Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

Determine How You Will Spend Your Life

March 14, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

I wish from my heart that it would be okay to be a renunciate. Because to be a renunciate is to renounce the things that one has desire for, the objects that one grasps, and instead seek only a true source of refuge. To renounce the sources of suffering. There ought to be a place for that in our society. It ought to be okay for anyone to do what they want. It ought to be okay if they want to remain as they are and continue to function in the ordinary ways that we are used to in our society. But it ought to be okay if a person sincerely becomes discontented and wants to seek a supreme refuge that is the end of suffering, which is enlightenment.

You don’t necessarily have to be a Buddhist to adopt these kinds of ideas, although I found for myself that the Buddha’s teaching was the best way to do it. But not only Buddhists can do this kind of thing. In order to do this successfully you have to determine what your supreme refuge is. You have to really review that. This is why I like what the Buddha said, because in the foundational teachings you are never asked to buy something with blind faith. You’re asked to think things out logically.

This is what I suggest you should do. Think to yourself, “Really, how do people suffer? How do sentient beings suffer?” Sentient beings of all kinds, not only people. If you can learn anything about non-physical sentient beings, do that. The Buddha has many teachings on non-physical realms. But, even about just the ones that you know, human beings and animals. Check books out from the library on different life forms and different conditions around the world. Check out books about India. Check out books about Ethiopia. Check out books about different cultures and different ways in which people live. Check out books about different animals and different life forms. How they grow, how they evolve, from insects to lions. Study them all carefully.

You will see that animals are consumed: that they are eaten, and that they eat. That human beings grow sick, grow old, and that they die. That so far, no one has definitely proven they can keep from doing that. Even within that, there are sub-sufferings and different kinds of sufferings. While you are studying all of those things, develop a deep sense of compassion for the endlessness of it. Compassion for the lack of resolution and that everything around you will have its moment of intense suffering; everything and everyone. Develop a deep sense of compassion, that their suffering is endless. That it is unbearable at times. And that there is yet no solution. Think for yourself, what could be the possible solution; try to think one up. Really work that through, down to the place where you’re into the planning stages. You will find it will never work, because we are all filled with the karma of desire. Every one of us.

Having decided for yourself that all sentient beings are suffering so greatly that you can no longer bear it, and having understood that there is nothing else but to end this suffering, then maybe you might also think there’s no other way to spend your life other than to accomplish that for yourself and other sentient beings. Because the only way you can truly benefit beings is if you yourself have achieved some realization and understanding of the causes of their suffering.

Having understood all these things, then you must determine for yourself how you will spend the rest of your life. You must determine this, and it will take every day of your life, because we’ve been trained to do the opposite. You must think for yourself again and again and again, of what use is this life? If I am constantly filled with more suffering, if I am constantly participating in a scenario that always ends up with suffering, how will this life be of any value? And if you come to the solution that this life has value if it is a vehicle for enlightenment, then you should think for yourself, how should I do this? You should examine what you do now; how you spend your day. Then you should think, how have I spent my years? Then you should think, what should I do?

Red-blooded Buddhist

March 13, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

Now, I’m a red-blooded American. You can’t get any more American than born in Brooklyn to an Italian father and a Jewish mother. That’s as American as they come in this world. So I understand our culture. I don’t claim to have any special powers or abilities; in fact I could study Lord Buddha’s teachings for the next twenty thousand lives. It’s the same for everyone: until you reach supreme enlightenment, you don’t understand the Buddha’s teaching, because to do that you must understand the Buddha’s mind. I feel that I am a beginner. But one thing I do understand is that as Westerners we have not yet come to understand what our objects of refuge are. One of our main sufferings, and the cause of more suffering, is that we take refuge in the wrong things.

As a culture we have not come to understand the value of using this life as a vehicle to achieve supreme realization. Even for those of us practicing Dharma, it takes a long time to understand that the only value of this precious human rebirth is to achieve enlightenment. Here in America we have the most precious jewel of all: the leisure to practice. If we don’t have the time, we can make the time. You can. Try it. You can. We have the leisure to practice. We have the ability to study. We have within our grasp a true path that has proven again and again and again it can produce enlightenment. We have these precious things, and yet we don’t understand that the only point of this life is to end suffering, not only for ourselves but for all sentient beings. Because once we ourselves achieve realization, we can contribute to the end of suffering in a real way for all sentient beings. For all others.

We tend to think of our lives in a very different way, because we don’t understand what our objects of refuge are. We try to live our lives with immediate gratification. We think, “Well, I have to be busy because I have to have this and this and this and this and this and this. I have to buy this, and I have to have this and I have to attain this.” We don’t accept that maybe it is possible to live a completely successful life under a completely different set of rules.

Renunciate in the USA

March 12, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

The idea of renunciation is not popular in our country because we don’t understand it. In America we believe in accumulation; that’s our source of refuge: we accumulate. The minute we have that coffee pot and that microwave and that big- screen TV and all those different things, we’re going to be happy. If you don’t have a car, if you’re not rich, if you don’t have a toaster, if you don’t have a dishwasher, if you don’t have all of these things, that is the cause of suffering. Yet the Buddha says, “No, that’s not the case. The cause of suffering is the desire for those things.” Having devoted ourselves to accumulation, it becomes uncomfortable to think that we might have to dedicate our lives to renunciation.

It depends on your objects of refuge. If you really think that the coffee percolator, the TV, the anti-aging cream, the microwave, the big car and all the money are your source of refuge, then most Americans are practicing their religion correctly. But if you believe that enlightenment is the end of suffering, then that is your object of refuge. All the teachings and the supports to the Path to enlightenment – the Buddha, the Dharma or the Buddha’s teaching, and the Sangha or the Buddha’s community – are the objects of refuge. That is what you see as the solution. The things like toaster, can only make toast. The things like coffee pot can only make coffee. The things like TV can only show whatever they show. They are not sources of refuge; they never, ever, end suffering for more than a short period of time. If we understand that our sources of refuge are those things which end suffering, we’ll be able to perceive in a logical and real way.

We are a hard-working people. We get up very early in the morning. We quickly get ready under stressful conditions, putting on as much of those Estee Lauder things as we possibly can, before seven o’clock. Then we leave and stay on the road for a very long time, under terrible conditions. Then we get somewhere and we work very hard with people we don’t know very well, doing very strange things that are very different from our nature, all day long. Then we come home on a very long road that is also very difficult to travel. Then we eat very quickly, and don’t feel very well, watch TV and go to bed. That’s what most of our culture does. And it’s a very hard road.

We use so much energy doing things that we are told we must do. We must have a certain level of education. We must have a certain level of accumulation. We must care for these things that we have accumulated. We must cultivate certain kinds of relationships. That’s a big job. According to our culture there are certain lines that we have to cross in order to be successful and happy. We work very hard at these things.

But chronically and repeatedly at certain ages of our lives we go through phases or passages when we are dissatisfied. Marriages go through the seven-year itch. We go through middle age and we go through menopause. We go through all these different stages, and they’re so common and usual that our psychologists are beginning to recognize and document them and consider some of them normal.

What are they really? We work very hard to get to a certain phase of our life and then we find that it’s basically empty. We didn’t get the satisfaction we were promised. Then we gear ourselves up for another phase. When we get there, suddenly we find: uh oh. That’s not to say we don’t have our little joys and happiness’s along the way. But basically as a people we work very hard and yet are becoming deeply disappointed and disillusioned.

The way that some of us have chosen to deal with it is to think more positively and convince ourselves that we really are happy. We go to friends or support groups or some New Age groups or a psychologist; all the different avenues that people explore when they’re really hurting. What you basically come out with is, “Oh you have to change your thinking around.” You are told to think, “My life is full, my life is fruitful, I am really happy and I like being busy like this because it means that I’m having many experiences.” There are so many people doing that kind of thing it’s painful to watch. Some people are okay with that; it’s their karma to live a good and simple life, and throughout their life they try to be kind to others. But some people are really struggling.

