For Their Sake

May 15, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from Marrying Spiritual Life with Western Culture by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

We are told that in order to be a good person you have to do a certain amount of church-going. That church-going idea is deadly. It’s really the antithesis of a spiritual path, and I find that here as well. Our Sangha also plays church. Whenever I see one of us do church-going, I don’t know what to do. That church-going thing drives me nuts! When we come here, on the proper days – Sunday, during retreats, and maybe for midweek class – we think, “Well I’m here. It’s Sunday and I’m fulfilling my spiritual obligation.” We have that church expression: We look all spiritual and fulfilled and we say the nice things.

Going to church in that way is deadening and disempowering. It’s a very destructive way to approach our spiritual life. Our spiritual life is something that requires no church. It requires no temple. It is an ongoing, internal, profound experience to which we have to marry. We shouldn’t marry simply because we’ve come of age, which many of us do, but because we are truly wed in our hearts and our minds with a deeper kind of friendship and understanding regarding our spiritual path than we’ve ever known before.

What is the missing link? What causes us to shunt ourselves off in that direction and create a scenario whereby we either don’t relate deeply to our path or it cannot nourish us, or we find ourselves feeling dead inside? How does that happen? One of the things that you have to remember – and its really important to think about – is that it is more and more prevalent in modern society to not see some of the natural currents of life. This is particularly true in our country with our level of technology and all the civilizing factors that have come together to make us what we are.

For instance, here we are so technologically advanced and removed from certain natural occurrences that we rarely have the opportunity to see the beginning of life carried all the way through to the end of life. Unless we ourselves have had a baby and daddy went into the birthing room and mommy had a mirror – unless we do that – birth to us is a mystery. We do not see what birth looks like. We have pictures of it. We may have seen a movie, but the direct sensual experience of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling, we have not experienced. Even those of us who are parents are somehow absent from this experience because many people do not have a real direct experience of their own birth-giving. They go to sleep during it or they’re drugged or something like that.

Neither do we have an experience of dying. When we die, we will have that experience, but until then, it’s hidden from us. We have no way to prepare ourselves for the reality of death in our society. We have no way to understand what is gained and what is lost during a life. Watching someone die is an interesting experience because you can see that everything material is left behind. You have a sense, once that consciousness has left the body, has moved on, that there is a really distinct difference between what the body is like at the door of death – even if it was unconscious – and what it’s like after consciousness has actually left. It’s quite different. Any of us who have seen loved ones immediately after their death will know this. You know that there is nothing in there, unless you’re completely out to lunch, which I also have seen! But you can see that something essential has left and that everything material has been left behind. It’s such an eye-opener, particularly if the person who has died is perhaps not very old. Perhaps they were still at the point in their life where they took a great deal of pride in their body or thought of themselves as being very vital. You might remember different things about the person. You might remember that the person didn’t like their figure, felt that they were too fat. Maybe you know that during the person’s life they obsessed about this. They felt really bad about being fat and they tried to do things about it without success. Then you see that person die. When the consciousness leaves, you realize that everything they struggled with doesn’t matter. Whether that body was fat or skinny, it didn’t go with them.

An understanding of how superficial such a struggle is occurs when you naturally see the rhythms of life and death. Do you see what I’m saying? There is a natural understanding that no one else can teach you. You have to see it yourself.

To undertand what we are, it’s also good to see a number of babies being born. Babies are different when they are born. Hospital nurses who care for babies right after they’re born can tell you this for sure. Babies are not blank slates. Some babies are very aggressive and very active, and you can tell that they have tiny, little, confrontative personalities already. They’re just that way. And then other babies are just wide-eyed and open. They’re like little jellyfish. My two sons have always been polar opposites from the first moment they were born. A mother who has had more than one child can tell you that’s how it is.

Many of us are completely separated from these natural events, yet they teach us very profound things about how to approach spirituality. Even the story about the Buddha indicates this. At first the Buddha was prevented by his father from seeing the suffering of old age, sickness and death. After having witnessed these sufferings, he found the strength to go on in his path because of compassion, because of the deeply felt recognition that occurred to him on some subtle level. That’s a metaphor for the problem of our society. What a display Lord Buddha gave us when he showed us that, because on several different levels we are prevented from seeing suffering by our society.

We take dead bodies away and put make-up on them. (Can you believe that? I want all my make-up on my body before I die. I do not want someone to put it on after I’m dead. All of you can remember this? That is not the time for a face lift.) On an internal level, because of these subtle messages that we get, we do not come in contact easily with any real internal processes. We avoid them in the same way we are taught to avoid them externally. We’re told, “Don’t go there, it’s not safe. Just don’t go there!”

We are told not to approach things in a really intimate way. Now in the story about Lord Buddha’s life, when he saw the suffering it bothered him, hurt him, upset him, scared him and shocked him, and he had to – oh my – go through transformation, that “T” word that scares us so much. Transformation is related to change, the other word that really scares us. So, yes, he had to go through all of that, but what was the result? The result was he became deeply empowered and was able to make some very difficult choices.

He decided not to live an ordinary life in which he was extremely happy. He was a prince with all the blessings. He loved his family. He had a beautiful and devoted wife, and they were very close, very intimate. He had a beautiful newborn child and was not a distant or absent or unconnected parent. He loved his greater family as well, his father and mother – the king and queen. But for the first time he saw the suffering of old age, sickness and death, and it moved him to his core and enabled him to make choices that are very difficult. He came to the point of deep knowing within himself, that if he wanted to really love his wife and his baby, he had to find the way to liberation for their sake. The phrase “for their sake” became real to him. It’s not real to us.

With Joyful Expectancy

May 11, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

It’s easy to hear Dharma, if you have the merit. It’s easy to keep a record of how many teachers we have sat in the presence of. It is much harder to change, to remain where we are and to deepen. It is harder still to rely on the advice of our Spiritual Master rather than on our own prideful, rigid, ordinary ideas.

The path of Dharma must renew for us a profound, living presence in our lives. It should never become stale or stiff, nor should we allow our minds to become hard, rigid or prideful. We should hold our hearts and minds in a confident posture of trembling, joyful expectancy. Then the path becomes our treasure, our food, our refuge. Then, gradually, we transform into that most precious jewel, the aspirant who actually gives rise to the Bodhicitta, who makes love and compassion a living presence in the world. This is the answer to all our longing.

May the power and potency of Dharma fill your lives. May virtue prevail. May compassion be born in our hearts and devotion nourish our minds, pouring forth to all sentient beings who remain in samsara. May they be liberated from the very causes of suffering. And may it be soon; may it be today. May samsara be emptied. Lord Guru, of the suffering of sentient beings, there has been enough. I dedicate all virtue I have accomplished, in this and every other lifetime, past, present and future, to this end.

True Purity

May 10, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

Let’s say you have become satisfied with an idea of what a practitioner should be. You are quiet, meek, gentle, and ever so passive. You attempt to be pure by never adorning your face, hair or body. You do what you think is right. Fine. But what if you stop there? What if you allow days, weeks, years, your whole life to pass by with no true sense of the need to eradicate hatred, greed and ignorance from your mindstream? What if you have no real understanding of the emptiness of phenomena? No true perception of the nature of mind? What have you really accomplished? What is yours to carry with you? How will you enter the afterlife state, the bardo? Will you not see as you have always seen? Will you not see the events within the bardo state as external phenomena? Will you not be excited, afraid? Will you not still be lost in the delusion of self and other?

On the Vajrayana path, true purity, true virtue is central and precious. Even one moment of true perception of the nature of mind is the only conceivable virtue. If you merely live according to the rules, you will definitely have merit. But in terms of the value of your own nature, your own mind, you will not have the purification that leads to true perception. The Vajrayana path is unique in its perspective on this. It adopts the morality and rules of the Hinayana path, as well as the Mahayana perspective of compassion and purity, yet it goes further into the understanding that true perception is the thing of value—the diamond.

The goal of the Vajrayana path is to realize the nature of mind. The nature of mind is absolute compassion. At that primordial-wisdom level, there is no good or bad. There is clear, uncontrived, pure, self-luminous nature. Primordial mind is unborn, yet perfectly complete. It is unmarked, un-measured by time or space. It is self-arising. True virtue is not a way of acting. Nor is it a way of thinking—as most people understand thought. There is only one real virtue: the realization of primordial mind. Naturally arising within that realization is a deep and abiding compassion—a compassion that is capable of manifesting in any form necessary in order to bring true benefit to beings.

Please understand that primordial mind itself is not filled with hatred, greed and ignorance. This is simply not possible. The mind is forever pure. It is unchanging. It cannot be defiled in any way. What then is the problem? Where is the defilement? Not in mind itself, but in perception. The real value of practicing on the Vajrayana path is that you are involved in a system by means of which your mind can arise with all the pure qualities of the Buddha. Think, for instance, of Buddha Vajrasattva. This is the practice of a Buddha who is the perfect union of wisdom and compassion. He represents that phase of mind as it first moves into manifestation from the primordial level. The pristine connection between the primordial nature of mind and its transition into an activity phase is not separate from that basic nature.

End Desire

May 9, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series

Where does desire come from? It comes from the belief that self-nature is real. According to the Buddha, if you believe that you are a self, if you believe in self-nature as being real, as being truly existent, then there has to be desire, because in order to be a self or to have a self, you have to define a self. That’s how it is. If you believe in the nature of self, you have to have an underlying belief that self ends here and other begins there. You have to have some conceptualization in your mind about what the self is, because the idea of self cannot exist without some definition. Conceptual proliferation develops, and with that, desire.

Desires are not always fulfilled. There is always the contest between self and other, and from those contests the three root poisons of hatred, greed and ignorance occur. It is the presence of hatred, greed and ignorance in the mind that causes phenomena to appear as they do. If there were no hatred, greed and ignorance in the mind, there would be no cause for suffering and therefore we would not see the phenomena of war, hunger, old age, sickness and death in the world. There would be no cause. This is the understanding and commitment that you should think about and work with in your mind.

The One Unfailing Source

May 8, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

Every great lama has yearned with sincere intensity for the Precious Teacher. How is it that some people have that yearning and others do not? Some people seem shallow and prideful. Others seem blessed with spontaneous devotion and love. What accounts for the difference? You may not believe it, but the key is discipline. The person who holds to the goal of realizing the Guru’s mind has the discipline to renounce the perceptions of the five senses and to see only with the heart of hope. Not ordinary, dualistic hope, but hope born of trust and faith in the Root Teacher. That takes discipline.

You may think you know the nature of the Root Guru, whose job is somehow to teach you. You may think that the person sitting before you, the one you call “Teacher,” will give you great teachings. Yet you fail to realize that you must cultivate that knowledge with your own effort. You think that somehow, if you try to practice—even though you continually go through your mood swings, your battles in life, and so on—it will all work out in the end. That is a foolish assumption.

This path takes tremendous, relentless, sincere effort. But it’s not just how many prostrations you do or how many hours you put into practice. You must cultivate in yourself a profound yearning. You must think: “If these five senses, pleasantly seductive though they may be, can convince me that I am a separate human being who has a right to hate and who wants to live in such a way that I will be born in terrible places—if these five senses can lie to me so that I am tricked into planting seeds in my own mind for endless future suffering—then I must with all my heart cultivate a yearning to be free of them and to take refuge in the one unfailing source.”

What is that source? Is it a thing? A person? A substance? The one unfailing source is the Root Guru, who embodies freedom from all sensory data and from all beliefs that relate to a separate ego-self. When all considerations of self are gone—when you rely not on the false guru of your five senses, but on the absence of hatred, greed and ignorance—that is the one unfailing hope. It is not within the potential of that nature to hurt you. In the relative world, the world of duality, there is nothing but the potential to hurt you. Everything you touch, see, or feel is impermanent, seductive, and illusory. It contains all the potential for creating the causes of suffering and death. It contains the justification for hate, for saying cruel and unkind things, for being crass, gross, or stupid, for caring only about yourself.

There is only one source of unfailing refuge—the Root Guru, the true face. The Root Guru is the Dharmakaya itself. Why then must we view the flesh and blood teacher as the Root Guru, as the undefiled, unchanging nature? Through the vehicle of that Teacher, you are offered the Dharma, the unfailing method to attain realization of your true nature—the ultimate source of refuge. Thus, the Teacher must be understood as a cornucopia, a feast of all things that will bring about salvation from suffering.

There is another level of understanding. Suppose we say: “I am the same as my Root Teacher. To find that out, I only need to go on a magical journey of discovery.” No matter how we disguise it with beautiful words, the very pridefulness which causes that declaration keeps us from genuinely prostrating. It makes our hearts rigid and stiff. That pridefulness keeps us from bothering to feel deeply, from having true devotion. That pridefulness and ignorance can allow you to come into the presence of your Root Teacher and not even think of Guru Rinpoche, not even think of true nature at all. That very pridefulness is what keeps you believing in self. Actually, you believe in self as well as hope for the truth of its reality. This keeps you clinging to self as a source of refuge, believing that if you could be strong enough, or smart enough, or just discover something wonderful about yourself, it would suffice.

The antidote is to recognize, from the depth of your heart, your own nature as inseparable from the Root Guru and as the true source of refuge. Without that realization, you will always suffer. You will desperately attempt to inflate your ego, thinking that the bigger and more powerful you are, the more easily you can overcome suffering by strength alone. One day, however, you will discover that you have not understood the causes of suffering. Look around you. Look at the most beautiful people in the world. Look at the most lovable people, the strongest and smartest people, even the most virtuous. They will all experience death. There is no hope until you take sincere refuge in True Nature, until you are willing to confront your own five senses, saying: “You have lied to me again and again and again.”

Invocation

May 5, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Invocation mp3 Download

Lord Guru

Teach me to see your face

Rinpoche

Teach me to call your name

Come Come Come Come

Appear in Nirmanakaya form

Make your holy face

Appear

Be known to us now

Do not leave us comfortless

Do not abandon your vow

Bring us your nectar

For we thirst

We Thirst!

And we cry to you

Stainless, precious one

Without your blessing

We are helpless

Do not refuse

This voice

I offer my body, speech and mind

Take this body to enhance yor

Activity

Make of this speech a perfect

Voice

And in my mind you are

Enthroned

Upon the lotus in my heart

Use me

For the sake of all beings

That they might be free

Ah la la ho

For their sake

My children

Seed of Your Buddha Nature

May 4, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

When one begins to understand some of the ideas that are presented in Dharma, one realizes that the goal that we are engaged in “moving toward”, if you’ll forgive that bad choice of words, is actually Buddha Nature itself. We tend to consider that the path is like a thing that goes from here to there, like a movement toward, and it’s very hard not to conceptualize it in that way. But, in fact, when one practices Dharma, the ability to practice Dharma is actually based on the understanding of the innate Nature. If we did not have within us right now the seed of Enlightenment, if we did not have within us the potential to actualize ourselves as the Buddha, there would be no point of practice. The very basis for practice is that understanding.

This is what the Buddha himself taught – that all sentient beings have within them the seed of Buddha Nature, that that Nature is their true Nature, in fact. However, they have not awakened to that Nature and so, in order awaken to that Nature, one engages in the path. The path should not be considered a ‘thing’, a straight line that connects from here to there. The path should be understood as a method that one uses in order to awaken to that Nature which is already our Nature; which is complete, unchanging, and will never get any bigger or any smaller. One should understand that Dharma is actually an activity that is meant to awaken that potential. But the ultimate goal that one wishes for when one engages in Dharma is, of course, Enlightenment itself. Now, what is Enlightenment? One understands that Enlightenment is actually the awakening to the Primordial Wisdom Nature, the awakening to the Buddha nature.

The Buddha never said that he was different from anyone else. He said simply, “I am awake”. He is indicating that he has awakened to the fullness of his own Nature and is able to abide spontaneously in that awakened state without any interruption or impediment. So, from that perspective, the basis of practice, the basis of the path itself is exactly the same as the goal. They are indistinguishable from one another. The path that one uses in order to achieve the goal is also indistinguishable from the basis, which is the Buddha Nature, and is also indistinguishable from the goal, which is the Buddha Nature. So, these three things, the basis, the method and the goal are indistinguishable from one another.

For us, however, it does not appear to be so, simply because of the way our minds work, involved in discursive thought as they are. We distinguish between what is potential and movement. We distinguish between movement and the goal. But in truth, you cannot distinguish between these three. If the basis for practice is the same as the goal, then anything, in which you engage in order to achieve that awakening to your own Nature, must also be indistinguishable from your own Nature. The path, then, or the method, is not separate from the Buddha Nature.

Now, where we run into trouble is when we make our Dharma practice an outward movement that goes somewhere. When we do our practice, we project that there is going to be a certain result. That very subtle concept prevents the practice from doing all that it can do to remove obstacles from our own perception, because we cling to the idea of here-ness and there-ness, of such-ness and thus-ness, and in doing so, we cling to the idea of self. It’s very hard to understand that subtle difference, but that subtle difference is very important. If we did not view our Dharma practice as a subject, object, thing or as a linear movement in some way, we would more easily understand that the goal is the un-moveable, unchangeable, fully complete and spontaneously realized Nature itself, which is already present. The potential for the realization of that Nature would be much stronger in our practice, in terms of taking responsibility for our situation and utilizing our practice to its fullest capacity.

In order for us to consider our Dharma practice, or even the ability to listen to teachings, as a movement that ‘goes somewhere’– we have to be considering it in a very superficial way. But if the practice is understood as a natural and spontaneous manifestation, arising from the Buddha Nature that is our Nature, then the practice becomes less materialistic and more meaningful in a very profound way. In the same way, if we are in an ordinary environment and an ordinary teacher comes before us, we don’t respond as we would if the Buddha himself, with all the signs and marks, were sitting in front of us. If the Buddha appeared, we would respond with, “Whoa! Whoa! This is important! Something is happening here. The Buddha is here!” In truth, we should respond that same way to our own simple practice because that practice is indistinguishable from the Buddha Nature itself. The Buddha is here. But you see, the impact is different. Why the impact is different is in the way that we consider and the way we have our understanding about what we’re doing.

The Play of Emptiness

May 3, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

When we taste the nature of the dakini through our practice, through whatever realization we achieve, when we taste that nature, when we taste the purity of that event through being exposed to, in a natural way, our own poison, our own fixation, our own determination to continue to absorb and be absorbed in and to remain fixated in a certain kind of view, a view of clean and dirty, a view of this and that, a view of high and low, a view of here and there, we can eventually come around to seeing through that absorption.

To the degree that we understand that by stabilizing our mind, by remaining unattached to the distinction between dirty and clean and up and down and here and there and you and me, we can begin to view the play or movement of emptiness. However, we think very superficially, we think we will achieve enlightenment and that is what is going to happen and we think we will have some kind of blissful experience – I think we have the idea of evolution. We think that we are going to evolve into something quite different. That is the kind of idea that we have.

What we do not attempt and what we should attempt by meditating on the nature of the dakini and by utilizing this particular phenomena, this particular movement of the Buddha nature, is to understand that the point is to pierce the veil of our own confusion, to see through this mistaken belief that things continue, to see the primordial empty nature that is inherent in all display, to see that all phenomena is instantly complete, to hold to our nature, to practice that view.

Unfortunately, however, we insist on breaking samaya. We break the commitment. We hold so much more importance in our own value judgments, our own distinctions, our own understanding of the way things ought to be and the way they are and therefore we see what our minds are filled with. We see the appearance of this enlightened activity as being ordinary, having certain qualities. We brand it with mental qualities that are our own. We see physical, emotional qualities that we ourselves are hooked on and we do not taste the appearance of that nature. So, we miss the entire point.

Do It Because You MUST

April 29, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Bringing Virtue Into Life”

Here are some thoughts that we do not accomplish because initially they are uncomfortable. They are painful. We do not want to know this. We have this idea when we’re young, that by the time we get to be an adult we’re going to have all the answers. And in fact you do have all the answers, until you’re about 25. Before that you’re omnipotent you see, and then when you’re 25 you’re no longer omnipotent. Do you know why that is? Because you have a brain that has finally started to grow in your cranium. Before that it was only brain buds. So now that you’re about 25 you’re beginning to realize that you don’t have all the answers and the omniscience, the supreme omniscience that you were afflicted with earlier, is dissipating.

That happened to me too. When I was little I used to think when I grow up, I’m going to be completely comfortable. I thought when I have children I’m going to raise them just this way; and I will never do this and I will always do this. Who has had good luck with that I want to know? Have you ever heard yourself yelling at your kid and you find out you are your mother? You have turned into your mother for real! Well, that kind of thing has happened. Also, you grow up and you think, when I grow up I’m going to have all of the answers. When I grow up I’m going to be secure. When I grow up I’ll have financial things worked out. It’s all going to come together for me. When you’re young you think like that. And when you’re older you realize almost none of it is going to come together for you, almost none of it. Some, yeah. There are good things in life. There are good things in samsara, but you realize that it’s not what it seems to be.

As practitioners this is really what you have to take away with you. As a practitioner, you cannot fall into the trap that we as younger people fall into. You can’t stay there very long. And you that are younger, you need to create the habit of thinking about this: Samsara is a deluded experience. It’s like a narcotic. It fools you. It creates a way for you to look in the mirror at 45 with dyed hair and think “I’m not dead yet!” Instead of pinching your cheeks for a little blush, putting on your lipstick and bouncing out of the house like you did when you were 18 or 20, after 45 minutes with the makeup, you look at yourself, blink twice, hope that the eyelashes don’t stick together, and go “I’m not dead yet!” again. You can’t stay like that. You cannot keep yourself in that childlike, ridiculous idea. You must, at some point in your life, realize that life is going by very quickly and that you are going by with it, and there is not a moment to be wasted.

When it comes to who should practice and who should not practice, it is not for you to practice to impress your friends. It is not for you to practice because I want you to practice and it would please me. Certainly not. It is not for you to practice because you’ll be cheek by jowl with the other people who are practicing. It is for you to practice because this is the nature of your situation. You are involved in the cycle of death and rebirth. Life passes quickly and if you do not prepare for your next life, your next life will not be what you want it to be. There is a very good chance that you will end up with a lower rebirth or a rebirth of extreme suffering. So, when you think about why you should embrace spirituality, particularly when you think why you should embrace the path of Dharma, don’t do it for me. Don’t do it for the temple. Don’t do it because it’s cool. Do it because you must.

Light of Compassion

April 28, 2016 by Holly

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series

Somehow you have found yourself in this fortunate, amazing position where this feast of possibility is laid before you. How did you come to this point? How is it possible that you have this option? You must have done something right in the past, and I suggest that you now build on it. If you don’t cultivate the mind of extraordinary compassion and such a burning love that compassion is the most important force in your life, then the natural inclinations of a mind filled with desire will overcome you. This is Kaliyuga, the age of degeneration, and that’s how it is. You must practice and cultivate that mind of compassion, of love, so thoroughly that you are moved to the core by even the faint possibility that you might achieve liberation in order to benefit beings. You think of nothing else. You must cultivate that until you burn with it. Don’t be afraid of that kind of love.

In the West we are taught, “Be cool. Hey, I’m an intellectual, I don’t think like that. I’m kind of special.” That’s what we’re taught, that’s our value system. That is the same value system we will take to our graves, and only the selfishness of that kind of idea will survive, not the intelligence. There is one thing that will survive this life, and will create the karma for your next life. It is the purity of your mind and the degree of love that you have accomplished. This will be the determining factor for how you will return time and time again in a form that will benefit beings until someday there is no more suffering.