Tibetan Buddhist Altar » samsara

The Dharma

Jetsunma — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:37:03 +0000

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

The Dharma is as vast as samsara, and is also as stable, as long as there is samsara there will also be Dharma.

As long as there is Dharma there will also be Samsara, because the Dharma is natural, uncontrived and would not exist without Samsara.

Commitment to the Dharma Path

Jetsunma — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:47:56 +0000

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

In an upbeat manner, Jetsunma describes the faults of cyclic existence and how to make the most of the path that Dharma offers to end that suffering.

Keep Your Practice Alive: Full Length Video Teaching

Jetsunma — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 16:06:01 +0000

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

For us in the west the most important part of Dharma practice is within your heart. Practicing the foundational thoughts that turn the mind will help you keep that alive.

While Samsara Burns

Jetsunma — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 02:20:34 +0000

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

Some of them are prideful, full of themselves in a way that precludes actual opening. Like cigar smoke in a furnished room makes a man.

Some are like Nero, madly playing in the bubble of delusion while samsara burns. Burns.

Some are ignorance. Like eyes watching a world of smoke and mirrors, totally orchestrated by madness.

Some are mechanical, reactive, tight. With a prototype protective covering, no one will notice they are not quite human.

For some it means nothing. Awake, asleep – shallow and deep. Up and high or on the fly – maybe you can’t help it. Or maybe I can’t.

Some go evil. Manipulation is evil. Like raising my kids. No one can discipline unless they have birthed and loved, wanted the best for them, I believe. And stick with that.

And the killers? Just keep them from harming more. I don’t care if they watch cable , swim, and have massage all day.

I wish we could all sit down and pray,

make offerings in some peaceful way,

for our selfishness we could offer light

no reason to fight.

Listen, we can do this,

we can blow right through this,

if we never take our minds off what’s right- Ja!

I could go on all night! Hallelujah and Amen!

Putting Out the Fire: Turning the Mind Towards Dharma by His Holiness Penor Rinpoche

Jetsunma — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 12:30:04 +0000

The following is an excerpt from a teaching given by His Holiness Penor Rinpoche at Kunzang Palyul Choling on Bodhicitta:

We start first with the special method that will turn one’s mind towards the Dharma. In that method, we have to understand that wherever we are born in the world, in this universe, there will not be much happiness. There is hot and cold suffering in the hell realms, and the hungry ghosts have the suffering of hunger and thirst. The animals have the suffering of killing each other. The human beings have a short lifespan, and within that short life, there is a lot of suffering. Even those god beings in the god realms have a very good life there, but because of their carelessness, they are just spending and wasting their lives with happiness. The sentient beings in this world have their own sufferings. It is important, the Buddha said, for you to understand that wherever you are born, there is no happiness. There is suffering.

When you understand that, then in order to remove the suffering, you need to have diligence to remove the suffering, like the diligence you do when your hair is burning, when your dress is burning. During that time, you will put all your efforts toward removing the fire. Similarly, once we have understood the suffering of samsara, of the world, then we have to really put some kind of diligence toward removing the suffering of samsara. Then if our hair is on fire and our dress is on fire, then we will not really remain peaceful. We will definitely do something. So, similarly, once we understand the suffering nature of samsara, we will not waste our time.

Understanding the Nightmare – by His Holiness Penor Rinpoche

Jetsunma — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 12:30:12 +0000

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by His Holiness Penor Rinpoche on “Meditation” reprinted with permission from Palyul Ling International:

And there are many, many beings that don’t know much about Buddha or Enlightenment or the Dharma teachings or liberation. They really don’t have any idea of such things. Even with all the explanations we could find in these Dharma teachings, and even though so many lamas and other qualified teachers give these teachings, still one might think that these teachings are just myths. And so you can’t truly accept them or believe in the absolute reality.

Everything is based on what is called the Law of Karma which is the actions that we do, the causes and conditions we create ourselves. Furthermore there is a Law of Karma which is known as the Collective Karma, the actions, causes and conditions we create together. There is no way we can change ourselves other than understanding Karma. Moreover, when one cannot understand all these deeper things, then one thinks that these things do not really exist.

When the lamas and the many other qualified teachers¹ teach on the sufferings of Samsara, of course it is not really nice to hear and then one feels like, “I don´t want to hear these kinds of teachings.” Certain people when lama gives these teachings on suffering even say, “I’m not interested to listen about the sufferings of Samsara. This lama doesn’t seem like he can give out good teachings!” These people prefer to just express their own ideas.