In Pursuit of The Real Cure

March 11, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

For Westerners, one of the basic teachings of the Buddha, that all sentient beings are suffering, is very difficult to understand. Our culture doesn’t buy the idea of suffering. Most of us seem to have everything, or if we don’t have everything we can get it if we really try. There are books that say if you really want to do thus and such, you can do it. That implies something about the understanding of suffering in our culture. There is also a movement that developed gradually with the idea that if you constantly think positively, you can make your life into something that is completely pleasurable all the time. This became the New Age movement.

The Buddha says that if you honestly and with courage look around, you will see that idea doesn’t hold up. No matter what people’s thoughts are, or how they try to live a life with positive thinking or master their emotions in that superficial way by saying, “Right now I am happy. I am constantly happy. I am always happy, therefore I will be happy.” No matter how they try to do that, we are getting old. We are getting sick. Eventually, everyone will die.

These are the thoughts we are given when we begin to study Buddhism, which turn the mind. The three sufferings of the human realm: old age, sickness and death, and also the suffering of suffering. Because even within that, there are different kinds of suffering: the suffering of loneliness, the suffering of poverty, the suffering of hunger.

We are not instructed by the Buddha to meditate on suffering to make ourselves miserable and increase our suffering. That isn’t the point. The point of understanding suffering and courageously viewing suffering is that finally you will have the tools to do something about it. Because at the same time that Lord Buddha teaches us there is suffering, he also says, “And there is an end to suffering. And the end to suffering is enlightenment.”

Here in the West we do everything else in order to end our suffering. We stand in front of the Estee Lauder counter for thirty years, and every year we buy a new product. We do this in order to not suffer aging; that’s how we think as Westerners. We develop new and better medical techniques in order to not suffer sickness. When people die, we quickly take them off the streets and out of view and stick them in boxes. Then we claim that according to psychology one can safely grieve for nine weeks before it becomes neuroses. We have done all of these things in order to deal with old age, sickness and death. Of course we have social services and we try not to let people be too poor. If they are poor we put them all in the same part of the city so that nobody can see them. All of these things exist in our society and yet we managed to cover them up. That’s really our psychology.

But if you understand a timeless and very simple truth, and look around you with courage at humans and animals all over the world, you will see suffering exists. Has Estee Lauder cured aging yet? Have we found a cure to death? Have we found a cure to sickness? We may have found a way to manipulate sickness, but it still exists. These sufferings are still there, although we have managed to delude ourselves that they don’t exist. The problem is that it’s not the cure. The cure is realization, enlightenment. In order to accomplish the end of all suffering, we as a culture have to turn some of our attention away from the grand cover up, and more to the pursuit of the real cure. We have to finally understand our objects of refuge.

True Refuge

March 10, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

In the West we have a certain context through which we understand. There’s a certain karmic format that we all participate in; our thoughts are shaped a certain way. When we are children and form our ideas we all receive, individually and collectively, a certain kind of input. These things have a very important influence on us. So the way a Westerner and an Easterner might approach the Buddha’s teaching is probably slightly different.

All of the cultures that practice Buddhism on a grand scale practice them from birth. The basic ideas of the Buddha’s teachings permeate the entire culture. But that’s not so with ours. In fact, there are some ideas that we have been brought up with that seem to be contradictory to the Buddha’s teaching. From this point of view, teachings of the Buddha have to be presented in a way that we can understand that while they seem to be contradictory to what we have learned, in fact they are not.

There is a universal truth being presented that isn’t contradicted by our culture, although the language and understanding is different. If something is a universal truth, then it must be true wherever it is, or it isn’t true at all. So what we’re looking for is a way to explain some of the basic thoughts to those that have never practiced Buddhism and haven’t heard any of these teachings before.

Compassion is a foundational thought that occurs again and again in the Buddha’s teaching. But Westerners define compassion differently than Easterners, because Western ideas surrounding the concept of suffering are different than Eastern ideas. From a Westerner’s point of view, we tend to think of compassion as meaning you feel sorry for somebody. It seems to be understood on a relatively superficial and ordinary level. If I say to you such and such is a compassionate person, you would think, “Oh probably he or she is kind. They probably speak nicely. They probably feed hungry people and put seed out for birds.”

Now, perhaps for a people or culture more schooled in the Buddhist teaching, when you say compassion or Bodhicitta, levels and levels of understanding occur within the mind simultaneously, and a more profound understanding takes place. So although as Westerners we might think it would be valuable to be compassionate, if we understood the full implications of compassion on the many different levels that it exists, we would think compassion is not only desirable, but essential. There is no life without compassion.

One of the things I would like to do is deepen our understanding of compassion so that it becomes essential. If it doesn’t become essential, we have the potential at any given moment to choose to be compassionate or not. We can fall into being not compassionate. We can accidentally forget to be compassionate. All these different things can happen. You know that this is true, if you look at your life: if you remember and are mindful, you sometimes do a fairly good job. Then if you go into your natural habits, or become tired, have indigestion or PMS or whatever, you may forget and not be mindful of compassion.

If we had a deeper understanding of compassion it would be part of our foundation and there would be no choice, in the same way that there’s no choice about breathing. You would never think, “Well, I’m in a good mood now, I’ll breathe,” or, “Well breathing is okay now because I’m relaxed,” or, “I can manage that now.” That doesn’t happen because you know that to breathe is to live. If we understood that compassion is as much a part of our being and as essential to our existence as breathing, then there would be less choice about it. It would more naturally and gracefully be part of our mind state. In order for that to happen, we have to understand what compassion really means, and we have to understand the nature of suffering.

Extraordinary Blessings

March 9, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Compassion, Love, & Wisdom by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

We need to practice human kindness. For instance if someone described to me child abuse and they said to me, “As a Buddhist you believe in karma, do you just accept that this is the child’s karma to have experienced abuse and do you sort of leave it at that and think, well that is their karma and pray for them?” Well, Lord Buddha, I don’t know what you would say if you were here right now, standing here in the flesh, but I’ll tell you what I understand to be the Buddha’s perspective. If you see someone being abused or hurt and you do nothing to end their suffering that is now your karma. You will have karma with them and you always will until you can be of benefit to them. So ordinary human kindness is very much a part of what we have to do, but it isn’t all that we do.

We have to prevent people from being hurt; we have to feed the hungry if we can. If we see suffering we have to do what we can to end it. But it is simply not useful to stop there. We must continue with an extraordinary kind of love, an extraordinary kind of compassion that sees beyond the causes and effects that are only obvious in this life time and goes further to understand the root cause and the ultimate effect. We must develop the capacity to completely liberate ourselves from the cause and effect relationships that have been caused from the beginningless past and that are with us always until we reach enlightenment. We have to think not only of this one slice of reality that is our life, what is it – eighty years? We have to think of the countless eons of cyclic existence that we have continued to accumulate cause and effect relationships and we must institute causes that overcome all of them. You have to get some perspective. To practice Dharma sincerely you have to get some perspective. It isn’t just about eighty years. It is about a long time. You may not always understand the causes that you experience the results of now.

It is popular now for people to go to psychics and say, “How come my husband always beats me?” And the psychic says, “Oh, because in a past life you ran over him with a mule.” Well, fine so far as that goes, that may very well be one of the things that happened. Maybe you were the mule and this psychic doesn’t like that, but anyway, that, I promise you, is only one of many things that contribute to your life such as it is now. It is only one of many things and it is impossible for a psychic without complete omniscience to see all of them. You may never know what the root causes are. But what is wonderful about the Buddha’s path is that you don’t have to know what the root causes are: they are all desire, hatred, greed and ignorance. This is the medicine.

Here in the West we love to examine our garbage before we take it out, but you don’t have to do that, you just take it out. This is the necessary perspective to maintain: that the wisdom we must seek is the wisdom that is different from ordinary knowledge, it is the pristine balance of the primordial wisdom state. It is completely in union with love. And that union is the very display, or results in the very display, of what we see bringing the most benefit in this world. When we look in this world and see where there is hope and where there is relief, we find that there is an extraordinary path, that there is an extraordinary means to achieve realization. That there have been, and there are, in this world extraordinary teachers incarnating again and again, and there are extraordinary blessings. We are living in an extraordinary time, able to grasp an extraordinary opportunity. This being the case we should adopt this wisdom as our most precious goal and adopt this love as our most precious mother.

Leaving you with that thought, I hope in some way you will come to the point where you will choose with certainty and with courage and with determination to practice in a consistent and meaningful way. I hope with all my heart you do not waste this precious opportunity. It is taught this opportunity to hear the Buddha’s words and see the Buddha’s form and come to a point where we can accomplish the Buddha’s teaching is so rare it is like finding a precious jewel sifting through garbage. It is that rare. And having had this opportunity once, if we do not institute the causes by which we will have it again and again and again it will be a long time before we see it again. Those are the teachings. I didn’t make that up and I believe them. So I ask you to consider practice, to learn how to practice, to practice consistently and to be faithful in your practice and, most of all, to begin now, even on your own, to turn your mind with thoughts of caring for others. To cultivate both ordinary and extraordinary kindness, to cultivate a pure determination to bring about the end of suffering, these things you can begin now. Thank you.

Ultimate Compassion

March 8, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Compassion, Love, & Wisdom by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Ordinary sentient beings cannot bring about extraordinary ends. Ordinary sentient beings do not have the skill to bring about the end of suffering, since they themselves have within their mindstreams the causes of suffering. Who then will act as this guide? Who then will bring this path? Who then will offer these teachings? Who will announce a door to liberation? It must be our intention as we practice this path until we reach supreme enlightenment, and once having accomplished realization, that we will remain in such a form as a Bodhisattva and return again and again and again in order to benefit beings. This is ultimate compassion. This is the compassion that is actually quite different from ordinary human kindness.

Let’s take as an example a relationship with a teacher. Let’s say that you have found a teacher who has those qualities, who has attained some realization and returns again and again to benefit beings. We might think of human kindness in a certain way. For instance let’s say that I have a student over here and he is a little slow. He is a nice person, he is trying to accomplish Dharma, but he is a little slow. Well if you examine it, that slowness is the result of laziness. He is a little lazy. Maybe he doesn’t have all the compassion he needs to really be fervent on this path. Maybe he really needs to develop that compassion and maybe he is just getting a little slothful and maybe there are some things that the teacher can see that are not quite kosher, not quite right with him. But because we are ordinary we might think, well maybe he is just a little slow and he can’t help it, he is doing the best he can. He is a nice guy, just leave him alone. He is a little slow. We might think maybe we will just be kind to him and we will try to support him to see if we can help him. Then we will just be nice to him and little by little he will do the best he can in his feeble, little way.

So he continues and he is still kind of slow and feeble and pitiful. Then one day a good teacher comes along, sizes up the situation and really displays some wrathful activity and says, “You are going to straighten up your act.” Gives him ‘what for,’ tells him the truth, reads him the riot act, testifies before Buddha and just changes his whole life around. Causes him a great deal of upset, causes him to have serious gastric disturbances, causes him to whimper and cry a little bit and the rest of us might think, poor guy, boy did he ever get it. Wow, that is really rough, that is really terrible.

The difference is that this teacher might have had the capacity to understand what is really happening is that an obstacle to his practice is arising. It isn’t about being simple at all, it’s about an obstacle to his practice arising, and that obstacle has to do with past habits of sloth and laziness. It has to do with not having been helpful to other sentient beings; it has to do with his not sending his mother a card on Mother’s day for a couple of years. We couldn’t see what the Lama could see and the Lama knew, but the Lama had that kind of wisdom. Well, what happened to this poor old guy is that he got really shook up, he got finished with his serious gastric disturbances, he took him pepto bismal and he is all squared away. Now suddenly he has changed.

How has he changed? Has he changed because he really needed to be yelled at? No because you could have done that. What the Lama did was to cut out an obstacle and that is kind of miraculous activity because there was awareness there, there was a skillful means that ordinary sentient beings don’t have. There was also a pure motivation. That Lama wasn’t really interested in yelling at this poor guy, but he saw there was an obstacle close to the surface and if it were cut out in some profound way it would be pretty clear sailing after that. That is also possible. I don’t know if there is such a Lama or such a situation, I don’t know if any of these things are true, but I do know what I am describing is the difference between ordinary perception and extraordinary perception, the difference between ordinary human kindness and true compassion.

Human beings want to follow human rules; we want to be kind in the ways we are taught. We think that is the answer because we don’t understand cause and effect. We don’t understand that in order to change the effect we are seeing now you cannot simply mess around with the effect some more. You have to remove the causes. If you have that pristine awareness, if you have that awakening, if you have that quality of knowing that comes with that kind of realization, you might be able to see the causes. Through skillful means, with pure enlightened intention through the perfect stability of the union of wisdom with pure compassion in your mind, you might be able to bring about the causes to end the particular suffering he is experiencing. So maybe the man turns around and maybe it’s not because of the reasons that you think.

Our job is to develop these extraordinary skills, and although I think in my case it is going to take an awful long time, still I think we have to do our best to understand that what is needed to accomplish the end of suffering are not ordinary techniques. They must come from the mind of enlightenment, they must lead to the mind of enlightenment, they must exhibit the qualities of the mind of enlightenment and they may not be exactly sympathetic to some of the human beliefs we may hold true. We have to accept that this may be a challenge for Westerners. Ordinary human kindness cannot be discounted. It is a part of what we must do. Actually ordinary human kindness is included in the miraculous compassion I just described, as not only did the Lama have the skill to know what was wrong with this fellow, not only did he have the ultimate compassion to care deeply that he accomplish his practice and achieve supreme enlightenment, but he also had ordinary human kindness. He cared about the guy and wanted him to be happy.

A Natural Purification

March 6, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Compassion, Love, & Wisdom by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

One of the techniques commonly practiced on the Vajrayana path is generating oneself as the Deity. When generating as the Deity one actually arises in a pure form, a form that is free of desire, a pure and fully enlightened form. Through mantra and visualization and recitation you allow yourself to arise naturally in a form that is an enlightened form and is considered a form of the Buddha. Arising in that pure state the mind is free of all the impurities such as desire and conceptualization and of the things that it does, and all perception is then seen as pure as well. We visualize the perception in a pure way and come to understand that the perception we have is innately pure. From that a natural purification takes place.

Many techniques are used and the result of these techniques is the wisdom we seek, not the techniques themselves. We are not collecting techniques. We are not collecting empowerments, we are not collecting things. That is not the wisdom. The wisdom we seek is the result of the pacification of constantly arising desire within the mindstream. It is the pacification of the mind expressing itself in an impure form. It is the pacification of the results that we constantly experience of erroneous belief. That is pure wisdom. Having obtained that wisdom one is actually liberated from cyclic death and rebirth. How is that?

Well, we have this idea about what happens. You collect all this wisdom and then some guy shows up. It’s probably going to be a guy, because guys are big this year. This guy shows up and is probably going to wear white. Don’t you think that white is good? I mean in this culture we think about white a lot so he is going to wear white. He is going to show up and he is going to say you have accumulated enough wisdom and now you are – sounds like Bill Cosby doesn’t it – and now you are fully enlightened. I bet it is Bill Cosby. So now you are fully enlightened and having been fully enlightened then I am going to take from you the need – now I am beginning to sound like an evangelist – now I am going to take from you the need to reincarnate in some future existence. We have some kind of dream that something like that is going to happen: we will be anointed and we will have stars on our crown and all this kind of thing. According to the Buddha’s teaching that is not what is going to happen. I am sorry. The Hallelujah chorus is a beautiful piece of music, but they are not going to play it when your moment comes, so don’t be waiting for a sign like that.

When we talk about the kind of wisdom that is necessary to accomplish the awakening that is so treasured and so desired, we talk about the elimination and pacification of all things that produce the causes of cyclic existence. The Buddha says that we actually take rebirth in a compulsive way and that compulsion is based on desire. When that desire is eliminated and pacified because the nature, the true nature, is understood and the belief in self as being inherently real is done away with, that very cause for us to take rebirth in this compulsive way is gone. There is no necessity to take rebirth. However, the Vajrayana path contains all of the Mahayana hopes and ideals; we achieve a state of realization that is ultimately of benefit to all sentient beings, not only ourselves. Having achieved that stability of mind, the realization of the natural state through practice, having poised ourselves on that pristine moment of pure cognition, that which is called innate wakefulness and yet has within it no conceptualization, we then can choose to return again and again and again in an emanation form in order to be of benefit to sentient beings.

The Coffeepot Thoughts

March 5, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Compassion, Love, & Wisdom by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Practice takes a long period of time. You will be practicing till the end of your life. In order to be successful you must be consistent in your practice, you must keep your commitments, you must cultivate the mind of pure intention, and you must cultivate the purest kind of love to keep the fires burning and to keep yourself motivated. After practicing for a good long period of time the mind itself will change and will become more and more stable. Those momentary feelings or experiences that you have in your meditation will become longer and longer. They will become more and more normal. When they become longer and longer it isn’t just that they become longer and longer in time but they become deeper and wider in their intensity and in their content. They become more a part of the way that your mind naturally functions. The goal of course is for that process to continue, because true realization is not a momentary ‘aha’, true realization is not something that you realize, that is knowledge. True realization is not an experience. That is a ‘something.’ True realization is awakening to the natural state that is free of all conceptualization. The mind needs to become stabilized in that state. How does that happen?

You must practice a technology or a path that causes your mind not to constantly run away with you, not to constantly run after things. It is desire that causes you to run after things. If you have ever tried just sitting and meditating you will discover that at first it is extremely difficult. Actually for a long time it is quite difficult. When you try to think of nothing or you try to remain poised or balanced in that natural state, try to simply let your mind be relaxed and to realize emptiness or to not think of anything, whatever it is that your technique happens to be, pretty soon, as in a split-second, your mind will be running down the block and you have to go run after it to catch up with it. You will find that you have thought of something that bubbled up out of the pool of your mind and that you followed it. You follow it by making all kinds of conclusions from what came up in your mind – judgments, opinions, developments. For instance, perhaps when you first sit down to meditate you may come up with, “Oh I left the coffee pot on.” And then immediately you are going to come up with, “That’s going to stink up the whole kitchen.” Then you are going to come up with, “Then it’s going to boil over.” Then you are going to say, “Well that wasn’t a very good coffee pot anyway, and well I always leave it on, I don’t know why I leave it on, there is something wrong with me, I’m kind of worried about it,” and then, “It’s just like me I sit down to meditate and here I am thinking about the coffee pot. Doggone it, I am not thinking about the coffee pot again.” By the time you find yourself you are in the next county, probably the next city. You are way down the road. That is what will happen in the beginning of your meditation.

When you get a little bit further in your practice you will learn a technique of letting go of those things, of just dropping them. You are not making a judgment about it, but just dropping it. Like if coffee pot comes up you let coffee pot go. You don’t run down the block thinking about coffee pot thinking this about myself and that about myself and this about coffee pot and that about coffee pot. You learn the technique of simply dropping it. Coffee pot comes up and coffee pot goes. The next thing that will begin to happen as you practice is that your mind will say, “Hey, I am not getting away with this anymore so I am going to try harder,” and the talker in your head, the one that never shuts up, is going to pop up and say, “We’ll get dramatic then, I’ll get her attention.” And so it jumps up and says, “Axe murder, Axe murder.”

Well immediately you run away with that thinking, “I thought about an axe murder. I’m not a very spiritual person. I thought about this in my meditation. This meditation is bad for me, but maybe not, maybe there is just something wrong with me.” There again you are off in the next county and of course you have to learn the same technique of dropping the axe murder. When that doesn’t work it will try something even more fun. It will say, “You are really a good person, you’re meditating now.” Or it will say, “You just had a good experience.” And you will think, “Yeah, that was a great experience, if fact I think that was like the nature of emptiness she is talking about because I didn’t think about myself at all for a minute, in fact I’m not thinking about myself at all right now I’m just thinking about that experience that I had.” And then you think about what a nice person you are and that comes up and, “I have not missed my meditation, not once for weeks and weeks now, I am so good I can’t believe it. Can you believe it? I am just so good. I’m so pleased with how this is going. A year ago I never thought this could happen to me, that I could sit here and mediate on emptiness as I am doing now.” Your mind begins to sound a little bit like Lilly Tomlin. You are sort of down the road and that begins to happen.

The techniques the Buddha advises you need to master are those that will eliminate the whole walkie-talkie scene. To eliminate that particular kind of thing you have to learn how to disengage from the desire that causes you constantly to define yourself. What is happening in that kind of state is the thoughts that come up in your mind as a result of your belief in self-nature as being inherently real. They are a result of your need to constantly redefine and cause yourself to be, because you think that is what you are. You are actually shoring up all around yourself. It’s like you take concepts and create a nice receptacle for you to live in so that you understand yourself. There is a funny kind of mechanism that happens when you do that. You really think that is what you are, this receptacle that you have built, this four squared thing that you have built with your bricks of conceptualization. That’s what you think you are. The Buddha teaches us that that isn’t our nature at all. The phenomena that arise within our mind, as well as the phenomena that we experience as external, which are not different from the phenomena that arise within our mind, and the belief in self-nature, these things are all inherently empty. They are puff-balls. I don’t know that Lord Buddha used the word puff-balls, but I think it is a good word. You can argue with me if you want.

Being True To Our Nature

March 3, 2018 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Compassion, Love, & Wisdom by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The Buddha considers that the point is to turn the mind to such a degree that you will not be shaken from your determination to practice pure Dharma that leads to the ultimate goal. You have a choice to practice in different ways. There is the Theravadin point of view, there is the Mahayana point of view and there is the Vajrayana point of view. In this Vajrayana point of view the path is difficult. You have to have a great deal of courage. But it is swift and it is certain, and we have an amazing history of beings who obtained realization in a very visible and provable way. Stories of Lamas who achieved truly miraculous signs through the power of their practice, who were able to perform in ways that were not ordinary, to accomplish things that were not ordinary and who also were able to display for our benefit extraordinary signs at the time of their death so that we would have faith.

Thinking that we should accomplish this ultimate goal, then we have to determine how we intend to accomplish that goal. We have to stay on that goal and we have to be true to that goal, in the same way that we can learn to be true to ourselves. When I say ‘to ourselves’ I don’t mean the self that we think we are, I mean the self that we really are, which is no self at all. The truth of our nature isn’t about ‘selfness’ at all. Our nature is that which is free and uncontrived, that which is awake and to which we have never been true, dancing around with phenomena as we do. Learning to be true to ourselves in that way, learning to be true to that nature, is the first time that we love.

I think that in one way it is the Mahayana view that we love ourselves too much and we are always trying to get something for ourselves. We are always trying to do what’s right for us and be gratified in some way. And that is true that is the Mahayana view. That is absolutely the truth. We should instead think of others. But I think there is another way to understand it; we seem to be running around constantly trying to destroy ourselves rather than loving that nature enough to allow ourselves to realize it, to be true to it. I think it is important to understand that in order to obtain true wisdom we have to learn to love that nature, we have to learn to love that nature in such a way that we can be true to that which we really are.

Having reached some awareness of that nature and having practiced sincerely, remaining stable within that nature and within that awareness is the next thing to be considered. It is common that during experiences of meditation you will have momentary experiences that can seem very blissful. They can seem very exciting, they can seem very peaceful, they can seem for one moment as though you had forgotten yourself and there was a sense of liberation because of that. These are all things that happen as you practice, but if they become the place where you stop or if you desire them or grasp them to you in such a way that you can go no further, you lose it immediately. Why? Because the minute you try to do that you are no longer with it. The minute you try to take that conceptualization in an iron clad way, wrap that conceptualization around the experience that you just had, you just lost the natural state. It is no longer natural. It’s contrived. You made it up and so you lose it immediately. But also if you use that particular experience to increase your desire and pride, or even to increase the grasping that comes with loyalty to memories or experiences, if you use it in that way it becomes something opposite to that which leads to Enlightenment. You take a side path and end up not going in the direction you wanted. You end up losing that pristine, poised balance in which the mind needs to remain in order to remain steadfast in that natural state. It becomes important to remain stable in your practice.