Recent Posts

Astrology

7/31/2010     Saturday

You wake up happy and with a plan!  You were thinking in your sleep, and the result is good.  Talk things over with your inner circle, and with the boss, and you will feel stable.  Energetic action, initiating new activity and moving forward stabilize the situation.  Money or good luck come from activity, so [...]

The Heart of Experience is the Guru

The Heart of Experience is the Guru

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

For many of you, I know that when we first started this temple it was family style, and you thought of yourselves as children, and I thought of myself as your mother in many ways, and there was a spiritual family dynamic.  We [...]

Astrology

7/30/2010     Friday

Take it easy early today and enjoy the lull because a storm is about to hit.  Choppy seas ahead!  Things loll along and then suddenly all heliotrope breaks loose! Hold your ground.  Keep your head.  Careful analysis that leads to action is good.  You will be tempted to react strongly if a mistake has [...]

Requesting the Buddhas & Bodhisattvas to Remain in the World

[Adapted from an oral commentary given by His Holiness Penor Rinpoche in conjunction with a ceremony wherein he bestowed the bodhisattva vow upon a gathering of disciples at Namdroling in Bozeman, Montana, November 1999. ---Ed.]

This is important because in cyclic existence there are many ignorant beings that fail to recognize the precious noble qualities of [...]

Path of the Bodhisattva

Being grateful for the many gifts I have been endowed with in this very lifetime, I now wish to offer a prayer usually associated with vows:

Today I have picked the fruit of this lifetime. The meaning of this human existence is now realized. Today I am born into the family of buddhas and have become [...]

Refuge and Bodhicitta

From the ” Path of the Bodhisattva
A Collection of Thirty-Seven Practices”

Until the heart of enlightenment is realized,
I take refuge in all the Buddhas.

Likewise, I take refuge in the dharma
and the bodhisattvas and their assemblies.

Just as the sugatas of the past
aroused the awakened mind of bodhicitta

and trained in the way of the bodhisattvas
to gradually accomplish the [...]

Do the Math

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love Series

If we wish to enter onto the path of a Bodhisattva and become that which benefits beings, we must have a heart that yearns for compassionate activity. We must want to help, or we wouldn’t be able to receive teachings like this. [...]

The Only Purpose

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

If we studied Bodhicitta, or the mind of compassion, every single day for the rest of our lives, we wouldn’t even scratch its surface because it is so profound. There are many different levels at which we might come to understand its [...]

Bodhisattva Vow

Jetsunma's Prayer Room Altar crop

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Compassion in Action - Part 11 (final)

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

To truly understand the mind of compassion is to understand suffering. To be willing to cultivate aspirational compassion and act in accordance with those aspirations, so that you fully intend to liberate your mind from the causes of suffering and fully intend [...]

Compassion in Action - Part 9

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

Everything that you do should have meaning. It’s important that your life be understood as a vehicle for practice. It’s the only thing that is meaningful: to make this life, which is so rich in opportunity, a vehicle by which you can [...]

Compassion in Action - Part 8

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

What form will your compassion take? Making compassion your root commitment to sentient beings must take some form. How can you begin to do that? First, I recommend again that you be courageous enough to study the nature of suffering: how it [...]

Compassion in Action - Part 7

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

Where does desire come from? It comes from the belief that self-nature is real. According to the Buddha, if you believe that you are a self, if you believe in self-nature as being real, as being truly existent, then there has to [...]