However, when taught by a qualified lama, it is indeed the Dharma, the truth. These teachings about the nature of Samsara and the reality of the faults of Samsara have been taught by all the Enlightened Beings such as Shakyamuni Buddha. The Enlightened Beings, the Buddhas, all gave these teachings because if we could just understand the nature of Samsara, we could then move on to the actual practices through which we could purify our obscurations. We could have the ultimate realization through which we achieve peace and happiness, and through that we could manifest ourselves to benefit all other sentient beings in Samsara. For that purpose Buddha gave all these teachings. It is not that Buddha wanted to be famous and so gave these teachings, nor was the Buddha showing off his skills in teaching, nor was he explaining things to us so that we would become frightened. These teachings are mainly about how all sentient beings can believe and act to attain complete Enlightenment, to liberate themselves from the sufferings of Samsara. So you see, Buddha gave these teachings with great compassion.

Take the example of a having a nightmare. Within such dreams, no matter what you do, you still cannot escape the scary feeling of a nightmare until you wake up. At the same moment, someone who is awake and watching beside the bed, can see that you are having a dream. We can understand something of the nature of Samsara from this dream example. While we are in Samsara experiencing all different kinds of sufferings, it is exactly like somebody who is having a nightmare.

Recycling in Worldly Existence

anisonam — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 17:47:06 +0000

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by His Holiness Penor Rinpoche on Meditation, reprinted here with permission from Palyul Ling International:

In this world, as we were born as human beings, we need to have something beneficial that we can do. In general, we have some kind of activity by which to earn our livelihood, just to have something to eat and drink. Of course, not only human beings, but also animals know how to live their lives in this way. As we were born human, we can talk and understand language and meaning. That is the specific characteristic of a human being. So based on that we need to have some ultimate benefit that we can achieve within this lifetime.

Generally speaking, two main activity categories we can engage in: our normal worldly activities and then the Dharma activities. But the majority of the world’s people become very busy with worldly activities rather than following some kind of spiritual practice. These worldly works or activities are based on one’s capabilities and power and skill, and of these there are many different levels – some have more or better and some have less.

However, whatever worldly activities that we complete, whether or not they are good or meaningful, they will only endure for a few months or years. There is not anything within these activities that we can ultimately rely on. For example, from young childhood we pursue educational training, from first grade until graduation. For almost fifteen or twenty years we work very hard and study so that we can get a specific job. Then if through one’s job one becomes more successful, then possibly in twenty or thirty years we consider that we have a better or happier life. And if during all that time, if we have a very pure and sincere mind in all these works, then of course there is some benefit which is known as virtuous action. But there are also those that have the qualifications to do these activities but who have so much ego or arrogance or pride that their works, even if completed, are not really beneficial in this lifetime.

So many human beings consider the benefit for their individual selves as the most important thing. The result is we are all re-cycled over and over in what is called Samsara or the cyclic existence.

We cannot really establish or find out how long we have been drifting about in Samsara or cyclic existence. No one can know for certain how many lives we have taken in this world – one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand, perhaps one million lifetimes. We cannot calculate the countless aeons of times we have been reborn in this world, in this Samsara.

Sometimes we were able to fulfill some of our wishes and sometimes we could not. For this life, from the time we have taken birth from our mother’s womb until now, whatever our ages, we have been constantly thinking about our own benefit and how we can be more happy people. All of our education and financial developments are all just for one’s own benefit. There is not anything left out that one has not thought of for one’s own benefit.

However, whatever we do, fulfill or complete in this lifetime is mainly based on our Karma, the action, of what we have done in our many past lifetimes. One cannot complete one’s every wish immediately because of the Law of Karma. Because have never developed their spiritual side, they mainly have deluded minds. So they are not able to understand the causes and conditions based on the Law of Karma. They can only think of what is happening today, and have no idea what is really going on. They don’t have a deeper level of understanding of these spiritual practices and so they don’t understand what is involved in past lifetimes and future lifetimes. It is because of their obscurations or ignorance that they don’t have any clear understanding about the causes and conditions. They really don’t know anything about the Law of Karma.

His Holiness Pema Norbu Rinpoche

Shining Lake of Crystal Tears

Jetsunma — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 13:30:31 +0000

Arya Tara, Noble One

We bow down to your Lotus Feet

And beg you to remain enthroned

On the Lotus Throne within our hearts

We, your daughters and sons

Offer you the essence of whatever purity we may possess in the three times

Please accept the nectar of our pitiful practice

Please bless the potential of all our hopes and aspirations

And guide our lips and blind eyes

To suckle at the breast of the Sublime Bodhichitta

Mother Tara, protect us, now and at the time of our death.

Sooth and cleanse our minds of the sickness and fever of worthless distraction.

Hear us, Holy One, even though our very voices are tainted

With fear and slothfulness, weakened by Samsara’s spell.

Oh Mother, when we have caused you sorrow

How will you then appear for us in Nirmanakaya form

Through endless aeons for our sake –

How, Mother, will this occur

When our hearts and minds turn inward

With darkness and lack of caring for the suffering of others?

Oh Mother Tara, Holy One, Perfect One

We are lost.

Now more than ever darkness comes

And we are overcome with our weakness and poor view.

Yet you remain for us

Blessed Mother, Holy One, this very day

We make our hearts and minds your home

We beg you to come in glory

And to remain with us

With your Supreme Beauty, Sublime Power and Faultless Light

Until we are inseparable

And Samsara is emptied

Colophon: Written by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, August 24^th, 2004 Sedona, Arizona, when one of Tara’s daughters herself had fallen under Samsara’s dark spell

Cry!

Jetsunma — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 12:30:12 +0000

In our divided

clinging consciousness

In our ego-centered

dreaming

we are bound.

Flung

Unaided, unable

to distinguish

The nature that is peace.

Drunken

Imagining distinction

in the nature that

is form and formless

Grieving

for we have seen

the difference

Between the crystal and the nectar

that fills it

with its emptiness

Oh..

If we could

only taste

the soundless voice

that sings its silent name

In colors

OM!

Vairocana Holy Holy

Bring the blessed kindest

Wisdom of the Dharmadhatu

To this singer’s song

Scream!

For we are angry

we are chained

In our self-righteousness

we are prisoners and wardens

Alone

No love in hate

No reason, no meaning

Hallucination, like a drug

we’re burning

Stiff

with jaundiced principles

disjointed, numbed

We’ve sold our value

for a nightmare

Sick

and filled with venom

we are dead and dying

scratching at our eyes

that we might see

Locked

in form, in function

In making statements

meaningless in the silence

of our indivisibility

HUNG

Vajrasattva Blessed Blessed

Bring the mirror wisdom

To the crying ones

who long to see your face

Running

In our race

to nowhere

Pumped with

self value

Our holy war

Straining

With increasing tension

Structuring conviction

Deny that I am you

can’t see your eyes

Plumped

And filled with dirty

hard distinctions

We are successful

We have sat our

hellish throne

Preening

In the gorgeousness

of reason

Reasons not to give our lives

Oh, take this life

Truly

We try so hard

to know the rapture of union

Impossible to know

with hearts so dry

Ratnasambhava Buddha Buddha

Bring the view

of equanimity

like holy wine

to this tired burning child

Need

The force is boundless

the aching endless

It never ceases

We are obsessed

Craving

The fire burns us

Our lips are parched

Our eyes, our hearts

Know no release

Pointless

The endless seeking

brings more of nothing

The suffering of suffering

has reached its peak

Moving..

this restless searching

I think of babies

crying

for the mother’s breast

Touch us

We need to feel it

It all seems

out there

Beyond our reach

Amitabha Purest Pure One

Cleanse our Perception

Bring the feast

of Pure Discrimination

to our hungry mouths

Wounded

Worlds of wounded

Crying and helpless

No one to

hear them

Too much jealousy

and fear

Wasted

Too tired and jaded

Sick and faded

Certain of my fix,

my gig, my sphere

Unaided

Standing alone in

mute acceptance

Burden of proof

so heartless

That we are here

We are

I am

Engaged

In righteous battle

I am unique!

Distinguished!

Endless is my work!

Please

There must be something

Or maybe someone

Responding sweetly

But never me

For I cannot

Amoghasiddhi Sublime Dancer

Bring us the movement

The sweet activity

Of Perfect Love

Samsara – Living in a Material World

Jetsunma — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 12:30:58 +0000

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

In practicing bodhicitta in a mindful and discriminating way, one has to understand first of all the faults of samsaric existence. One has to understand the basic logic if it. If we are giving rise to the aspiration to be of benefit to beings, it only makes sense if we understand why and what the connecting factors are. Otherwise it is just acting.

One of the greatest obstacles I’ve seen, is the current pop religion culture that says, “Everything is perfect; the world is perfect.” So many people are into the idea of seeking happiness that on some level they must realize that there is suffering, because they’re trying to cover up that suffering. They’re trying to affirm it away by saying that suffering doesn’t exist. They tell themselves everything is light and love and suffering doesn’t exist and that’s wonderful, and so the world is a great place. We don’t have to practice compassion, because everything is already blessed and very holy. The world is perfect. Can you hear the superficiality in that? What you need to hear next is what’s really going on in the world because if you’re in that mind state, you haven’t been watching, you haven’t seen.

There is such an extraordinary amount of suffering in all the realms of cyclic existence. In this world alone, just look at the human condition: the extraordinary, unconscionable suffering. How can you look at these people marching out of Kosovo and think that’s perfect? How can you watch children and innocent civilians being torn up, with no understanding as to how this could have happened to them? They are modern people like us. How can you look at that and say everything is love and light; that everything is perfect?

If you’ve had the good fortune of knowing one person throughout the course of your life, think of all the different ages and stages they’ve gone through. Watch what it’s like to be a child and to go through all the struggles that children go through? It’s tough being a child. They don’t really understand what’s happening to them. They don’t really understand why it is when certain things happen, other things happen. It’s tough being a child. That little brain is forming. It doesn’t work in its entirety yet. And then watch that person grow up to be a teenager. It’s tough being a teenager. It’s awful being a teenager. I remember being a teenager. I don’t think there are words for that! You have all these feelings and your body is all grown up and your head is still childish and nothing works. And then you grow up, and suddenly you’re supposed to be an adult. You don’t feel any different, though, than you did when you were a teenager or a child. You still feel like you don’t understand diddly-squat, and yet suddenly, because you have a child maybe, you’re supposed to be an adult. You think, “Wow, I’ve waited all my life to be an adult. This is great. Now I can vote. I can drink.” Yeah, you can also get up early every morning and go to work. You can also work every single day. You can also have very little fun.

Do you remember what it was like when you were just trying to build your life? There’s an obsession with that. You think, “Ooh, I’ve just got to do this. If I don’t do this, I’ll never be happy.” All that reactive delusion kind of beats you up. Then, when you get to the point of maturity and you realize that not all the things you thought really mattered actually matter, there’s a little spaciousness. Maybe you have a pause that lets you know that maybe now it’s time to relax a little bit about getting all these material things lined up; maybe now it’s time to stop and smell the roses and then even beyond that, plan for your maturity. Maybe you think, “I should think about my death. I should think about how to take care of my children.” So you get this glorious moment of thinking, “Yeah, okay. I’m pretty stable now. I’ve got a car, got a house, got some kids, so things are okay.” You have about five minutes of that before everything you have goes south, and I mean the body. This thing that we put so much energy into shining up and growing up and waiting until it is matured, and then everything you have from the waist up is now from the waist down.

As Buddhists we are required to study these images of a young woman or a young man, middle-aged or mature and then older, and then see that this is the same person. Understanding what that’s all about is the key. For us to not wander through life with everything happening to us unexpectedly. That’s the most amazing thing about us. Everyone around us gets old; everyone we see gets old; we’ve got old people everywhere, but it’s always a surprise when it happens to us. How can we possibly go through life in any meaningful way when it constantly surprises us? Instead, what we need to do is to really study the conditions that we are involved with and do so truthfully and honestly.

In the practice of bodhicitta, the first things that we can understand are the faults of cyclic existence. Cyclic existence is impossible. It’s ridiculous. It’s not only flawed and faulted, it’s a real pain in the neck. The amazing thing about cyclic existence is that no matter what you do in the material realm, in the realm of experiences, if it arises from samsara and is within the realm of samsara, it’s all going to come to nothing because anything that you accumulate, build, or create, you lose when you die. You won’t be able to take that with you.

The saddest thing and the thing that we have compassion about and try to become mindful about, is watching someone who is no different from us, wanting to be happy just like we do; spend all of their time pulling stuff together, accumulating or not accumulating, setting up their little gigs, their little power things, all their little personality dramas. We watch people that are so entrenched and lost in that, and generally, before we’ve had any training, we’d think that was normal. But having had training, we think, “Oh, maybe that’s not so good. Maybe that’s not the way to go.” We might judge that person as being superficial. We might have a lot of judgment about that person. But in order to be truly discriminating and mindful and to actually benefit our practice, we should be saying, “Yes, that’s what it’s like here. That is the fault of cyclic existence,” and feel compassion for them.

Creating mindfulness in the arena of practicing bodhicitta is like that. We have to constantly caution ourselves not to simply go down the road in the way that we ordinarily do, but instead, to be in a state of recognition and awareness. When we see ourselves act in a superficial manner, just going through the motions of life thinking, “Oh, I’ve got to have this money or this power or this fame or this fortune or this car or this family or this whatever” — instead of judging these terrible faults in ourselves or in each other, simply say, “This is the fault of cyclic existence.” Rather than saying that person is superficial or that person is lost or that person is damned, we ought to say, “What a fabulous opportunity to study the faults of cyclic existence.” You should look at that person, and say, “Oh, I’m so sorry, because that’s how it is here. What can I do to help? How can I benefit sentient beings so that it is no longer the case?” It increases your bodhicitta practice rather than taking it down by judging others. To say, “They’re so material; they’re just about money” or, “I’m just about money, I’m just about material things.” is not beneficial because you are not contributing to mindfulness; you are contributing to judgment. Can you see the difference? You are not contributing to a state of recognition. You’re only recognizing appearances. Big deal! Dogs can do that! Do something dogs can’t do.