Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Motivation That Nourishes the Path

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

It’s almost impossible to attain the goal of selfless compassion, where you commit every fiber of your being to benefiting all sentient beings, seen and unseen, without a moment’s hesitation. It’s almost impossible to develop the kind of compassion where you understand that all sentient beings are revolving helplessly in such suffering that they can’t bear it, and you can’t bear to think it’s going on, without cultivating a deep understanding of suffering. You want to avoid the trap of making the very same prayers that the selfishly motivated person might do, but instead have the idea that you want to be a great Bodhisattva.

One goal will produce lasting results and the other will not. The person with the motivation of selflessness has the key. Through extraordinary, selfless compassion, that person has the strength to persevere through everything until he or she is awake. That person will persevere until he or she has completely purged from his or her mind even the smallest, gossamer thin seeds of hatred, greed and ignorance. The person whose motivation is to be the ‘good person’ will not be able to do the same for any length of time. The foundation isn’t strong enough. That person may need some kind of feedback, or warm fuzzies as reward for being good. Even tried and true Buddhists will find this impure motivation in your minds. Even our ordained Sangha will find that they, themselves, will have dry periods. You’ll go spiritually dry, bone dry, and you’ll think, “What am I doing here? I can’t go on; it’s just too hard.” Then the next day, you’ll wake up and you’ll think, “Another day…good.” You’ll have all these different feelings that are just so common. Everybody, everybody has them. You don’t have to be a Buddhist to have these feelings.

Why does it flip flop back and forth? Because you have not built the firm foundation of very pure, selfless compassion. You need to cultivate it every single moment. You need to get yourself past the point where you need warm fuzzies to keep you going. If you are only looking at the symptom of suffering and trying to manipulate your environment to turn suffering around, you will always need feedback. That feedback may or may not come. Your compassion, your love should not depend on that.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Awareness of Suffering

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Excerpt from a teaching on Compassion by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

If you’ve never practiced the Buddhadharma before, or if you’re interested in practicing, or if you have practiced some general meditation and you feel it’s time to move on to a path that is more stable or well known, then you’re in a perfect place for this teaching. You can start practicing one of the most important teachings of the Buddha right now. You can begin to cultivate the mind of compassion. How might you do this? First of all, you might look around and examine physical existence.

In America, we hide our suffering. We have very little knowledge of real suffering, and I think that’s one reason why it’s very difficult for Westerners to practice a pure and disciplined path. We think we understand suffering because we have experienced loneliness, or because when we were kids we had the measles, or because we have gone through marriages and divorces. Or maybe we’ve seen some sickness or poverty. For these reasons, we think we understand suffering, and we do to some extent. These are valid sufferings.

But there’s a funny thing about our culture that we must understand. We are actually hidden from the sufferings of our culture. When people are deformed, handicapped, mentally or terminally ill, they are taken away from the mainstream of society and they are hidden. Or if we are considered unpresentable to most people, we have plastic surgery or we have some kind of therapy that makes us like everyone else. In fact, if we examine the healing process in American medicine, part of that process is to become like other people.  We are made to look like other people.

In other countries around the world suffering is more evident, for many different reasons: those countries may not be as technologically advanced as our country, or their culture may be an older society in which suffering has become more the norm and it is not such a shock to see it. Or perhaps poverty is a factor.

I will describe how I felt when I first went to India. I couldn’t bear it. I don’t claim to be so compassionate; I too have to cultivate the idea of compassion every day. But I remember seeing people walking the streets with arms and legs missing, eaten up by leprosy. I saw mothers and fathers maim their children, not because they hated them or because they were cruel to them, but because that would give them a deformity they could use for begging. That would be the only way they could ensure their survival. There was no other way for them to get food. What do we do for our children? We might send ours to school. In the streets of India, they have to prepare them in a different way.

Suffering is a part of the fabric of the society in India, and it’s very evident. I remember walking down the street in Delhi. There was a young boy who must have been twelve; it was hard to tell, he was so small. He was lying on a rag, a tattered blanket, and he was dying. He was so thin that he looked like the pictures of starvation we see from Ethiopia. He was beyond thin. His bones were sticking out, his belly swollen, his tongue hanging out. And next to him were a few coins and a candy bar. Someone had thrown them down for him.

We don’t see that in our culture. We don’t understand it. We think that the things we’ve gone through – the divorces, not being able to pay the light bill, the heartbreak of psoriasis, the things we consider so awesome – are the real sufferings of the world. But they are not all the world has to endure.

Look at the animal realm. We know what our animals are like. They get fed everyday and they have it pretty good. But not all animals are like them. If we go to different countries, we see beasts of burden that are treated in horrible ways. We see animals that are denied their natural environment.

Humans and animals are only two life forms. According to the Buddha’s teachings, there are many different life forms, many of which are non-physical. How we appear, how we manifest, what form we take has to do with the qualities of our mind. If we are filled with hate, we are reborn in a hell realm. Why is that so hard to understand? When you are filled with hate now, even as a human being, aren’t you in your own private hell? Have you ever gone through a period where you were so filled with anger that everything you saw became ugly and you managed to distort it somehow? Each of us has lived in a private hell. Why is it so hard to believe that we are capable of living in or creating a situation like that? If your mind is capable of having a nightmare, then rebirth in a hell realm is a possibility.

Have you ever been needy? Have you ever gone through a period in your life when you needed approval, or love, or some kind of nourishment so badly, that you were in a state of despair? When people did reach out to you, they couldn’t get through? Each of us, for at least one moment in our lives, has experienced this. Why then is it so hard to understand that these kinds of existences really do exist?

Having understood that this is logical, having examined your own mind truthfully – and truthfully is the key – and found the residue of these experiences in your mind, you can allow yourself to go more deeply into the recognition that the Buddha was right. There is suffering in cyclic existence.

We have to think also of our own suffering. We must think that even if we have a TV, a car, a house, and all of the things that we are taught to desire, there will be a point at which we cannot take them with us. There will be a point at which they will do us no good. That point, of course, is death. All of the efforts that we’ve gone through to get those things will have been wasted.

Long-time Dharma practitioners may think, “I really wish she’d get on with it. I know this.” I have to tell you, if you really knew the truth of suffering, there would not be one moment that you did not practice with the utmost compassion. There would not be one moment when you thought only of yourself and your needs, and of the temporary gratifications you think you must have. Yet you still have many of those moments.

Mindfulness and Compassion: A Meditation on Bodhicitta in Everyday Life

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The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Your Treasure is Heart”

There are many different ways that one can actually engage and begin to train the mind as a Bodhisattva.  Actually, as a Bodhisattva the goal is to make every aspect of one’s life a vehicle for the benefit for others.  So, what would that look like?  Well, what about the ordinary things that you do?  Westerners have all these different elements in their lives, divided into sections, pigeon holes.  There’s the holy part, and there’s the ordinary part. There’s your regular personality and the way you are to your husband, wife,  kids, in-laws, and all those people that know you better than anybody.  There’s another part of your life where you’re out on the street, and people get to see you with your street-face on.  And then there’s the personal part.  You go to the bathroom and all those kinds of things. There’s the intellectual part,  the part that goes to the movies, and the part that exercises.  There are all these different parts, and because we’re so deluded, none of them seems to have much relationship to each other.  It’s like we’re juggling cats all the time.

One of the things that you have to do as a Bodhisattva is to make your entire life a basket, a vehicle for this compassion.  But how do you do that?  Well, there are these walking mindfulness meditations that you can do that are extremely beneficial.  If you find yourself moving into a depression or some sort of negative mood, if you really try to practice some sort of absorption with them, they’ll pull you right out of it, It’s very simple.  You don’t have to sit down and do the “holy” thing.  You don’t even have to put on your dharma clothes, pick up your pretty beads, or wear your particular medallions showing that you’re cool. You don’t have to do any of that.  All you have to do is, oh, I don’t know, let’s say, eat lunch.  As you’re eating lunch, you would pick up a spoonful of the food and you would say a quiet, loving prayer, a heart-felt wish, “As I take this nourishment into my body, may all sentient beings be nourished by the light and power of Bodhichitta.  As I take this drink into my body, may all sentient beings be watered and nurtured by the nectar of dharma.”  As you walk through the door, “May the suffering of all sentient beings be ended by the virtue of my walking through this door. May they be led through the door of liberation.”  It’s a constant mindfulness meditation.  As I walk down the street, “May all sentient beings walk down the path to liberation.”  In the car while looking at a map trying to find these crazy Washington streets and where they go, “By the virtue of this activity, may all sentient beings receive the proper guidance and direction by which they can accomplish dharma and be free.”

