Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

To Be a Practitioner

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

If you realize that all sentient beings are suffering, and are then motivated to examine the other side of that law – that enlightenment is the cessation of suffering – and therefore commit yourself to attaining enlightenment in order to end the suffering of yourself and others, then you are a practitioner. Whether you call yourself a Buddhist or not, you are a practitioner.

If you realize the belief in self and in the ego configurations that surround self – the rigidity, the need for survival, the hardening of the mind – are the causes of suffering, and begin to eliminate them by living a compassionate life, purifying your clinging to ego, then whether you call yourself a Buddhist or not, you are a practitioner of the highest caliber.

As a practitioner, you should consider these things: the idea of compassion, of living selflessly, of living an extraordinary life solely to benefit beings, to end their suffering, to bring about a situation in which they can create the cause of happiness rather than the cause of non-virtue. If you can live an extraordinary life, not only are you purifying your mind – because that is the antidote for self-absorption, and self-absorption is the cause of suffering – but you are also a contributor to a very precious idea: the idea of a world, of all worlds, free of pain.

These things you can consider. You can consider them in accordance with Buddhist teaching, or you can consider them separate from Buddhist teaching, even though they are not. You can consider them from whatever angle you wish. But I hope from my heart that whoever you are, and whatever your game plan is, that you will consider these things to the extent that your mind will be softened, and that you can adopt the two ideas that are foundational in the Buddha’s path: renunciation and compassion.

Why We Die

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

Did you ever watch yourself when you were young? Did you see what you did? Do you watch young people now? Look at the teenagers you know. They are invariably right. They know everything. I knew everything at that age, too, so I understand. They know beyond everything. If there is more than everything, they know it. They have all the answers.

We are also like that. We are locked within a time-and-space grid. When we drop something, it falls, immediately. What makes it so immediate? If it were to hang in the air for ten years, then fall, invariably we would convince ourselves it’s never going to fall. But since it falls immediately, since when we stick our hands in the fire, it hurts immediately, we believe that. Old age, sickness and death we don’t believe. We sort of get it, but it’s in the back of our minds somewhere.

Why is it we don’t fully believe in cause and effect, even though we take into account the passage of time? It’s because we are trying to be happy, so we convince ourselves that cause and effect is not absolute. Why is that? How is it that we can understand that we create the causes of suffering in our mind, and yet still convince ourselves it will not bear the fruit of suffering? It’s because karma appears to ripen in different ways. Karma can ripen immediately. If I drop something and it falls, this is karma ripening. I dropped it; it fell. Karma can also ripen in a different way.

Because of your belief that self-nature is inherently real, you have created the delusion of a self. Self has a beginning and it has an end, and that is the cause for death. The cause for death is the belief in self-nature as being real; that is why people die. Yet you will convince yourself it is okay to believe in self-nature, that there is no problem as long as you can find a way to make self happy. You think it’s going to be okay. But you are still going to die. We are doing this to ourselves, and we don’t even realize it. The self is a finite thing. It had a beginning, a time when it was conceived. There was a time when the thought of self-nature as being inherently real first manifested. Since that is so, then it also must end. If there is a beginning, there is an end.

In the same way, we are constantly engaged in creating things that are the karmic causes of our own suffering, but we don’t make a connection. The reason we don’t make a connection is due to the other kind of karmic ripening, the one that you don’t see in this life. The karma that ripens after a long time, an intermediate time, or even a short time, are karmic ripenings that you actually do not see in this lifetime.

Here then is a problem. Here is one of the reasons why it becomes very difficult to realize the unchangeable truth that all sentient beings wish to be happy, and yet not realizing how to create the causes of happiness, create instead the causes of suffering.

Many of the things that we have suffered in this lifetime seem to have been put upon us in an innocent way. We were innocent. Why is someone born with a cleft palate? Why are some of us born with a crippling condition, some handicap? Why do some of us become ill or die when we have tried to live a good life, when we have done everything we can to be kind to other human beings and have never killed anyone? It is because many of the causes that we see in this lifetime have come from a time before.

© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Courage

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Make the point and let it roar

Soaring through the moment

Doing what was hard before

You don’t have to worry

Now you’re holding all the cards

Time and space are yours now

Stand up tall and give your heart

I’ll be here beside you

Doing all I can for you

Loving from inside you

You and I can see it through

You don’t have to worry

Now you’re holding all the cards

Time and space are yours now

Stand up tall and give your heart

 

Strike out from this moment

With the power in your hand

Filled with strength of purpose

Caring for your fellow man

Bright and shiny moment

When you finally decide

To make this life worth living

Love and strength you can provide

Wake up bright and happy

Change a life to gorgeous play

Ripe fruit of compassion

Offered in a sweet display

You don’t have to worry

Now you’re holding all the cards

Time and space are yours now

Stand up tall and give your heart

© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, April 20, 1992

Many are More Precious than One

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A Teaching from Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Three thousand years ago Lord Buddha introduced the idea of great compassion to an unknowing world. After his enlightenment he was asked to teach others the means to supreme realization. Although he was tempted to simply leave — knowing that almost no one would be interested in his teachings, and of those who were, few would try to follow them and fewer still would succeed — he nonetheless replied, “For those few, I will remain.”

Buddha is the exceptional teacher who teaches the development of great and selfless compassion as part of the technology of the path to enlightenment. But to develop such great love, it is first necessary to familiarize oneself with the nature of suffering and especially with its causes. Amidst the array of spiritual teachings, this perspective is unique because most people do not understand the reasons for suffering or how suffering appears in the world.

The Buddha taught us that human happiness through ownership, eating, drinking, gaining love, stature, approval, or even the happiness of engaging in pleasurable activities is at best temporary. These experiences do not prevent suffering because between these happy times we can experience times of distress.

Nor do happy times solve questions concerning the nature of suffering and why it arises. The Buddha taught that the happiness of enlightenment is not composed of impermanent things but occurs when one cuts out the sources of all unhappiness. Through understanding and meditation, one liberates the mind into true awareness, a state free of conditions and defilements. This pure awareness is a lasting state.

Ultimately, the attitude of care-taking or being responsible for the wellbeing of others, of caring for planet earth, its inhabitants and all the 3,000 myriads of universes described in Buddhist cosmology  is the true cause for ultimate and permanent happiness. Being responsible for all sentient beings is a spiritual technology the Buddha taught to be the supreme antidote to selfishness, compulsive desire, self absorption and all other symptoms of the ego.

When we remain selfish and neurotically fixated in the ego, we remain deeply unhappy. When we are in a state of profound generosity, having a relaxed mental attitude and pure motivation, we remain stable in a state of joy. Yet if we view caring for others only as a medicine, we may miss the beauty of it.

No sentient being is born with pure, unconditional, constant love. In the beginning, selflessness and generosity require discipline. Like all things, they must arise from a cause. One must break old habitual tendencies, and this requires discipline. Initially, one must understand the values of generosity and the pitfalls of selfishness. One cannot then rely on one’s feelings, because they are products of an ego distorted by the self-centered habits that produce unhappiness and disregard for others. It is necessary to understand the cause and effect relationship here.

Happiness does not just appear. Enlightenment does not just appear. Neither do unhappiness or suffering just appear. When one understands this apparently simple truth, it is possible to make generosity part of one’s activity in a true and lasting way, because one has a basis of understanding that will support and uphold the discipline necessary in the initial stages.

Ultimately, through persistence one can soar. There is a point at which a great leap takes place and one moves into an experience of effortlessness. This is because ultimately, in the pure state, compassion is part of one’s nature. We each, in fact, live in a world of our own making and have the choice of living selfishly, trying in a futile way to get happiness through gaining or having more phenomena (whether external or internal)  or we can live a life of generosity and responsibility, cognizant that there are many more sentient beings than just our selves.

