Guru Yoga | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

Your Chance at Recognition

October 22, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Awakening from Non-Recognition by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Guru Yoga must be seen not as an end but as a means to an end. Quite frankly, speaking for myself and I’m sure most other teachers, we could care less. I’ve described this many times before. I just hate the whole prostration thing. It takes me forever to get through a room. If one practices in a profound way, these prostrations are an opportunity, and that’s why I allow them to be practiced here in the same way that they are practiced generally in our tradition. Otherwise I wouldn’t, because they bother me, but I allow them because it is an opportunity to make an offering and to move immediately—body, speech and mind—into a posture of recognition. You are speaking, “I take refuge in the Lama. I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the Dharma. I take refuge in the Sangha.” You are engaging in conduct with your body. You are engaging in intention with your mind. With body, speech and mind you are connecting to recognition, and that’s why I allow it.

The relationship with one’s teacher is utilized as the water of life or some sort of ultimate nectar or ultimate empowerment that provides a way for us to begin to recognize that which is holy arises in the world and that each of us is that. Each one of us should practice like that. To the degree that we hold the teacher above the crown of our head and then take the teacher into our hearts, without finding reasons not to—because those reasons not to are the very reasons we are using to remain lost in samsara—to that degree we learn to recognize. Yes, we know you’re clever enough to find reasons not to recognize the nature. If you need to be clever in the way Americans need to be clever in this day and age, you are already clever, very good, now let’s move on. Let’s see if you can learn recognition.

The relationship with the teacher then becomes this precious opportunity, this precious bridge. We see that the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha and, all three-in-one as the Lama have appeared in the world, and we see that this is not separate from us. So in the beginning we start practicing by contemplating the difference between what is ordinary and what is extraordinary. We begin to move into relationship with the teacher. We begin to practice devotion. We try to practice some pure view, understanding that this is the appearance in the world and that this is holy and we let it be that way. We simply let it be. Then gradually we move into a much deeper practice where we understand everything is the mandala of the guru. In that practice we begin to learn to turn adversity into bliss.

Devotional Yoga

October 19, 2016October 19, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a the teaching, When the Teacher Calls, by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

In Buddhist tradition and particularly in Vajrayana Buddhism, there is a kind of practice called devotional practice. One of its most meaningful and foundational aspects is developing a relationship of pure devotion with one’s lama or teacher. In Vajrayana, the teacher is considered to be the door to liberation because even though the Buddha was once on the earth and even though the Buddha’s teachings are written in books, it is just about impossible to enter onto the Path without the blessings of the teacher. The lama, who is necessary for empowerment, transmission and teaching, is considered to be the blessing that is inherent in the Path.

In the Vajrayana tradition there is a devotional aspect to every practice that is done,from the most preliminary to the most superior practice, and it is considered to be the means by which blessing is actually transmitted. In the Nam Chö Ngöndro, the preliminary practice accomplished at this temple, there is a beautiful song of invoking the lama’s blessing called “Calling the Lama from Afar.” It has haunting melody, and it is done from one’s heart in order to soften the ego and make the mind like a bowl ready to receive any blessing.

This type of practice functions like a cultivator. Think of planting a field of grain. One has to plow the field and work the soil so that it’s capable of receiving the seed. Otherwise, if the soil were not ready, when seed was thrown out it would just bounce, as on a hard surface. Likewise, devotional practice is considered to make one ready. Its benefit is immeasurable. Without it there is no possibility of the blessing being fully received.

Devotional yoga is meant to benefit the student. The teacher is not “pleased” by devotional yoga. Rather, the teacher is pleased by movement and the softening, the gentling and the change that occurs within the student. In the same way as the student calls the lama from afar in traditional practice by putting one’s heart in a position of surrender, we may talk about what the lama experiences when the lama calls the student from afar and the student responds to that call.

When a student calls the teacher, with his or her mind and heart like a bowl, many things are happening. First, there is fantastic auspicious karma ripening. In order for a student even to make that step, he or she must have accumulated a tremendous amount of merit or virtue in the past. A nonvirtuous mind cannot call the teacher with devotion.

When the student calls the lama, it’s because the student has realized certain things. First of all, they have looked around and have seen that cyclic existence or ordinary life is flawed or faulted. Sometimes it’s older students who, in some ways, are able to do this more readily because they’ve seen their lives pass, and they have looked around and said, “What have I done? I’ve worked so hard my entire life, and what have I really accomplished? What am I going to take with me?”

At any rate, the student that is prepared to call the teacher has been awakened, stimulated, has understood that much time has passed and that very little can be really accounted for. There has been some fun. It’s been up and down. We’ve all experienced getting older; we’ve all experienced sickness, and we will certainly experience death. At some point we look at all of this and ask ourselves, “Isn’t there something more? There must be something!” We begin to think in this way, and then we see someone who can give us a path, not just thoughts about the path, not just ideas that are popular in the New Age, but a technology that is succinct and exacting, a method that has shown itself to give repeatable results. When students see this they become hopeful and joyous. Suddenly they’re excited, and they begin to want to come in closer to this experience. It’s a beautiful, precious moment, but that moment can only happen due to the virtue of the student’s previous practice.

Eventually students will come to the point, due to the virtue of their practice, where they will do anything because they know their time is short. They know that they’ve tried everything and nothing has worked. Nothing has produced permanent happiness, so they are looking at the door to liberation, and in part, that is how the teacher is considered. They want to walk through that door.

Meditation on the Teacher

October 7, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from “Treasury of Precious Qualities: A Commentary on the Root Text of Jigme Lingpa” by Longchen Yeshe Dorje, Kangyur Rinpoche

…the tantra nam mkha’i klong yangs kyi rgyud says:

Meditation on the teacher

Is meditation on the Dharmakaya,

Compared with this, all meditation

On a hundred thousand deities

Is seen as nothing,

Therefore every act

Of wholesome Dharma–

Hearing, teaching

Meditating, and upholding,

Torma offerings and all the rest–

Are but preparations for the guru yoga.

For the teacher is the glorious Buddha

Of past, present, and all future time.

Viewing the Guru

September 26, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

This teaching is meant to help us correct our view and deepening in Guru Yoga. We will be thinking about how to deepen in our practice and how to practice with a deeper and more profound sense of view. Remember that the antidote that we are trying to apply now is the one that addresses our superficiality.

As materialists, modern people, and sentient beings in general, our minds are very superficial. In fact, our superficiality is literally invisible to us simply because we have no sense of what anything other than superficiality might be. As you listen to this, you should listen with your “doors” open. That means, don’t just listen lightly the way most people do. Most people, when they listen to either conversation or teaching, listen to it just skimming the surface, picking out the main points. In this case, you don’t want to use that technique. That’s okay for ordinary listening, but in this case you want to not only hear everything that is actually said, but at the same time, you also want to try to understand the concept that’s being presented in a deeper way. It’s as though you want to receive the totality of the idea, not just the top of it. You don’t want to try now to determine what are the most important parts. In other words, accept the entire teaching, and then, later on, as you begin to digest it, you’ll be able to determine what the important parts are more readily.

Generally, when we walk around in our normal waking consciousness, we think that we are with the Guru only when we are praying or doing our practice. We visualize the Guru in front of us. We think, “Oh, now the Guru must be here by the force of my devotion.” That’s appropriate, that’s what I’ve taught you. Then we think also that we are with the Guru whenever we see the Guru’s face. We think that when the Guru is actually in the room and we see the face, we see the form, and we think that we are with the Guru. If we see a picture of the Guru, maybe we have a moment of devotion, and perhaps we feel a connection because of our past practice. We think, “Oh, now we are with the Guru.” In fact, if we are really to examine the way that we are thinking at that point, it is extremely superficial. There’s no view in that at all. It’s superficial. It’s completely inaccurate. If we think in that way, it goes to show us that we have not accomplished pure view. We have not accomplished a deeper view. So this would give us a lead as to how to practice more deeply.

When we think about when we are with the Guru, we have to try to understand the meaning of our relationship with the Guru in the deepest possible sense. We try, hopefully, to move past our perception of the Guru as an individual person. This is our goal. This is what we’re trying to do, generally speaking, in our devotional yoga. We are trying to see past the personality, past the superficiality, into a more profound understanding, a more profound view.

Let’s go back to that question that we might have answered differently while we were thinking more superficially: when is it that we are with the Guru?

We are with the Guru every moment that we have the Buddha nature. We are with the Guru so long as we appear in the world but still have within us the Buddha seed. What that actually means is that the Guru represents for us all sources of refuge: all Lamas, all Buddhas, all Bodhisattvas, these three that arise from the primordial nature. The Lama represents for us the Dharma: all of the Dharma, every word that was ever uttered of Dharma teaching. The Lama represents for us as well the entire Sangha: every monk, every nun, every Lama that has ever taken robes, that has ever practiced the Dharma. The Lama represents as well all the meditational deities with all their qualities and all their particular incarnations and all of their activities. The Lama represents as well all of the dakinis and all of the Dharma protectors. So when we think of the Lama, we think that everything that arises from the fundamental Buddha nature, from the pure primordial nature, that which is our Buddha nature is represented by the Lama. Everything that the Lama represents arises from the Mind of Enlightenment.

Conversely, the Lama does not represent those things that are present in samsara. The Lama does not represent those things that increase our five poisons, that increase our delusions. The Lama, therefore, cannot cause suffering. The Lama cannot cause an increase in ignorance. In a natural way, the Lama is not capable of giving rise to more suffering and more delusion. If somehow within the relationship that we have with our Lama there is some suffering, then we have to look to ourselves as having impure perception, as having incorrect view, incomplete understanding and the tendency to project outward what is actually happening within our own minds. The reason why we know that the Lama cannot increase our suffering or increase our poisons, or harm us in any way, is that the Lama actually appears as a display arising from the very Mind of Enlightenment and within the Mind of Enlightenment there is no cause for suffering. There is actually no cause for suffering, so the seed is not there.

Extraordinary Relationship

September 1, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

If we rely purely on an emotional level, not much will come of the path. If we do not challenge ourselves to truly understand all of the thoughts that turn the mind (and you’ve been taught them many, many times. You can go back and re-listen to the teachings if you aren’t sure what they are), if we do not require of ourselves to really recognize this precious opportunity, we won’t get very far. And now the recognition has to go even deeper than that. Number one, understanding that the teacher is a spiritual ally, a spiritual friend—someone on whom you can depend as a spiritual guide or a spiritual friend—is a really important first realization. Secondarily, you must understand that this reality that you are looking at when you see your teacher, when you see the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, is to be considered separate from ordinary samsaric cause and effect conditions, or separate from the wheel of death and rebirth, because this is all the result of the Buddha’s teaching which arises from the mind of enlightenment and, like a seed, it must always create a fruit that is appropriate to that seed. So if this reality rises from the mind of enlightenment, it results in enlightenment as well. The seed and the fruit are always consistent.

That being the case, this is understood as something different. Now, if you wish you can, like that Tibetan man with His Holiness Penor Rinpoche regarding his opinion on my enthronement (this student did not agree with His Holiness Penor Rinpoche’s recognition of Jetsunma) waste the opportunity by just playing out your little intellectual ‘here’s my idea, what’s your idea. I’ll see you as something equal to my common ordinary intellectual mind in the world. You know, I’ll see you as that.’ Or you can play the game where “O.K., you’re the Guru, so I’m going to call you the real thing, but in my heart, in my mind, I’m pretty much just going to keep doing exactly what I’m doing, but I’ll have a teacher,” rather than gathering oneself together in order to understand something about this primordial wisdom nature, rather than trying to move further on the path of accomplishing pure view, rather than utilizing the teacher as a way to untangle some of our neuroses and actually seeing the condition of our mind and how different that is from what the Buddha described when the Buddha said simply, “I am awake.” The Buddha didn’t say, “I’m different from you.” The Buddha didn’t say “I am better than you.” The Buddha said “I am awake.” Awake to that nature that is also your nature.

Now supposing that you could use the relationship with the teacher to puzzle that out, to work that out. It’s such a fine line how to you give rise to or at least, shall I say not suppress, not give rise to, conflicting thoughts that you may have. How can you not suppress them and still utilize the teacher faithfully in the best possible way? Not as something common and ordinary that is equal to your own conceptual proliferation because then you could do that with anything. We do that with all of our relationships. We do that with all of the areas in life that we work with. We have preconceived ideas that we play out in our lives. Why would the teacher be different then? Why would it be precious? What’s the value then of having a teacher?

So it becomes the student’s responsibility to harness their mind. It isn’t about going brain dead. It isn’t about suppressing your ideas and your thoughts and your feelings. It’s about recognition between what is ordinary, habitual, definitely part of birth and death cyclic existence, that which arises from ordinary cyclic existence, and always therefore results in more ordinary cyclic existence, or that which arises from the precious primordial awakened state that is also your nature, and therefore always results in that precious primordial state that is also your nature—enlightenment. You are the one that must make the distinction.

So the Buddha recommends this: Take a long time determining your relationship with your teacher. If at first you have an emotional reaction, that’s fine. You don’t just suppress that either, but don’t stop there. It’s a big mistake just to stop there, because otherwise you just stay in some kind of wacko bliss thing. You could get that wacko over a cute little puppy or something, or a new car, or a new honey. You gets lots more wacko about a new honey, don’t you? Way more wacko about that! So your responsibility then becomes the responsibility of recognition. You have determined that this teacher has the necessary qualities to give you what you need. You can travel on the path now. You can understand very clearly. The teacher has a way of explaining to you and you can understand. You can hear it. You mind is opening. It is ripening. It’s deepening. Your compassion is increasing. Something is happening here and you are able to determine that this is not ordinary because this didn’t come from ordinary experience.

You’re travelling the path of Dharma and this is precious. This teacher has hooked you onto the path of Dharma, placed your feet there, deepened and ripened your mind, provided for you all of the necessary accoutrements. Therefore this is precious. You then must determine that this is different for you. You see, it’s not up to the teacher to provide proof for you. It’s not up to the teacher to convince you. It’s up to you to determine for yourself. Take your time, do it right, move through all the foundational teachings and decide for yourself: Is this precious to me? Then if it is, treat it like it is.

Responsibility Begins With Recognition

August 31, 2016 by anisonam

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

Responsibility begins with recognition. Simply that. Recognition. There are some fundamental truths that must be recognized here in order to stop the game of projecting your own neuroses onto yet another external object. Because that is not the practice of Dharma. That is not going to lead you to liberation. That will continue to lead you to more and more neuroses. So you must play the game correctly. The first thing that happens is recognition. It begins with the recognition of the fundamental foundational truth that we call turning the mind toward Dharma—the faults of cyclic existence, cause and effect relationships, impermanence, these kinds of thoughts, and then the realization that in all the six realms of cyclic existence there is suffering. Then the recognition that there is the appearance of the Buddha, which brings the element of enlightenment and supreme realization and the visage or face of our own primordial wisdom nature, and puts that into the world. That’s the Buddha, the Dharma, which is the Buddha’s method, inseparable from the Buddha like the rays are inseparable from the sun, and the result, which is enlightenment, also inseparable from the Buddha. You begin to recognize that this has in fact happened.

In the world there is the Buddha. There is the Dharma. There is the Sangha, and there is the Lama as the condensed essence of all three. That recognition alone puts you into position where you have to choose between continuing in samsara and neurotic redundancy which is what samsara really is. Isn’t that a great term? Neurotic redundancy. Don’t you just love that? Neurotic redundancy,.Or you can choose Buddha, and Dharma, and Sangha—this three-legged stool, or chariot we should say, by which we travel through the door of liberation into enlightenment, into realization, the precious awakened state that the Buddha named.

So we’re in a position now where we make that choice. That choice is based on this recognition. You can’t make that choice on an emotional level. Big mistake! And some people try to do that. They come to the temple and they say, “I like this stuff! It’s all weird. I like the colors. I like the shape. I like the material over there. Look how they built that up there. Isn’t that cute? Those books… You know, I like that they don’t turn this way. I like that they turn this way. It’s so exotic. I think it’s really cool, don’t you? And then all the statues and crystals! Look at this! This is really cool to be with the crystals!” Really I’m describing a silly mindstate, but many students, when they first begin, will come here and say, “Oh this stuff is so cool. I really want to do this. O.K., you’re my teacher.” So on that emotional level, really not much has happened. Or they might come in and have an emotional reaction. I’ve seen that happen too.

In fact, this is another story that you’ll be amazed at. This is an amazing story. A woman once walked into the bookstore. I happened to be there, checking out the earrings as usual! So I was in the bookstore and she turned around. She got immediately who I was. She had never been around Dharma before, knew nothing about Dharma, knew nothing about anything like that and she just was entranced. She was transfixed. She looked at me and then she did three perfect prostrations. Then when she got up she said “I don’t know what that is. I don’t know what I just did.” No idea what happened there, no idea. And then I never saw her again. And she was crying, crying, just like “My teacher. My teacher at last! My teacher!” Crying. Big emotional thing, and I never saw her again.

What happened there was unfortunate. I would call that an obstacle to her practice. She obviously had enough inner purity to remember a former relationship with her teacher. Something bled through and yet the obstacle was that she could only, in that moment of meeting, relate on a purely emotional level. She could not lay down the foundation. She could not make any connecting thought. Really, as beautiful as that story is, it broke my heart that she never came back. It really did. I love you all, but I have to tell you I have many stories about the ones that got away! You see, she could have been very close to me and it broke my heart that she didn’t come back. But what you’re seeing there is just purely an obstacle. She was only able to relate on this emotional level, and really, it’s not that much different from what you see your dog do when your dog barks to go out or sits there looking at the door. It is an immediate emotional hit that you’re just overwhelmed with. It’s not that different from what animals do. But animals can’t practice Dharma, because what’s needed here is to make these connecting thoughts, these cause and effect thoughts, by creating the kinds of awareness and thinking that causes you to move into a deeper level on the path, and causes you to get the lay of the land, to really get what’s going on here.

This is what’s necessary. She was not able to, at that time, to think of the faults of cyclic existence, to think of impermanence and that this opportunity might not come again. She was not able to think “Now that I’ve found my teacher, I have found a way to travel the path of Dharma and pass through the door of liberation.” Just not able to think like that. This is a big obstacle that arose in her path at the same time as the blessing of meeting with her teacher again. So this is the difficulty that we all have, but now we are here and we are in a learning and teaching situation. We’re in a situation where we have time to think. We have the leisure to think. We have the ability to put two and two together, and this is how we have to approach the path. This is how we have to do this.

Navigating the Path with Guru Yoga

August 29, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

Should it happen that we cannot meet with the Guru for some reason, or there is some difficult point in one’s path, some difficult moments, some difficult times, maybe even some difficult months or years, still, so long as the Guru remains in the world, we can turn our face towards the Guru and know. It’s like falling off a horse. You can always get back on. But the problem is—and there is a problem with that—if you waste your time with that precious jewel and don’t collect its interest, the jewel somehow becomes more distant, less potent, less present, less precious, less everything. And we think to ourselves, “Why is the Guru not in my life so much?” And we tend to think, “Oh, it’s because the Guru’s over here or the Guru’s over there, or the Guru is not speaking right now, or the Guru is this, or the Guru is that.” And you can think that way if you want to but it won’t help. We must think, “Now I’ve come to this place. I have chosen my Guru and I am steadfast. I have seen the door of liberation. Yet somehow things are a little mixed up here, I can’t quite get to it. I don’t feel focused. I don’t feel like I understand this blessing. I feel outsourced. I feel like I’m out to lunch somewhere on the Path here.” And so we think, “Oh, what is the problem?”

