A sacred space for everyone
The following is a full length video teaching offered by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo at Kunzang Palyul Choling:
Jetsunma gives an overview of the Buddha’s path emphasizing your power to actualize the mind of enlightenment, which is not separate from you.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo. All rights reserved
From The Spiritual Path: A Compilation of Teachings by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
Wouldn’t you think it impossible—in a country so permeated with eternalism, with the traditional western teaching that the self exists after death—for many people to act as if they believed that it doesn’t really matter what they do? Yet these opposing beliefs coexist in our culture. It is somehow possible for us to believe in eternalism and at the same time to be full-fledged, card-carrying materialists. Let us examine how this has come about.
Very early in life, we learn about rules. Getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar means trouble. Also, our parents hide their feelings and teach us to repress ours. We see them break laws sometimes, clear-cut ones. If we ask our parents why they just ran a red light, they may jokingly say, “It was only pink.” We also see them do things they told us not to do. (“Do as I say, not as I do,” they seem to be teaching us.) We soon realize that there are some things we can sweep under the carpet of our conscience.
We also learn about cause and effect. We know that if we cross a busy street without looking both ways, we may get hit by a car. Fire burns. Immediate, obvious consequences we understand. What we neglect, what we do not really comprehend, is that results can take a long time to unfold. Early in childhood, we were told not to feel anger, yet we could sense it in adults. How do you feel a certain way and yet not feel that way? We learned the real message: if you can see it, it counts; if you can’t, it somehow doesn’t. It’s okay to get mad and to hate if you don’t do it too obviously. Taking an ax to people or beating them up is wrong; but somehow you can get away with being angry at them. We learn that it’s okay to do subtle or secret things.
Being subtle is not a problem. And there may be nothing wrong with hiding feelings. The real problem is that we fail to understand that hatred and anger will produce results simply because they exist in our mindstreams. Even though hidden or subtle, these feelings create an undeniable cause-and-effect relationship. People in Buddhist or Hindu countries deeply believe in karma. Whether or not you get caught makes no difference. They know there is absolutely no way a person can get away with anything. They are taught from birth that if you don’t pay in this life, some day you will. This is so profoundly ingrained that they have a totally different perspective: health, appearance, prosperity, surroundings, family, the ability to be successful in our lives—all these are seen as results of previous actions.
We, however, are convinced that our experiences happen to us. If someone is angry at us, we can find the causes, can’t we? The person was in a bad mood. Well, if we’re honest, we might remember that we said something to him last week, and now he’s getting back at us. Anyway, we can always find something. But what we are experiencing is not what it seems. It is a picture, a display, an emanation of our own mind-stream continuum. And if we are experiencing it, we had something to do with sowing the seed, which is now ripening. That is what the Buddha teaches.
This is true of every event, such as people treating you badly, or even an experience like hunger. My stomach is empty. I need food. But this experience and all the circumstances surrounding it are the ripening of previously created karma. We can’t see at that subtle level because we have no sense of our true nature. We cannot see the continuum. We can see pieces of it, glimpses maybe; but the continuum is invisible. So we persist in our habit of inventing explanations.
© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo
The following is a full length video teaching offered by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo at Kunzang Palyul Choling:
For us in the west the most important part of Dharma practice is within your heart. Practicing the foundational thoughts that turn the mind will help you keep that alive.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo. All rights reserved
From The Spiritual Path: A Compilation of Teachings by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
You have heard that hatred is a primary cause for suffering, so you may say: “First, I want to be free of hatred.” Don’t you often say that? But hatred remains. Why? Because you will willingly let go only of the things that obviously cause suffering. For instance, you will not be involved in wars. Yet this is no great credit to you. Oh, it is some indication that you are progressing on your path, but butterflies don’t wish to go to war either—and they don’t even have the potential to know the Nature of Mind.
Where is this hatred that you wish to be rid of? It resides deep within some subconscious levels of your mind. It also hides. Though you decide to rid yourself of hatred, you compulsively want to hold something back for your own. Hatred you want to be rid of, but you also want to hold on to a particular prejudice against someone or something. You want to maintain an active set of opinions about the qualities and personalities of others. You want to be the one who is right. You want to be the favorite—but this, of course, can only happen if others are not. On the conscious level you pledge your life to be without hatred, but still you have not overcome your dependency on the data given to you by the five senses. You give with one hand and hold back with the other.
The five perceptions are born of desire; this results in all karmic suffering. Your job is to renounce your participation in this process to the very depth of your capacity and then take refuge in the five celestial perceptions, the components of the Buddha in the world, the five pathways to liberation. If you run from the facts of your existence, you will miss your opportunity. You must decide from the depth of your being that you truly wish to be free of hatred in all its forms. Make every conscious effort, realizing that that will not be enough. For instance, it is not enough to think positively: that only makes your hatred more subliminal. Instead, take absolute refuge in the Buddha’s teaching. Make fervent wishing prayers to be free of hatred. Make many different offerings that this might be accomplished, wishing sincerely to be free of pride and the demons of the five senses. Then practice and live the Buddha’s teaching.
There is no suffering you cannot be free of. You hold in your hands a precious wish-fulfilling jewel, a magic carpet, celestial food. You need not be imprisoned within the demonic confines of your five senses when at last you have dedicated yourself to realizing the nature of the five goddesses. The degree to which you have devotion will determine the speed of your victory.
© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo
From The Spiritual Path: A Compilation of Teachings by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
The Buddha taught us to treasure those we do not know—even our worst enemies—as much as our most beloved relatives and friends. We should value them equally. “Is that really possible?” you may wonder. Not only is it possible; it is necessary. Boundless equanimity is the basis of compassion and of a truly deepened, stable practice.
If you carefully examine why you value a loved one more than someone you have never met, or more than your enemy, you will uncover a whole mother lode of information and awareness required to understand the Buddha’s teaching. You will realize the extent to which you are motivated by desire. This can make you uncomfortable: sincere self-examination requires tremendous courage. I believe that the Buddha’s teaching is best understood and practiced if you are fearless in examining your motivation. This alone can be a great guru. You can learn much about your desire for approval, for recognition.
If you look closely at how you have felt about yourself throughout your life, you will see that you have played a kind of mirror game since birth. Children develop their sense of self by seeing its reflection in the eyes and minds of others. Through our perception of them, children learn about their appearance, qualities, and tendencies. This process continues even now: you modify your self-image as you watch your reflection in others.
Your belief in the reality of self-nature seeks its own continuation. That, of course, is the bottom line of survival instinct. Once we have developed the view that self-nature is inherently real, we see “other” as inherently real—all phenomena as inherently real. This perception seems essential to prevent chaos, to maintain stability.
But the Buddha teaches that we are empty of self nature. Our true reality is the primordial-wisdom state. The experience of self and other is merely a series of conceptualizations. Watch your mind as you meet a person for the first time. The determinations you make in order to distinguish that person from yourself or someone else are all tainted by attraction and repulsion. This is true even of the thought processes that occur when you are not looking at anything, when your eyes are closed, and when you are resting or in a relaxed state.
With attraction and repulsion, there is always wanting or not wanting; there is always grasping or pushing away. When attraction arises in the mindstream, repulsion will also occur to the same degree. Though you may not be aware of the repulsion at that moment, the seed is there which will cause it to be experienced at some future time. Once a cause-and-effect relationship is begun, it always fulfills itself—unless it is purified. That is why equanimity is essential to your meditation or practice. In order to attain equanimity, one must realize the emptiness or sameness or suchness which is the underlying reality of all perceived phenomena. The way to stabilize the mind is not through suppression. The goal is not to train your EKG to become a straight line. Realization is not a “flat-line” mentality. You are not supposed to act out your idea of peacefulness. You know how it’s done: not too blissful, just un-focus the eyes a little, a pseudo-Mona Lisa routine. We tend to think that the way to attain stability is to adopt a pose or posture, like a child putting on his daddy’s clothes.
The Buddha teaches that the primordial-wisdom state is the ground from which phenomena spontaneously arise. We experience them either purely, as spontaneous, natural movements of that Nature, or impurely, as delusions of self and other. The primordial wisdom state is clear; it has the quality of innate wakefulness; it is neither dead nor cold. Yet the moment you try to describe it, saying: “Well, it’s like this” or “It looks like this” or “It’s light” or “It’s love” or even “It’s innate wakefulness,” whatever words you use, the moment you describe it, you lose it. You lose it because you wrap concepts and terminology around it, making it a contrived, unnatural experience. But by gradually eliminating desire from the mindstream, you begin to practice equanimity. You begin to experience the natural state in meditation.
© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo
The following is a YouTube Video of a message delivered to the sangha at Tashi Choling on November 5, 2011 when Venerable Gyaltrul Rinpoche attended tsog:
Used with permission of: mirrorofwisdomvideo.org.
A teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
Try to believe in the Love….that the Love that exists is
Absolute. It never varies, it is unchanging. You did nothing
to deserve it and you cannot destroy it. It is your belief in the
Love, your acceptance of it, this changes from moment to
moment, circumstance to circumstance, tossed about on the
waves of your emotions.
Let your heart fall deeper under the surface to where the
waves seem very far away. There you will find it, and me.
Make a samaya now to go deeper every day, to diligently
travel to that calm place where the sands do not shift at all.
You never asked for this! Only for what is temporary,
turbulent, based on a self that you have only imagined. Learn
to ask for what is true. That you will be answered is certain
because the answer is already accomplished.
Beneath the waves it is already there.
I am with you again, still, always.
I do love you.
Prayer to Be Reborn in Dewachen
With a longing to benefit beings who are sick and dying, Jetsunma created a song called “Prayer to Be Reborn in Dewachen.” This is a traditional prayer to Amitabha, the Buddha of Limitless Light, from the P’howa practice of the Longchen Nyigthig tradition. P’howa is the meditation practice for the time of death, and Amitabha is the deity to be visualized in that meditation. “Dewachen” refers to the state of consciousness in which one experiences a pure land and the opportunity to accomplish liberation.
Jetsunma said, “When I listened to this tune, I realized that it was like a mother singing her child to sleep, which really was my motivation when I sang that song. I know that everyone that I love, I will be parted from someday. Everyone that I meet will die some day. I wish there was some way that they could be guided through the bardo individually. And the best response that I know of is this prayer.”
Any being who listens to this prayer receives a blessing, whether Buddhist or non Buddhist, human or animal. It is especially soothing for those who are chronically or acutely ill, or who are on the precipice of dying. You can help beings by making this prayer heard by as many people and as many animals close to their death as possible. It is available here: Prayer to Be Reborn in Dewachen
The following is a music video of a song by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo dedicated to the #Occupy Movements:
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo. All rights reserved
The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:
I needed a day off twitter today, please forgive me. My friend’s dog is dying and she cannot accept. One of my monks needs attention, always.
I walked two days in a row while healing, so it was a pain killer and flat out day. I had nothing left. Meanwhile the utterly cruel “people” that hate and beat me up every day have taken this time to show what high-minded people they are. Wow. Some days it makes no sense to try.
I won’t be stopped. If I can benefit sentient beings I will have to be satisfied. People can be so selfish and cruel. They need help. I wish there was magic. But there is only miracle (earned through merit) merit itself, (like gold to trade) and Mentor (guide: Buddha, Lama et al.)
So I rest today, but it is painful to see what we have come to. All you workers of the way, the light, I salute and love you. Wrap you in my arms. Occupy Prayer, Peace and Occupation I adore you for your strength and gift. May I take the pain for you. You are the crown of creation, lovers and peacemakers, shelters from the storm. The gold of humanity. You who love – I love you as my children. Blessed are those with heart! May there be kindness and goodness for you. OM TARE TUTARE TURE PUNYE PUSHTIM AH YOU PUSHTIM KURU YE SOHA! Long life and peace to you!
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo. All rights reserved