Because their value is equal, many pieces of gold are worth more than a single coin. So it is with sentient beings. Many are more precious than one. Fortified with that awareness, one can live and act accordingly with simplicity, generosity and respect for life. The attitude of cherishing all sentient beings as though they were truly the same as you is a deeply moving and personal experience. It is a life changer. It is also the cause of happiness.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Like Milk with Water

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An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhism Differs from Other Religions by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

When we begin to practice the Buddha dharma and really engage in practice, we begin by practicing generation stage teaching.  And what that means is you learn to generate yourself as the deity.  You learn to dissolve your ordinary constituents.  Boom.  You just dissolve.  This is your visualization.  And then you give rise to yourself as a seed syllable, and then from the seed syllable, you become the deity.  Tara, Vajradhara, Manjushri.  Any of those.  You become that deity, and you give rise to Vajra pride.   It’s not like “Ha Ha.  I’m the deity and you’re not.”  It’s the realization of your nature and the nobility of that.  And you become that very deity, and you begin to develop the qualities of that deity by reciting the mantra and practicing the hand implements.   Eventually when you accomplish the deity, at that very moment you come to understand that you are not separate from that deity and that deity is your very nature.

As we move on to practice the Guru Yoga, we realize that the teacher on the throne that we revere and think has great wisdom and great bodhicitta, has special qualities.   When you really accomplish Guru Yoga, you mix your mindstream with the Guru’s mindstream like milk with water.  And they become so inseparable that in the end you realize that your own root guru is the very display of your mind.  How amazing!  That’s how deep this path is.   And to practice it superficially is crazy.   You can do that anywhere else.  You can be superficial anywhere you want to, but to come here and practice, you should practice deeply.

Please take to heart aspirational prayers, and developing the habit of making aspirational prayers.  Please start there right now, and give rise to the understanding that all are the same in our nature, and that we all wish to be happy.

The happiest people in the world are people who are happy in their own mind.  Those that have awakened and have realized, are filled with the streaming bliss of the bodhicitta.  There’s no unhappiness.   There’s no drama.   There’s no BS.  You see?  And that’s how we know we’re making it.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Walk the Talk

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An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhism Differs from Other Religions by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The most glorious thing about the Buddha Dharma is that you don’t wait for a blessing outside of you for permission or the grace to ascend to the heavens for no apparent reason.  That’s the great thing about Dharma.  It’s real.   In the Dharma you are given the tools that you need to change the circumstances of your life, and to change the condition of your consciousness as well.  And the way that that happens of course is through our practice.

The difference between our own religion, which is basically a non-theistic religion and other religions, is that other religions see a blessing from outside.  They wait for a redeemer who will make it okay no matter what their activity is.  For instance, in my family my stepfather was Catholic, and he was an alcoholic and would beat us mercilessly.  We were brutalized as children.  It was a terrible situation, but then we’d all tromp off to confession.  Free and clear by Sunday afternoon.   So, I don’t have a good feeling about that, because they were never required to change.  Even the parish priest knew that my mother was getting the stew beat out of her all the time, and he would recommend confession.

We Buddhists are not like that.  We believe and understand in the relationship between cause and effect.  You can’t murder a handful of people and then confess and accept Jesus as your savior and be okay.  We don’t believe that.  You can’t accept Buddha as your savior and be okay.  You can’t accept me as your savior and be okay.  You have to walk the talk.  You have to walk the path, and you have to practice.

Your conduct matters a great deal.  What’s in your mind matters even more.  And if as you practice your path your joy increases and it smoothes out for you, you know you’re getting somewhere.

