A sacred space for everyone
The following is a full length video teaching offered by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo at Kunzang Palyul Choling:
Since time out of mind, we have accumulated karmic causes – both good and not-so-good. To antidote these, we practice the purification practices of Ngondro. Through these we can find clarity of mind a space to deepen. This we do for those who have hopes of us.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo. All rights reserved
From The Spiritual Path: A Compilation of Teachings by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
Let’s say that your immediate family consists of four people, so you have a particular karma with three others. Those three all have both negative and positive karmic seeds coming to the surface, just as you do. When you four came together, you did so because certain karma was ripening. You could not marry; a child could not be born to you, unless that particular karma was ripening in your mindstream, and in someone else’s. When this karma comes together, it has a kind of interactive characteristic. Like tends to attract or “vibe with” like.
Perhaps you have some horrible negative karma associated with cruelty to animals. You may have a child, or there may be someone else in your family, who has a similar negative karma. Though you won’t understand why, it is likely that something will happen to reinforce the catalyzing effect of your relationship. For instance, you might get a dog that both of you abuse. Or you might develop a terrible animosity toward animals that you would not have experienced so overwhelmingly, if you had not been with that particular person. In your past, you also have karma of being kind to animals. And had you come together with a person with strong kind-to-animals karma, that relationship might have catalyzed something completely different. Let’s say that you have a period of intense anger: the karma of anger is coming to the surface. If you let yourself fall into that anger, really wallow in it, then you will tend to ripen still more anger from the deeper past, and those bubbles will continue to come forward. On a superficial level, the anger will seem to feed on itself. You will feel compelled to be angry.
But suppose you do everything you can to overcome your anger. Though angry at someone, you tell yourself: “This person is suffering just as all sentient beings are, and doesn’t really mean to act that way.” If you truly try to circumvent the anger by reasoning it out, what will happen? Instead of having more anger ripen and come forward, you will ripen a different kind of karma. Perhaps the karma of clear thought. Basically, you can prevent future ripenings of negative karma by taking hold of yourself at any given point. You have a precious human rebirth; you have the Dharma; and you can think logically. You are able to choose how to cope with any anger that arises.
When some people have an unpleasant feeling, such as anger, hatred, or grief, they habitually cover it over. If they become angry, for example, they say, “I feel only love.” Or: “There is only love.” This is like slapping a Band-Aid on an ulcer, which only continues to ripen and grow deeper. By plastering one thought on top of another, you actually link them together. And what happens? Either your anger and hatred will remain inflamed on an underlying level (a frequent result), or you may ripen the karma of delusion. Your mind will be very unclear. Those who use such methods over a long period of time become deeply set in delusion. It seems as if they have gone somewhere else, and one is tempted to ask, “Are you still in there? Anybody home?” There are just too many layers of Band-Aids. What you need is to examine the contents of your mindstream. And begin to view your own mind as something you can work with, something you can take responsibility for.
© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo
The following is a full length video teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo offered at Kunzang Palyul Choling:
The narcotic of samsara encourages us to believe that we will stay the same forever. Self-honesty tells us differently. Jetsunma helps us see the reality of impermanence and karma in our lives. Living a life of virtue will bring us ultimate happiness.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo. All rights reserved
The following is a full length video teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo offered at Kunzang Palyul Choling:
In this introduction, Jetsunma explains the logic that Buddhists use to follow the path which leads to Enlightenment. She also helps us navigate the various available paths to us as westerners.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo. All rights reserved
The following is a full length video teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo offered at Kunzang Palyul Choling:
Do we think in full equations? Jetsunma says not. If we did, we’d realize the truth of the 4 Noble Truths and have more motivation to follow the path. Jetsunma helps us find the logic that can lead us out of suffering.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo. All rights reserved
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 at Kunzang Palyul Choling called “Turning the Mind Towards Dharma”
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo. All rights reserved
The following is a full length video teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo given at Kunzang Palyul Choling:
Why is so much change required on the Dharma path? It’s because the result is so extraordinary.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo. All rights reserved
The following is a full length video teaching given by Khenpo Tenzin Norgay at Kunzang Palyul Choling: