Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhism Differs from Other Religions by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

In the Buddha Dharma there are mainly two kinds of compassion.   There is ordinary compassion, and there is extraordinary or sublime compassion, also called ordinary bodhicitta or sublime bodhicitta.   Bodhicitta is the great display of compassion, which is our own primordial nature.   Ordinary bodhicitta is the caring for others through the means that we can find on this earth.  In other words, caring for others through ordinary means.  Like for instance, if you see somebody that’s hungry and you give them a sandwich.  That’s compassionate, but it’s ordinary compassion because you know you didn’t get the sandwich from the sublime realms.  You got it from a kitchen or you bought it somewhere.  It’s ordinary stuff that went into it – baloney or salami or peanut butter and jelly. It’s ordinary even if you make 150 sandwiches and you pass them out to the hungry homeless.  That’s a real good day, but still ordinary compassion because it’s easily attainable.

There are many hungry people now in Burma.  No matter what the junta says, the people are not eating, and they are sick and dying.  Let’s say somehow we magically can put together everything they need, and just bust through the blockades and give it to the people.  Let’s say we airdrop everything they need, and the whole place is satisfied. The people have tents or homes or something to live in.  They have the means to get food.  They have food.  They have bedding; they have everything because of this magnificent airdrop that you made.  Let’s say that’s possible.  That would take an awful lot of money, but still in all it’s ordinary human compassion.  We never see ordinary humans doing that very much, and that goes to show you the pickle we’re in.  But it’s still ordinary human compassion.

Now, what is supreme or extraordinary compassion?  That is compassionate activity that concerns and offers that which is not of this world.  The great bodhisattvas that return again and again are considered to demonstrate the great bodhicitta, because the nature of the bodhisattva is such that once they attain certain bhumis, which are levels of realization, then at that time they can step into enlightenment or step into nirvana and attain the rainbow body at any moment.  But they hold back because they wish to benefit sentient beings.  They look at the suffering of sentient beings.  They see this terrible suffering and it moves them, and they return to earth to show them the way out of that suffering.  That is considered extraordinary compassion.  So then translating, teaching, creating the books of Dharma, offering these ancient teachings in a modern world so that modern people can continue to benefit from something that would ordinarily be lost to them, that is considered extraordinary compassion.

When I held my little new born son in my arms, I thought, “I would do anything for you.  I will care for you. I will keep you warm.  I will give you my milk, and when you’re done with that, I will bake pies.  I’ll do anything for you.”  And then I realized I was lying to him, because if my son were to get gravely ill, I would have no power to help him.  Or if my son were to die, even though I told him I would never abandon him, I would not be able to follow him into the next rebirth.  I would not be able to see to his welfare.  So, there’s my baby in my arms, and I have lied to him.

That was one of the main things that made me practice really hard when I was young.  I made it my business to learn how to provide the Phowa, which is the transference of consciousness from one level to the next, or from one life to the next rebirth.  I made myself learn to do that so that I could help people, and dogs, and cats, and anybody in the dying process, and so I could even follow my own child into the next life, and make sure that his rebirth is good.  I’ve attained that goal.  And I’m very happy for it.  Do you see the difference there?  A mother’s love is so powerful, so extraordinary.  You would feed your child your own body if they were hungry.   And you look in the eyes of your child and you think, “Never has there been love like this.  I would do anything for you.”  But until that compassion applies to all sentient beings, and we have the skills through our own realization, we are lying.   And we are not able to do very much for those we love.  That is the one of the differences between ordinary and supreme bodhicitta.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

OM TARE TUTTARE TURE SOHA

21 Homages to Tara PDF Download

An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhism Differs from Other Religions by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

We tend to do things that give us a rush, but it doesn’t make us happy.  For instance, let’s say we decide to drink some alcohol, and we decide to do it a lot, and we decide to get loaded every weekend, and we think, “Boy, you know that gives me something to look forward to because all week long I can be a good person, and then on the weekend I can get loaded, and then I’ll be happy.”  Of course, it doesn’t happen.  Generally, what happens is your body gets sicker.  You get dependent on alcohol in order to feel anything.  And you know eventually the mind just churns in samsara and no new habits or no new understandings or anything that will actually make you happy occurs.  We just get drunk.   And then we sober up on Monday.  And that’s it.  That’s all that happens.  But we keep thinking that if we do it every weekend, and if we do it better every weekend, then eventually one weekend it’s really going to make us happy, and it’s going to last.  And of course, that’s foolish because it never works.  There’s something about human consciousness that makes it difficult for us to learn from experience.  It’s like banging into the wall constantly.  And we go on with behavior that actually makes our situation worse rather than easing it or making us happy or making it better in any way.