In the Buddha Dharma we do not wait.  We understand that there are the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas, and we are taught that there was Shakyamuni Buddha, Vajrasattva, Amitabha, and Tara.  We’ve got all these different statues, and they are symbols of the Buddhas.   Do they actually exist?  Yes.   Can you pray to them?  Sure.  Are they separate from you?  No.   That’s the difference.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Extraordinary Technology

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An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhism Differs from Other Religions by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Let’s say that a practitioner has dedicated their lives to practicing everyday for the sake of sentient beings, for the happiness of sentient beings.  Maintaining their samaya or commitment practice very purely, practicing everyday for the sake of sentient beings.  That’s extraordinary compassion.  Even though you are doing it here on earth, the method for doing that did not come from the earth.  It came from the realization and the awakening of the Buddha.  If not for the Buddha’s awakening, the technology would not be here.  And so it’s extraordinary compassion.  And as we progress along the path, the first thing that we do is to practice ordinary and extraordinary compassion.  These are the two feet of the path.  This is what gives you the ability to go the distance.  If all you’re concerned about is yourself and your own delusions and illusions and your own BS, and really not out there for the sake of sentient beings or doing your practice every single day for the sake of sentient beings, then you’re not there yet.  And that’s why we call it practice.

Nobody comes here ready to fly.  Nobody.  If that were the case, you wouldn’t need to come here.  But you come here with a taste.   There must be some old habit in you, some karma.  Something that you’ve given rise to in the past that puts you here in this moment.  I beg you to take advantage of it.  Because in order to get to the point where you can sit at the feet of your guru, and listen to the precious Buddha dharma, and then go to New York and hear His Holiness teach the precious Buddha dharma, you must have made so many wishing prayers, and must have done so much virtuous conduct in the past.  And if your path goes smoothly, then you know that you’ve done it before.   And if you give rise to the Bodhicitta, then you are not a stranger to it.   And this is how we know where we’ve been, and what we were like simply by looking at ourselves.

If we’re poor, we didn’t give enough.   If we’re sick, we did not see to the welfare of others or caused them harm.   If we are mentally incapacitated, then we caused someone or many people mental suffering in the past.  Those that die young have either killed others young or caused others to die young.   So these are the things that we are looking for and these are the things that we can overcome by practicing the Buddha dharma.  It can be overcome.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Creating Happiness

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An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhism Differs from Other Religions by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

If all we want is happiness, how do we do it?  It’s a little, but there’s a real trick to it, but you can create happiness.  Here’s how it’s done.  First of all, all sentient beings are equal.   And in our nature, we are not only the same, we are one.  From the point of view of Buddhahood, if the Buddha were to look out at everyone, and look from the mind of awakening, in the state of enlightenment, it would not be possible to see where one of us ends, and the other begins, because our true nature is pure, pristine, primordial light.  It’s not visible light in the way that we understand light, because when you see light then you are standing away from it.  You would call it undifferentiated, nonconceptual illumination – radiance.  That is our nature.  So when we defile that nature in our relationships with others, and cause harm to others, we suffer.  If we could do the opposite, and try to benefit others, we would create happiness.

It doesn’t seem to be the truth because we think, “Gimme, gimme, gimme.”  This is what America has taught us.  This is what our culture says to us.  “Gimme a car.  I’ll be happy.  Give me a boyfriend, I’ll be happy.  Give me another boyfriend, I’ll be twice as happy.”  That’s what we’re taught. We’re taught that gimme, gimme, gimme is the way to happiness.  It’s kind of the modern mantra, isn’t it?  “Gimme, gimme, gimme hung.”  We try very hard, and it doesn’t work that way.

What we find out is that in our oneness, we must uphold one another.   We must not only practice kindness towards one another, but practice recognition.  So, let’s say in my desire to be happy, I decide the only thing that’s going to work for me is a new car.  In my materialistic American psyche that’s what I’ve decided.  I saw this new car on TV, and I’ve got to have it.   Whatever I do to get money for that car, even if it’s honest, even if I go to my credit union, and borrow, make my payments,  and I do everything right, it’s ordinary.  It’s just regular.  It’s the stuff that you move around when you move an apple from here to there.  It’s nothing but ordinary, worldly gobbledygook.

