Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

Listen to Your Life

December 28, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

One of the great difficulties we have as practitioners and people involved in a materialistic culture is that we have very little understanding of the longing we feel for the Guru. In a culture that has a spiritual foundation, in a culture that recognizes the role of the Guru, that recognizes the role of the Teacher 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.

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

And so, because it is so crushing, because it is such a lonely thing, often, the very people that longed the most are the ones that diverted that longing into, perhaps, promiscuity, or perhaps becoming almost fanatical about this thought or that thought or this idea or that idea. They could have diverted that longing into drugs or alcohol. They could have diverted that longing into making themselves into a way that they are not, such as a superficial way or a hard way or a tough way or a dull way or a dead way. They might have pretended that they had no feelings in order to deal with the ones that they did have.

Now, it’s true that lots of people have these same feelings and lots of people have 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. You should listen to 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. It was there and it was with you always.

Light of Recognition

December 26, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

What would it be like for you if Guru Rinpoche himself, appearing in a way that you could understand, were to actually walk through every day with you? In your mind, in your heart, seeing what’s in there? Walk through all your efforts, and watch you when you turn away and say, AO.K. that’s enough of that. I’m going to go and do what I want to do. Enough of that high thinking. Let me feel the way that I naturally feel, the hell with all of you. You know, that kind of thing?

If we actually had the eyes of the Guru, if they could be felt watching us, you know what you would feel like if you had seen that happen. If you had felt that even for one day. There would never be an end to your grief. There would never be an end to the sorrow that you would feel knowing that in the face of the Guru you had made such a stinking offering.

We remain content with our self-cherishing, content with our pride, content with our ego and our hatred and our bigotry and our bad qualities. We remain content with these while the eyes of the Guru watch. Because there is no moment that you exist, that you can have a thought, that you are alive in samsara that the eyes of the Guru are not watching. And I don’t mean this like you should think of yourself as a little kid thinking, “Oh no, Mommy’s watching.” It’s not like that. The Guru doesn’t get mad at you. It isn’t an approval thing. It isn’t like your mother or your father. It’s that these eyes are like a radiant connection through which we can see directly the primordial nature, which is free of any kind of contrivance and separation and ugliness and superficiality and any of the possibilities that make it likely that we are going to practice any kind of non-virtue. This nature is so pure that it’s like having the eyes of supreme, unnamable, unspeakable sweetness looking at us always, looking at us with love and compassion. And we are taking shit and throwing it against the wall and wiping it all over ourselves: scratching and burping and farting and hitting and killing and carrying on. And yet, these eyes that hold us up, watch us always, even while we, like apes in a zoo, fling shit on them.

And yet, we wonder why it is that we cannot awaken to the Buddha nature. “When is ‘it’ going to happen? When is ‘it’ going to come from ‘out there?’ How old am I going to be when ‘it’ happens to me?” — as though it were going to be visited upon you like something air-dropped; as though it were going to come to you from another city, or another state or another world. And all the time, we are turning away from those eyes, those loving, perfect pure eyes, that are actually like guiding beams of light, if you can imagine such a thing.

When we turn our face away from the Guru, we are only creating more suffering. There is no other result that can come from that, no matter what it looks like. You might say that there are extenuating circumstances. All right, name them! I’d like to see an extenuating circumstance that’s going to change what I’ve just said, because it doesn’t exist. You might say, “Well, I did my practice from this time to this time and I really tried very hard with my Guru Yoga. I worked very hard at that and I kept it mindful as much as I could and then, well, you know, you have other things to do. You have to go work, and you have to go do this, and you have to go do that.” This is the kind of thinking that we have. Basically, what we have done is, while we were in the state of devotional practice, while we were aware of being in the presence of the Guru, while we were practicing that kind of view, we have only created causes of future bliss and happiness. The moment we turned away, that act of saying, “Okay, that’s that. Now on to this” — the moment we said that, we have practiced that non-virtue which has caused us unthinkable suffering in this and every life that we have experienced up until this point. The moment we turn away from the face of the Guru and find “something else”: in that moment we have turned away from the primordial nature that is our nature, and found suffering. The moment that we go on to the next thing, is the moment that we go on to our suffering. The moment that we move away from our practice into another state, at that moment we have moved away from what causes bliss and moved into what will only bring about more suffering. This is true even if our activity is just as pure and clean as apple pie. Let’s say we ended our practice to go feed the baby. You can’t argue with that. You got to feed babies, right? Of course, you’ve got to go feed the baby, but the problem is that you had to turn away from the Guru in order to do it.

Now you haven’t actually figured all of this out yet, but now it’s time to practice so deeply that you understand that it is possible not to turn away ever. It is possible to be in that space, to be with that face and of that face, to be inseparable, to be constantly in union with that which is union itself, to be inseparable with the Guru. This is the goal!

Why wouldn’t it be the goal? Is it samsara that you wish to be inseparable from? Is it suffering? Is it non-virtue? Do you like to turn away? Maybe you like the result, the suffering that comes after! Of course, now that I say it this way, it seems ridiculous! Of course, you don’t want that! Yet, in our practice, in our lives, what do we do? We offer the five cups of poison. This is our standard offering, every day. And then we read the text and the text says if we could just offer one butter lamp, we would remain in unmovable samadhi. And we wonder, “I’ve offered lots of butter lamps! What is the hold up? What’s the problem?” I’ll tell you what the problem is. It’s those five other cups that you offer so much more of than that butter lamp.

Maybe the butter lamp needs to be understood as a symbol, not only as a literal butter lamp on an altar, but like a light in the window, a constant reminder. When you know that a loved one is nearby and you’re trying to create the connection whereby the loved one would be guided home. In this case, we’re trying to create the connection. You would keep a lamp in the window, wouldn’t you? Keep a light on? Maybe that’s what we need to do. Maybe the butter lamp we need to offer, the one that brings us to immovable samadhi is the light that never extinguishes: the light of recognition.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Mindfulness: Letting Go of Reaction

December 22, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Stabilizing the Mind”

If you can get to a place of natural awareness, you can remain mindful in a way that isn’t really describable in words. You can begin to sense a little bit of space between the calm, natural awareness and the reaction that you have quite automatically, instantaneously. It’s really necessary to develop the skill of sensing that little bit of space, because your tendency is to run off and react to every thought that you have. Just look at what you’re doing in your mind right now. What are your thoughts? You’re reacting. Everything is a reaction, and you’re floating on it. You’re up and down with it all the time.

If you can just begin to sense a little bit of space between that natural awareness and the reaction, you can begin to have the skill to not be so at the mercy of the conceptual proliferations of your mind. That little bit of space is exactly what you need to begin to disengage the ego, to begin to disengage desire. You need space in your mind to meditate even on the problems that desire brings up for you. You have to have some space in your mind to meditate on true nature. You have to have some space in your mind to meditate on emptiness. That kind of space can be developed all the time. If you practice in that way constantly, or at least as often as you are able, to remain mindful, and increase that mindfulness and increase that kind of practice, you’ll find yourself doing it more and more naturally.

But don’t try to keep yourself locked up. That’ll make you crazy. That is not a solution. You make yourself crazy when you say, “I’m not going to be happy now. I’m not going to be unhappy now. I’m not going to follow my mind around the block. I’m not going to do that.” Really, that is not a good solution. If you practice the spaciousness in your mind in the gentle way I have just described, you’ll begin to be able to be more mindful and more aware of the validity of the Buddha’s teaching.

Spaciousness: The Foundation of Practice

December 21, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Stabilizing the Mind”

If you are romantically involved with Dharma, then you have developed no space in your mind and you will be constantly up and down, skating on your own dramatics with no stability in the mind. And you are completely at the mercy of suffering. Where there is no space, there is nowhere to go. There’s no quiet place where you can rest. You are either going to be suffering or feeling exhilarated — an intensity of a different kind. Ultimately it’s all suffering. You’re going to be into the intensity with no spaciousness in your mind. You’ll be stuck there with nowhere to go. You just ride on your emotions. If you have not developed spaciousness in your mind, you are the victim of the highs and lows and the mind’s conceptual proliferations. For example, you’re completely at the mercy of pain. Have you ever had really intense pain? It can make you lose all awareness. It’s unbelievable. You just lose consciousness, and it’s because there’s no space in your mind. Pain is a concept; it’s something in your mind.

You are completely at the mercy of emotionalism of all kind, and you know that of yourself. You follow your emotions constantly. They’ve been high, and they’ve been low. They’ve been big, and they’ve been small. They’ve been in, and they’ve been out. Have your emotions ever made you happy for a long time? Have your emotions ever been dependable companions? They never have if you really think about it.

So if you develop spaciousness, you have at least a fighting chance, if you will excuse the phrase, to begin to practice in such a way that your mind has some potential for liberation. In other words, there’s a little spaciousness in which you can practice. It’s very, very important for you to try to do that. If you develop a little bit of space, you can start building up these bricks of the Buddha’s teaching. You can evaluate the teachings for yourself. From that calm place, from that place behind all of the concepts, you can see that following the mind leads to no happiness. You can see that desire is the cause of suffering. You can sense the potential for enlightenment or at least for disengaging from that phenomenon that you are so involved in. You can sense that there is something behind all of your concepts that’s very profound. You can begin to build the solid blocks that are necessary in order to follow the Buddha’s path until you achieve supreme enlightenment.

How to Practice Mindfulness During All Activities

December 20, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Stabilizing the Mind”

While you’re practicing you have to find a way to stabilize your mind. I cannot emphasize mindfulness enough. It is what will result in a stabilized mind. One of the best things that you can do, no matter what experience you’re having – whether you’re getting excited about something new that you bought, some new project that you’re doing, some new idea that you’ve been presented with, some new relationship that you have, or depressed about the loss of any of these things, whether you’re having a high or low experience – ask yourself in the midst of that circumstance, “Who is the taster here?”

When His Holiness Penor Rinpoche was giving the Rinchen Terzod, he gave us lemon juice and then honey, and he asked, “Who is the taster? Who says one is sweet and one is bitter? What is the meaning of this taste? How does taste come about?” It is important to remember that taste is a perceptual thing.

You should practice this type of mindfulness when you’re feeling intense emotion of any kind – whether great joy, great sorrow, great pain, great physical pleasure, even during sexual activity, during any of those intense experiences that run the gamut of human emotion. Center into a natural awareness. A good way to do that would be, for instance, to just watch your breath with gentle attention. It’s not forceful; don’t go, “OK, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in…” It isn’t like that. It’s a gentle, nonintrusive, passive attention on the breath, a light awareness. Just lightly watch the breath for a few moments, and let that be what you’re doing right then. Then observe, while you’re breathing, “Who is the watcher?” Observe the natural awareness that occurs when you just gently watch your breath. Try to sense that natural awareness.

If you really ask yourself the question, “Who is watching the breath?” then your mind is going to come right back at you and say, “I am.” Then you have to play the game with your mind that goes, “Who is I?” And you get sort of tense about that. So you don’t want to really ask yourself who is the watcher. There will be a sense of peeling away layers until you get to a place of pure awareness.

What you want to do is to gently sense the watcher without forming any conceptualization about it. Just sense and go behind the concept. If you gently observe what you are doing, you have a concept about the watcher. Go behind that concept and sense behind that. And if you develop another concept about the watcher, go behind that, gently, gently, gently. You can practice this technique quite naturally while you’re typing or doing anything.

It’s also good to use this technique in meditation, but there are more formal techniques that you can use at that time. This is a good, ordinary technique that you can use while you’re doing anything – while you’re listening to music, while you’re thinking, “I’m having a good practice” or “I’m having a bad practice” or whatever it is that you’re reacting to. Take yourself out of the realm of reaction and watch the breath. Just concentrate on your breathing for some time with light attention and go behind the concepts one after another until you have somehow gotten gently behind or underneath all of the concepts that you have about who the watcher is, until you get to a place of natural awareness where there isn’t so much the question of who the watcher is.

Caught in a Dream

December 19, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Stabilizing the Mind”

In order to practice the Buddha’s teaching with any meaning, you first have to understand that all sentient beings are suffering. Now I have to ask you: Have you really seen that with your own heart, with your own eyes, with your own mind? Have you seen that all sentient beings are suffering?

If you have seen that you are suffering, then let me describe a funny little thing that you still do that cannot coexist with that knowledge. You have circumstances throughout the day (and throughout the month, the year, your life) that either please you or displease you, that either make you happy or make you unhappy.

You may think, “Oh, I’m really down today.” Then you talk to someone, and someone has an upbeat thing to say to you. It’s meaningful, it’s good, and it pleases you. So what happens to you? You go up, right? There’s a nice sense of warm fuzzies, and you go up.

Or let’s say you are a renunciate, a monk or nun, and when you wake up in the morning, it’s a ho-hum day. You’re in a flat-line zone, a kind of grey zone. And let’s say you manage to get in all of the practices that you want to do in the morning, and you manage to have a pretty good experience with them. You feel buoyant in your practice. You feel stable in your practice. You’re able to hold your visualization. Somehow that magical thing that happens every now and then happens. You had a good practice. Then you have your breakfast, eating your cereal by the window like a guy in a commercial, and you say, “Morning is my time!” But later on the dog urinates on your one robe, you are too busy to eat any lunch or any dinner, and you have a bad practice. That’s the worst thing – you have a bad practice – and things are no longer going so well.

