Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

What We All Want

December 11, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

When we study Buddhism, the first thing we come to understand is the equality of all that lives. This is a direct teaching from none other than Shakyamuni Buddha himself. He taught that all beings are essentially equal in their nature and that they all have the same exact desires that we have. We want to be happy. We strive for happiness in our own way everyday. We go here and go there to be happy. We rest to be happy. We wake up to be happy. We have our weekends to be happy. We hope the weekdays will be happy. It’s something that’s a theme in us and whether we consciously realize that we are striving for happiness or not, it is an underlying fuel that runs the machine. And when we are not happy, we are filled with desire. And when we are not happy, we are suffering.

The Buddha taught us that each and every sentient being – humans, animals, and even nonphysical beings mainly wish to be happy in the simple way that we do. I watch MSNBC news sometimes, and I watch Chris Matthews and Keith Oberman. And Chris Matthews always says in one of his commercials, “This is something uniquely American. This is something that really shows us who we are.” We are Americans, because in America there is the hope that this day is going to be the best day. And that this is going to be our favorite day, and that we are going to be really happy today. And so we wake up in America with that hope because we have the freedom to gain that happiness. We’re not oppressed or starving or homeless or something where there is no real potential for true happiness, comfort, or ease. I disagree with Chris Matthews even though I am a fan. I don’t think that only in America do we wake up with that thought. Maybe in America it seems more attainable. But the truth of the matter is, no matter where we are, what diseases we suffer from, what poverty or hunger or disability we endure, or what oppression or warlike conditions, every single person has the wish for the freedom to be happy, and wishes for happiness.

When we realize that all sentient beings are exactly the same in that way, an understanding comes up in our minds. It is a sense of the equality of all that lives. Perhaps it is a sense of budding compassion or understanding. That’s the goal anyway.

So, how does that work? Sometimes we hear about really terrible situations, and really terrible people, such as a serial killer who has murdered like Jeffrey Dahmer. Have you ever heard about him? He was a serial killer that used to cannibalize people, and live with their dead bodies, and stuff like that. Now, of course our understanding of that is that the man was extremely sick. We can understand that, but do we understand that as strange and abhorrent and bizarre, and as ghastly his behavior was, he was striving to be happy? But the confusion, the delusion in his mind was so thick, that in order to be happy, he had to completely dominate another life form. Yet underlying that, even while killing, maiming and torturing people, he was striving to be happy. That’s a bizarre thought, but it helps us to understand a little bit about the nature of suffering sentient beings.

Then we think about animals. For those of you that don’t know, I just adore animals. I feel very close to them, and I have a bunch. They are my family. Animals suffer too, and I have come to understand through my own experience, not just from the teachings, that animals also strive every day to be happy. I see my dogs move from a hot place to a cool place, from a cool place to a warm place, and it’s about wanting to feel comfortable, to be happy. Whenever you buy them a new toy or a new treat, they are gung-ho on it because they want to be happy. I’ve seen for myself that desire for happiness in humans and in animals. And so I absolutely and totally understand that what the Buddha has said is true. While we are striving to be happy, we have absolutely no understanding as to how to go about it. And therein lies the rub, as they say. Therein lies the problem.

Practical Bodhicitta

December 8, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

All of our suffering is brought about because we have desire in our mindstreams. Having desire, we have attachment and aversion, hope and fear. Examine your own thoughts. Every one of them is either a thought of hope or a thought of fear. There isn’t one that doesn’t have as an underlying cause of hope or fear, attraction or aversion. Every one. That is the way the mind of duality works. So all of the experiences that we have, according to the Buddha, are caused by the karma of desire. Making wishing prayers to return in a form in which you can benefit beings purifies the mind of desire. You will find that desire rules your mind less and less. Compassion is the great stabilizer of the mind.

Never stop cultivating aspirational Bodhicitta. While you are practicing aspirational Bodhicitta your mind becomes firm and stabilized. You are so on fire that you need to practice, in the same way that because you are determined to live, you always remember to breathe. With that intensity, you should be absolutely determined to accomplish compassion and benefit all beings. You always remember to practice and be mindful. Then you begin to practice practical Bodhicitta.