So you go to your credit union, and you get the dollars, and you get the car, and then what happens?  You’re happy for a little while, and then the car gets old.  The baby throws up in it.   The dog shits in it.  You spill milk in it.  You drive it, and it gets old, or you smash it up.  Or now that you’ve bought it and gone to the credit union and cleaned all your money out, you don’t have money for gas!  This is not the way to create happiness.  Even though the car might cheer you up for a little while, it is not going to change your life.  It is not going to do what you hope it’s going to do.  And it’s the same with the big ticket items – the house.  And the non-buyable items like relationships, and marriages, and boyfriends, and girlfriends and all that stuff.  All are like band aids in samsara – quick fixes.  When you’re unhappy and you grab for something like that, your intuition tells you you’re going to feel better, but the real solution is counterintuitive.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Ordinary or Extraordinary?

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An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhism Differs from Other Religions by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

In the Buddha Dharma there are mainly two kinds of compassion.   There is ordinary compassion, and there is extraordinary or sublime compassion, also called ordinary bodhicitta or sublime bodhicitta.   Bodhicitta is the great display of compassion, which is our own primordial nature.   Ordinary bodhicitta is the caring for others through the means that we can find on this earth.  In other words, caring for others through ordinary means.  Like for instance, if you see somebody that’s hungry and you give them a sandwich.  That’s compassionate, but it’s ordinary compassion because you know you didn’t get the sandwich from the sublime realms.  You got it from a kitchen or you bought it somewhere.  It’s ordinary stuff that went into it – baloney or salami or peanut butter and jelly. It’s ordinary even if you make 150 sandwiches and you pass them out to the hungry homeless.  That’s a real good day, but still ordinary compassion because it’s easily attainable.

There are many hungry people now in Burma.  No matter what the junta says, the people are not eating, and they are sick and dying.  Let’s say somehow we magically can put together everything they need, and just bust through the blockades and give it to the people.  Let’s say we airdrop everything they need, and the whole place is satisfied. The people have tents or homes or something to live in.  They have the means to get food.  They have food.  They have bedding; they have everything because of this magnificent airdrop that you made.  Let’s say that’s possible.  That would take an awful lot of money, but still in all it’s ordinary human compassion.  We never see ordinary humans doing that very much, and that goes to show you the pickle we’re in.  But it’s still ordinary human compassion.

Now, what is supreme or extraordinary compassion?  That is compassionate activity that concerns and offers that which is not of this world.  The great bodhisattvas that return again and again are considered to demonstrate the great bodhicitta, because the nature of the bodhisattva is such that once they attain certain bhumis, which are levels of realization, then at that time they can step into enlightenment or step into nirvana and attain the rainbow body at any moment.  But they hold back because they wish to benefit sentient beings.  They look at the suffering of sentient beings.  They see this terrible suffering and it moves them, and they return to earth to show them the way out of that suffering.  That is considered extraordinary compassion.  So then translating, teaching, creating the books of Dharma, offering these ancient teachings in a modern world so that modern people can continue to benefit from something that would ordinarily be lost to them, that is considered extraordinary compassion.

When I held my little new born son in my arms, I thought, “I would do anything for you.  I will care for you. I will keep you warm.  I will give you my milk, and when you’re done with that, I will bake pies.  I’ll do anything for you.”  And then I realized I was lying to him, because if my son were to get gravely ill, I would have no power to help him.  Or if my son were to die, even though I told him I would never abandon him, I would not be able to follow him into the next rebirth.  I would not be able to see to his welfare.  So, there’s my baby in my arms, and I have lied to him.

