Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

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.

Offering Oneself

October 19, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from the Mindfulness workshop given by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo in 1999

In our Ngöndro practice we find the practice of offering oneself, the practice of generosity. It’s called the practice of Chöd. Chöd can very easily be practiced constantly. The practice of Chöd is based on eliminating ego-clinging through transforming oneself into that which is beneficial to all sentient beings and offering oneself. In Chöd there is actually a visualization where you see all your different elements separated into piles: skin and bones and muscles and fat and eyeballs and stuff like that. All of that stuff is put into little piles and you cook it all up and you offer it up to the Buddhas. And you’re thinking, “That’s kind of an interesting little practice there, isn’t it? Whoa, dude!” But just remember that this is meant to antidote our ego-clinging because as we walk through our lives, we are all about ‘what can you do for me, and what do I want?’ Remember, as we’re walking through our lives as ordinary sentient beings, our mantra is “Gimme gimme gimme, I want I want I want I want.” So this kind of practice is meant to antidote that.

The very habit that we have of assuming self-nature to be inherently real and reacting with hope/fear, want/not-want to our environment and the things in it constantly perpetuates itself! So, we are taught instead that, wanting to make oneself useful in some way, wanting to be of benefit and awakening compassion, one way to practice that is by offering the self, offering self-nature, and transforming it into something that is useful to sentient beings.

So how can we do that as we’re walking around? Try to remember that we’re practicing Recognition. Here’s a great way to think about it. Have you heard about the guy who recently had a cadaver’s hand sewn onto his arm, and it’s working? Now those of you that have heard about that, what did you think about that? You probably said, “Ugh!” I mean, it sounds amazing in one way, doesn’t it, that somebody who didn’t have a hand now has a hand, but it’s not his hand. So when we think about it, that’s kind of gnarly, right? Just think about it: you know what your hand looks like. You’ve seen it your whole life. It changes, but it’s your beloved hand. It’s so recognizable. It has a certain shape, and it feels a certain way. Well, now suppose you had an unmatched set, and one of them was not your hand. Think how you’d feel. This kind of clinging is so automatic that until we hear something like that, we don’t even know we do it. It is the very basis for our recognizing one another and ourselves as selves.

We grow attached to the shape of our face, the shape of our head. Even if we don’t like the shape of our face and the shape of our head, we grow attached to it because it is us, (we think), and so it constantly perpetuates that idea of self-nature being inherently real. It constantly perpetuates that ego-clinging. Our bodies are, for us, something that we have to protect. Even if you think that you’re very brave and not afraid of being hurt, or not afraid of even losing your life, I say to you, baloney! I’ll start chopping, and you tell me when to stop. We protect our bodies. If anything scary comes around us, we react, “Aaaggh!” And if we can’t protect ourselves any other way, we protect our head because that’s the part that keeps us going — we think. So we have this automatic clinging. Any sense of recognition of oneself as self is a clinging kind of phenomenon.

To antidote that, we practice Chöd, separating all the parts. When you’re done separating all the parts, you can ask yourself, “Well, what part am I? The skin or the bones or the fat or the muscle or the brains or the tongue or the eyeballs? Which part am I?” Of course, we begin to learn that that question is not answerable because ‘I,’ or self-nature, is simply a concept. It’s simply a concept.

How can we practice this as we walk around through our lives? Well, one way to do that is to develop the habit of when it is you notice yourself…do you notice yourself? You notice yourself constantly! It’s all you notice. We notice our hands; we notice the position that we’re in; we constantly move to be in a different position, don’t we? We think, “Do I want my hand like this or like that?” We are constantly doing that. It’s a constant phenomenon.