For instance, let’s say you really feel that you would be happy if you had more money.  I can’t say that I haven’t thought that.  And I’m sure if I’ve thought that, pretty much everybody has thought it at least once.  And so we think, “Wow, if I had some money, I could do some things, and I would be happier.  I’d really like to go on vacation this summer, and there’s no money to do it with so wouldn’t I be happy if I could go on vacation.”  It’s that kind of thinking.  Let’s say that you put a lot of energy into getting this money.   Let’s say in fact that you put so much energy into it that you’re not quite kosher about it.  You’re not quite above board.  Let’s say you lie a little.  Somehow that brings you a little money.  Let’s say you cheat a little.  Somehow that brings you a little money.  Let’s say you steal a little bit.  Somehow that brings you a little bit of money.  You may get the money.  You may go to jail too.  You may get the money and you may go on vacation, but guess what?   You have set yourself up for more suffering than you could possibly imagine, because even if the vacation goes well, the moment that you took from others, and were dishonest and acted selfishly, at that very instant when you gave rise to a negative cause, the result was also born.  Did you know that?  We think we get away with it until we get caught.  And it’s not true.  The moment we create a nonvirtuous cause, the result is born – at the same moment.

In our lives it seems different because it seems like time is linear.  And it seems like you were really nonvirtuous on Thursday but by Saturday it is still looking good for you.  So you think, “I got away with it.”  No, it doesn’t work that way because you gave rise to the cause, so the result is already there.  Just because it didn’t ripen on Saturday means nothing.   It will happen.  You will have karma with the person that you were dishonest with or that you stole from or that you harmed in some way, and that person will harm you in the future, whether they want to or not, it will happen, because karma is exacting.   It’s cause and effect.

If you can understand how a seesaw works, you can understand how karma works.  If you can understand how you could drop a rock on one side of the pond and feel the vibration on another side of the pond, then you understand how karma works.  Although we can’t see it manifesting in front of our eyes, that’s our great loss because we still think we get away with it.  And it’s simply not true.  Let’s say we go ahead and steal, we go on vacation, and we think it all works out, and then six months later, something dastardly happens to us.   And maybe it reminds you a little bit of the situation in which you were not nice to somebody, and maybe it doesn’t.  If you do catch the connection, bully for you.  You’ve learned something and that’s excellent, but if you don’t catch the connection, and most of us don’t, then it’s unfortunate.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

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

All of our suffering is brought about because we have desire in our mindstreams.  Having desire, we have attachment and aversion, hope and fear. Examine your own thoughts.  Every one of them is either a thought of hope or a thought of fear.  There isn’t one that doesn’t have as an underlying cause of hope or fear, attraction or aversion.  Every one.  That is the way the mind of duality works.  So all of the experiences that we have, according to the Buddha, are caused by the karma of desire.  Making wishing prayers to return in a form in which you can benefit beings purifies the mind of desire.  You will find that desire rules your mind less and less. Compassion is the great stabilizer of the mind.

Never stop cultivating aspirational Bodhicitta.  While you are practicing aspirational Bodhicitta your mind becomes firm and stabilized.  You are so on fire that you need to practice, in the same way that because you are determined to live, you always remember to breathe.  With that intensity, you should be absolutely determined to accomplish compassion and benefit all beings.  You always remember to practice and be mindful.   Then you begin to practice practical Bodhicitta.

Practical Bodhicitta has two divisions.  It has a lesser and greater division, or personal and a transpersonal division.  Compassion on the personal level is what we call ordinary human kindness.  It is invaluable.  There is never a time in your life that you should not practice ordinary human kindness.  I am sometimes dismayed at people who have a high-fallutin’ idea about compassion and how to practice the Vajrayana path, and they know how to do the proper instrumentation and they can chant and they can do all these wonderful things.  But they aren’t kind to one another.  How you can think of yourself as a real practitioner and not even be nice to the person next to you? How can you be arrogant?

Ordinary human kindness must be constantly practiced.  If you know of someone who is hungry, you should do your best to feed them.  If a starving child were in front of you, wouldn’t you feed him or her?  If someone that you loved really was lonely, wouldn’t you try to help them?  Of course, these are ordinary human kindnesses.  We’re not even perfect in that, are we?  I mean, we let ourselves and our families down.  We let everybody down on a regular basis.  Sometimes ordinary human kindness is impossible to achieve.

Ordinary human kindness is not lesser in its fabric or nature, but it touches less people.  For instance, let’s say you needed a friend. If I were to stay with you for some period of time, we would talk and we would share. Maybe I would teach you to meditate, if I were to discover that you’re the kind of person that would really respond to that.  But if I don’t do that, maybe I’ll have the time to teach a large group of people. Essentially I might be able to benefit many people as opposed to benefiting one person, even though you are very important and precious to me.  Yet even teaching a larger group of people is actually an intermediate level of practice. There are only so many people that can fit in this room and can be taught.

What is the highest level of compassion?  What is the highest level of Bodhicitta?  You have to go back to the Buddha’s teaching to figure this one out.  The Buddha says that all sentient beings are suffering and that there is an end to suffering and that the end to suffering is enlightenment.  That’s the only true end to suffering.  If you fed every one that’s hungry everyday and provided them each with a companion so that they’re never lonely, gave them nice clothes, they still will experience old age, sickness and death.  There’s nothing you can do about that.  And you have no control over how they will be reborn in their next incarnation.  They could come back in a form in which they still suffer.  The only end to suffering is to eradicate the cause of suffering from the mindstream.

The root cause of all suffering is the belief in self-nature as being inherently real. It’s the mother of all-pervasive desire in the mindstream.  The children are hatred, greed and ignorance.  The mind of duality causes us to act in certain ways that create the karma so that our lives manifest in certain ways.  If we suffer from hunger or old age or sickness or death, whatever it is that we suffer from, the root cause for those sufferings is the belief that self-nature is inherently real. How can you possibly uproot all of that from your mindstream?  How can you rid the very seed of suffering from your mindstream?  According to the Buddha, that is to achieve enlightenment.  To help sentient beings remove these causes from their mindstreams, we must ourselves first achieve enlightenment.  The purpose of self, which is to achieve enlightenment, is the same as the purpose of other, which is to achieve enlightenment.  They are the same, in the same way that we are non-dual, these purposes are non-dual.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

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

In the Vajrayana tradition one contemplates very deeply on certain thoughts before you ever go on to any deeper practice, and these thoughts are called the ‘Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind.’  The idea is that your mind becomes turned in such a way that your intention to practice is firm, like a rock.  If you were wishy-washy about why you should practice meditation, your meditation will be wishy-washy.  There’s no doubt about it.  If you were convinced that your job could bring you more eternal and natural happiness than enlightenment, you would practice your job with greater fervor than you would practice enlightenment.  Therefore you try to turn your mind so that it has a firm foundation, hard as a rock, upon which you can build your practice.

It’s that way with aspirational Bodhicitta.  You have to turn your mind in such a way that you understand the value of compassion and you have to actually ignite your mind.  You have to set it on fire, and that fire has to be stronger and hotter and fiercer than any other feeling or idea that you have.  It has to burn so strongly that you can’t put it out.

In order to practice aspirational Bodhicitta, you must first of all look around you with courage.  Because we Americans, even New Age Americans, don’t like to look around and see that others are suffering.  We hate to think about that.  We think somehow it’s bad to think like that. According to the Buddha, it isn’t bad to think like that.  In fact, you must think like that in order to go on to the next level of practice.  You must look around you and be honest and be courageous. If you don’t see suffering in your life, if you don’t know that the people around you are lonely or getting old or getting sick, that they live with worry and with fear, then what you need to do is go to the library and check out books about other cultures and other forms of life, and see what the rest of the world is like.  Have you ever seen pictures of Calcutta, India?  Have you ever seen pictures of Bangladesh?  Have you ever seen pictures of Africa?  If you don’t believe that suffering exists in the world, you’ll see it there.  Have you ever studied the lives of people who continually do non-virtuous activity? Even though they might look like they’re tough and in control, they are deeply suffering. It behooves you to be courageous enough to examine that.  You should look at other life forms. You should look at animals.  You should look and see how oxen are treated in India.  I speak of India a lot, not because it’s a bad place, but because I’ve been there, and I was shocked.  I had no idea how sheltered Americans are from suffering.  I had no idea until I saw lepers in the street with no limbs and with open sores.

Having studied these things, you will come to understand that there is suffering in the world.  You should cultivate in your heart and mind a feeling of great compassion. You shouldn’t stop until you’ve come to the point that you are on fire and you cannot bear that they are suffering so much.  The Buddha says that we have had so many incarnations in so many different forms that every being you see, every one, has been your mother or your father.    Whether you believe that or not, it’s a great way to think.  Because you look at other beings and see how they are suffering helplessly, with no way to get out of it.  And that they, at one time, had given you birth.  In that way, you can come to love them in a way that you can practice for them.

You should allow yourself to become so filled with the urgency to practice loving that your heart is on fire and there’s no other subject that interests you as much.  Even if it’s uncomfortable; we Americans think we should never be uncomfortable. Sometimes discomfort is very useful.  Be uncomfortable and let yourself ache with the need to practice Bodhicitta.  Cultivate in yourself that urgency and that determination.  You might get to the point where you feel something, and you feel sort of sorry for all sentient beings.  You might think, “Okay, now I’ve got it.  I’ll go on to the next step.”  No, you haven’t got it.  You should cultivate compassion from this moment until you reach supreme enlightenment.

Unless they are supremely enlightened no one is born with the perfect mind of compassion.  I, and everyone I teach and everyone I know, including my teachers, practice aspirational Bodhicitta everyday, reminding ourselves that all sentient beings suffer unbearably and that we find it unbearable to see.  You should continue to cultivate compassion every moment of your life. It will begin to burn in your heart. It’s like love.  It’s beautiful.  You won’t want ever to be without that divine fire in your heart.  It will warm you as no other love can.  It will stabilize your mind as no other practice can.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo