monks

An excerpt from the Mindfulness workshop given by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo in 1999

When we view one another, if we have taken teachings together or empowerments under the same teacher, we are Vajra brothers and sisters.  We are family.  When we see each other, we should be willing to lay down our lives for each other because there is nothing more precious than someone who is holding empowerment, holding the blessings of the Buddha in the world.  That doesn’t mean you have to make a big display about it.  You still have that one vertebra bow trick you could do.  We hold our Vajra family as being most precious.  We should think very, very carefully how we deal with our Vajra brothers and sisters.  If we’re ill-tempered, hateful, scornful towards them; if we are not holding them in pure View, holding them as gods and goddesses, as deities and consorts, if we are not looking at them in that way, we are committing a non-virtue.  If we speak with hatred or ugliness to a monk or nun, we are committing a heinous non-virtue.  I don’t think it’s written “heinous” in the book, but I’m telling you, it is.  It is a serious non-virtue because monks and nuns are the providers, the holders, of the doctrine that make it possible for us to practice.  So if we were to speak with disrespect to a monk or nun, the one who suffers from that is us.  The monk or nun, they’re going to react or not react.  That’s their business.  Whatever they do, that’s their practice.  You’re only responsible for your own practice.  And whether that’s a good monk or a good nun, that’s also not your problem.  That they are holding the Buddha’s teachings invites you to accomplish pure View regarding them.  So we should not think of monks and nuns as being equal to us.  I think of monks and nuns as being higher.  They hold the Doctrine, and I hold the view about them.  So even though I am required, to sit higher than the monks and nuns, if I didn’t have this job, I would never willingly do it, never.  I would never willingly do it.  I know you guys on chairs, you’re thinking, “Oh God!”  But in general, I will tell you that when you have the opportunity to sit lower than a monk or nun, you should try to do so, always.  If you have the opportunity to receive a cup of tea from a monk or nun,  receive it properly.  This is from a monk or a nun!  This is really important to hold the View.  These nuns are goddesses.  They are Tara, none other.  These monks are the appearance of Avalokiteshvara in the world, Chenrezig.  Their compassion establishes the Lineage on this Earth.  It’s because of their efforts that we are able to keep ourselves together.  It’s about raising up what is extraordinary, raising the Dharma up higher.

For monks and nuns, there is a particular hierarchy that we think of when we honor one another. For instance, the younger – I don’t mean younger in terms of age but younger in terms of ordination – the more recently ordained monks and nuns are supposed to hold the elders in higher respect, and you should because they have held the robes longer.  Even if you’re better at your practice, if there is a monk or a nun that has held their robes longer than you, you hold them up.  You practice that View.  You monks and nuns that have had your robes for a long time, however, you don’t hold yourselves up.  You don’t think, “Well, you know, I’m an older monk, I’m an older nun.” In fact, your job should be a little bit like the tactic I take.  Perhaps you can allow younger monks and nuns to show some respect if that is their practice and they are willing to do so, but in your mind, you should be thinking, “These are the most precious ones, the babies, the newly ordained, fresh, moist with longing.”  You should think that they are still fresh from that devotion, from that opening, from that pouring out and the gathering of merit that it took for them to become monks and nuns.  You should think, “These are the jewels.  I, as an older monk or nun, am responsible for bringing these along because they are so precious.” not because they are younger in their ordination.  Do you understand that?

In a way, each of us is looking for ways to not have our own ego in the center of our own mandala.  We are looking for a way to practice View so that we really begin to awaken to the sense of all phenomena, all appearance, as being none other than the celestial palace mandala, and that doesn’t mean thinking it.  It means practicing like I said, not just saying, “Oh, everything is love and light, everything is celestial palace mandala.” That’s not how it’s done.  That will produce absolutely zero result.  Positive thinking is not the same thing as practicing View.  Positive thinking is nice, it’s lovely, I hope you do it, but that ain’t what the Buddha taught.  Practicing View is much firmer than that, and yet more subtle.

Practicing View is instituting the habit in your mind to see things differently than you did before.  Practicing View is using every opportunity to get yourself, your ego, off that throne, and using every opportunity to flush out that obsessive-compulsive desire syndrome.  You know that syndrome: the one that says if you have something sweet, now you have to balance it with something salty and then you have to have something sour and then you have to something wet and then you’re thirsty and then you’re hungry.  That is never ending.  Those are the attributes of your ego.  That is what your ego does, that obsessive-compulsive nature, that constantly going around in circles with what we want.  That is absolutely the nature of the ego.  That is all it does.  That’s all it does, and your five senses help you do it.  You smell what you want, you see what you want, you touch what you want, you grab what you want.  The five senses help us to do that.  Any opportunity that we have to move away from that is an excellent opportunity.

When we have those opportunities, and we search them out, you will find those opportunities everywhere, because there is no place where it’s impossible to practice the sacred.  So that being the case, once you move into that posture of really practicing View and beginning to give rise to that recognition and beginning to see all extraordinary, compassionate, sacred objects as being something different — once you begin to see opportunities in every part of your life, you will begin as well to recognize Guru Rinpoche’s blessing.  Once you recognize those opportunities and practice like that, Guru Rinpoche’s blessing will be everywhere.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

An excerpt from the Mindfulness workshop given by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo in 1999

I want to talk to the monks and nuns about how to keep mindfulness, the awareness of emptiness and bodhicitta as being the true meaning of one’s path, one’s practice: the two eyes.  Somehow, we have to embark more deeply on practicing a way to attain pure View.  What keeps us from attaining pure View?  It’s our constant need to recognize and reaffirm self-nature as being inherently real, and then the rest of it – our desire, our clinging, our egos.  And then there’s always the reaction going on.  We have to see that.  These are the reasons why we are asleep in this narcotic state.  As a monk or a nun, we should be constantly striving for a state of deeper recognition, for a better sense of View.  How can we do that?

We have all kinds of ideas about how we should relate with one another.  We have all kinds of ideas about how we should conduct ourselves, carry ourselves.  My suggestion is that we develop some new patterns, some new habitual tendencies so that we can develop something other than that strong sense of I-ness, of ego-clinging.  Remember that the point is to recognize what is sacred.  That may not coincide with what you think; it may not coincide with what you want; it may not coincide with the way you’re used to doing things. But that’s okay, because the point of practicing Dharma is to change.  It’s not to remain the same, right?

Now, all you feminists, calm down.  When the Buddha first taught, he taught men, right?  Those were the first aspirants. There are all kinds of traditions about nuns sitting in the back and monks sitting in the front, and because we’re all feminists and we’re all girls, we don’t like that very much.  But like it or not, the Buddha taught men first, and so the idea is not to worry about what body we’re wearing right now, what ego we’re stuck in right now.  In fact, to identify with being ordinary males and females and to think, “Oh, females have to be there and men have to be there,” is to stay stuck in ego.  So the reason for women to practice an honoring of monks is not because men are better, but because the Buddha taught men first.  They are our eldest practitioners.  They held the Lineage all this time and made it possible.  It is the ordained male sangha that held the full Lineage of ordination intact through all this time and made it possible for ordination to occur today in its fullness, both genyen and gelong.  So that has been held properly by men.  So as nuns, we should honor the monks.

The monks, however, should not honor themselves.  The monks should honor the women, the nuns, because in pure View, she is the Goddess.  She is Tara herself.  Her nature is indistinguishable from what is most precious to us, so as a Vajrayana practitioner, women are elevated.  She is the Goddess, she is Tara, she is the spiritual consort.  She is the one with whom we can practice in such a way as to overcome samsara, so she is extraordinarily elevated.

So the nuns get to lose their egos by honoring the monks as the primary practitioners who, through their generosity, morality and kindness, have kept the vows all this time and have made it possible for us to practice in the way that we are now.  That should be something you should think about every time you see a monk, good or bad.  Get out of the habit of saying, “Oh, that one’s a good monk, and that one’s a bad monk.”  When you see those robes and they’re on a monk, you should feel exactly the same.  The same thing applies for the monks.  You should not worry about feeling that way about yourself.  You’re here.  That’s good.  So the monks, when they look at women, they should not see a good nun or a bad nun or one that’s dressed one way or one that’s dressed another way.  They shouldn’t see that.  These women who are holding the robes of the Buddha, who are practicing in that way, are nothing less than Tara incarnate.  They are nothing less than the appearance of the Goddess.  The only hope any of us have is to practice in spiritual union, whether that’s on a spiritual level or on a physical level, and so when we look at the female principle, she is everything.  Every time a monk looks at a woman, particularly a nun, he should see the Goddess.  It should be like that, even if it’s a laywoman.  You’re not looking at the clothes, remember?  See the nature.  Behold the Goddess, and in that way, develop the habit of just doing that little bow.  Nobody has to see it, men!  It’s okay!  It could be like one vertebra, you know?  Pick a vertebra. I realize what a hard time men have with that – women, too.  It’s this battle between the sexes.  But that is ordinary phenomena, and we’re trying to get around that, past that, through that.

The point is to carry the View and recognize the nature of one another without holding ourselves in high regard because we are so “fancy.”  The point is to carry the View without getting the ‘rah-rah nuns’ or ‘rah-rah monks’ thing going:  I’ve heard the nuns say, “You know, the monks never support one another.  They’re not being nice to one another.  They don’t cook for each other. They don’t make each other’s beds.  They don’t do anything for each other.”  That’s what I hear from the nuns.  And the monks are saying, “You know, the nuns, they’re sloppy.  They just run around doing ooh-ooh, ah-ah stuff, all those hugs and squeezes and all that stupid stuff.  They’re not very together.”  We tend to think like that and we have these ideas.  It’s that kind of thing that creates not only dissension in the sangha, but it’s also ordinary view.  What do you have to do with that?  What is the point of practicing as you do without holding View?  There would be no point.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo