counted. It is incredibly profound. It’s an entirely different process, really, than the kinds of ordinary activity that we always engage in. We’re always working hard at something,,but that’s not the point. The point is to see the face, to know the nature. The point is to be awake.

If one uses the thoughts that I have just described, contemplating in the way that I have described, practicing Guru Yoga as I have described it, one dispels the delusion that comes from the fixation on self-nature and phenomenal existence as being inherently real and solid. By dispelling fixation, one can know the nature that can only really be described as “suchness,” that which is beyond.

So, I hope that you will take this into your heart and begin to practice. Perhaps you can begin to practice the Seven Line Prayer and Vajra Guru Mantra. But most especially, I really hope that you will think in the way that I’ve described: understanding what is ordinary and what is not ordinary; understanding what is of the world; understanding what is part of the process of fixation and what is a direct display of the Mind of Enlightenment. Thinking on these things and practicing accordingly, one can have great results.

Understanding the Seed and the Fruit

May 29, 2011 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

What makes Guru Rinpoche’s teaching, his path, different from others, different from other activities that we could do in our lives? Well, if we want to attain wisdom, why don’t we just go get a card in the library? Why don’t we just read everything there is to read? Why don’t we just go through every book in the world? Would we become wise then? Not necessarily, even from an ordinary point of view, because we would not have done anything about dispelling the fixation on phenomenal existence. We would not have done anything about dispelling the fixation on self-nature as being inherently real. We would do nothing about the delusion within our mindstreams. We would simply have accumulated information. I know lots of people that are smart, but not too wise from a Buddhist point of view. That is because the things that you can read from the library, the things that you can do in the world, arise from ordinary circumstances. They are compiled, or made up, of ordinary things. They can be collected. They are things in phenomenal existence.

What comes from Guru Rinpoche does not come from an ordinary place. What we receive from Guru Rinpoche in terms of teaching and blessing actually arises from the state of enlightenment. It therefore has an extraordinary source. And you always get apple trees from apple seeds. If what he offers arises from the mind of enlightenment, then it will result in enlightenment. It will bring about enlightenment. It has the capacity to do so.

There’s no way you can get that blessing other than through extraordinary means. You can’t pay money to get it. You can’t pay someone else to help you get it. You can’t take a pill to get it. You can’t eat the right foods to get it. You can’t work for 40 hours a week for so many years in order to get it. You can’t collect it. And so we practice Guru Yoga in order to increase our faith and our certainty and our confidence in order to receive the blessing that actually arises from enlightenment.

If we understand the nature of the Guru, if we understand the nature of Guru Rinpoche as being these profound things that I have described in brief, then we can understand that by practicing Guru Yoga, one can achieve extraordinary result that can be had through no other means. But in order to do so, one has to meditate and really concentrate on what that blessing is, how it arises, and what it comes from. One has to see the reality of Guru Rinpoche as being something more than superficial phenomenal appearance. One has to understand in a more deep and profound way.

So the blessing we receive from Guru Yoga then depends on us. How much time are we actually going to put into this consideration? And how are we going to view it? Are we going to continue to view Guru Rinpoche as somebody out there somewhere separate from ourselves who did something that affects us now? That’s a very limited, very superficial, very ordinary view and it won’t get us very far. We have to think about the nature of the Lama. We have to think that this phenomenal appearance of the Lama in physical existence is due to the miraculous extraordinary compassion that comes from a fully enlightened mind, that is inseparable from a fully enlightened mind. And we must understand that nature as being totally and completely realized, totally awake. We must understand it as being completely revealed in display form, emptiness and luminosity, emptiness and compassion. When we look at the Lama, when we see Guru Rinpoche, this is what we should understand.