That was one of the main things that made me practice really hard when I was young.  I made it my business to learn how to provide the Phowa, which is the transference of consciousness from one level to the next, or from one life to the next rebirth.  I made myself learn to do that so that I could help people, and dogs, and cats, and anybody in the dying process, and so I could even follow my own child into the next life, and make sure that his rebirth is good.  I’ve attained that goal.  And I’m very happy for it.  Do you see the difference there?  A mother’s love is so powerful, so extraordinary.  You would feed your child your own body if they were hungry.   And you look in the eyes of your child and you think, “Never has there been love like this.  I would do anything for you.”  But until that compassion applies to all sentient beings, and we have the skills through our own realization, we are lying.   And we are not able to do very much for those we love.  That is the one of the differences between ordinary and supreme bodhicitta.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Like a Seesaw

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An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhism Differs from Other Religions by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

We tend to do things that give us a rush, but it doesn’t make us happy.  For instance, let’s say we decide to drink some alcohol, and we decide to do it a lot, and we decide to get loaded every weekend, and we think, “Boy, you know that gives me something to look forward to because all week long I can be a good person, and then on the weekend I can get loaded, and then I’ll be happy.”  Of course, it doesn’t happen.  Generally, what happens is your body gets sicker.  You get dependent on alcohol in order to feel anything.  And you know eventually the mind just churns in samsara and no new habits or no new understandings or anything that will actually make you happy occurs.  We just get drunk.   And then we sober up on Monday.  And that’s it.  That’s all that happens.  But we keep thinking that if we do it every weekend, and if we do it better every weekend, then eventually one weekend it’s really going to make us happy, and it’s going to last.  And of course, that’s foolish because it never works.  There’s something about human consciousness that makes it difficult for us to learn from experience.  It’s like banging into the wall constantly.  And we go on with behavior that actually makes our situation worse rather than easing it or making us happy or making it better in any way.

For instance, let’s say you really feel that you would be happy if you had more money.  I can’t say that I haven’t thought that.  And I’m sure if I’ve thought that, pretty much everybody has thought it at least once.  And so we think, “Wow, if I had some money, I could do some things, and I would be happier.  I’d really like to go on vacation this summer, and there’s no money to do it with so wouldn’t I be happy if I could go on vacation.”  It’s that kind of thinking.  Let’s say that you put a lot of energy into getting this money.   Let’s say in fact that you put so much energy into it that you’re not quite kosher about it.  You’re not quite above board.  Let’s say you lie a little.  Somehow that brings you a little money.  Let’s say you cheat a little.  Somehow that brings you a little money.  Let’s say you steal a little bit.  Somehow that brings you a little bit of money.  You may get the money.  You may go to jail too.  You may get the money and you may go on vacation, but guess what?   You have set yourself up for more suffering than you could possibly imagine, because even if the vacation goes well, the moment that you took from others, and were dishonest and acted selfishly, at that very instant when you gave rise to a negative cause, the result was also born.  Did you know that?  We think we get away with it until we get caught.  And it’s not true.  The moment we create a nonvirtuous cause, the result is born – at the same moment.

In our lives it seems different because it seems like time is linear.  And it seems like you were really nonvirtuous on Thursday but by Saturday it is still looking good for you.  So you think, “I got away with it.”  No, it doesn’t work that way because you gave rise to the cause, so the result is already there.  Just because it didn’t ripen on Saturday means nothing.   It will happen.  You will have karma with the person that you were dishonest with or that you stole from or that you harmed in some way, and that person will harm you in the future, whether they want to or not, it will happen, because karma is exacting.   It’s cause and effect.

If you can understand how a seesaw works, you can understand how karma works.  If you can understand how you could drop a rock on one side of the pond and feel the vibration on another side of the pond, then you understand how karma works.  Although we can’t see it manifesting in front of our eyes, that’s our great loss because we still think we get away with it.  And it’s simply not true.  Let’s say we go ahead and steal, we go on vacation, and we think it all works out, and then six months later, something dastardly happens to us.   And maybe it reminds you a little bit of the situation in which you were not nice to somebody, and maybe it doesn’t.  If you do catch the connection, bully for you.  You’ve learned something and that’s excellent, but if you don’t catch the connection, and most of us don’t, then it’s unfortunate.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

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