Suppose we were to develop the habit of considering the hand. “Well, this one matches that one. I like that.” But what if we were to consider our hands in a different way? Instead of thinking, “This hand is mine and it looks like this,” think, “How can this hand be of benefit to sentient beings? What use is this hand?” Consider it. You can develop a sense of Recognition of the true nature of our body parts. You can think to yourself, “Do you know what I like best about me? I really like my eyes.” I like your eyes too, but I like my eyes, and so when I think about that, I think, “Oh, you know, wherever I go, I have these eyes, and they can see. That’s really cool. And other people can see me.” And I can work those eyes, can’t I? And that’s really something. All we know is that our sight, our eyes, are part of us: that is us. We cling to that. Suppose we were able to understand our eyes in a different way. Supposing when we think of our eyes and how wonderful the capacity to see is, or how amazing it is that we can express ourselves with our eyes, we can offer that entire scenario, that entire experience, to the Buddhas and bodhisattvas for the benefit of sentient beings. Your relationship to your own body parts, your own eyes, for instance, your own hand, becomes different. Rather than thinking, “These are my brown eyes and I have great brown eyes,” or “This is my right hand and it’s a great hand” — rather than thinking like that as an extension of our ego, we can develop the habit of offering the whole phenomenon of sight, the whole relationship to our different body parts, by evaluating how it is that these eyes can benefit sentient beings, and how it is that we can offer them.

The Longing to Awaken

October 18, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

You were born with the longing to awaken. You were born with a longing to know your own nature, to taste that nature. You were born with a longing and a homing instinct to find your Teacher. You were born with a longing to find a pure path and there were no words for that when you grew up.

You compensated by substituting other things as the object of your longing. You made lots of mistakes because of it. That’s not the point, though. There is nothing you can do in one lifetime that is as meaningful a miscalculation as reaching for that nature and trying to find it in something small. That is the biggest miscalculation that any of us can make and we do it constantly. That’s what keeps us revolving endlessly in cyclic existence.

The relationship with the Teacher is especially difficult for Westerners. We have lots of training on authority figures. We have lots of training on mothers and fathers. But we have no training on to how to deal with this longing. The ways we have dealt with it have brought us a great deal of pain and suffering because we have acted in ways that we do not understand. We are people who have had a particular karma that did not quite fit in with the karma of the society in which we were brought up. If that were not so, then more of the society in which we were brought up would be able to approach the idea of awakening, and the idea of having a Teacher in order to follow a supreme path to achieve that great awakening.

If we can reprogram ourselves by looking back at that original longing, understanding its depth, understanding the ways in which we compensated and forgiving ourselves and confessing the lack of recognition, we will then be able to establish a relationship with the Teacher, the path, the Buddha and the meditational deities that we practice. If we can establish that relationship anew, the quality of the path that we practice will be completely different. The quality of the experience that we have will be completely different. We will feel healed, and the need for that healing is very sharp and very strong.

Longing for the Guru

October 17, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

Merit & the Karma of Happiness

October 16, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

You are able to practice because you had the karma to receive teachings. Merit has come to the surface of your mind; good karma is ripening. But linked with some of this ripening merit are some bubbles of not-so-good karma. So what happens? You sit down with the intention to practice, but now you’re just too tired. You start to fall asleep. Or you decide that you need to do some other things. You externalize what you think are the causes for your inability to practice. Maybe you even begin to doubt that you’re happy in the Dharma. You wish you were surfing in California, and this thought is like a little rat, gnawing in your head. It gnaws at you slowly and steadily.

You need to understand that good karma is ripening, but some negative karma is linked to it. Embedded in your mindstream is some non-virtuous activity associated with the intention to practice. Now you have repeated that pattern, in seed form, and it will ripen in the future. Sometime in the future, you will again sit down with the intention to practice, and you won’t be able to do it. So the sensible thing to do is to persevere, to push through as well as you can. Understand that your tiredness, sleepiness, and other excuses have no basis. They are puffballs.