These things happen to all of you, and yet, although you say you know that there is suffering from the depth of your heart, you have looked to satisfy the end of suffering in a way that is different from what the Buddha taught. We let our minds float on an ocean of waves like a buoy, up and down. What is “up”? What is “down”? And who is feeling it? Who says morning is your time? Who says evening is not? Who says life is good when you go out to a restaurant and have a glass of wine? These are concepts that are part of your mind, and your consciousness floats on them. For some of you, there is not a moment of spaciousness in your mind where your consciousness is not floating on some circumstance you contrived all by yourself. Why does that happen?

You say that all sentient beings are suffering and that the end to suffering is enlightenment, yet you allow your mind to be satisfied going up and down according to circumstances. All of the beings that you say are suffering are doing the same thing. Has anyone achieved happiness by allowing the mind to float on that ocean of concept that we call samsara, affected by circumstances, lifted up by what we call high circumstances, put down by what we call low circumstances?

No one. Never. The Buddha tells us that samsara is not happiness, that the contrivances of the mind are not happiness, that sentient beings are suffering, and that the only end to suffering is enlightenment. Yet we allow ourselves to slide up and down every day. We get excited about some project, we get enthusiastic, but it always comes to a dead stop. It always ends. It has never, never, never, never, never continued until it gave you supreme happiness.

So here’s the point I am trying to make. First brick: All sentient beings are suffering. Now, we’ll put the next one on top of it: There is an end to suffering, and it is enlightenment. Just two bricks, and already we find that we are not secure behind those two bricks, that we don’t believe. Yes, you say that you believe that all sentient beings are suffering. Yes, you say that you believe enlightenment is the end of suffering. Can you tell me how that can coexist with the tendency to let your mind drift, relying on circumstances to make it happy, being the victim of circumstances that make it unhappy? How do we allow that?

We forget. We’re caught in a dream, and we lose faith. So how are you going to practice this Vajrayana, the Diamond Vehicle, the Tantric teachings of Buddhism, passed from teacher to disciple, that can lead to the attainment of enlightenment in one lifetime, a path with sincerity and stability for the rest of your life until some potential comes for you to achieve supreme enlightenment? Do you believe that that can happen?

Why Practice Dharma?

December 18, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Stabilizing the Mind”

Do you really understand why you are practicing Buddhism?

Ultimately, when you come to understand what the Buddha and all the great lamas have taught, you will come to understand that it basically boils down to the fact that all sentient beings are suffering, that desire is the cause of suffering, that there is an end to suffering, and that end is enlightenment. There are different ways that you can attain enlightenment, but they all have to do with ending attachment and desire in the mindstream. They have to do with realizing that one’s nature is not the same as the conceptual proliferations that we live with, the desire that we live with, and the ego that we perceive as ourselves. I really think that once you understand enough so that you can look at your life – with all its emotional highs and lows – and realize that it is impermanent, that you’re just riding on your own concepts and that by doing that you can’t make your mind stable enough to break free of the compulsion to revolve in cyclic existence for eons and eons that awareness becomes the taskmaster. That realization becomes the teacher.

If you don’t realize that circumstances are impermanent, if you’re practicing because you have some crazy idea that you’re going to be a great being some day or that you’re going to triumph in the end, and that it’s all about self and self-cherishing, if you have some romantic notion about ordination or about practicing at all, you won’t be stable in your practice. Understanding the teachings about impermanence is the stabilizer, the real teacher. Understanding from the depth of your heart that desire really is the cause of suffering is the taskmaster. Looking at your mind in some stable way so that you can understand that the mind just floats helplessly, constantly, on its own concepts, whichever way the concepts go, up or down, and that these concepts are the cause for suffering and that there’s no lasting happiness in them, gives you a firm foundation. It is then that you understand why you practice, and although the circumstances of your life may change, you will never turn away from practice. You may go to work or you may stay home; you may have children or you may not; you may take robes or you may not. Whatever the circumstances are of your life, as long as you know these things, you will remain firm. Your infatuation with the culture, with the music, with the color, with the ritual of Tibetan Buddhism will never be enough. You have to understand the heart of the Buddha’s teaching. You have to understand the value of compassion. You have to understand how important it is to end suffering and what the means are to end suffering in order to stay with the Dharma, in order to be stable and safe in the Dharma.

You Can Make It

December 6, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Bodhicitta by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo given after her return from India and Nepal in 1996

In Nepal, right next to one of Guru Rinpoche’s caves where he practiced chemchok, lives a wonderful Dakini. She is the consort of Lama Tulku Orgyen. And she’s been there for years and years, practicing and practicing. We had the pleasure of meeting her. Whenever you go there, you can hear her ringing those bells and practicing. She never stops. She’s so beautiful. She’s actually kind of old, but when you look at her, her face is completely unlined, she’s got beautiful black hair and really deep eyes. She’s just gorgeous. We went in there and gave her a scarf and tried to do prostrations, but she wouldn’t let us. Sangye Khandro came with us to translate, since the Dakini doesn’t speak any English, of course. And she just practices all the time. She sat us down and we talked for a little while.

I told her that we have a Sangha here and that a large percentage is women. And I said, “Would you give some advice to women practitioners in the West?” She said first of all that there’s no difference between women and men practitioners. There is no difference. Women tend to think that they are held back by certain issues – family issues, lover issues, blah, blah issues, stupid issues. There is no difference between women and men. In fact, she said, women actually have a deeper sense of primordial wisdom. They are closer to that Dakini archetype. They have a deeper sense of that. They’re more internal in some way. She said women have an excellent chance to be practitioners. And she said, “I would give this advice to both men and women equally. You have to be courageous. You have to never stop. You have to decide that you are going to achieve the rainbow body and you will do whatever it takes because you really want to incarnate in such a way that you can help this world or any world that you land on. You have to have courage. You have to never let any circumstance stop you. You have to practice as though it’s the most important thing in your life. You have to remember that this is the only important thing there is.” And she said, “Practice constantly with great faith and great courage. Then you need to be sure that you are with a teacher that you have absolute faith in. And you need to be with a lama who can give you initiation that can ripen your mind. With all those factors, especially great courage, you can make it, even in this degenerate time.” She said, “You can make it.”

It was one of the most moving speeches I ever heard. But she kept saying, “Have courage; don’t stop. Break through whatever stops you. Have courage.” And my feeling when I watched her is that it must have taken tremendous courage for her to completely renounce the world that she lived in. She is right up there in that little building right next to the cave. It’s one room. She’s got thangkas and rugs, it’s kind of nice, but there is no place to go to the bathroom. You have to wash out of a bucket. She has renounced the world and all the stupid trappings that go with it. She’s going to make it. When that Dakini dies, you are going to see signs and they’ll find her again when she reincarnates.

What Drives You to Practice?

December 5, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Bodhicitta by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Some of you show up for practice because you think your teacher will get mad at you if you don’t. So you make yourself visible. Some of you show up for practice because you’ve got to get it in today. When do you do practice because you are sick of delusion? When do you do it because you are sick of death? When do you do it because you are sick of watching sentient beings suffer and yet are helpless to help them? When do you say those prayers so deeply that your heart and your mind are purified of delusion and of hatred, greed and ignorance, so that your heart and mind are so deepened that you will absolutely incarnate in such a way to benefit beings?

The single most abundant deepening quality that you all have is your great love and desire to help others. If that’s the ticket with you, ask yourself if you really want to help others or if you want to look like you are helping others? Sometimes I think people want to look like they are helping others so they can be a nice person. As soon as you’re finished with that and you decide that you really help others because you really can’t bear to see their suffering and are finished with watching people suffer, then use that.

Why do you just practice by the book? Why don’t you walk around the temple and make prayers constantly, visualizing the refuge tree; walk about the living quarters of your Lama and the temple itself and the Sangha that’s in it saying, “In this way, let me follow you forever. In this way, let me always revolve around the Three Precious Jewels. In this way, let me be born under whatever circumstances to help sentient beings,” making these profound and sincere prayers. Maybe you can break through into depth.

Those With Hopes of Us

December 4, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Antidoting the Mantra of Samsara”

The Buddha teaches us that there are literally so many sentient beings that, not all the great Bodhisattvas and lamas have connections with all of them. That’s how many sentient beings there are. We don’t have connections with all of them. That means that there are sentient beings with whom you have connections, sentient beings that you have been involved with in one form or another since time out of mind, and their only connection to future practice, to being liberated from samsara, to practicing Dharma, is you. Literally there are sentient beings right now who are waiting for you to achieve liberation. The more you dance around with this, the more they suffer and the longer they wait.

From the moment that you begin to practice Dharma, these are the ones that you should live and breathe for—these precious ones who have hopes of you. You should think of them as your children, as your purpose, as your parents, as your beloved because without you, they have not much hope. That’s why we practice Dharma. That’s why we work hard at it— to alleviate suffering for self and others. And we consider that to be completely nondual and equally importantSofor this reason it’s time to face the music, go deeper, and that hated word, commit. That’s what it takes.