Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Increase Your Capacity to Love

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An excerpt from a teaching called Dharma and the Western Mind by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Having taught Westerners I can see that the ones that last on this path, the ones that change and gentle and deepen in their practice are the ones that are motivated by this intensity of loving.  The ones that will do almost anything to end suffering, these are the ones that make it.  These are the ones that I have hopes for.

It is a Buddhist tradition that we should pray for the ones who have hopes of us because we have many karmic connections. Each one of us have karmic connections, it’s just like a giant web of connections, and some day each one of us will attain supreme enlightenment just as Lord Buddha did.  Surely we will, because our nature is the same as his.  We are the same and we will some day become awakened to that nature.  And on that day, those with whom we have connections, those who have hopes of us, will rejoice because at last they have a chance.  You should think right now there are those who are waiting for you, whose future it is, whose karma it is that when you achieve supreme realization they will depend on you as your disciples and you will be their teacher. You will be the one by which the door to liberation is opened for them.

Some day you will be reborn as a teacher that opens the door of Dharma, or makes the path available and you will be the cause of the end of their suffering.  You should think about them every day.  You should pray for those who have hopes of you.  It is a very important thing to think about and in teaching Westerners I find that they must remember this.

Even if all of the concepts associated with the Buddha Dharma are difficult, even if the idea of devotion is difficult, even if the idea of doing prostrations is difficult because we are unfamiliar with these things, we can do anything in order to benefit beings.  We can accustom ourselves to any idea in order to benefit beings.  Once your mind has been gentled and softened by that kind of loving you can begin to understand that the most important thing is to eliminate suffering.  You can understand also that the idea of doing what is unfamiliar to you – repetition of mantra, practice of different kinds, meditation of different kinds, sitting for a very long time, doing prostrations, developing a relationship with the guru, these things, that are not common in our Western society, become acceptable because we can see that they bear fruit and gentle our minds.  They increase our capacity for loving and they bring us closer to enlightenment.  Then we can do it.

©Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Dakini’s Blessing

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Mandarava-small

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Dakini Workshop

The Dakini is considered to be the enlightened or concerned activity of the Buddha nature. In order to understand the enlightened or concerned activity of the Buddha nature one should understand thoroughly the activity of samsara.  In order to do that, one should observe one’s own activity. The key word to describe one’s own activity is effortfulness.  Everything that we do requires effort.  There is nothing that we can simply do spontaneously without effort.  Everything requires effort; including starting with the effort it takes to get up in the morning and the effort that it takes to continue throughout the day.  Every single item on our agenda requires some effortfulness.

Of course, there are degrees of effortfulness and there are degrees of ease.  You can describe some things as being easy.  You can describe some things that you do as being very, very difficult but the key word, the mark of samsaric experience, samsaric movement, is that everything one does requires effortfulness.  That is the basis of it.  And of course, in order to understand that basis of effortfulness, one must understand the foundation or the basis of activity.  All activity experienced within samsaric existence is based on the idea of self-nature as being inherently real because the self is doing the activity.  It has to be based on that.  And in order for self to interact with the environment, self has to distinguish between self and other.  That distinction has to be made.  That is the activity that is going on in samsaric experience.

 

In order for that to happen, one must have attraction, repulsion or neutrality.  One must interact with, or continue to meet up against and reinforce duality in every sense.  Therefore, in samsaric experience concerning activity, there is always an inherent friction.  Nothing slides through.  There is no effortlessness.  There is always a friction.  There is always a bumping up against. That bumping up against has to do with the mind of duality and the distinction between subject and object.  There is no movement in samsara without that.  All movement occurs in that way.

Therefore, in order to understand the nature of the Dakini and enlightened activity or compassionate activity, one must understand the concept of effortlessness.  In order to understand the concept of effortlessness, one must understand the basis for the appearance of miraculous enlightened activity in the world, and that, which is consistent with the nature of the Dakini.  The basis for enlightened compassionate activity is that this activity is consistent with, inseparable from and indistinguishable from, enlightenment itself – Buddha nature.  That must be understood.

How is that distinct from ordinary activity? Ordinary activity has that friction and struggle associated with its basis. This basis is the fundamental idea of self-nature as being particularly solid.  Remember that in order to determine self-nature, one has to distinguish between self and others, so immediately there has to be division, there has to be distinction, there has to be cleavage – there has to be a breakage of some kind.  That movement is very hard. It is a movement very much involved in a solid process of continuing the continuum.  That is the basis for any activity or movement seen in samsara.  That is not the case pertaining to the nature of the Dakini, enlightened activity or compassionate activity.

If we can think of the nature of the Buddha we should think of the great sphere of truth, the undifferentiated expanse, the great sphere of emptiness.  We should think that there is no basis for the sphere of truth, there is no basis for emptiness, and there is no building block or cause and effect relationship because there is no distinction within the great expanse.   In order to understand the great expanse, the mind has to relax utterly.  There is no arising of the components of distinction.  There is no contrivance.  There is no ripple or friction or cleavage or distinction of any kind.  The great sphere of truth is simply suchness. The moment one tries to box up suchness or put it in a bottle or put in a certain shape or color it or distinguish it from suchness, it is no longer that.  So, the great sphere of truth is as it is – simply suchness.

Yet, all potency arises from the sphere of truth.  All that one sees, all richness, all diversity arises from the sphere of truth: that which we perceive as diversity arises from the sphere of truth.  How can that be so?  Either a thing is empty or it is not?  Well, the mistake, the delusion comes after the idea of self-nature as being inherently real. At that point, the mind operates in the posture of distinction. It operates in the posture of duality.  And everything that is perceived from that point is engaged in that process.  Yet, from the point of view of enlightenment, when one has awakened to that nature and the view is correct, when one no longer engages in the process of distinction, when the mind is restful, spacious and luminous in the natural state, the mind is not operating in distinction.  There is no distinction.  And so, all that arises from the sphere of truth arises spontaneously and effortlessly and is spontaneously completed and insubstantial, like a rainbow.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

A Great Stabilizer

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An excerpt from a teaching called Dharma and the Western Mind by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

I have found something wonderful about Westerners; we are really kind people.  I don’t know what it is about us.  Is it because we grew up and our parents told us? Is it because we heard it on the news and all the Presidents have told us and Kissinger says so and everybody knows that we are the strongest country in the world? This is what we grew up with. We think that if anybody is going to save the world that it is going to be us. Who else would it be, really?  So we have this idea that we can save the world. Are we really thinking, “Well we really have something special, we are pretty extraordinary.”  Or is it somehow that karmically a family has come together here and has the leisure to practice.  It has the opportunity to accomplish Dharma.  It even has the opportunity to make Dharma stable in a world in which it is no longer stable.  It is no longer stable in Tibet.  It is difficult in India.  It is difficult in Nepal. Could it be that a family has come together in the right place at the right time that has the opportunity to do something really terrific and somehow we know that somewhere? Are we unusual?  I know so many people that have grown up with the idea that they wanted to help people and to do something good for somebody some time.  They felt almost a sense of being chosen, that there was some meaning that would be found in this life and a sense of purpose, so many of us have had that.

I don’t know if it is unique to Westerners. I have no idea. When I talk to Tibetans they talk all the time of being of use to sentient beings. So I know that that is a meaningful concept to them but I don’t know how they approach it or how they think of it. But I know that it is a thought that somehow a part of us has hopes of ourselves, that we will do something useful.  We look at the world and we feel genuinely sorry.  We have a big brother or a big sister attitude.  We may not have an easy time looking at our suffering but we can see that other people are having a rough time. Sometimes we can’t even relate to the issues that make the times rough but we can try to help. Sometimes we mess it up worse than before, we really complicate things when we try to help and we have that knee jerk reaction without even understanding what the causes are. Nevertheless we feel that we can help.

I found therefore that in teaching Westerners this is a very important and central thing to understand, that the Buddha teaches us to be of use, to be of benefit to sentient beings.  The Buddha teaches us that if you cannot be of use at least do no harm.  But in Vajrayana Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism you are actually asked to consider that other sentient beings are more important than you are by virtue of the fact that there are many of them and only one of you and that the name of the game is the end of suffering.

We are taught to love, I mean really love, which means defining love in new ways.  We are taught that we are supposed to be on fire with it and know it is possible in order to practice Dharma correctly and purely. We have to think only of that which can be of benefit to beings and to bring about the end of suffering, only that is important.  I have found that Westerners are moved by that, and they are stabilized in their path.

Those of you who are familiar with the center know that we have a twenty-four hour a day prayer vigil that has been running since 1985.  There is never a time when there is not someone here, undertaking prayer for all sentient beings.  I have been delighted and warmed to see how deeply my students respond to that job.  They take it very seriously.  They adopt the idea that if there is no-one else at least there is me, and pitiful as I am I am still going to give it my best shot to do something virtuous in order to be of use to sentient beings.  I am going to try to help.  That has been a great stabilizer on the path.

For those who have turned their minds in such a way that they care more for the welfare of sentient beings and are greatly motivated by the end of suffering, their hearts are warm with it and their minds are gentled with it. They will practice in order to benefit beings.  You can’t stop them.  Yet even for my long time students I find that those who haven’t quite got that, remain up and down about practice. It varies and they need inspiration, and they need someone to take them by the hand and help them to stay on the straight and narrow.  Once we really learn to love in this profound and universal sense, there is no turning back.  We are touched and we are changed.

©Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Your Potential

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An excerpt from a teaching called Dharma and the Western Mind by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

One of the most difficult concepts for Westerners besides the idea of emptiness of self-nature and some of the thoughts about the Nature of Mind that the Buddha teaches us are thoughts about devotion.  I think it is because we have grown up in a society where it is very important to be important.  We are very egocentric really.  We have this idea of individualism as being the optimal thing; the idea of the self being fully developed and fully actualized in some way, the idea of developing all of your qualities and talents, whatever they may be.  Developing all of your different talents has become so central to us that when we see that in Vajrayana Buddhism it is the custom to do three prostrations to the teacher we become appalled.  As Westerners, our first thought is, does this mean that I am less than this person, do I have to subjugate myself, do I become some sort of wimp?  What happens to me when I do that? Does this mean that I am kind of useless somehow?

You should understand that there is nothing in this path that will undermine what you inherently are.  In fact the point is for you to awaken finally to your real nature, to your true nature.  There is no way, there is no room, and there is no space on this path for you to be undermined in any way. In fact in this path you are recognized to be something that you never thought you could have been.  Your potential to be a Buddha is fully recognized, male or female, high or low, whoever you are, that potential is fully recognized by your teachers and that is the point of teaching you.

When you comply with the custom of doing three prostrations and of honoring your teacher you are purposefully cultivating devotion, because the teacher is seen as the door to liberation and the motivation of going through that door is love.  You want to be of benefit to beings, you want to accomplish Dharma so that there is an end to suffering.  You want to return again and again and again in whatever form necessary in order to be of benefit to beings and the teacher is seen as a door that you walk through to get there.  The teacher gives you the Dharma.  The teacher offers you the technology.   The teacher acts as the catalyst by which these things are realized and for that reason the teacher becomes a feast; the feast that you have always hungered for.  When you prostrate to the teacher you do not prostrate to the person.

My name before I became Ahkön Lhamo used to be Catharine.  Do you really think that anyone is really prostrating to Catharine?  She is not that great.  No one is that great really, but what is great is the door to liberation that your teacher offers you.  What is great is that awakened nature that someone who has experienced some realization displays.  That is what we prostrate to, not the person.

So you shouldn’t be shy about that or uncomfortable with that. If you don’t want to do it that is fine but don’t feel funny about other people doing it.  Try to overcome the different blocks that you have as Westerners so that you can practice Dharma purely and sincerely.

Remember the whole thing is about being of benefit to sentient beings and about loving.  As Westerners that is what you have to stabilize your mind with, you should cause yourself to understand these things, turn your mind; cause yourself to only want to do those things that will produce the result that you want – love.  Motivate yourself to be stable on this path because the result of this path is the awakened state, and that state is of benefit to all beings, especially those who have hopes of you.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Right Speech

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An excerpt from a teaching called The Eightfold Path by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Right speech is the first principal of ethical conduct on the Eightfold Path.  And on the Eightfold Path is really based on ethical conduct.  It’s one of the things that I like best about Buddhism.  It isn’t based on a pie-in-the-sky idea. You have to work it.  People who are recovering alcoholics will recognize that saying about the 12-step program, “It works if you work it.”  Right?  And the Eightfold Path is exactly like that.  If you don’t work it, you’re going to go back to the narcotic of samsara.  But if you do work it, you have strength and bones that you never had before.  There is a similarity.  I’ve often drawn that connection between the Buddha dharma and the way that self-honesty is required, and the 12-step program, especially in that we are all addicts.  We are addicted to our emotions.  We are addicted to our delusions.  We are addicted to our visions.  We are addicted to our dreams. We are all addicts. And we are just so drunk with the narcotic of samsara that it is hard to pay attention, and see what is the root of all this.  We are trying to become awake so that we can see all of that, and right speech is one of the guidelines to the moral discipline of ethics.

We don’t realize that you have to do right to be right. That is certainly true on the path of Buddha dharma.  The importance of speech in the Buddha dharma is central and obvious.  For one thing you can cause harm with speech, and you should never do that.  Right speech would be speaking well, speaking nobly, speaking higher, and not speaking against anyone or speaking harshly or cruelly, or gossiping.

Gossiping is a terrible ethical non-virtue or perversion of Buddhist ethics.  And I must say it’s rampant in most religious communities and in ours too.  It’s rampant.  It’s not what the Buddha taught and it should not be that way.  We should uphold one another with speech, rather than to tear one another down.  Words can break or save lives.  Think about that.  Words can make enemies or friends. Start war or create peace.  All by words.  And you can review history to see that that’s true.

To keep away from false speech, one especially should never tell deliberate lies or speak deceitfully.  Some people are storytellers, and tend to be expansive in their speech.  I’ve been known to do that myself.  When you tell a story, you expand it a little bit.  You polish it up.  Make it a little more interesting.  Throw in a few hand gestures. That’s not deceitful necessarily unless you are making yourself higher.  Then that would be deceitful.  If you said, “I had this experience in meditation.  It was so big.  You’ve never had anything like it.”  (And therefore, I’m big)  That would be wrong speech.  That would be unethical.  What we really want to do is avoid telling different lies, especially those that bring us power, acknowledgement, or approval, because then we know that we are lying to someone, which is unethical, in order to bring ourselves up above them which is not right either.  It ruins our right intention.

That would be called false speech and it is to be avoided.  We must also abstain from slanderous speech, and should not use words maliciously against others.  That’s gossip.  We do it all the time.  We should be very very careful with that, because one thing I’ve noticed about gossip and slander is that it comes right back to you, even in this very life.   But if we develop the habit of slanderous speech, lifetime after lifetime, what happiness can come from that?  We will be born into lifetimes where no matter what we do people will not think well of us.  We will be causing more suffering to others and ourselves.  To use words maliciously against others undermines the whole basis of the path, which is this right intention and this right view, and this consideration of the truth of the Four Noble Truths.

When we consider all of this together, we understand that malicious speech is not just a no no.  It’s a killer. We should abstain from harsh words that offend or hurt others. We can see what the ethics of that would be.  Like if I were to say to you, “Gee, you look kind of ugly today.”  What is the point of that?  Why would I need to do that?  Even if it were true, why would I do that?  Well, first of all I have shown that I have not accomplished right view.  Right there I have shown you my buttocks.  So, obviously this is not the right way to go.

We want to cultivate right intention, so we want to keep away from unethical speech that hurts or offends others.  We want to abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth.  Positively phrased, it means tell the truth, speak friendly, warmly and gently, and talk when you’ve got something to say.  Brilliant!  Only a Buddha could have thought of this.  Actually it was “talk only when necessary.” I had to have a little fun there.

© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The Burning Room

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The following is an excerpt from a teaching called “Essence of Devotion”

When embarking on the path, we look for the most excellent method.  We look for that method that gives excellent results every time.  That method would be Dharma.  Dharma has brought about enlightenment in generation after generation of students and teachers alike.  Students have become teachers who have returned to benefit beings, just as I hope you are hoping to do.

Now, we not only need that, but we need an excellent captain, and that captain should be considered none other than the Buddha and his emanations in the world.  The Buddha is the one who has successfully crossed the ocean of suffering and has, without a doubt, achieved enlightenment.  If you read the life of the Buddha there is no doubt that he has achieved enlightenment.  The results of his life—having brought enlightenment to so many others for 2,500 years­—can only have arisen from the mind of enlightenment.  So we want the proper ship.  We want the proper captain. We also need the proper navigator because it’s considered that, while the Buddha is the supreme captain of our ship, it is his spirit, his mind, his nature which is present in the navigator who does the driving and keeps us afloat. And that is our teacher.

So that is the situation that we want to hook up to.  That’s how to leave the party, another analogy that we can use. I love to teach in analogies because it’s much easier and simpler for us.  We can understand parties.  We can understand foolishness.  We can understand suffering.  We can understand ships and water and the urge not to drown, but sometimes it’s hard to understand Dharma. So I like to learn and I like to express in analogies. One good analogy for understanding our present situation as we embark on the great task of practicing refuge and Bodhicitta is that when we look around and we read the paper and we see our own eventual age and death and all the sufferings that come with it, as well as the sufferings of others, we consider that the two of them are unbearable and they are inseparable.  I am suffering, you are suffering.  It’s all one package.  You come to realize that it’s like you’re in a burning room.  You know, the room just burning, burning, burning, burning, on fire, and at that point you look around and you realize that there is one door, one opening, not even a window.  One door as an exit from that room, and that door is wide open.  How much love and regard will you have for that door, while being in that burning room?  Well, we’re so funny, we’re so kind of asleep at the wheel, at least in the first part of our spiritual path. Maybe we don’t even have much realization but, when in our own experience the room really begins to get hot and we begin to see the singeing of our own hairs and really relate to the burning of our own flesh. we begin to see, really see, what the situation is due to our own experience. And we will someday.  We will.  If not now, then someday.  Then at that time we look at that door with such love and regard. In fact, we don’t even think about how much we love and regard the door.  We are so into the door that we are out of the door as soon as possible.  We love the door.  The door is our hope.

It’s like that when we approach the path.  As we begin to practice turning the mind towards Dharma, we begin to practice seeing what is in this ocean of suffering, what we are surrounded with.  Then at that point, we begin to take in our own real experience and how kind of silly it is when we try to keep on top of our suffering when, in fact, we are suffering and it is foolish to be in denial about that.  At that point our minds soften. They gentle and they turn.  And suddenly we get smart in a way we were never smart before.  Suddenly we’re on Red Alert.  Something is different and we begin to regard that door, not as just a shape in a room, but as something that is more meaningful to us than anything else.  The path is that door.  Our teachers who give us the path are that door.  The method is that door.  That is our opportunity to exit samsara.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo.  All rights reserved

 

A Teaching to Give You Confidence

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The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Essence of Devotion”

Before I even met His Holiness Penor Rinpoche, who told me I was a Buddhist—I didn’t know this—I had been teaching; and I had been teaching about compassion and the empty nature of phenomena and the empty nature of mind. And you see, I thought that I thought this whole thing up.  I thought I had come up with this myself. So smart!  Oh well.  I thought that what was really missing here was a way for ordinary beings who have been involved in ordinary lives to switch tracks, to come to a place of profound renunciation and acceptance and compassion, and to take a vow that would somehow reach into every future life. I thought the only way to do that was to give them some extraordinary teachings, and make them understand the nature of suffering and the absolute necessity of compassion, and to have them turn their minds in such a way that compassion arose in their minds. In the same way that consciousness appears in the mind, compassion then also appears.  And that was my idea—that I had to find a way to do this.  So what I did was I began to give a bunch of teachings and eventually called a retreat. And those students that I thought were prepared to go deeper I took on retreat.

We spent a great long time looking at the world and praying for the world and taking responsibility for the world.  These students I taught and cajoled and loved and goaded and tricked and manipulated until they would agree to take responsibility for the world and to take responsibility for all sentient beings.  They just finally gave up and let me have my way.  From that came the writing of a Bodhisattva Vow and I knew that that was the most important turning point and experience in their whole spiritual evolution, and I explained it to them as such.  Well, this became a custom. We customarily gave the Bodhisattva Vow. I also began to develop the idea of refuge, of taking refuge in that which brings forth enlightenment, the Buddha nature.

Eventually I met Penor Rinpoche, and he told us that we were Buddhists and that we were practicing Buddhism. I didn’t know anything about Buddhists.  I didn’t know anything about anything . Penor Rinpoche came to me and announced to me that I was a Bodhisattva. I was practicing Dharma and I was teaching Dharma and I should keep on teaching Dharma, and I said, “O.K.”  Then he gave us the Refuge and Bodhisattva Vows. You see, I had already written this Refuge and Bodhisattva Vow and it didn’t sound anything like what he did because he gave us something in Tibetan!  We tried our best to repeat it, but I don’t think it was the same thing.  It was a lot more words!  So I was kind of a little tense about this and finally when I went to India, I had one of the lamas there translate the Refuge and Bodhisattva Vows and another set of vows that had also been written called the Renunciate Vows for Lay Practitioners, a deeper level of vows.  I had them translated into Tibetan and I confessed to my guru, Penor Rinpoche, that I had written these vows and that I had been giving them. I said I didn’t have any other vows and I knew that this was necessary and so, even though these aren’t the traditional vows, I would like your advice on what to do about this.  Well, he read the vows and he started laughing and slapping his knee. He thought this was a real gut wrenching hee haw, just laughing and rubbing his knee.  Then he said, “About the Refuge and Bodhisattva Vows, if you don’t mind, I think I will continue to give them in the way that I am accustomed to, simply because it’s difficult for a person to learn new tricks.  However,” he said, and then he drew himself up to his orthodox lama posture (he is a very orthodox lama), and he said, “I authorize you fully to give these vows.” And he said, “I authorize these vows fully as proper Refuge and Bodhisattva Vows in our lineage.”

That has never happened before.  There is a traditional way to give the vows and there is another way, and this is the other way. And at least in the Palyul tradition, he firmly encouraged me to give these vows as often as possible, with teaching.  He encouraged me to give them in the way that I have been giving them, because he felt that this is a manifestation of the same vow but done in such a way as to touch the minds and hearts of westerners so that they can remain fully absorbed at that pure moment of ordination which this is.  This is an ordination, an ordination of kindness.  So he fully acknowledged these as proper vows. That’s why, although they are a little bit different, they are considered to be appropriate, they are considered to be lasting and they are fully authorized in our tradition.  A very unusual occurrence, but very important for us as westerners.

Meeting His Holiness for the First Time

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

When I first met His Holiness Penor Rinpoche, he came to where I was in Kensington, Maryland, and wanted to stay at our house.  I had only met one Tibetan in my whole life.  I had no idea what a Tibetan lama even was.  I had no idea what to do with a Tibetan lama.  Where do you put them?  What do they eat? I wasn’t being silly, I just didn’t know.  So I thought, “Well, we’ll have a barbecue!” I didn’t know what to do.

I remember it, and I think about the way I was then.  Of course, it was natural, but there was His Holiness sitting on a bench!   I remember plopping down right next to him and asking casually, “So, what do you think of the barbecue?” If I did that now, my head would explode!  Thankfully, some spiritual discrimination has been developed since then!

During that visit, His Holiness said he wanted to talk to all of my students.  He wanted to ask all of my students, “What does she teach you?  What do you know about this, that and the other thing?  What do you think about compassion?  What does she tell you to do?  How does she tell you to practice?”  He questioned all my students, and I hadn’t even talked to him alone yet. I didn’t know that you were even supposed to ask Tibetan lamas questions.  I just didn’t know.

I saw that when he was interviewing my students, they also had the opportunity to ask him these great questions, and he gave them these really cool answers, about karma and how things are and why things were, and I thought, “I’d like a chance.  Give me the opportunity.”  I asked His Holiness if I could come and talk with him, and he agreed.  So I went in and I talked to him and I said, “Rinpoche, when I first saw you, I knew that you were purity itself; that there is nothing more pure than you.  So based on that, I’m asking you, at a certain age it just came to me to start teaching like that — teaching about emptiness, teaching about compassion, teaching about benefiting others, but I wasn’t taught this.  Until you, I didn’t have a teacher in this lifetime.  How can this be?  Have I done something wrong?”

I told him I felt like there were two justifications for me to teach before I had met my teacher.  One of them was that when these practices, like the natural kind of Chöd that I was doing, came to my mind, and I did them, they worked.  I could feel the renunciation that was happening.  I could feel it.  That was one determining factor.  I could feel that when I spent a large percentage of my time trying to be of benefit to others, I could feel that it worked.  I could feel that it made me happy.  So I began to practice like that, and I felt that I was authorized to teach others because I practiced it and I could see that it worked.

The other thing was that I looked around — ever since I was a child I could see that there’s nothing but suffering here, that suffering is all-pervasive, and even when it’s temporarily alleviated by some kind of temporary happiness, it’s all-pervasive and it returns, and the suffering is primarily spiritual.  I told His Holiness, that being the case, I felt I couldn’t wait.  I felt that if I knew something, anything, that would help, I’d better do it.  I asked him how these things have just come in my mind: this practice of generosity, this meditation on emptiness, this Chöd, where does it come from?  And by what authority am I passing this out?  How is this happening, and why doesn’t it happen to everybody?    And he said to me, “You were a bodhisattva in so many past lifetimes and you accomplished your practice — and he spoke of mindfulness and awakening and stuff like that — you accomplished your practice to the degree that it is mixed like milk with water into your mindstream.  You are not separate from that.  In every future lifetime, when you appear, you will remember the teachings.  You’ll remember them because you practiced them so mindfully.”

Do you hear what that tells you? I’m not different from you.  I use deodorant.  I stink when I sweat.  I am not different from you.  That tells you that, according to His Holiness, a Living Buddha, this practice of mindfulness is so potent, so perfect, that if you really invest all that you have into it in an honest and deliberate and profoundly deep way.  You can take it with you! To think that that is the one treasure, the only treasure we can take with us when we die.  You can’t take your car, you can’t take your TV, and you can’t take your boyfriend or girlfriend, husband, wife, or kid.  Even if you and your whole family die together, you can’t take them with you.  It doesn’t work that way.  But that profound Recognition, that habit, the constant making of that habit of Recognition and mindfulness, that you can take with you.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Daily Offerings

by

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

I’d like to talk about mindfulness in practice of making offerings.  As you know, when you do your preliminary practice of Ngondro, at some point you accumulate 100,000 repetitions of mandala offerings.  That’s a fairly elaborate practice where you sit down and you work with the mandala set and you make the mounds and you have a very extensive visualization.  So is that where your offering practice stops?  Do you make your offerings to the deities and then walk away from your practice and not be involved in your practice anymore?  No, of course not.

In order to practice truly and more deeply, what we have to do is remain mindful of the practice constantly.  Remember that we are trying to antidote ego clinging.  We’re trying to antidote the belief in self-nature as being inherently real.  We are trying to antidote the desire, the hope and the fear that results from that identification of self-nature as being inherently real and other as being separate.  Remember that this is the point of what we’re doing.  So if we were to practice accumulating mandala offerings, or make offerings at a temple and then have that practice end and no longer be a part of our lives, we wouldn’t be applying that antidote very well — at least not as well as we might.

How would it be possible for us to avoid this ego clinging?  How would it be possible to avoid simply reinforcing samsara’s unfortunate message when we go around and simply enjoy ourselves?  Remember that it is a worthy thing to notice, when you perceive something like a house or a tree or a flower, how automatic your reaction and response to that is.   How is this flower going to affect me?  This flower, this tree, how is it going to be meaningful if it doesn’t affect me?  That is its meaning: it affects me.  That is how we think.  The practice that I’m suggesting is something that you can do without ever sitting down and meditating, so for those of you that have no time, this is a great practice.

When we’re doing anything, no matter what it is, we see appearances.  Images come to us.  They are sometimes very favorable, sometimes very beautiful, sometimes wonderful, and we enjoy them, and sometimes not.  When we enjoy them, we enjoy them by clinging, by taking that experience, in a sense, and holding onto it, grabbing it.  We’re grasping that experience.  That tree is only relevant because I see it.  Out of sight, out of mind.  When the tree is out of my sight, it no longer exists.  We think like that.  My suggestion is that rather than just doing your practice when you’re sitting down, why not be mindful constantly? When you see the appearance of any phenomenon, when you see any kind of beautiful thing — like for instance when you look outside and you see how lovely it is out there, how gorgeous it is, the trees and the flowers and the sweetness of the air — how can you not let that beauty simply reinforce our clinging to ego, that clinging to identity?

One way to do that is to develop an automatic habit, and again, those habits start small and end up big.  We start at the beginning, and we simply increase.  Develop the habit of offering everything that you see. You think, “Huh?  How can I offer it if it’s not mine?”  Well, that’s not the point.  Whether it’s yours or not, your senses will grab it as yours.  You will react to it, you will respond to it, you will judge it, and so it becomes, in a way, your thing.  You collect it.  When you see something, you collect it, and you hold onto it.  The experience is what you take away.  Maybe we can’t take away the tree, but that doesn’t mean anything because we’ve taken away our experience of the tree.  It has become ours, and it reinforces that delusion of self and other.  Instead of doing that, isn’t it possible upon seeing something beautiful, upon taking a walk, having a good feeling, accomplishing something wonderful, seeing beautiful things, having meaningful relationships with other people, any kind of pleasure that is part of your life, that it can be offered?  It can be thought of in a different way.

For instance, if I were to walk down the street and see a field of flowers, but didn’t know about any of these teachings of the Dharma, then maybe I might pick some of the flowers think that’s a meaningful experience because I feel good about it; I’m really happy with that.  The only reason these flowers have become meaningful is because they’ve affected me in a certain way, and it continues the delusion.  Having heard about Dharma, we have another option.  When we see and enjoy a whole field of flowers, we can visualize in a very simple way, making it an offering to all the Buddhas and bodhisattvas.  Instead of that automatic clinging to this image and trying to take it with us, trying to make it part of us, there can be an instant habit that we form of offering this to all the Buddhas.  “This field of flowers is so wonderful.  I love it so much.”

If we work on it, instead of clinging to it in some subtle way, our automatic habit can be to offer it to the Buddhas and bodhisattvas.  Take any good taste, for instance, a good flavor in your mouth; a lot of times when we have a pleasurable experience like good food or good taste you may have noticed that ultimately it’s not so good.  The food turns into…well, you know what it turns into, doo-doo. The experience does us no good because when we were tasting it, we were clinging to it.  That’s mine.  You see?  I’m tasting it.  It’s in my taste buds.  It’s that relationship between my taste buds and that food that’s really important: we’re stuck in that delusion.  We’re stuck in that dream.

Suppose we were able, instead, to develop the habit that when we eat something we are practicing as well by automatically offering the flavor and the taste of that to the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas?  Then you’re not grabbing onto it, you’re not making it your experience.  Offering it, you’re not reinforcing that dynamic of self and other, but rather when you taste, you’re just simply offering it.  You can learn to do it very quickly.  When you first start, it’s a little bit cumbersome because you take a bite of food, and you say, “Okay, I offer this to the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas.”  You take another bite of food, saying, “I offer this to the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas.”  At first, it may seem a little dry and uncomfortable, but there’s an inner posture that can be developed that’s an automatic response, as automatic as deciding whether or not you like that taste.  As the taste hits you, the experience of that can be just offering it to the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas.  It can be so immediate that no words are required.  At that point, you’ve developed the habit of making this constant, constant, constant offering.

As parents, when we bond with our children and hold our children and have that wonderful, pleasurable experience of cuddling our kids and feeling wonderful, as ordinary human beings we think, “Oh, this is my child.  This is the extension of my ego.  I made that.  I made an egg, and look what happened.”  So we have very great pride about that, and our family becomes an extension of our ego, an extension of what we call ourselves.  What if were able to offer that as well?  As we hold our beloved children, as we feel that feeling, rather than putting another star in our own crown and thinking, “Oh, yeah, this is my kid and I’m holding her now” – what if we could offer that feeling? What if we could even offer the connection, the incredible, powerful connection between mother and child?  That, too, can be offered to the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas.   When you offer something to the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas, it’s not as though it disappears.  It’s not as though the feeling disappears once you offer that feeling of loving your child to the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas, and suddenly you don’t love your kid anymore.  It’s not like that.  Anything that we offer, really in some magical way becomes multiplied.  It becomes even more than it originally could have been.  In not using what we see with our five senses as a way to practice more self-absorption, but instead using what we see with the five senses as a way to accomplish some kind of Recognition, this is a very powerful practice and a very excellent, excellent adornment for the sit-down practice that we do.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Your Guru

by
Ven Gyaltrul Rinpoche

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

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