When you find yourself making excuses why you are unable to practice, why you don’t really want to hear the teachings, the best thing to do is to break through by accumulating merit. By doing virtuous things. Study Dharma. Pray. Practice kindness and generosity. Meditate. Contemplate the teachings. Try to understand them more deeply. Be attentive. Make offerings. Repeat the Seven Line Prayer many times. Repeated with faith, it is an antidote that can end all your suffering. It can, the teaching says, lead to enlightenment. All these things are ways to accumulate merit. You must understand how merit (and lack of it) works, or you will have a difficult time maintaining potency on the Path. It will even be difficult, on an ordinary level, to have a good life. For you won’t have any way to understand what is happening to you. You will always blame external things, other people. It is true that when you encounter misfortune, other people are usually involved, and you may well have some mixed karma with those people. But the karma arises within your own mindstream; it isn’t somewhere outside.

Pull out of your addiction to reaction. Think of your mind as something like a mechanism, and you yourself as a mechanic. Understand that you can work with its levers, pulleys, and gears. To most people, their own minds are a mystery, a complete mystery. And they search for someone who can understand them.

What should you do? Persevere in your practice. What else? Create more merit. The big mystery of “me” is solved. Almost reluctantly, too, because it’s so lovely to remain a mystery. It’s so pleasant to think that there is something mysterious, special, and unique about us. How often we try to obtain something that seems just out of reach. Or we have it in our hands, and it slips away. What is going on here? Lack of merit, of course. And yet we keep on reaching and grabbing and forcing, all in vain. Sometimes we think we have made something happen by forcing it. And yet, we have merely rearranged our karma. The basic problem remains unsolved. Suppose you want a new car, but the cost is just out of reach. Both merit and lack are coming to the surface. Even if you contrive to get the car, you will still have, ripening, some non-virtue associated with lack. That lack will always show up somewhere—with the car itself, or in your relationships, your health, or in missed opportunities. So the key, whenever you lack something, is to accumulate merit.

Some people are unaware that it takes merit to be happy. Have you ever noticed that some people just seem to be happy, no matter what? And others … well, happiness seems to elude them. And it’s because there is no karma of happiness, no karma of having made others happy, ripening in their minds. You can’t even lighten them up with a joke. They just don’t have any happy bubbles ripening to the surface. “How are you today?” you ask them. “Not so good,” they reply. “Umm … Nothing seems to go right.” But if we haven’t got the karma for happiness, whose fault is that? Who did it to us? Someone else? No, but it’s a problem we can fix. The problem is within our own minds. We can create the karma of happiness by creating merit.

Wishing Prayers

October 13, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called Compassion is the Only Lasting Antidote to Suffering

In Vajrayana Buddhism (literally the Diamond Vehicle), which is the form of Buddhism preserved in Tibet and Mongolia and the one followed in my temple, one of the foundational teachings is the understanding and practice of compassion. I personally find that a religious philosophy based on selfless compassion is deeply satisfying, and I believe that it strikes a chord with many Americans.

However, although there are many people who embrace the idea of compassion as love and a deep caring for others, they do not realize that to actualize the mind of Great Awakening requires a deliberate and disciplined path. Human beings are not born with great compassion automatically realized. Thus, the Diamond Path can be described as a technology for spiritual development.

From the Buddhist point of view, there are primarily two ways to approach compassion: aspirational compassion and practical compassion. When one begins to practice on the Diamond Path, one begins straightaway to make wishing prayers, cultivating the idea of being of benefit to beings who are revolving helplessly through cycles of existence. This is aspirational compassion.

Every practice in which we engage, every teaching we hear, every empowerment we receive, every prayer we chant, can all be dedicated to the liberation of all beings from all forms of suffering. Thus, aspirational compassion is practiced in the beginning by many repetitions of wishing prayers. These prayers are meant to benefit beings through developing the sincere desire to utilize all one’s activities — from the mundane to the sublime — as a means of eliminating the causes of suffering in all its forms. One prays for the cessation of war, poverty, sickness, death and rebirth, loneliness, hatred, greed and ignorance. One adopts a posture of pure intention based on the idea that every portion of this life, as well as future incarnations yet to come, might somehow be useful to sentient beings.

As an example of this type of wishing prayer, I will paraphrase a famous practice:

If there is a need for nourishment, let me return as food. If there is a need for shade, let me be a tree. If there is a need for shelter, let me be a house. If there is a need to cross over, let me be a bridge. If there is sickness, may I manifest as the doctor, the medicine and the nurse who restore health. May I be land for those requiring it, a lamp for those in darkness, a home for the homeless, and a servant to the world.

While this may sound very kind and loving, the intention here goes far deeper than the apparent words because one must strive to be of benefit not only to fulfill the immediate needs of beings, but also to bring future benefit. Providing things such as food, housing, and medicine bring about benefit, of course, and this type of kindness is profoundly virtuous. We should all strive to meet the needs of others in just these ways. Yet, from a Buddhist perspective, being able to practice only this type of compassion does not bring ultimate benefit. For instance, if it were possible to feed an entire nation or perhaps even the world and completely eliminate hunger and hopelessness, we still would not be solving the root of the problem.

According to the Buddha, there is no condition or circumstance without a cause. Just as the fruit does not manifest without first appearing on a tree, which came from a seed, neither does any circumstance, good or bad, in which we find ourselves manifest without a cause. These causes may not be found in this life only, but may come from previous lifetimes.

It is not possible for people to be born randomly into difficult circumstance or to suddenly experience the onset of tremendous suffering and upheaval. These events are always the result of a tapestry of cause-and-effect relationships (karma) woven around the delusion involving the definition and maintenance of an ego. Thus, to solve the immediate needs of beings may bring some relief, but it does not guarantee that they will not experience great difficulty in the future, because it does not break the continuum of cause and effect that ripens unexpectedly and constantly. This continuum originates from the belief in an ego self and the desire that results from that belief. It is through the pacification of desire that one can begin to transform one’s karma. When the delusion of ego begins to dissolve, karma also begins to dissolve. But if the mindstream is not purified of the karma of suffering, the potential for suffering remains.

The Ultimate Technology

October 11, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called Compassion is the Only Lasting Antidote to Suffering

We were raised to believe that reality can be manipulated. Our libraries are filled with books of great American success stories. These tend to be about material successes. But the spiritual aspirant must ask: Will this success last? Even if it lasts for an entire life, will it survive death? If we had the power to bring peace to the world, to disarm nations and maintain order and harmony, would that peace last beyond our lifetime? Many leaders have exhausted their lives forging great nations and empires only to have them destroyed shortly after their deaths.

To provide beings with the ultimate benefit of freedom from all suffering, one must apply the ultimate technology. The aspiration to be of benefit to beings, the cultivation of pure intention, the continued observance of human kindness, the making of wishing prayers, and constantly hoping from the core of one’s mind and heart to be of lasting benefit to others, are practices to develop compassion. Yet at some point the ultimate step must be taken. This begins with the realization that temporary happiness is not enough, that feeding and clothing people, along with other acts of kindness, are not enough. These things cannot undo the certainty of death, which puts people beyond our reach. How can we follow them into future incarnations to ensure their safety?

There is only one way to cease the ripening of the seeds of suffering: enlightenment, which dissolves the belief in ego, pacifies all cause-and-effect relationships or karma, and reveals one’s true primordial nature. The Diamond Path utilizes many techniques to purify the five senses and the mindstream itself. When these practices are engaged in, not only for one’s own benefit but also to purify the karma and suffering of others, the practical aspect of the Awakening Mind — practical compassion — is engaged. This is “practical” because it is the technology to completely rid oneself and others of the causes for suffering. Buddhists view this type of compassion as the act of ultimate kindness.

While ordinary kindness is a valid undertaking and should be part of the activity of every spiritual aspirant, one must address the question of ultimate benefit, of eliminating suffering at its roots.

We should take to heart what the great Indian Buddhist Shantideva wrote a thousand years ago. “May I act as the mighty earth or like the free and open skies to support and provide the space whereby I and all others may grow. Until every being afflicted by pain has reached to nirvana’s shores, may I serve only as a condition that encourages progress and joy.”

It’s Your Mindstream

October 10, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called How Buddhists Think

Certain aspects of the Buddha’s teachings are foundational to the way Buddhists think. My purpose here is not to render any teachings in a complete form but rather to discuss why Buddhists think the way they do. My hope is that you will take the responsibility of keeping these ideas in your minds and that they will have the effect of shaping the way you think. The best way you can use these teachings is to allow them to permeate your thoughts, reminding yourself of them continually. This will take some effort on your part. The result will be changes in your view of things––and in the decisions you make.

You must understand that any problems you have in being able to embrace your practice are caused by the karma of your mindstream. The obstacles to your practice are really a reflection of very old habitual tendencies. You have developed them, and you carry them with you. There is no one to blame––not society, not anyone who keeps you from your practice, not your non-Buddhist parents, not your jobs that take too much time. What we’re really looking at is an externalization of the content of the mindstream.

We must understand that we are looking into a mirror. If we’re too busy to practice, if we’re too materialistic to see the big picture, if repeatedly we stumble over these problems, we need to understand them as reflections of the content of our mindstream.

So what should you do? You should apply the antidote. For some people, this would be jumping onto the Path hog wild, really going for it––even though they may need to slow down a little later. Some people need time to adjust to the pace that is naturally best for them. Others can only take one tiny bite at a time.

You start where you are, and that has to be okay. Therefore I suggest three cardinal rules: 1) Do the best you can. 2) Give yourself a break. 3) Don’t let yourself get away with murder.

These rules are not the Buddha’s teaching; I made them up and take full responsibility for them. They actually work very well. You are where you are. Do what you can do. And watch yourself––because you will try to get away with murder. This is the way you should approach the Path.

To download the complete teaching, click here and scroll down to How Buddhists Think

I Choose Enlightenment

October 3, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhists Think by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

People ask: “In your tradition, is Buddha like God?” No, Buddha is not like God. “Is Guru Rinpoche God?” No, Guru Rinpoche is not God. “Well, what do you call God in your tradition?” We don’t call anything God. There are gods, but they are not the goal. Westerners try to find a way around that, saying something like, “All right, then what is the goal?” I tell them, “Enlightenment.” They reply, “Okay, then Enlightenment is God.” No, it’s not. The goal is not anything as personalized and externalized as that. There is no “other.” The moment we are caught up in “self and other,” we have lost the essential Nature. We are fixated, stuck in duality.

This is about Awakening, which is the pacification of such fixation. You must understand the fundamental distinction between Buddhism and Western thinking––whether you are considering beginning the Path or are already a practioner. You must understand this difference, so that you will know what your true objects of refuge are.

The statement “I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dharma, and I take refuge in the Sangha” is an essential element throughout your practice of the Buddha’s teaching. What does this statement mean? It means you have looked at the faults of cyclic existence, and you have seen that it produces no real happiness. You have learned that the Buddha said there is a cessation of suffering, this cessation is Enlightenment, and it is also the cessation of desire. So you have decided to go for Enlightenment. That means you have to really understand the faults of cyclic existence––even if these ideas are difficult to swallow. It’s like taking a medicine that tastes bad until you get used to it. It is like that in the beginning.

Having decided to take this medicine, you look at those who deliver it. We look to the Buddha, and this includes all those who have attained Buddhahood, not just the historical Shakyamuni Buddha. We look to the Dharma, which is the revelation or teaching brought forth from the mind of Enlightenment. And we look to the Sangha, the spiritual community to which we belong. It is the Sangha who are responsible for treasuring and propagating the teachings.

