Wrathful Compassion and Dispelling Obstacles

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

For Americans, the activity of the lamas can be confusing because sometimes the lamas will engage in wrathful compassion.  This has happened to me and I know it has happened to my students as well.  Sometimes because of the karma and the love and concern between the student and the teacher, the lama will see in their meditation that some terrible obstacle has arisen in the mind of the student, or in the path of the student, or in the life of the student in some way.  Maybe it’s an obstacle to the student’s life.  Maybe it’s an obstacle to the student’s path.  Maybe it’s simply something like a brick wall where the student will meet up with their habitual tendency and not be able to make much progress.  If there is the right kind of karmic relationship, if the causes have been given rise to and the devotion is there and all of the different catalytic necessities are in place, then the lama will often engage in wrathful activity in order to cut this obstacle.

Let’s say, for instance (and this often occurs), that the lama sees that within the student’s mind some negative, nonvirtuous karma has been catalyzed or drawn to the surface, or has begun to ripen.  Then the lama will see that this could be dangerous and the lama will be very wrathful.  How does that work?  Well, first of all, the lama, knowing what the student’s capacity is, will do that skillfully in such a way that eventually, even if not at first, the student will fully understand the lama’s gracious activity; and even though wrathful activity has occurred, the student will remain fully devoted, fully respectful, fully loving and confident in the lama’s kindness.

That pure inner posture is a posture of true devotion, purity, spirituality in every sense of the word.  When the lama takes all of your habitual tendencies and all of your issues and smacks you in the head with them, it takes a tremendous amount of vajra courage to continue with love and confidence.  If the student is lacking in a certain kind of virtuous karma, or virtuous ripening at that particular time and is also, perhaps,  having the ripening of some nonvirtuous karma, that interaction between the lama and student may turn it around, and can turn it around just like that, because of the student’s capacity, even in the face of such a difficult situation, to remain fully devoted, fully confident and fully vulnerable.  Vulnerable means opened up and not protected.  In order to continue on this path of compassion and wisdom, that determination, that vajra courage, is such a tremendously virtuous inner posture in which to remain, that often this negative tendency or negative event will be cut.

This has definitely happened to me as I described once or twice before, where my own teacher, out of the clear blue sky with no seeming cause, began to be very angry at me and accused me of something that I would never do.  It would be the equivalent of my accusing you of murdering babies with chain saws.  It was just so far from reality it could never be true.  So my teacher began to be really angry at me and scolded me and raged at me to the point where I was shaking in my shoes.  I was unbelievably terrified. Then when he felt the obstacle had been cut he just stopped and he said, “O.K., we’re done now.  Try not to get mad.  See you later.”  Sort of like that.  Try not to get mad!  I was trying not to make my own gravy if you’ll excuse the expression.  I was terrified.  I’ve never been so terrified in my life. I barely shuffled myself out of the room. And then I realized that physically I felt completely different and that something had changed radically. I went to my other teacher who was also here (two of my main teachers were here) and he said “Oh yeah.  His Holiness saw an obstacle to your health and he cut it.”  Interestingly, from that time forward I felt about 10 years younger, the ultimate face lift.  My love and respect and regard for my teacher, and also the courage to really make myself spiritually vulnerable to his care, grew by that situation because I knew in my heart that he had brought me great benefit.  That’s the kind of thing that one sees on the path of Vajrayana.

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