So you have a choice with everything that you engage in.  You can be looking at the map and cussing like a trooper, hating the way D.C. is laid out with those weird tunnels, or you can be utilizing the opportunity. You’re going to be looking at the map and finding your street anyway.  So instead of getting into a bad mood, perhaps you could use that as an opportunity to understand that all sentient beings are directionless and hungry for direction.  A small prayer at that moment that all sentient beings be guided on the path to liberation is appropriate and beneficial. It organizes your mind and thought. Mindfulness becomes so profound and so clarified that almost anything that you’re doing at that time is better, happier.  It takes on more meaning.  The mind is more clear, less filled with the kinds of hyper-emotions that make us crazy and confused.

Turn everything into that kind of meditation, that kind of consideration for the well-being of others.  Everything. “As I ascend the staircase, may all sentient beings ascend into the true meaning of dharma.”  You’re free to make up your own prayer concerning the welfare of sentient beings.  It doesn’t have to be my prayer.  Make up your own.  If you constantly walk around like that, you’ll find that you are changing in some subtle way that you can’t understand. You have less bad moods, less depression, less frequent overwhelming concern with your ego to the point where you are busy doing nothing but manipulating everything and everybody around you in order that they will get it right for you, which is pretty much how we live.  That kind of thing begins to change and you’re less concerned with manipulating everything and everyone around you in order to get what you want. You spend less time accomplishing the great mantra of “gimme gimme gimme iwant iwant iwant hung phat!” And you are more concerned with the welfare of others.  Something inside of you begins to change.  Remember, our habitual tendency is so strongly biased toward ego cherishing that we really have to spend a lot of time putting something in the pile of concern for others in order to bring the mind back into some kind of balance.  This kind of meditation really brings about that kind of balance, and your habit begins to change.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Bodhicitta and Generating the Deity

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The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo in response to some comments from one of her students:

Gonpo: To say one “generates” this or that — deity or Bodhichitta – is a type of that materialism. Kind of like, “wow, look at me!” Our great Vajrayana teachers like Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo help is cut through such materialism. Help us cut ego, relax mind, do nothing maybe! I don’t know, but my understanding from Jetsunma is that the Bodhichitta, our Buddhanature isn’t where the work needs to happen. Our habits are.

Jetsunma: Your statement Gonpo, bears a little comment. “Yidam generation stage” is indeed Vajrayana. In the generation stage one generates the qualities of the yidam, mixing one’s mind so as to gain the mind aspect. One generates the handheld implements and their meaning to gain the qualities and activities of the Deity. Say your generation stage is Bodhisattva Manjushri. The implements are meant to be generated with a deep understanding of their meaning. Like Manjushri’s sword of wisdom is seen to cut through ignorance. The text he holds is a symbol of wisdom, purity of mind. All yidams are practiced like that. Now say you are practicing a yidam in yab/yum posture. What are you practicing there? The union of compassion and method! Or also called “wisdom and display” which also means one must accomplish the meaning and the concerned activities as your own very display in samsara.

All yidams, deities are the very door to liberation, and that is the great blessing power they offer. They are not ordinary, they emanate from primordial awareness, the profound Buddha Nature. Why is this? In their great compassion their sole concern is to liberate beings from the cycle of suffering and rebirth. Therefore, if one generates any yidam their first and primary concern should be the same. To benefit and liberate all motherly beings from suffering.

OM MANI PEDME HUNG!

OM AH RAPATSANA DHI!

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Moods, Bodhicitta and Mental Discipline

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The following is an excerpt from a teaching called “Your Treasure is Heart”

In order to understand how mental discipline will help you feel more compassionate, you need to understand that compassion is not an emotion.  Bodhichitta is not an emotion.  It doesn’t exist on that dense a level.  It’s not as dense as an emotion.  Emotions are actually reactions.  If you take perception, delusion, duality, confusion, hatred, greed and ignorance, all of those things that are characteristic of samsara, and you shake them up in a jar, the bubbles that you would get, like the bubbles from soap, are roughly the equivalent of emotions.  Emotions are the result of conceptual proliferation, whipped up into a very exaggerated state.  They are reactive. Bodhichitta really has nothing to do with that.

When we begin to give rise to the Bodhichitta, we do so, first of all, through mental discipline.  As we begin to practice, we have some understanding of the suffering of sentient beings and why we should engage in loving concern for them.  When we examine the thoughts that turn the mind, we really tune into the sufferings of samsara.  We tune in, as well, to the fact that we have lived so many lifetimes that literally anyone that we can see, or see a picture of, or hear or think of has been our own kind parent in some previous life.  Yet these beings are wandering in samsara just like a bee that’s caught in a jar, absolutely clueless as to how to create the causes by which their terrible suffering might end.

Once you learn that, you discipline your mind not to ignore it.  We like to surf on the sensual pleasure of the moment.  We like to enjoy, and try to get as high in our daily routine as possible, so we can just surf on the moment of experience.  We don’t want to think about the condition of sentient beings.  So this mental discipline is required in order to be a serious practitioner. You can’t cut corners here. If you don’t put in the time, your practice will never be up to snuff.

Many students come to me saying “Well, I just don’t feel this compassion.”  My answer is, so what!  Compassion is not an emotion.  Nobody is going to benefit by how you feel.  They’re going to benefit by what you do.  So do the practice.  Discipline yourself to contemplate the causes and conditions of both happiness and suffering; and particularly contemplate the suffering of sentient beings,  These contemplations cannot be short-circuited. They must be delved into with everything you have. Once you do that you begin to feel a certain kind of determination and motivation, and it begins to make sense.

When I was 20, I had not met with the path of Dharma yet, but I was actually given these contemplations directly in my own meditation and in the dream state. So I began to practice them.  What happened to me was I realized that compassion is the only thing that makes sense.  Think about the logic of it. Here you are, one sentient being on our planet where in the human realm alone, there are roughly six billion of us.  On our planet there are also uncountable animal forms.  You can’t even count the number of ants in an ant hill.  Each one of them is a sentient being with the Buddha nature within them, just as surely as you are, yet they appear in this form due to their own habitual tendency and the way that their consciousness is functioning. How many uncountable sentient beings can be seen with the eye on this planet alone!

If this absolute Buddha nature, this ground of being, is my nature, and you are that also, and yet we appear in these multitudinous forms, wandering and suffering in samsara, it made perfect sense to me to dedicate my life to the liberation and salvation of all sentient beings.  Nothing else seemed logical or reasonable.  And from that, gradually, this determination grew.  For about ten months,  I went through the mental discipline. I practiced for eight to ten hours a day only on those contemplations until I could see clearly for myself that this is the only game in town that made sense.  With that knowledge, living any other kind of life seemed like whoring or prostitution to me, and it didn’t seem reasonable.  So my discrimination was born.

In the Buddha’s teachings we are told that there are three thousand myriads of universes, three thousand myriads of universes.  That’s just one number that gives us some understanding that we’re talking big!  The Buddha also teaches us that there are formless realms, and there are uncountable sentient beings in these formless realms.  So logically, if my nature is this Buddha nature, completely inseparable from the very Lord that I call Buddha, completely inseparable and indistinguishable from all these sentient beings, it is logical and reasonable that I would do everything that I can to bring benefit to others instead of spending my entire life in ego-gratification and self-cherishing.  It is logical and reasonable also to me, that I will never be happy until every sentient being is free.  That’s what seems reasonable to me.

Once you have that kind of understanding, you have to go through the process of reminding yourself, keeping it alive every step of the way.  If any of you have been married, you know that taking the vow is not the end of the issue.  If you want to remain in that situation, you really have to work at it.  Giving rise to the Bodhichitta is like that .  The effort doesn’t stop once you come to the great conclusion.  You have to remind yourself every day.  It’s part of the discipline of practice so that you remain mindful.  On the path of Dharma these contemplations are crucial.

So this is how it starts.  It starts in mental discipline which gives rise to determination.  Where’s the emotion in all that?  Emotions become inconsequential.  Once you realize that there are six billion humans, that you know of, wandering in samsara, not understanding how to create the causes of happiness, whether you have gas at that moment or are in a good or a bad mood, those kinds of things become a moot point.  You learn that it’s OK to be a Bodhisattva in a bad mood.  But you don’t get to stop, you see, because you’ve learned something.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Prayer for Mental Clarity

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The following is from a twitter conversation between Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo and a follower on twitter:

Student: need your advice. I am so nervous to face my exam tomorrow. What should i do? is there a pray for it and to get success maybe?

Jetsunma: Hi, a good mantra to recite for memory, mental clarity, wisdom is to the great Manjushri. mantra: Pronounce “OM AH RA PA TSA NA DHI”

Student: Thanks a lot! It can be read anytime or just before doing something?

Jetsunma: Any time at all!

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Use Your Heart

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

I hope and pray all people will come to see that kindness is the way. Most trouble can be avoided if we are simply good hearted. Bitterness and meanness poison just about every situation. If people would communicate skillfully and with respect nearly all arguments can be solved without war or hate. Only when one’s very life and livelihood are threatened, then legal council should be sought for advice.

In general, no resolution is ever possible with insults, snarky talk, or childish cruel jokes or rants. It is possible to grow up and grow in the capacity for compassion with practice. If we care about any sentient beings, we must care about all, as we are all of the same nature. So the obsession with harming others is a strong indication that this is not well understood. From the view of say, Lord Buddha’s extraordinary awakened state, there is no “place” where one life “ends” and another life “begins.” There is only the empty and complete display of the primordial ground of being. Beyond that, we are not separate- not in being, not in distance, and not in time, as these are all relative, where the absolute nature is unchanging, and fulfilled at once.

Relative view can be a real mess, and discord results when one has no healthy boundaries or indulges the ignorant, ordinary monkey-mind to do as it pleases. We are not here for that. We are all, in ultimate view, Buddha in physical form. How well the “light” shines through one’s “window” depends entirely on how well we clean and keep the “glass”, and this is our true job. We must see all as it is. Not as our habits dictate. You can change, you can do better. You are Buddha! Never forget that. Use your heart, and stand tall for the sake of all!

OM MANI PEDME HUNG!

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Six Realms of Cyclic Existence

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An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhists Think by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Most people, however, fixated as they are on self-nature, experience hatred, greed, and ignorance.  This is the content of their mindstream.  We all have a great amount of self-concern, craving, desire, and grasping, which Buddhists consider a form of greed.  We have abundant anger.

You know you have anger; everyone has anger, which Buddhists consider a form of hatred.  And we have ignorance, which in Buddhist terminology signifies the lack of awareness of the primordial Wisdom State.  It means the lack of being awake as the Buddha is awake.

In the Bardo, some of the latent karmic potential, or the karmic seeds in our mindstream, will ripen.  For instance, if we have hatred within our mindstream, we will perceive it externalized as some kind of demonic entity––and respond with fear.  And we will try to take rebirth as soon as possible.  We will go compulsively into the next rebirth.  So it’s very possible that we take rebirth in an undesirable form.

Even if we achieve again the precious human form, we might be reborn in poverty in Calcutta, or as the offspring of parents who have AIDS.  And we ourselves could have AIDS.  There is no way to predict how karma will ripen.  This is the unpredictability of cyclic existence.

Of the six realms of cyclic existence, the human realm is considered the most precious––because it is the only realm in which we can practice Dharma in order to achieve Realization.  In all the other realms, preoccupation with immediate experience is too tight, too intense––so much so that one cannot meditate, contemplate, or practice.   This is true even in the higher realms.

The highest realm into which we can be reborn is the realm of the long-life gods.  The suffering in this realm is actually related to pleasure.  You may think, “I’d like to suffer like that,” but in this realm pleasure really is the source of suffering.

To be reborn in this realm requires tremendously good karma, but also involves the karma of pride.  (It is your pride that will, despite a great accumulation of positive causes, keep you from being born in an Enlightened state.)  Positive causes produce the experience of great pleasure which prevails in the long-life god realm. The scent there is an overpowering experience, sensual and erotic, healing instantly and completely.  Any sense––touch, taste, sight, hearing––is so potent that one is completely intoxicated, completely consumed by it.  The gods in this realm are extremely, excruciatingly beautiful.  Their bodies are sweetly scented; their skin, exceedingly pure.  They swim in nectar-like water; everything they taste is the elixir of life.  And they live for thousands of years.

Some people may think: “How do I get into that place?”  But there’s a catch.  When the thousands of years of their god-realm karma are exausted, these beings begin to change.  Suddenly they are no longer so sweet-smelling.  Then the other gods and goddesses start to move away from them––as far away as they can.

Soon the god-realm beings whose good karma is depleted become aware that they are deteriorating.  No longer are they quite so beautiful; their “high” is wearing off.  They realize that they’ve used up all the fortunate causes they had accumulated for aeons.  Since they have a touch of clairvoyance, they can look down and see that there is nowhere to go but to a lower rebirth.  And they get no help from the other gods and goddesses, who are still absorbed in their intoxication.  This is the most pleasurable rebirth.  You suffer only as it ends.

Immediately below the long-life gods is the realm of the jealous gods.  The causes for being reborn there are power-hunger, competitiveness, and jealousy.  There is much wealth in this realm, and intoxication too, but of another sort––intoxication with power.  There is continual warfare––and the suffering which comes from it.  There is suffering, but also pleasure.  The jealous gods are very powerful, very demanding.  They engage in battle with other gods, and they sometimes become involved with other realms in order to use them for their warfare agenda.

Some say that the Old Testament God Jehovah is actually a jealous god, exhibiting the characteristics of this realm––wielding destruction and demanding exclusive allegiance.

The realm below the jealous gods is the human realm.  In this realm, old age, sickness, and death are our main sufferings.  If we live long enough, all of us experience them.  One cause for being born human––instead of appearing miraculously in the state of Enlightenment––is doubt.  Everyone in the human realm experiences doubt.  You must look at yourself as if from the outside and recognize that doubt is an obstacle to your practice.  We have the habitual tendency of only believing what we can see and hold in our hands.

We may not believe that there are non-physical realms.  Well, we’ve heard of them, and think they may possibly exist.  We think we may have lived before, but we don’t know for sure.

Right below the human realm is the animal realm, in which a rebirth results from “dullness.”  The word actually translates as “stupidity,” but we hesitate to use that term because we all love animals.  Here however we are focusing on the consciousness of animals and their inability to absorb the teachings needed to achieve Realization.  They can’t reason, they can’t be taught in the way humans can.  They’re tightly reactive, completely involved in their experience of phenomena, without any spaciousness between event and reaction.

A tiny bit of spaciousness is the difference between us and animals.  Unlike them, we can consider and formulate in a creative way some kind of impression and response.  An animal’s inability to do this is termed ignorance, or stupidity, or dullness.  Animals are preyed upon by predators, pursued and eaten by one another.  They are often at the mercy of humans, who eat them or use them for their own purposes.  Animals suffer greatly from all that.

Below the animal realm is the realm of the hungry ghosts.  These beings are not visible to our eyes, but we have information about them: the Buddha in his omniscience saw and described them.  The cause for being reborn as a hungry ghost is grasping or desire.  With very small mouths and very big stomachs, these beings are weak from hunger and hardly ever able to get what they need.  They suffer from physical and other kinds of hunger and cannot be satisfied.  They have the unfortunate karma of strange, mixed perception.

When you drink a cup of tea, it tastes like tea to you.  (To long-life gods, it would taste like the most exquisite nectar.)  Hungry ghosts would experience it as pus or another equally horrid substance.  Their perception is askew because of their greed and desire.

The lowest rebirth is in the hell realms.  The main causes for being reborn there are hatred and anger, and the suffering is tremendous.  Who can claim a mind free of anger and hatred?  If you’ve ever had a frightening nightmare from which you felt you could not escape, then you have the potential to create the phenomena of a hellish realm.  It’s the same.

 

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

To download the complete teaching, click here and scroll down to How Buddhists Think

For the Benefit of All

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

I haven’t been on twitter so much in a teaching or connecting capacity, as I am required to testify in this upcoming case between the US Government and William Cassidy, with others involved. I would prefer not to testify but there is no choice. I am the main victim, and my Ordained Sangha. It is sad it has come to this. But this is a criminal case, and laws have been broken. As well as hearts and even spirits. Many of us have suffered greatly. And grieved for Buddhism here in the west. We have done our part, screen shots, every bit of cruelty, every single threat. All these three horrible years. Now the FBI has taken this as criminal and due process is underway.

My motivation is not punitive, but a hope that hate-filled people will think before harassing women or anyone for whatever reason. I hope Buddhist Sanghas everywhere see they need not accept such abuse. Nor will I, nor should any other woman. Cyber stalking and threats, all forms of it should be eradicated from Buddhism, Dharma, and any true spiritual path.

OM MANI PEDME HUNG

OM TARE TUTTARE TURE SOHA

May virtue and compassion prevail!

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

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