In the Vajrayana tradition, we also say, “I take refuge in the Lama,” who is considered representative of the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. Without the Lamas, you would not hear the Buddha’s teachings. And without the Lamas, there would be no Sangha.

When you say you take refuge in all of these, what you are saying is: “I choose Enlightenment. I choose the cessation of suffering.” You move away from the faults of cyclic existence, and you remain focused on the ultimate goal.

In a deeper sense, however, you must understand that you are ultimately taking refuge in Enlightenment itself. You must understand it as both the Path and the intrinsic Nature. So you are taking refuge in the Nature of your own mind. If you understand this thoroughly, you can never be duped. But you do have to work very diligently and with discipline towards the goal.

The method is very technical, very involved. It isn’t easy because it must cut through aeons of compulsive absorption in self-nature. It must cut like a knife! It must be powerful––and it is powerful. You have to think of Dharma that way. The technology has to be strong––and real. You can’t just talk about it. There is work to be done!

Although it is strong, the technology is very flexible. You need not be afraid. You will not be forced to go any deeper than you want to go. You have the right to practice gently. You will still be accumulating causes for a future incarnation as a human with these auspicious conditions, and then you will be able to practice well and dilligently.

There are people who only do very small, very gentle practice. And that’s fine. There is a large tradition of that in the Buddha Dharma. There are also people who are more deeply involved, though in a mediocre way. They practice an hour or so a day. They do a good job, and they’re faithful, and that’s it. Then there are people who practice many hours each day. They continually try to propagate the Teaching, and they work very hard. So you have a choice. You can determine the level of your involvement.

To download the complete teaching, click here and scroll down to How Buddhists Think

Enlightenment is Awakening

October 2, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhists Think by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

In their Nature, all sentient beings are essentially the Buddha––all humans, all animals, even all the microscopic little beings running around on the tips or our noses. We should regard that Nature as the basis or seed of the Path. The Buddha’s revelation of the Path came directly from his awareness of this Nature. Even though we ourselves are this Nature, we have a fixation on self-nature as inherently real. Any idea we have now, any conceptualization, anything that comes from us, arises from thinking of ourselves as a self.

The Buddha gave the Path after he attained Enlightenment, and it arose from his Enlightened intention, from Enlightenment itself. The Path is considered to be “the method.” All the Dharma teachings you receive, even the commentary teachings I may give, all derive from the Buddha’s teachings, or have as their basis the Buddha’s teachings. They are considered precious because they are the “method” that arises from the mind of Enlightenment.

You can only achieve the result of Enlightenment if the method you use arose from the mind of Enlightenment. And you can be certain that this is the case only if you know that the result has been proven again and again. This is because we ourselves cannot recognize the Buddha Nature––not in ourselves, not in any other being. Not yet. All we have to go on is a proven, result-bringing method.

The basis, or cause, brings forth the method, or Path, which is not separate from the goal, the fruit––which is the Awakening into our inherent primordial wisdom state. These three (the basis, the method, and the goal) are inseperable, indistinguishable one from the other. Therefore, we Buddhists never consider that we are moving towards an external goal. We never make the mistake of those involved in a more Western idea of linear development––thinking that they are building a higher self, or even making a connection to a higher self. And we never make the mistake of thinking that we are becoming great beings, or Masters, as those who are involved with linear thinking may do. From our point of view, we haven’t moved at all. Attaining Enlightenment is not gathering together a bunch of facts, as you might do in college. Nor is it the gathering of a bunch of experiences. We are indeed the total of our experiences, but only in a karmic sense.

Enlightenment is actually the “Awakening” to the naked state––the state that is free of all experience, the state that is pure luminosity. We don’t go anywhere. There is no building, no tearing down. There is nothing of the accumulation we value in our life. We have only pacified our chronic, compulsive fixation on self-nature, the fixation we have had since time out of mind. This constitutes a profound difference between Buddhist philosophy and Western metaphysical or religious thinking.

To download the complete teaching, click hereand scroll down to How Buddhists Think