Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The Eighth Throne Holder

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The Third Karma Kuchen Rinpoche,

Orgyen Do-Ngag Chokyi Nyima

(1854 – 1906)

The third Karma Kuchen Rinpoche Do-ngag Chokyi Nyima was born in Ahlo Khateng in the fourteenth rabjung year of the Wood Tiger (1854). His birth was prophesied by a letter left behind by Karma Gyurmed, which clearly indicated the location of the birth. As befitted the birth of a great lama, light of rainbow colors suffused the sky and awe-inspiring resonances echoed through the air.

The fourteenth Karmapa gave Do-ngag Chokyi Nyima the Refuge Vow and soon after he was enthroned as the eighth Throne Holder at the Palyul Monastery. After he received the full ordination (gelong), he was given the formal name Orgyen Do-ngag Chokyi Nyima. Transmission from many sources including those of the Palyul tradition were given to Do-ngag Chokyi Nyima by Gyatrul Rinpoche, Washul Lama Sonam Namgyal, Khang-nang Lama Tashi Phuntsok, Dzogchen Dorje Rabten, Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo, Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche, Lhatrul Pedma Garwang, Drubwang Drodul Pawo Dorje, and many other eminent masters of the time.

Do-ngag Chokyi Nyima’s mind was full of compassion for all sentient beings. Much as he wished to be in solitary retreat, he opted instead to follow his root guru Gyatrul Rinpoche’s advice and devoted his life to propagating Buddha Dharma. Regardless of how busy his schedule was, his personal practice started daily without fail at three in the morning. His successful attainment of having the mind inseparable from the four elements enabled him to perform many extraordinary deeds, which were deemed miraculous by others.

In the fifteenth rabjung year of the Fire Horse (1906), Chokyi Nyima dissolved into the pure realm of clear light. He was fifty-three years old. During the cremation ceremony, cloud formations resembling large tents manifested across an otherwise cloudless sky, accompanied by a mild shower of light rain. A large number of bone relics were found on the ground. These were gathered together and placed within a Stupa of gold and copper that was constructed to the left of the Avalokiteshvara temple.

Reference:  Pathgate Institute of Buddhist Studies

The Seventh Throne holder

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The Seventh Throne Holder

Pedma Do-Ngag Tenzin Ngesang Chokyi Nangwa

(1830 – 1891)

Gyatrul Rinpoche was born amid many extraordinary phenomena into the household of a Chinese Emperor’s minister in Gyalmo Tsawai-rong in the fourteenth rabjung year of Iron Tiger (1830). His birth was prophesied in Terton Sangngag Lingpa’s revelation. Since the young boy exhibited signs of pure awareness and demonstrated accomplishment in Tsa Lung (Subtle Energy Qigong) from an early age, Karma Gyurmed had no trouble recognizing him as the incarnation of Kunzang Sherab. Blessed with incredible faculties in reading, writing and perception, the young Gyatrul Rinpoche could remember the many incarnations from his past life as Rongton Shung-Gya, Shakya Gyaltsen and Kunzang Sherab. He could also give an accurate description of the Palyul Monastery from memory of his previous life. At ten years of age, he received the Nam Cho Ngöndro practice from Lama Sangye Yeshe. Two years later, he arrived at the Palyul Monastery and was duly enthroned.

The young Gyatrul Rinpoche received from Karma Gyurmed all the transmissions of kama and terma of the Palyul tradition, then spent three years in the practice of Ratna Lingpa’s three kaya mind accomplishment. After taking his full ordination (gelong), he spent two years at the Palpung retreat centre with Jamgon Lodro Thaye from whom he received guidance in Sanskrit, poetry and literature. He went on to receive from Jamgon Lodro Thaye other profound transmissions and empowerments such as Rinchen Ter Dzod, Dam Ngag Rinpoche Dzod and Dukhor Wangchen. Gyatrul Rinpoche also received from Jamyang Khentse Wangpo all the transmissions of Longchen Nyingtig, Gyud Lug Phurba, Yonten Dzod and the two traditions of the view and practice of Bodhicitta – that of the ‘Profound View’ passed down from Manjushri, and that of the ‘Vast Conduct’ passed down from Maitreya.

It was said that Gyatrul Rinpoche was watched over by many dharma protectors during his practice. Through his tireless effort and the support of his Yidam, Gyatrul Rinpoche was able to assimilate the understanding of a great number of Buddhist Doctrines and frequently gave the impression that he knew them by heart from memory. He continued to manifest signs of authentic accomplishment and pure awareness in both generation and completion stages of Dzogpa Chenpo. Gyatrul Rinpoche devoted his entire life to propagating Buddha Doctrine. He gave ordination vows to thousands of monks; repeatedly gave many cycles of transmissions and empowerments to countless disciples; printed many scriptures and sponsored the construction of Stupas and temples.

On the twenty-second day of his sixty-second year (1891), Gyatrul Rinpoche entered into a serene state of meditative equipoise and passed into the pure realm. His body was placed within a newly completed two-story Stupa next to the Vajrasattva temple.

Reference:  Pathgate Institute of Buddhist Studies

Gyatrul Rinpoche’s current incarnation is Gyatrul Rinpoche. Known in recent times for his connection to Dhomang Monastery, a branch monastery of Palyul, he currently heads centers around the world, practicing the Nam Chö revelations as well as the Dudjom Tersar.

The Sixth Throne Holder – Karma Gyurmed

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The Sixth Throne Holder
The Second Karma Kuchen Rinpoche,
Gyurmed Ngedon Tenzin Palzangpo
(1794 – 1851)

Karma Gyurmed was born at the foothills of Me Chu Gang in Me Shod in the thirteenth rabjung year of the Wood Tiger (1794). His birth was prophesied by Duddul Lingpa’s Terma revelation. Acting in accordance with the advice of the thirteenth Karmapa Duddul Dorje, the monks of the Palyul Monastery were able to identify the reincarnation of Karma Tashi, the First Karma Kuchen Rinpoche. After Karma Gyurmed was enthroned at Tai Situ Rinpoche’s Palpung Monastery, he started his study of Buddha Doctrine in earnest. The range of transmissions Karma Gyurmed received included those of the kama and terma of the Palyul tradition, the Kham tradition, the Longchen Nyingtig tradition, the Kathog tradition, the Dzogchen tradition, the Jigme Lingpa tradition, the Duddul Lingpa revelation, and many others. Karma Gyurmed went on to incorporate the Longchen Nyingtig’s Three Roots practice of Lama, Yidam, and Khandro into the Palyul tradition.

Similar to his root guru Karma Lhawang, Karma Gyurmed preferred to spend his time in solitary retreat. His principle Yidam in his Three Root practice was Vajrakilaya and he had frequent visions of the full assembly of all seventy-five deities of his Yidam. In one pure vision, he received a visit by Guru Rinpoche who instructed him to introduce the Mendrub Accomplishment Ceremony (the tantric ritual of making dharma medicine) into the Palyul Monastery. Karma Gyurmed also started the tradition of performing the Lama Cham of the Eight Manifestation of Guru Rinpoche, on the tenth day of each Losar, in accordance with the pure vision of Guru Chowang (1212-1270).

Karma Gyurmed’s accomplishment in the Dzogpa Chenpo enabled his disciples to heighten their insight simply by hearing his voice. He sometimes performed miraculous activities for the purpose of removing the mental defilements from sentient beings, such as reading the thoughts of their minds, and in one case left a foot print indentation in a rock by the hot spring of Tilung.

On the twelfth day of the fifth month of his fifty-eighth year, Karma Gyurmed instructed his disciples to prepare a host of offerings when he became aware of the presence of the Buddhas of the three times around him in every direction. The following day, Karma Gyurmed dissolved his mind into the pure realm of truth. His life-like body shrank to the size of mere eighteen inches in height while the sky was filled with extraordinary cloud formations and rainbows. Gyatrul Rinpoche built for his root guru a temple and a two-story Stupa of gold and copper into which the body of Karma Gyurmed, the second Karma Kuchen Rinpoche was placed.

Reference:  Pathgate Institute of Buddhist Studies

The Fifth Throneholder – Karma Lhawang

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Karma Lhawang was the nephew of Kunzang Sherab. He exhibited signs of recognizing the true nature of mind and demonstrated adept attainment in Dharma practice since childhood. His early years were spent at his uncle’s former quarters atop the Dzong-nang Mountain where his root guru Karma Tashi transmitted to him all the teachings and essential practices of the Palyul tradition.

As the fifth Throne Holder of the Palyul lineage, Karma Lhawang had little interest in the running of the monastery. Instead he preferred to immerse himself in the pure nature practices and spend most of his time in solitary retreat. The day-to-day administrative side of the monastery was left to his disciples Ah Sam and Lama Wangchug, while Karma Dondam, a heart disciple of Karma Tashi was tasked with the maintaining of the lineage of empowerment and transmission.

Karma Lhawang exhibited many signs of pure mind accomplishment consistently throughout his life until it was time for him to depart for the pure realm.

Reference:  Pathgate Institute for Buddhist Studies

The Test

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An excerpt from a teaching called The Dharma of Technology by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

You should come to respect the root of Dharma, which is bodhicitta or compassion, as the most profound teaching at whatever level you are practicing.  You should come to understand that if you accomplish only that, then you have a right to wear your robes and you have a right to call yourself a Buddhist.  But it is by far the most difficult of all of the vows. You have to think about compassion like this.

If you can pass this test, then you have accomplished Dharma, even if you don’t know how to do a single mudra or ring a bell, even if you don’t have any arms or legs to do it.  Here is the test.  Ask yourself,  “If Lord Buddha Amitabha came to me right now, giving me an opportunity and saying, ‘I’m going to make you a deal.  You could take on all the suffering of all the six realms, every bit of suffering that every sentient being carries, meaning that you have to take on and absorb all the causes of their suffering – hatred, greed and ignorance, desire.  I can give you that, and you could take all of that onto yourself and absorb it completely so that you will suffer endlessly in the most extreme, horrible way until time has run out and in doing that there would be no more suffering in the six realms.’”  Would you do it?

When you hear me say this, you are going to say yes.  You get carried away with emotions.  But if Lord Buddha Amitabha really appeared to you, red and sitting on his lotus, and he really said that to you and he showed you the condensed suffering of all the six realms and you knew that the six realms of cyclic existence appear to be like an endless ocean, and have been going on for uncountable eons, then if you had to accept all that suffering onto yourself, knowing that your mind had to change from the nice thing that you think it is now into a monster filled with hatred, greed and ignorance from all the six realms, but in doing that all of the six realms would be emptied, would you do it?   If you were shown this horrible poison of suffering, this cauldron, this endless sea of suffering and Lord Buddha said to you, “Eat it for their sake and become for an uncountable amount of eons a horrible thing suffering in agony for their sake.”  Would you do it?  Would you open your mouth and start eating?  More than that, would you be happy about it?  Would you be able to do that?

You should try it sometime.  You should test yourself in that way by really thinking that it is possible.  Would you take on every bit of the suffering?  Would you become so grossly misshapen and ugly because of the grossness of all of that suffering?  Would you become so unrecognizable to what you are now?  Would you be willing to do that, knowing that as a result there would be nothing in the six realms of cyclic existence except for you?  There would be nothing.  There would be no more suffering.  The karma of all of those minds, uncountable minds would be purified so that they were free of desire, free of all karma.  Would you bite the big one?

If you think that you would do that, then you know less about yourself than you think.  But to accomplish Dharma you have to get to that point where you would gladly, joyfully, willingly start to eat an ocean of suffering for their sake.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Stop the Madness

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An excerpt from a teaching called Perception and Karma by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

In order to pacify the karma of our mind, we need to employ the methods of Dharma.  These methods consist of generating oneself in a pure form, free of attachment and desire, meditating on the nature of emptiness, contemplating the nature of emptiness, engaging in compassionate and pure activity in order to pacify the karma of our minds.  We engage in all of these things.  These are the means by which eventually, over a period of time, the karma of our mind will change.  It will change.  How quickly it changes is up to you.  No one can predict that.  It really depends on you. It depends on how diligently and deeply you practice, how clear you are about what you want, how deep you can allow your understanding to go, and how much you put into it. There is no law or force outside of you that pushes you to have progress at a certain level or in a certain way.  It is purely up to you.

The experience that we have, however, and the habitual tendencies we have are so strong, that even hearing this is a little bit like riding a Ferris wheel.  When you ride to the top of a Ferris wheel you can look down at the whole world.  You can see the horizon, you can see the lights, you can see the buildings and you can see people, and you go, “Oh, it looks like that, does it?”  Then the Ferris wheel comes down and you get off and you’re on that ground level.  You are in it, walking the streets.  You forget that there is a horizon.  You forget that there are millions and millions of sentient beings per square block. You don’t have any view so we continue with that habitual compulsive tendency to act and react in the ways that we do.

These teachings sound disturbing and they should be disturbing for people that have no access to dharma.  Within that circular, compulsive, experiential procedure there is no end to it.  One cannot do something that will end the phenomena because the more you do the more you interact between self and other.  The more you interact between self and other, the more that you try to accomplish, the more effortful your efforts are, the more engaged you are in cause and effect relationship.  The more cause and effect relationships you engage in, the more karma continues, the more exaggeration continues.  The process does nothing but give birth to itself.  There’s no end to it.

For those who have the opportunity to practice the path that is brought about, not through ordinary means of cause and effect, not through using ordinary techniques of manipulating phenomena and increasing exaggeration, but rather by using techniques that are birthed from primordial wisdom and that bring about the pacification and the end of cause and effect relationships, you should thank Buddha because there is an end to suffering.  Having seen the impenetrability of this tight constant delusion, having seen how it simply gives birth to itself and does more and more and more, having understood this, you should look at the path that comes from the primordial wisdom state and that offers the necessary technology to bring about the end of cause and effect relationships, and feel tremendously relieved. It is like you have been sifting through garbage for many lifetimes, and suddenly you have come upon a precious jewel.  Suddenly you have found the wish-fulfilling jewel.  With that you should develop some sense of determination.

That determination can be a very illusory thing. I’m talking about really understanding for yourself, not just hearing my words, but taking the time to contemplate and understand how useless it is to combat this thing you’re in with the ways that you do.  To really contemplate on how useless your actions are to end something that can’t be ended.  To really contemplate in such a way that you look at the way you’re manipulating phenomena and see that it’s nothing.  You might as well do nothing.  In fact, you’re getting yourself in deeper and deeper.

Contemplate that in such a way that you become armed with a foundational view or foundational understanding that says to you that this stuff is stupid.  It’s not only stupid, it’s deadly, it’s horrible and there’s no way out of it.  To be involved in cyclic existence is horrible beyond belief.  Be determined to examine the nature of your mind.  Watch yourself as you engage in it, and from that point, use these techniques to begin to pacify the causes of the experience that you’re having, which is karma.

That determination is the kind of determination that doesn’t make you practice a little bit more for a few days and then waste away again.  It’s the kind of determination, for instance, as a monk or a nun that would make you say, “Look at these robes, I will never abandon them.  How precious that I have found the supreme vehicle.” Even if men or women came dancing naked through the room and they were all gorgeous, it wouldn’t affect you at all.  You wouldn’t need the world to hide itself so that you could maintain your vows.  You would have that kind of renunciation. You would understand and even if the most delightful sensual experiences were to present themselves to you, they would be nothing to you.  What is it?  It’s nothing.  It’s garbage.  It begets more of the same. You can’t have anything without losing it.

For those of us who are renunciates in different ways, you should have the same experience.  You should look at whatever experience you have in your life and know that it can’t dupe you anymore. It’s not that you won’t achieve, it’s not that you won’t have money; it’s not that you won’t have the experiences that people have but it just won’t dupe you anymore.  You can get married, you can have money, it doesn’t matter what you do, but it won’t dupe you anymore because you know what it’s about.

Having this sense of renunciation, you develop a kind of unshakeable discipline.  It’s not the discipline that means I should do so many mantras per day.  This discipline should go even deeper than that. You should be practicing constantly.  You should be constantly developing some space in the middle of that hard core perception of self and other. You should be developing some space in the middle of all your reactions.  Develop the spaciousness and the relaxation that is based on understanding what’s what, and then develop it through your practice.  Please refer back to the teaching on Monday night.  I hope that all of you will try to hear that teaching again. The constant revelation in every piece of phenomena is the heart of emptiness.  That is its taste.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Me, You and Karma

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An excerpt from a teaching called Perception and Karma by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, July 19, 1989

Every single kind of perception that we have, no matter what it is, is based on the false presupposition that self is inherently real.  The belief in self as being inherently real, absolutely lays out that other is inherently real. Once that idea of self has been borne and is fixed, you must develop walls of ideation and conceptualization to surround it and maintain it.  You must constantly separate other.  In order to separate other, you must continue to determine how other and self interact.  That’s the basic process.  Having done that since time out of mind, you are involved in cause and effect relationships complete with lots of exaggeration. The residue and reality of that is experienced as karma.

Karma is nothing other than cause and effect.  That’s all it is.  It’s not somebody up there making check marks in a book. It’s simply cause and effect.  It’s as simple to understand as a leaf falling from a tree.  There are irrefutable laws of cause and effect.

The experience that we have is based on this karma, which has been based on a long-term relationship with cause and effect, which is based on the underlying belief in self-nature as being inherently real.  Why then, hearing this, can’t we just stop?  Why can’t we just stop reacting?  Why can’t we just stop judging things?  Why can’t we do this?

We can’t stop because we are no longer in a position where we are truly cognizant of the choice between self-nature being inherently real or not.  It is now automatically so.  It is now so rigid that survival has become a big deal. You believe that this is what you are.  You must continue that continuum that you think is survival because you do not know that there is anything without the continuation of self-nature. It is so far buried, it is such a primal experience, it is so beneath reason, so much deeper than reason, due to the constant building up of cause and effect relationships, of karmic relationships and the constant exaggeration that has occurred since time out of mind, from the first perception that implied self.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Try Me

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Try me, try me

If you need a friend

I will be there for you

Till the end, when you need me

Try me, try me

Let me show you

How deep it can be with love

You can count on me

To stay by your side

Through thick and thin

Try me, try me, try me

What you need

Is easy to see

You seem lonely like me

Maybe ready to see

If you need a friend, some love

Oh, won’t you please try me

(Repeats)

©Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo 2007

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