Well, the first thing we have to do is correct our view and think, This is the door to liberation. It is present in the world.” Period. End of story. “What must I do? What must I do?” Sometimes it takes traveling to see your Guru. Sometimes it takes sitting down and doing Guru Yoga like you never did it before. It can work out a myriad of ways according to one’s karma, according to one’s blessing. I’ve had it both ways. I’ve traveled to see my Guru and the blessing was immeasurable and phenomenal. And then I’ve stayed home and practiced Guru Yoga and with amazing signs. The blessing was amazing and fundamentally life changing. And one, I saw the Guru’s face; and one, I saw the Guru’s face.

That’s the nature of this blessing. It doesn’t depend on time and space. It doesn’t depend on ordinary things at all. And unless you neglect it, it cannot lose its potency. We must think, as pertaining to Guru Yoga, that everyday, even while now we sit in comfort and enjoy being together, that everyday, even this day, we should earn the blessing to see the Guru tomorrow. How will I see the Guru? Maybe I’ll see the Guru’s picture and it will jump out at me and touch my heart. Maybe I’ll see Guru Rinpoche’s picture and it will jump out at me and touch my heart. Or maybe I’ll say The Seven Line Prayer. And wow, that one really…, that one did it. Or maybe I will do my practice and it feels deep and rewarding like an underground stream that has come suddenly to the surface and has given us something precious to drink.

Guru Yoga can always be depended on to reestablish and continue the blessing. I promise you, if we call out to the Guru with a full heart, with determination and with fervent regard and recognition, the Guru will respond, whether it’s in the way that you would like which is “Hi I’m here for lunch.” Or whatever. It may not be that way. It may be something quite different. And sometimes it’s not something that feels good right away.

I’ve seen one of my favorite students work herself to death and forget to practice sometimes and then periodically she does things like break her back or, you know, injure herself in some way. And then she practices and amazing things happen. I wish she wouldn’t do it that way, but she does. You know who I’m talking about, out in Sedona. I have other students that kind of orchestrate separation and return in order for that feeling of return. But I wish they wouldn’t do that because that feeling of separation often comes with some cause and effect relationship. Again if it were my diamond, I’d be shining it up all the time. I’d be collecting that interest all the time.

We use Guru Yoga that way to create the causes for continuation on the Path. The teacher should never be frightening. The teacher is your friend. Your friend who will take your hand and walk you, lifetime after lifetime, even when you stumble and you fall. Something will arise through the devotion that you practice in this lifetime, to protect you even in your next life. So eventually we come to the place where we see everything as the blessing of the Guru. Everything. Sometimes we feel some confusion, and maybe even feel confusion for a long time; but you know that that Guru would not let you down. You know that. And so you count on that, even the confusion, to be a blessing. Eventually because of that devotion, the confusion will clear and the Guru will appear, again like an underground spring coming once again to the surface.

Working with Anger and Ingratitude: Commentary by His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

August 19, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is respectfully quoted from “Enlightened Courage” a commentary by His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche:

No evil is similar to anger,
No austerity to be compared to patience.

Never give way to anger, therefore. Be patient–and, moreover, be grateful to someone who humiliates you, as they give you a precious opportunity to strengthen your understanding and practice of bodhicitta. The great Jigme Lingpa said:

Ill treatment by opponents
Is a catalyst for meditation;
Insulting reproaches you don’t deserve
Spur your practice onward;
Those who do you harm are teachers
Challenging your attachment and aversion–
How could you ever repay their kindness?

Indeed, you are unlikely to make much spiritual progress if you lack the courage to face you own hidden faults. Any person or situation that helps you to see those faults, however uncomfortable and humiliating it may be, is doing you a great service. As Lord Atisha says,

The best spiritual friend is one who attacks your hidden faults.
The best instructions are the ones that hit your hidden faults.
The best incentives are enemies, obstacles, and sufferings of illness.

and the Kadampa master Shawopa used to warn his disciples as they came to see him, saying, “I only show people their hidden defects. If you can avoid getting annoyed, stay; but if not, go away!”

Of the eight ordinary concerns, therefore, even from the relative point of view there are many ways of eliminating the distinction between the good an bad, those you want to happen and those you do not. From the point of view of absolute truth, there is not the slightest difference between gain and loss, pleasure and pain, fame and disgrace, praise and disparagement. They are all equal, all empty by nature. As Shantideva says:

Thus, with things devoid of true existence,
What is there to gain, and what to lose?
Who is there to pay me court and honors,
And who is there to scorn and revile me?

Pain and pleasure–whence do they arise?
And what is there to give me joy and sorrow?

b. Using on the path the two things that are difficult to bear.
The two things that are difficult to bear are (i) being wronged in return for kindness and (ii) humiliation.

i. How to use on the path being wronged in return for kindness

Even if one I’ve lovingly cared for like my own child
Regards me as an enemy,
To love him even more,
As a mother loves a sick child, is the practice of a bodhisattva.

If you do something good for others, it is a mistake to expect anything in return, or to hope that people will admire you for being a bodhisattva. All such attitudes are a long way from the true motivation of bodhicitta. Not only should you expect nothing in return; you should not be disturbed in the slightest when people respond ungratefully. Someone for whom you have risked your very life may return your kindness with resentment, hatred, or harm. But just love him all the more. A mother with an only child is full of love for him no matter what he does. While she is suckling him, he may bite her nipple and badly wound it, but she will never get angry or love him any less. Whatever happens, she will continue to care for him as best she can.

Many people do not have the good fortune that you enjoy of having met a spiritual teacher, and thus cannot find their way out of delusion. They need your help and your compassion more than anyone else, no matter how badly they may behave. Always remember that people who harm you are simply the victims of their own emotions. Think how good it would be if they could be free of those emotions. When a thoughtless child wrongs a thoughtful adult, the adult will not feel resentment, but will try with great love to help the child improve.

To meet someone who really hurts you is to meet a rare and precious treasure. Hold that person in high esteem, and make full use of the opportunity to eradicate your defects and make progress on the path. If you cannot yet feel love and compassion for those who treat you badly, it is a sign that your mind has not been fully transformed and that you need to keep working on it with increased application.

A true bodhisattva never hopes for a reward. He responds to the needs of others spontaneously, out of his natural compassion. Cause and effect are unfailing, so his actions to benefit others are sure to bear fruit–but he never counts on it. He certainly never thinks that people are not showing enough gratitude, or that they ought to treat him better. But if someone who has done him harm later changes his behavior, is set on the path, and achieves liberation, that is something that will make a bodhisattva rejoice wholeheartedly and be totally satisfied.

The Point: Pith Teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

July 22, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

“Calling the Tsewei Lama from afar” does not mean asking for gifts and wishes fulfilled. It’s about devotion and faith. I mostly get requests for favors. Of course I will try to fulfill anyone’s wish. But Buddhists should also practice and learn so they can help themselves. That’s the point, as there may not always be a Lama to call on.

Short Visualization Instruction by His Holiness Penor Rinpoche

July 19, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is a short section of heart advice from His Holiness Penor Rinpoche at New York Retreat in Upstate New York:

At night before you go to sleep, visualize that Guru Padmasambhava, non-dual with the root teacher, melts into your central channel, and abides in your heart. Then from the Guru’s body light radiates and your whole body is filled with light. Have devotion, faith and confidence. Concentrate one’s mind on that. And then go to sleep. And in that way, you can carry on this practice.