Practical Bodhicitta has two divisions. It has a lesser and greater division, or personal and a transpersonal division. Compassion on the personal level is what we call ordinary human kindness. It is invaluable. There is never a time in your life that you should not practice ordinary human kindness. I am sometimes dismayed at people who have a high-fallutin’ idea about compassion and how to practice the Vajrayana path, and they know how to do the proper instrumentation and they can chant and they can do all these wonderful things. But they aren’t kind to one another. How you can think of yourself as a real practitioner and not even be nice to the person next to you? How can you be arrogant?

Ordinary human kindness must be constantly practiced. If you know of someone who is hungry, you should do your best to feed them. If a starving child were in front of you, wouldn’t you feed him or her? If someone that you loved really was lonely, wouldn’t you try to help them? Of course, these are ordinary human kindnesses. We’re not even perfect in that, are we? I mean, we let ourselves and our families down. We let everybody down on a regular basis. Sometimes ordinary human kindness is impossible to achieve.

Ordinary human kindness is not lesser in its fabric or nature, but it touches less people. For instance, let’s say you needed a friend. If I were to stay with you for some period of time, we would talk and we would share. Maybe I would teach you to meditate, if I were to discover that you’re the kind of person that would really respond to that. But if I don’t do that, maybe I’ll have the time to teach a large group of people. Essentially I might be able to benefit many people as opposed to benefiting one person, even though you are very important and precious to me. Yet even teaching a larger group of people is actually an intermediate level of practice. There are only so many people that can fit in this room and can be taught.

What is the highest level of compassion? What is the highest level of Bodhicitta? You have to go back to the Buddha’s teaching to figure this one out. The Buddha says that all sentient beings are suffering and that there is an end to suffering and that the end to suffering is enlightenment. That’s the only true end to suffering. If you fed every one that’s hungry everyday and provided them each with a companion so that they’re never lonely, gave them nice clothes, they still will experience old age, sickness and death. There’s nothing you can do about that. And you have no control over how they will be reborn in their next incarnation. They could come back in a form in which they still suffer. The only end to suffering is to eradicate the cause of suffering from the mindstream.

The root cause of all suffering is the belief in self-nature as being inherently real. It’s the mother of all-pervasive desire in the mindstream. The children are hatred, greed and ignorance. The mind of duality causes us to act in certain ways that create the karma so that our lives manifest in certain ways. If we suffer from hunger or old age or sickness or death, whatever it is that we suffer from, the root cause for those sufferings is the belief that self-nature is inherently real. How can you possibly uproot all of that from your mindstream? How can you rid the very seed of suffering from your mindstream? According to the Buddha, that is to achieve enlightenment. To help sentient beings remove these causes from their mindstreams, we must ourselves first achieve enlightenment. The purpose of self, which is to achieve enlightenment, is the same as the purpose of other, which is to achieve enlightenment. They are the same, in the same way that we are non-dual, these purposes are non-dual.

To What Do You Aspire?

December 6, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

In the Vajrayana tradition one contemplates very deeply on certain thoughts before you ever go on to any deeper practice, and these thoughts are called the ‘Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind.’ The idea is that your mind becomes turned in such a way that your intention to practice is firm, like a rock. If you were wishy-washy about why you should practice meditation, your meditation will be wishy-washy. There’s no doubt about it. If you were convinced that your job could bring you more eternal and natural happiness than enlightenment, you would practice your job with greater fervor than you would practice enlightenment. Therefore you try to turn your mind so that it has a firm foundation, hard as a rock, upon which you can build your practice.

It’s that way with aspirational Bodhicitta. You have to turn your mind in such a way that you understand the value of compassion and you have to actually ignite your mind. You have to set it on fire, and that fire has to be stronger and hotter and fiercer than any other feeling or idea that you have. It has to burn so strongly that you can’t put it out.

In order to practice aspirational Bodhicitta, you must first of all look around you with courage. Because we Americans, even New Age Americans, don’t like to look around and see that others are suffering. We hate to think about that. We think somehow it’s bad to think like that. According to the Buddha, it isn’t bad to think like that. In fact, you must think like that in order to go on to the next level of practice. You must look around you and be honest and be courageous. If you don’t see suffering in your life, if you don’t know that the people around you are lonely or getting old or getting sick, that they live with worry and with fear, then what you need to do is go to the library and check out books about other cultures and other forms of life, and see what the rest of the world is like. Have you ever seen pictures of Calcutta, India? Have you ever seen pictures of Bangladesh? Have you ever seen pictures of Africa? If you don’t believe that suffering exists in the world, you’ll see it there. Have you ever studied the lives of people who continually do non-virtuous activity? Even though they might look like they’re tough and in control, they are deeply suffering. It behooves you to be courageous enough to examine that. You should look at other life forms. You should look at animals. You should look and see how oxen are treated in India. I speak of India a lot, not because it’s a bad place, but because I’ve been there, and I was shocked. I had no idea how sheltered Americans are from suffering. I had no idea until I saw lepers in the street with no limbs and with open sores.

Having studied these things, you will come to understand that there is suffering in the world. You should cultivate in your heart and mind a feeling of great compassion. You shouldn’t stop until you’ve come to the point that you are on fire and you cannot bear that they are suffering so much. The Buddha says that we have had so many incarnations in so many different forms that every being you see, every one, has been your mother or your father. Whether you believe that or not, it’s a great way to think. Because you look at other beings and see how they are suffering helplessly, with no way to get out of it. And that they, at one time, had given you birth. In that way, you can come to love them in a way that you can practice for them.

You should allow yourself to become so filled with the urgency to practice loving that your heart is on fire and there’s no other subject that interests you as much. Even if it’s uncomfortable; we Americans think we should never be uncomfortable. Sometimes discomfort is very useful. Be uncomfortable and let yourself ache with the need to practice Bodhicitta. Cultivate in yourself that urgency and that determination. You might get to the point where you feel something, and you feel sort of sorry for all sentient beings. You might think, “Okay, now I’ve got it. I’ll go on to the next step.” No, you haven’t got it. You should cultivate compassion from this moment until you reach supreme enlightenment.

Unless they are supremely enlightened no one is born with the perfect mind of compassion. I, and everyone I teach and everyone I know, including my teachers, practice aspirational Bodhicitta everyday, reminding ourselves that all sentient beings suffer unbearably and that we find it unbearable to see. You should continue to cultivate compassion every moment of your life. It will begin to burn in your heart. It’s like love. It’s beautiful. You won’t want ever to be without that divine fire in your heart. It will warm you as no other love can. It will stabilize your mind as no other practice can.

Walk In Recognition

November 25, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

Practice deeply and mindfully every minute of your life. I’m asking you, I’m pleading with you: don’t practice like a robot. If you can only start with just moments of Recognition throughout the day, start there. Even one. It will increase, I promise you. It’s like building muscle. What a noble and honorable way to live. How amazing! Rather than just clinging to our egos, constantly defining them, and reacting to everything else, practicing some sort of profound Recognition, some sense of the sacred — I mean, is it a real choice? You can see that one life is so much more precious than the other, so much more meaningful, so much more profound, so much more useful for sentient beings.

I hope that you will, in your practice, begin to institute a way to be mindful, not only when you’re sitting down. Sometimes we’re not even mindful when we’re doing our sit-down practice. But to not only be mindful and stretching for that sense of Recognition when we do our practice by carefully, nicely accomplishing the visualization and really discovering its meaning, but also in our lives, to Recognize the nature of appearances, to Recognize that everything is the face of the guru, everything is an opportunity to practice – perhaps that’s a little deeper than walking around saying “Everything is beautiful, everything is love and light.” I hope that you will practice in that way.

I invite you to go deeper and deeper every moment. As a practitioner, every moment that you live with this consciousness, with these precious Dharma teachings in your hands, each moment is like a gift. Each moment is like a Christmas present. Most of us have them, and we just squirrel them away. We just take our moments, we move through linear time collecting moments. But as a practitioner, you can open that package. Each and every gift has Guru Rinpoche’s face in it. Each moment as a practitioner has the capacity in it, the ability and the responsibility, to move into a state of recognition, to awaken.

When you find that you’re thinking, “Oh, some of these monks and some of these nuns aren’t so good,” and, “Now I’m really pissed off at my teacher because she moved to Sedona and then not only that, but it’s my week to clean the bathroom” — when you think things like that and you have these ideas about how it should be and you’re judging this and feeling bad about that, what are you doing? You’re practicing the mandala of self-absorption. You’re putting that ego right in center stage. How amazing instead to turn it around and, should you see that you have some reaction, to question your perception. Question the depth of your practice. That’s where you have potency.

That’s what makes this practice of Buddhism so amazing: the ball is in your court, the practice is in your hands. You’re not waiting for salvation; you’re learning to Recognize it. What’s so potent and so powerful about understanding that is that no one can take that away from you. There is no power that can take Recognition away from you, no power that can take the face of the guru away from you.

I hope you will include this in your practice. I hope you will walk a sacred life. Whatever it takes to remind you, walk a sacred life. Walk in Recognition, not in ignorance. When you use these practices, use them throughout all of your experience.

Aspirational Bodhicitta

November 24, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:

One very important step on entering the path is to make aspirational prayers. It is the beginning of right focus and view. This habit is the very underpinning of one’s spiritual journey. Aspirational prayers are also a way to train the mind, based on altruism, to give birth to the great Bodhicitta in one’s mind.

For instance, one might pray “as I open this door may all pass through the door of liberation”

Or if eating delicious food one prays “as I receive nourishment may all sentient beings be fed by DHARMA”. This trains the mind to be less self absorbed and more likely to put the welfare of others before one’s own, to see one’s life as a vehicle by which to serve. To AWAKEN from the death-like sleep of ordinary view. For some kindness is not a natural habit. This is the life, the time to make it so!

If you can read the word Bodhicitta then you have the karma and power to accomplish it, and should NOT hesitate to practice! Life is quick, short and we must grab the opportunity while we may to make ourselves and our world BETTER. In human physical realm we all suffer from old age sickness, and death. These are inescapable! So we must use this time to prepare for our rebirth.

Kindness will bring happiness. Generosity will bring wealth in our future time. Keeping vows purely will make a beautiful body and Form. Pure thought will bring a clear balanced mind. As we make aspirational prayers we are beginning all that. To whom do we pray? Not to a conceptual god, old man on a throne. But to the 3 jewels, Lama, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, which are the very display of one’s own pristine primordial nature. This is our own true face.

So one is in a sense purifying one’s own perception in order to wake UP as lord Buddha is awake. Selfishness, dullness, anger, cruelty are ALL causes for a low rebirth. One must build pure view by examining the condition of other sentient beings to understand. They are the same in their nature: separated only buy habitual tendency; Karma. All suffer. All wish to be happy. All strive as you do. With very little result until they train their minds. We must apply method, which is stated clearly in the 8-fold path as Buddha taught. And I have also,as I follow his teaching.

“As I offer these humble words, may they bring benefit to all beings. May all who suffer find the WAY!” This is my prayer. And after I teach all I know, may I have the honor to see ALL cross this ocean of suffering; to be last in order to guide others to the Ship to Liberation! For their sake, my children. OM AH HUNG BENZAR GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG Sarwa mangalam!

Thank you for offering your attention, and allowing me to speak the precious lessons taught by Buddhas and Bodhisattvas through the ages.

By this merit may the sick be healed, may the hungry be fed, may cruelty and hatred end, may confused minds be mended and may there be PEACE!

Gratitude and Guru Yoga

November 23, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

Another aspect of constant mindfulness – it’s sort of like hand-in-glove with offering – is gratitude. When you think about the appearance of all phenomena, like beautiful flowers, beautiful trees, all of our beautiful stuff, suppose you were able to develop the habit of thinking like this: “How great must be the Buddha nature, that this display of the Buddha nature is so beautiful,” with gratefulness. It’s not like ‘thank-you-God-for-everything.’ It’s not like that. It’s a deep response, joyfulness, the Recognition to see that the nature that is our deepest, most profound nature, the nature that is all-pervasive, the nature that is our Buddha nature is actually inherent in all appearances. To acknowledge that, to move into any kind of Recognition of that is so amazing. To think that we are somehow connected. How amazing!

A sense of wonder that encourages you, not just to see and react in a dull and stupid way, but to perceive more deeply. By doing that, we develop the habit of letting the mind be more profound, letting the mind reach its depth, and consequently, one’s practice becomes so much more profound and our level of Recognition becomes so much more deepened. This sense of gratitude ultimately, as we begin to practice, gives rise to an awareness of the emptiness of all phenomena and the inherent nature that is the heart of all phenomena.

As we begin to think like that, every time we take beauty into our eyes and have the opportunity to offer that beauty, perhaps we can say, “That is Guru Rinpoche’s. This is Guru Rinpoche speaking to me. I see this beauty and now I have, because of that, the opportunity to offer this beauty to the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas for the liberation and the salvation of all sentient beings.” If you have a marvelous personal experience and remember to offer the joy of that experience for the sake of sentient beings, or to the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas, to be able to do that, in that moment, you are with Guru Rinpoche. Guru Rinpoche is speaking to you.

If we learn to Recognize the intrinsic nature of phenomena, isn’t that like learning to see the face of the guru? What’s important about this is the power that we have to practice this way. In ordinary situations, if you love somebody, they can be taken away from you. They themselves can walk away from you. You could lose them. But in this way of thinking, this kind of practice of mindfulness, no one can ever take the appearance of Guru Rinpoche away from you. No one can ever take from you, nothing on this earth has the power to hide from you, to keep from you, the face of the guru. So if you’re able to look at your environment, and think, “Oh, this is so beautiful, such a beautiful place,” and you’re able to really offer it and feel that blissfulness of just letting go and surrendering all the beauty that you see to the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas, praying fervently that somehow that virtue will be used to benefit beings, praying that all of that virtue will go to nourish sentient beings, at that moment, you are in the very arms of the guru. You are not separate from the guru.

In ordinary relationships, someone can take that away from you. Samsara has that power, and there’s not a thing you can do about it. How amazing to distinguish between that and the extraordinary relationship that is brought about through mindfulness and Recognition: this one relationship that nobody on this earth, even Guru Rinpoche himself, could take away from you, not that he’d want to. We have this extraordinary opportunity.

Regarding recognition and mindfulness in our Guru Yoga, remember how I’ve taught you that ultimately the practice of Guru Yoga helps us to recognize our own nature, to recognize our primordial wisdom nature as being inseparable from the teacher? How amazing to use this practice of Recognition in such a way as to expedite all of that and make it so much more profound and so much more meaningful instead of reacting constantly as we habitually do. How amazing if even once, twice, three times in one day, in one week, we can practice that Recognition and remove ourselves from that neurotic scenario, using the appearance of phenomena and our reaction to it as a way to see the face of the guru. How amazing!

Watch It

November 19, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

You’ve heard this so many times in Buddhism: watch your mind. That is an indication to give rise to a state of recognition, the ability to discriminate the nature of phenomena. When we begin to practice in such a way that we can get a little spaciousness in between the assumption of self-nature as inherently real and the reaction to the tree, there is a natural pause that develops. It’s a very small pause, but as you continue to practice, it will grow. That moment of spaciousness will grow. Then you are empowered to do something that you couldn’t do any other way, and that is to get ready to start dealing with your emotions and seeing them for the empty phenomena they actually are.

You know, we have all kinds of techniques for dealing with our emotions. We take Prozac, we go to therapy, we drink – self-medication – we suppress our emotions. Some of us are just champs at that. We repress our emotions, or we divert them. We divert them into something else entirely, and then we’re completely crazy. There are all kinds of different ways to deal with our emotions, but one way to deal with your emotions, if you’re really going to practice this path and you’re really going to treasure this idea of recognition and treasure this idea of practicing mindfulness, you’ve got to watch the mind. You have to watch; you have to perceive the nature of experience, perceive the nature of appearance, perceive the nature of phenomena.

Instead of suppressing emotion, diverting emotion, glossing over emotion, the thing to do here is to practice when we are very relaxed so that when we are in a highly emotional state we can begin to insert that same wedge, that same bit of spaciousness. It’s not that you judge yourself harshly and say, “God, I’m just such a terrible person. I’m just so angry all the time. I hate that about myself!” I actually have a student that does that to herself. “I just hate that about myself!” Well, that’s a solution, isn’t it? “I just hate that about myself.” Instead of doing that, you can simply observe. Observe like a mind that is calm like a lake. You’re observing. That’s all you’re doing. You don’t need to do anything else. Watch yourself in the equation. Watch yourself clinging to the idea of self-nature as being inherently real. Watch yourself assuming that everything else is out there, and watch yourself react to, with hope, fear or neutrality, everything. Watch yourself also go into that emotional state which is really only the elaboration of that original equation. That’s all it is. It’s just an elaboration of the original equation. We think our emotions are us; they’re so precious because we areour feelings, and that’s what makes us unique. That is bull hockey. I don’t know how better to say that.

Instead we have to begin to realize what these emotions are. They are just the continuation or elaboration of that original equation: ego-clinging reactiveness, that equation is simply a more elaborate form. In order to insert the spaciousness that is required, what we have to do is find a way to observe. Even when you’re getting ready to kick the dog and throw the kid through the wall, technically speaking it’s very, very hard when you’re in that state to do much about it. Once you’re there, just wait for it to go away. That’s all you can do. Once you’re there, it’s very difficult, but even if in that aroused, inflamed state we are able to observe ourselves, that is the unique capacity of human beings. Won’t you use it? It’s what distinguishes you from the rest. If there’s anything that makes you special, that’s it: the ability to put that spacious moment in there through observing the reaction. We can just say, “That’s just like me. Yeah, that’s just like me. I do that.” And then maybe questioning oneself later on and understanding, “Well, I do that because I’m protecting my turf; I’m protecting my space; I’m not wanting to change anything; I’m wanting to be powerful and right, so I need to put everybody else down.”

Whatever it is, simply observe, just observe, and you’ll find out that if you do that as consistently, deliberately, honestly, truly and deeply as you can, that after a while – and it doesn’t come immediately, so please don’t look for immediate results necessarily – there will be a spacious moment. It might be just a little moment between you and your reaction, but eventually in your practice, by practicing Dharma, by using generation and completion stage methods, you will be able to recognize. In that spaciousness, you can begin to recognize the emptiness of both the ego and that which affects it. But it takes a combination of things. It takes the ability to practice Dharma the way that our teachers teach us in generating oneself as the deity and practicing completion stage practice, but it also takes this deliberate, walking, waking mindfulness. This is part of the path.

Another Glass of Samsara?

November 18, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

Do you ever sense that there is a thickness in your mind, almost like pudding? We can’t break through it. It’s like we go through these sleepwalking motions, and you lose days, hours, years. You just lose time, and that thickness is because we already decided, way back somewhere else, that one of the goals in life was to get such-and-such, and in order to get such-and-such, we have to act thus-and-so. Once we decide that, we never think about it again, not really. We never stop to reevaluate. That is the unique thing about our brains. It’s something we really need to understand. Once you come to a conclusion and you conceptualize something, that’s it. You act by rote afterwards. You have to break through that.

In order to really give rise to true compassion, one has to recognize the faults of cyclic existence, and be in a state of recognition. In order to awaken to a state of recognition, to begin that process of discrimination, you have to rouse your mind from going through these preset patterns which are based on deluded ideas that you were given somewhere early on that you’ve never bothered to change. If you don’t change those, you will still try to attain the same type of goals, but you’ll be wearing Dharma clothes and doing Dharma activities when you do it. If you got the message that you have to be a star, be powerful, be smarter, or be some kind of special person, then when you practice Dharma, if you don’t go back and reevaluate that in a mindful and discriminating way, you will simply do the same thing with Dharma clothes on, with Dharma words in your mouth. Basically what we’re doing there is continuing to practice sleepwalking.

This discrimination that I’m talking about is not like a generalized, euphoric state where you walk dreamily outside and you say, “I’m mindful of the Buddha nature and everything.” That’s not what we’re talking about here. This mindfulness is requiring of yourself, stimulating yourself, rousing yourself to rethink, to reassess, and to try to give rise to some recognition of what is precious and what is flawed; of what is extraordinary and what is ordinary.

We can equate the condition we are in ordinarily to be like drunkenness. It’s exactly like drunkenness. Some of my best students –Best with a capital “B,” as in Buddhist – are recovering alcoholics. Recovering alcoholics have a wonderful opportunity because having emerged from the cocoon of constant, chronic alcohol consumption and the cycle of craving and the response, the recovering alcoholic has the opportunity to put aside the drinking and go through the process of picking up one’s awareness again and focusing it. They have the sense of knowing what it’s like to do that for the first time. I’ve talked to many recovering alcoholics, and they always say the worst time is the first time. The worst time is right after you quit drinking, and you notice that you have no mind, and you try to get one going. You try to punch start it somehow. You try to teach your mind how to think in a way that does not always go back into obsession, compulsion, and desire. Recovering alcoholics have this magical understanding of what it’s like when you first get sober and the difference between that sober state – even if it’s a little raw and painful at first – and that other state. They realize that they were not functioning. They understand that they were not “there.” There was nobody home and they were being driven by craving alone. There was nothing else going on. There was nothing in your head but buzz, and the buzz got louder when you walked away from the liquor store, and it got better when you walked toward the liquor store. The opportunity to experience what that’s like, to awaken to sobriety, is a fabulous teacher because it gives one a sense that all sentient beings are alcoholics. We may not be drinking alcohol, but we are guzzling down the samsara! We are high on ego! We don’t ever want to get off that. If we ever, in just one day, spent as much time on our practice as we do on our ego, we would be changed forever.

Having that experience of suddenly awakening to a sober state is not so different from moving out of the drunkenness of preconceived patterns and ideas, with all of their judgments, reactions and habitual tendencies of doing what you thought you were supposed to be doing, and into that sobriety that one attains when one begins to move into a state of recognition. At that point, one begins to discriminate what the problems of samsara are, and what the difference is between what is extraordinary and what is ordinary. One begins to see what’s really going on here. That state of discrimination is just like the very beginning of sobriety, and like the beginning of sobriety, it can be a little raw and painful. In the drunken state, you try to stay comfortable in the time and space grid where you are in ignorance, saying, “Oh, I’m sitting here right now, so I’m not dead, therefore I’ll never be dead. I’m sitting here right now and I’m middle-aged, therefore I’ll never be old.” To awaken from that kind of deluded thinking and say instead, “I’m middle-aged now and I used to be a kid. Uh-oh, that means there’s a progression happening here. Whoa! Where’s that taking me?”

We don’t like to think like that. As sentient beings, we try to keep ourselves in a safety zone, thought-wise, don’t we? One day you look in the mirror, and you say, “Wow, what happened to the flesh that used to be up on that cheekbone?” And although you see it, and you think it’s kind of funny, you know it’s happening, but you tell yourself it’s not really happening. You tell yourself it’s just that you had a potato chip last night so you had too much salt. We try not to think that any of this is happening, and we stay in our comfort zone. We spend most of our calories trying to stay in this comfort zone.

Wisdom Merit

November 5, 2015 by Holly

[Adapted from an oral commentary given by His Holiness Penor Rinpoche in conjunction with a ceremony wherein he bestowed the bodhisattva vow upon a gathering of disciples at Namdroling in Bozeman, Montana, November 1999. —Ed.]

General offerings please the senses. Imagine those offerings to be vast and inconceivable. However, if you were to [attempt to] compare the outer offerings with a single particle of the realms of buddhas and the quality of offerings made in the minds of enlightened ones, [you would find that comparison] to be beyond the scope of your imagination. That is why it is so important while presenting offerings to try to connect with the ultimate nature of offering, which is mental and not just material. Material offerings you make are supports for your mental or imagined offerings, which should be as inconceivably vast and wondrous as you are capable of manifesting. The actual offerings you use as a support should also be the best substances you are able to offer. At least they must not be old, dirty, or leftover substances; they must be suitable supports for the basis of virtue. The pure material offerings you make will be the support for the continual manifestation of inexhaustible offerings that will remain until samsara is emptied.

There is a well-known story of an accomplished practitioner named Jowo Ben. One day Jowo Ben made a very beautiful, clean, and pure offering on his altar. As he sat and looked at his offering, he thought, “What is it that makes this offering I’ve made here today excellent?” Then he remembered his sponsor was coming to visit that day, and he realized he had made the beautiful offering in order to impress his sponsor. He jumped up, picked up a handful of dirt, and threw it on the altar, saying he should give up all attachment and fixation on worldly concerns. Other lamas, on hearing what Jowo Ben had done, proclaimed his offering of throwing dirt on his altar to have been the purest of offerings, because Jowo Ben had finally cleared his mind of attachment and aversion.

When offerings are made, they are rendered pure and excellent by a mind free from attachment and aversion to the ordinary, material aspect of the offerings—and they must be made with a mind that is also free from avarice. Don’t think you can throw dirt on your altar and think that will benefit you. You must adjust your mind. If your mind is free from attachment or fixation and aversion, then whatever you do will be right. If your mind is not adjusted and your intentions are impure, then no matter how beautiful and magnificent the offering is, it will be insignificant. If you present all offerings, whether abundant or meager, with fervent devotion from the core of your heart, that will produce profoundly amazing results.

In order to be free from the suffering of existence, the mind must be free from dualistic fixation. In freedom from duality, everything is inherently pure. Just imagine all the wonderful offerings that are made that are free from duality: pure water possessing the eight qualities, garlands of flowers, incense, light, superior perfume, celestial food, musical instruments, fine garments, beautiful umbrellas, canopies, victory banners, the sun, the moon—the finest and best of everything is offered. Consider those as offerings arranged in a magnificent array equal in size to Mt. Meru. Furthermore, know that those offerings are pure and free from duality. For example, if you were to pick a flower and think, “Oh, this is such a beautiful flower; I want to offer it,” but then you also think, “My flower is more beautiful than the others,” and you offer it with that dualistic thought, then that offering would be defiled by your dualistic fixation. On the other hand, if you focus on the pure nature of the offerings and present them with pure devotion, you will make offerings that are pure or free from dualistic fixation. Recite the verses of the branch for offering, and make the most excellent, immeasurable offering you are capable of with the enlightened attitude [bodhicitta], faith, and pure devotion.

It is important to understand that presenting offerings is the antidote for [having] desire. Offerings are not made to the Three Jewels because they are considered to be poverty-stricken and in need of receiving from their disciples; offerings are made to accumulate merit. By making offerings with actual material substances, we accumulate ordinary conceptual merit; by using the mind to manifest immeasurable offerings, we accumulate nonconceptual wisdom merit.

From “THE PATH of the Bodhisattva: A Collection of the Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva and Related Prayers” with a commentary by Kyabje Pema Norbu Rinpoche on the Prayer for Excellent Conduct

Compiled under the direction of Venerable Gyatrul Rinpoche Vimala Publishing 2008

Recipe for Results

October 5, 2015 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

As long as the idea of self exists, self will experience other with either attraction, or repulsion. There is no other way to experience other. Whether it’s subtle or not, even if you are a proponent of New Age philosophy, and are supposed to love everybody and have unconditional positive regard towards others, if you could really examine your mind with determination, courage, innocence and willingness, you would discover that you are either attracted to or repulsed by everything you see, no matter how you gloss it over. No matter what you say, the karma is still forming. That is how the consequences of one’s life actually manifest: through that constant inter-reactive relationship, through that interplay, through attraction and repulsion, through desire. That’s how it’s possible for you to be born. That’s how it’s possible for you to do things you feel uncontrollably forced to do.

Even if we are so convinced that we know all of these teachings, don’t we still get into trouble? Don’t we find that we react to circumstances in a way that is not skillful? Don’t we, in fact, on an on-going basis make everything worse? I mean, it’s true, if we are honest with ourselves. Every time we react, we make things worse. Even when we can’t see that we’ve made things worse, I’m telling you this is the truth: we are constantly compounding the karma of our own minds. Even if in retrospect, we could see that we should have been loving, and we should have been kind and good, blah, blah, blah, blah, still, we are compulsive about it. We are what we are. We are ‘feeling junkies.’ We are hooked on sensual experience. And we react to it.

What then is the answer? If all of this is true, and desire is the foundation of all suffering, then what if the Buddha is right? What if all of suffering comes from the belief in self-nature? Will it do to pacify our minds with positive thinking? Will it do to walk around with the idea or the New Age philosophy saying, “Oh, I’m already enlightened because I understand I am the creator, or one.” I’d have to say you’re talking about two selves there. You’re talking about ‘creator’ and ‘I,’ and so long as there is distinction, so long as there is the belief in self-nature, you still have desire. You still have attraction and repulsion. You still have hope and fear. You haven’t gone yet into a deep and profound understanding of the emptiness of self-nature. Of course, we have to do that through meditation. There is no ordinary language or ordinary experience that will teach us that profound understanding.

The best thing to do, actually, is to find a qualified teacher who can begin to help you, not only in terms of giving you the words – the verbal teachings – but also some kind of virtuous or valuable energy transmission. On the Vajrayana path, that is done through the transmission of the lineage. The teachings on the nature of emptiness, the teachings on the generation-stage practices, all of the different teachings that we receive here, are passed down through a lineage. That lineage originates in the mind of enlightenment, in the primordial state. It then is transmitted to us. It doesn’t stop there. The minute we receive an empowerment, we’re not going to instantly become enlightened. I wish it were that easy, but it is not. At that point, we are qualified to practice, and it is through the practice and our meditation – with the help of the transmission of the lineage – that we will achieve results.