Tibetan Buddhist Altar » merit

Merit and the Blessings of Lineage

Jetsunma — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:45:58 +0000

The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:

Here amongst friends, my Palyul family in peace, I smell delicious cooking, my hosts are so kind! Even before dinner I feel full with love.

Having always fed and housed wildlife, homeless, poor, taken in the sick and infirm, I think there must be a karmic connection with these events in my life. But what I know for sure is the strength and blessing of Palyul. I’ve always been loyal to my Lineage and they to me.
Yep, that is merit and karma in a nutshell. You earn it, and you pay it forward, with joy!

Merit & the Karma of Happiness

Jetsunma — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 13:30:26 +0000

From The Spiritual Path: A Compilation of Teachings by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

You are able to practice because you had the karma to receive teachings. Merit has come to the surface of your mind; good karma is ripening. But linked with some of this ripening merit are some bubbles of not-so-good karma. So what happens? You sit down with the intention to practice, but now you’re just too tired. You start to fall asleep. Or you decide that you need to do some other things. You externalize what you think are the causes for your inability to practice. Maybe you even begin to doubt that you’re happy in the Dharma. You wish you were surfing in California, and this thought is like a little rat, gnawing in your head. It gnaws at you slowly and steadily.

You need to understand that good karma is ripening, but some negative karma is linked to it. Embedded in your mindstream is some non-virtuous activity associated with the intention to practice. Now you have repeated that pattern, in seed form, and it will ripen in the future. Sometime in the future, you will again sit down with the intention to practice, and you won’t be able to do it. So the sensible thing to do is to persevere, to push through as well as you can. Understand that your tiredness, sleepiness, and other excuses have no basis. They are puffballs.

When you find yourself making excuses why you are unable to practice, why you don’t really want to hear the teachings, the best thing to do is to break through by accumulating merit. By doing virtuous things. Study Dharma. Pray. Practice kindness and generosity. Meditate. Contemplate the teachings. Try to understand them more deeply. Be attentive. Make offerings. Repeat the Seven Line Prayer many times. Repeated with faith, it is an antidote that can end all your suffering. It can, the teaching says, lead to enlightenment. All these things are ways to accumulate merit. You must understand how merit (and lack of it) works, or you will have a difficult time maintaining potency on the Path. It will even be difficult, on an ordinary level, to have a good life. For you won’t have any way to understand what is happening to you. You will always blame external things, other people. It is true that when you encounter misfortune, other people are usually involved, and you may well have some mixed karma with those people. But the karma arises within your own mindstream; it isn’t somewhere outside.

Pull out of your addiction to reaction. Think of your mind as something like a mechanism, and you yourself as a mechanic. Understand that you can work with its levers, pulleys, and gears. To most people, their own minds are a mystery, a complete mystery. And they search for someone who can understand them.

What should you do? Persevere in your practice. What else? Create more merit. The big mystery of “me” is solved. Almost reluctantly, too, because it’s so lovely to remain a mystery. It’s so pleasant to think that there is something mysterious, special, and unique about us. How often we try to obtain something that seems just out of reach. Or we have it in our hands, and it slips away. What is going on here? Lack of merit, of course. And yet we keep on reaching and grabbing and forcing, all in vain. Sometimes we think we have made something happen by forcing it. And yet, we have merely rearranged our karma. The basic problem remains unsolved. Suppose you want a new car, but the cost is just out of reach. Both merit and lack are coming to the surface. Even if you contrive to get the car, you will still have, ripening, some non-virtue associated with lack. That lack will always show up somewhere—with the car itself, or in your relationships, your health, or in missed opportunities. So the key, whenever you lack something, is to accumulate merit.

Some people are unaware that it takes merit to be happy. Have you ever noticed that some people just seem to be happy, no matter what? And others … well, happiness seems to elude them. And it’s because there is no karma of happiness, no karma of having made others happy, ripening in their minds. You can’t even lighten them up with a joke. They just don’t have any happy bubbles ripening to the surface. “How are you today?” you ask them. “Not so good,” they reply. “Umm … Nothing seems to go right.” But if we haven’t got the karma for happiness, whose fault is that? Who did it to us? Someone else? No, but it’s a problem we can fix. The problem is within our own minds. We can create the karma of happiness by creating merit.

Create a Deep Storehouse of Merit: Full Length Video Teaching

Jetsunma — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:39:10 +0000

The following is a full length video teaching offered by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo at Kunzang Palyul Choling:

Our merit is not as solid as we often believe it to be. Often we can find ourselves very far away from where we were just a few minutes ago. This affects our lives, our death, our rebirth and our enlightenment. It is the result of our karma – our decisions or non-decisions everyday. If we are fortunate, we have a Lama whose merit is deep enough that they can point out to us where our mind has gone and bring us back home.

Venerable Gyaltrul Rinpoche: Advice on Practicing Purely

Jetsunma — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:30:56 +0000

The following is a YouTube Video of a message delivered to the sangha at Tashi Choling on November 5, 2011 when Venerable Gyaltrul Rinpoche attended tsog:

Used with permission of: mirrorofwisdomvideo.org.

This Is Your Temple

Jetsunma — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 13:30:19 +0000

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Bringing Virtue Into Life”

When you give money to the temple, do it because you need to, not because we need you to. Do it because you understand that you are the one that needs to practice the generosity. That’s your medicine.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that your root guru or your lama is the one that needs the temple. It’s completely false. It is not the lama that needs the temple. It’s the students that practice there. This is not my temple in Poolesville, Maryland. This is your temple in Poolesville, Maryland. You should take pride in its cleanliness. You should take pride in its prosperity. It should embarrass you when the bills are not paid here. It should embarrass you when things are not going well at the temple—when there is not enough participation, when we can’t find someone to cut the grass—because this is your temple. This is your house. Spiritually, you live here. This is for you. If you could just get that one small truth and take responsibility for your practice whether it’s the karma yoga of engaging in protecting your temple, propagating the teachings, making this place firm, pure and safe for others to come and practice, or whether it’s the meditational yoga of actually engaging in sit-down practice in order to benefit sentient beings, or both. Hopefully you’re doing both, because that’s what is needed.

The Bodhisattva’s Logic

Jetsunma — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 12:30:36 +0000

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “The Bodhisattva Ideal”

The posture of a Bodhisattva is misunderstood in our culture. When a parent raises a child, the parent does not say to the child, “What I’d really like you to do, darling, is to be a great, generous mystic. I want you to be so generous that you give your life up for others. I want you to be so generous that you pay no attention to your own welfare or comfort, but instead I would like you to live and die for the benefit of sentient beings.” Nobody’s mother told them that! Due to the culture that we are raised in, we are told by our parents, their parents before them, and everything around us that there are certain things that one must do in order to be successful. One must gain recognition, power, money, ease of living. These are the things that one must do. But when one enters onto the path and becomes a Bodhisattva, one is faced with an entirely new set of ethics and morals and responsibilities.

This entire process must be understood as an intelligent, logical and reasonable process, simply by virtue of the fact that no matter what we accomplish during the course of this lifetime, other than the impact it has on our own bouquet of habitual tendencies, there is not one piece of what we collect that we can take with us, not one thing. So here is the Bodhisattva’s intelligence. And it is an intelligence. It is based on truth. It is based on fact. It is something like the intelligence of a person who receives a great deal of money, let’s say, or something precious and, if they’ve never had that before, if they haven’t thought it through, they might say, “Oh now I’ve got, let’s see, I’ve got $10,000 here so I’m going to go out and I’m going to spend that money and have a really good time. I’ve never had $10,000 before, so I’m just going to go spend it, and I’m going to get all the things that I wanted to get. Get some of my bills paid up, and I’m going to get a, let’s see, a down payment on a car, and I’ve got some clothes that I have in mind and all these different things. Maybe I’m going to buy a new TV. I’ve got all this laid out.” A sentient being’s normal reaction to having blessings in their life, or to life itself, is a little bit like that. I’ve got this thing. How am I going to spend it?

The Bodhisattva thinks very differently. The Bodhisattva realizes that, according to the Buddha’s teaching, life is like a precious jewel. When one meets with Dharma, meets with the teacher, and meets with the method by which we can accomplish realization, this life is understood as wealth for sure. We understand that there is a tremendous gift here. But how is the gift utilized? There comes in a completely different kind of logic.

The Bodhisattva realizes that, in the end, all will come to nothing. If our only gain is on the material realm, in the end all of the effort that we put into self-cherishing and beautifying ourselves, and the ease and comfort of our lives, and the accomplishments on the mental and physical levels of our lives, even those greatly cherished social institutions like vast education, even that will come to nothing, other than perhaps the discipline of studying. That habit may be brought into the next rebirth. .But everything that we have learned to love and cherish will come to nothing.

And so the Bodhisattva thinks, therefore, if in samsara, all efforts come to nothing, if all that survives is one’s virtue or lack of virtue, if all that matters in samsara eventually breaks down, then why should I put much effort into these things? Why should these things be precious to me? Because ultimately they will be lost, they will come to nothing.

The Bodhisattva then thinks more like a smart investor. You want to invest in that which brings ultimate returns: kindness, generosity, spiritual habits, habits associated towards travelling on the path of Dharma and developing oneself spiritually. Making offerings, living with generosity, meditating, praying, contemplating, teaching—these virtuous acts are the things that will bring a result that one can carry over into the next life. So the Bodhisattva is not so much a martyr as someone who has been trained through logic and reason to understand not to put all of one’s emphasis and hope in that which will ultimately disappoint. The Bodhisattva has been trained well enough to know that ultimately all things in samsara are disappointing. And so the Bodhisattva then makes the choice, based on training, to put one’s emphasis and one’s effort only in those things which will produce the excellent result of enlightenment and benefit to others. This is how the Bodhisattva thinks.

Choices – Like a King or a Queen

Jetsunma — Wed, 18 May 2011 12:30:36 +0000

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Entering the Path”

It is not only in the beginning of the path that obstacles happen; they occur periodically throughout your experience of the path. They don’t end. They are like PMS. So each and every time obstacles arise, you have to simply support and nurture yourself. Go through it. Simply take yourself by the hand as if you were a child. Think of this as your kingdom, and you’re a good king or a queen. What should you do to responsibly negotiate yourself through this? You think like that.

Remember the first and most important point to consider: not to make it a big deal. Don’t get yourself all worked up. Try to keep your mind calm, because remember, the obstacles will ripen more quickly and more violently if the mind is excitable, emotional and violent, if it has so many ups and downs. So take yourself to a movie or something, you know, calm down and walk yourself through this. Remember that the biggest tool that you have right now is the accumulation of merit. Within the continuum of your mindstream there are cause-and-effect relationships that have not yet fully ripened. The causes are deeply embedded within your mind. Accumulate more merit and the more meritorious causes from the past will be drawn forth and will come to your rescue.

The name of the game is to pacify obstacles and to draw forth and accumulate as much merit as possible. The mind will become spacious so that we can awaken in incremental degrees to our own nature. To the degree that we begin to awaken to our nature, to that degree, obstacles will no longer affect us.

Upon attaining the Bodhisattva path and moving through that path to the higher bhumis, one is no longer susceptible in the same way to cause-and-effect relationships. They become pacified within the mindstream. They are still expressed in some way, to exhibit the normal characteristics of life. Yet the high level Bodhisattva is not hooked and condemned by these obstacles the way ordinary sentient beings are. These obstacles do not cause them to wander in samsara the way ordinary sentient beings do. So that’s what we have to look forward to. The name of the game is pacifying obstacles and bringing forth as much merit and opportunity as possible until that day happens. For this you can use the practices.

The moment you decide to be on the path and practice, you should immediately begin to accumulate the Seven-Line Prayer. Repeat it on a regular basis every day. That is a merit machine for you. Then as soon as possible, as soon as you have accumulated approximately 10,000, begin to practice Ngöndro or preliminary practice. The reason why it is set up that way is so that the mind can develop and open up to the primordial wisdom nature.

This is the opportunity that you have, and this is the method that you should use. Be your own best friend. Be a good king or queen. Be intelligent and responsible and think beneath the surface. Do not read the things on the surface any more. That’s for children; that’s not for you. You’re on the path now. Look deeper and see what’s happening. Antidote unhappiness with virtue because unhappiness is caused by non-virtue. Accumulate virtue to the degree that you can begin to experience the truly virtuous nature that is your nature. Because if that nature that you truly are were allowed to express itself unimpeded, the display of that nature is the very Bodhicitta or great compassion that we try so hard to emulate.

Your nature is in truth that great unequalled Bodhicitta. You are not a bag of non-virtue; you are suchness, you are that great kindness. When you practice in that way, it’s like cleaning a glass by which the sun can shine through, and the sun is your nature. But do not let your image of the sun be closed down or distorted because of your own habitual tendency to simply ride on the surface and do whatever you think seems right. For the first time, look deeper and understand cause-and-effect relationships. Implement the causes that will bring about happiness and freedom, and pacify, through suppression, those non-virtuous characteristics that will bring you unrest and suffering.

How does this suppression look? Not like faking it and pretending you don’t have these things. That is not suppressing, that is neurosis. That is acting inappropriately. Suppression means that you take the antidote, and you apply it through practice, through contemplation, through offering, through generosity, through kindness. Practicing these things is suppression because the mind remains firm and stable in the way of virtue rather than remaining caught up in amplifying non-virtue.

You are a creature of choices. Isn’t it amazing! A creature of choices! At every turn you can make choices. You cannot choose what experiences seem to come to you because the cause-and-effect relationships have already been laid out for them, but you can choose how to respond, and you can choose how to create future causes. And for this I am exceedingly glad. Choose well then, not like a child. Choose like a king or a queen— noble, thoughtful, educated and sound in your mind. Create the habit of virtue and you will create a kingdom of virtue that will be your life.

Relax

Jetsunma — Mon, 09 May 2011 12:30:11 +0000

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Entering the Path”

In a sense, the first thing the teacher does for you when you come to the path is to say, “Put on your crash helmet, study this obstacle course, fill up with gas, gun your motor, here we go. Put a spare in the trunk, carry a set of jumper cables, be fully equipped. Have a miniature, dehydrated tow truck in the back of your car. Just add water, and you’re set to go!” That’s the kind of instruction your teacher gives you. Your teacher very carefully lays out a program and says do the Seven-Line Prayer, do your Ngöndro. Do these things in order to accumulate merit because what happens is that should you use up a vast amount of merit when you first come to the path – and you will – you may experience obstacles. This doesn’t mean that you should not come to the path; this means that these obstacles are in your own mindstream. The causes for these obstacles have been in your mindstream since who knows, time out of mind maybe. They would have ripened eventually, they will ripen anyway, but if they ripen without the guidance of the teacher and without the tool of the path, they will ripen out of control. One never knows.

You know yourself that you’ve gone through life and things have wham! hit you just when it looked like things were going great and you had everything under control. Several times during the course of your life already you’ve looked in the mirror and said, “There is no such thing as control here in samsara! Things are really wacky!” But whatever obstacles arise when you first come to the path are yours. They’re not mine. I didn’t give them to you. I mean really, I didn’t do it. They’re not someone else’s. They didn’t do it. And yet, as new practitioners we think, “What’s happening here? Everything’s wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t do this stuff.”

Actually the opposite is true. You should think like this. You should think, “Now my mind is being ripened. Due to my merit and virtue I am able to hook into the path. I have to stabilize that. I have to take responsibility.” Think like a big boy or a big girl for a change: “I have to take responsibility for this. I have to stabilize my mind and stabilize my practice.”

So how is that going to happen?

The thing that you need to do to flush out any obstacles that ripen on the path is to first of all stabilize your mind. Relax. Don’t be such a heavy breather. Chill, will you? Get mellow! So you relax. Just relax. Be confident on the path. Be confident that you are in a boat with no holes.

Yeah, it’s scary to cross the ocean of suffering, but friend, you’re going to do that anyway, either in a boat or not. So you’ve got a choice. You can get out and do the backstroke or cross the ocean of suffering in a boat with no holes. You’re in a boat with no holes. You’re fine. You’re OK. Plus you have a good captain, a good captain who has themselves crossed the ocean of suffering before and brought others. So you should be confident in that. Relax. Try not to get yourself so worked up all the time. Just relax.

Remember, the more emotional you get, the more bent out of shape you get, it’s like you’re stirring up the water. Think of your mind as being like a bowl full of liquid soap, and if you start stirring it up like that with emotion, you know what you get? Bubbles and foam. Have you ever had that happen to your dishwasher or your washing machine where you get the bubbles and foam that come out all over the floor and then you’ve got to spend the rest of the day cleaning it up and the clothes are not clean, everything’s a mess? You have to think like that. Cheer up. Don’t get yourself all foamed up. Just relax. You’re on the path. You’re safe. Be cool.

Freedom Isn’t Free: Understanding Merit and the Path

Jetsunma — Sun, 08 May 2011 12:30:33 +0000

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Entering the Path”

It is important to remember that when you enter the path you have earned the right to be here. This is absolutely the case. I can swear to it because you are here. You have absolutely accumulated the necessary virtue and merit within your mindstream in order to be able to hear these teachings and to do these practices, and even to prepare for your own death.

Yet, there is a Catch-22 situation that’s very difficult with Dharma. You have absolutely earned this opportunity and it is your right and your responsibility to take advantage of it. Now think about this: You could not be hearing these teachings from me if you had not made extensive prayers in some way at some time. It has to be so or you would not be here. You must have made prayers to Tara. You must have made prayers to Guru Rinpoche. You must have made prayers to meet your teacher and to be with your teacher and to hear these words. This must be so, or you could not have created the causes by which you are enjoying this opportunity.

So what does that mean then? That means that you’re here. Simply that, only that. That means that you’re here, and you’re ready to rock and roll. Now think about this. This is something else that’s important and something to think: our Dharma, and particularly the Vajrayana path, is the singular most potent and powerful method that exists on this planet. That is to say that one can achieve true enlightenment, not what New Age people call enlightenment, but the real thing, like the Buddha, like great Bodhisattvas. One can achieve enlightenment within the context of one lifetime or immediately following this lifetime in the bardo state – that’s what the practice of Phowa is about – or within three lifetimes or within seven lifetimes. But surely, if one were to practice Vajrayana, and one were to practice it faithfully, one would achieve the ultimate result relatively quickly. That makes this the most potent path on the planet at this time, the most potent. We know this because we have seen that there are those who have achieved enlightenment in one lifetime. This is not true of other systems.

Now, that being the case, if it has that kind of weight, what kind of virtue or merit would be needed to keep that coming in, to keep that blessing flowing? An enormous amount. That sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? It’s like the you-get-what-you-pay-for kind of philosophy. If we were to think in materialistic terms, if you want the best, the absolute best, you have to pay the highest price. It’s expensive. Good quality costs money. In material terms you think like that. Doesn’t it follow then, logically, that that which is potent and of highest quality spiritually would also require the highest spiritual investment?

On the path, there is the necessity to accumulate merit and virtue in an extensive and responsible way because when we first come to the path is we immediately expend our accumulated merit. Here’s the picture: What has come forward to us, what has ripened in our mindstream, is the accumulation of some meritorious virtuous activity we’ve done in the past that allows us to hook into the path in this lifetime.

Upon using up that tremendous amount of merit that fortunately has risen to the surface in order to bring us to the path, an obstacle may arise. It takes such an enormous amount of merit in order to travel on the path, particularly to begin the path, that we may not have at the surface of our mind, or at the surface of our expressive continuum, enough merit to sustain us. So immediately upon coming to the path, the teacher gives instruction. The teacher says accumulate many repetitions of the Seven-Line Prayer. That is a merit-making machine. It is a way to accumulate the most merit. Then immediately after that, we are told to practice Ngöndro, preliminary practice. In Ngöndro, you are given five different ways to accumulate merit, and they are extremely potent. It is actually meant to guide you through the shoals of beginning practice until the mind becomes sufficiently purified and deepened to the degree that it will sustain itself through the shining qualities of its own virtue and merit.

Ghost Stories and Understanding Karma

Jetsunma — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 00:15:57 +0000

From a series of tweets between Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo and two of her followers, Michelle9647 and Seedsdown:

Michelle asked Jetsunma about ghosts after sharing a video of a “ghostly image” she had seen online. She asked Jetsunma if she had ever had an encounter.

Jetsunma: Yes. Some seem to be repetitive emotional “bodies”. Others seem to be temporary thinning of other dimensional systems.

Seedsdown: Demons you mean? There are those too!

Jetsunma: There are demons. But they aren’t ghosts.

Michelle: Are some of the classes of demons subject to the thinning dimensional systems?

Jetsunma: Maybe, but I think hell-beings are there due to Karma. The heinous crimes especially – cause and effect. Not a god punishing us. If that doesn’t fly, think about this: do we have nightmares? They are our own emotions being worked through in a display. In that way at time of death all emotions, concepts appear outwardly, jumbled in time. If we are haters, that is one hellish appearance. If greedy, another hell. We are drawn to repeat our own habitual tendencies. Like draws like. So we are attracted to what we know in the Bardo. As many hell-dreams as there are “dreamers” to “dream” them. That is why it is so precious to awaken. As Buddha did.

Michelle: Just a thought. If mankind was to wake up one day and live a life of love and the karma is purified, what then happens to the demons?

Jetsunma: Very good question. It is very difficult to change habits in a hell realm, but it can be done, must be done. In the same way it is so difficult to let go of the addiction to samsara when living. Or to wake up from a dream. We must accumulate a storehouse of merit and virtue to draw from. It is like money in the bank, simply stated.

Was that clear enough for twitter? Any more questions?

Michelle: I’ve heard stories of great beings taming the demons. How is this done if merit is needed, because I do believe these stories to be true.

Jetsunma: Those stories are true. The merit of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas is so great it can transform all through Bodhicitta, thereby transforming the habit and non-virtue of hell beings. That is the power of many lifetimes living compassion and love. So don’t waste time.

Sometimes, demons (hell beings) can affect the world we know. They are powerful in their laser like focus on hate. Some remain in one habitual place, like a haunting. Some want to return to their old ways desperately. I once knew an alcoholic (raging!) and three pitiful demons possessed him, trying to get their mouths and noses where his were. They were trying to smell and drink the liquor he always stank of. So the poor gent’s craving was magnified three times! So disgusting to see!

Another time a little girl had cerebral palsy and I saw a bag like thing sucking from her lower brain. She had a mild case. When I removed it the doctors were amazed, said she had “grown out of it.” Easier to take I guess! It seemed they had a karmic bond, hurting each other life after life. When it came off it tried to go to me and was transformed, able to take a higher rebirth. Some are easy to deal with, others extremely difficult.

But we should never fear if we can help it. They love that. One can visualize oneself in a sphere of light to protect. Buddhists have more options, puja, smoke offering, mantra, deity generation. Eventually we get strong and naturally repel them.

Michelle: It makes one wonder how many of these conditions are more “beings” based than medical.

Jetsunma: Many more than we can imagine.

Michelle: What you just said was heartbreaking and for some reason it was also very freeing.

Jetsunma: Goes to show. We live in our own karmic stream, and our own awareness and view is the door to samsara and enlightenment both.