Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

The Soothing Balm of Virtue

March 21, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Take Control of Your Life”

To cultivate a joyful mind, we should cultivate virtuous habits. We are happiest when we are busy creating merit. We don’t realize this because the words are so dry. We think cocktail. I like that word! Merit? Ugh. Happy Hour? That sounds good! Practice? Ugh. That’s our ordinary thinking that we have to dispel because it’s wrong. It’s wrong. Cocktail means ‘poison’. It means drunk. It means alcoholic. It’s never been good for you and it never will be. It’s an unfortunate addition to your body, when you can do without. Merit, on the other hand… To practice merit and joyfully meritorious behavior, to soothe the mind rather than constantly inflame it with all your manic stuff, and to be a stimulation junky… That’s what we are. Stimulation junkies. It’s like psychological sugar. We can’t get enough of it. “Gimme something! Anything!” That how we are psychologically. And yet the mind is happiest when it’s relaxed, quietly joyful, mellowed out, thinking of the benefit of others, not absorbed in what I don’t have, what I want or what I think I got to get!

It turns out that what the Buddha said is true. The life of meditation and mysticism and loving regard for others—a life of service, a life planned to benefit others, a life in Dharma, Dharma so alive and so much a part of one’s mind that it is moist and sweet from the holy breath of the Dakinis… That is a life of joyfulness.

In a relaxed mind, colors are brighter. Did you know that? People who are locked in to their own personal phenomena, their own personal crazy phenomena, can’t see colors well. They think they can. They look and say, “Oh, I see red, you see red. What’s the difference?” But one red is different than the other. A peaceful mind can smell better. All the senses are purified and more alive, even though, because we are not yet enlightened they may still do the work of duality. Yet slowly slowly, we are training them in our practice. And so the mind becomes more relaxed. The mind becomes actually sensitized to quiet luminous joy—a state of restful luminosity that could be described as the very dance of bliss. This is the relaxed mind, the virtuous mind.

Yet we cultivate these habits that keep us raw and inflamed. I look at the expression on people’s faces. They’re all scrunched up because of all that inflammation, all that horrible feeling. When we suffer we say, “I feel so raw”. No kidding. That self-absorption, that constant selfishness and non-virtue and inflammation… It would be like taking Brillo and just constantly rubbing it on one’s skin.

And yet the joyful virtuous mind actually is more like putting a soothing balm on this same skin and allowing it to heal. This is the reason for happiness. This is the way for happiness. This is the method for happiness. Each and every one of us experiences unhappiness due to our previous non-virtuous habits. When we switch tracks, we begin to pave the way and to move on the journey towards personal happiness, happiness for all beings which is our highest priority, and towards making the world a better place, literally.

The House is On Fire

March 20, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Take Control of Your Life”

The Buddha teaches us tenderly and gently, as though we were his own children. There’s a story about a king who had many children. He loved his children dearly, but they were children, you know, children involved with children things, bright shiny play objects and things that make them happy. So the father left the children, hopefully in good care; he had to go off and do something in his kingdom (I think I’m telling the story right, I hope so. Om Benzar Satto Hung. So he goes away for a while and when he comes back to his house, his house is on fire. It’s a big house and his children don’t even realize it. The children are comfortably asleep in their little children beds. The king is outside. He can’t get to his children and he’s hollering, “Come out children. Hurry up. Get out of that burning house now. Quick wake up. Run.” The kids, they’re not used to being in trouble. They’re the king’s children. They’re used to being safe; and they have that habit of being safe in their beds so they’re not worried about anything. They hear somebody shouting, but they just turn over in their covers and go back to sleep.

The king becomes frantic. They’re his children! So he says, “Children come out now or I’ll beat you with a stick! Come out or I’ll go in there and I’ll just beat you with a stick and knock your heads off. So come out right now.” And the kids go, “Oh, that’s dad. You know, he’s not really going to beat us with a stick, because we’re the king’s kids. He’s just saying that, so we’re not too worried about it.” And so the kids get out of their beds and they start playing with their toys. The king is making so much noise, and they’re in the back room and they’re just playing with their little toys, preoccupied, you know, the way we are, and playing with little things. And then the king goes, “Children, I have beautiful toys for you out here. Treasures. Beautiful things. I have a grand elephant for you to ride. I have a whole herd of horses for you to enjoy. I have beautiful umbrellas and shiny jewels and so many objects for you to come and play with.” Naturally, the kids are attracted by that and go running out of the house. At which time the father, being part Italian goes, “Aye!” (That would have been me. That’s not what the father did.) The father embraced his children and said, “Oh I’m sorry I had to lie to you. I’m sorry I had to promise you things. I’m sorry I had to threaten you. But see, your house is burning.”

Party Anyone?

March 19, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Take Control of Your Life”

First there’s contemplation. We should think like this. All sentient beings are suffering, yet they are all Buddha. How is it that the Buddha was different, that he was not suffering? The Buddha said the difference is, “I am awake.” Therefore, I will practice in such a way as to become awake like the Buddha. Or we can also look at the suffering of sentient beings and we realize that every one of them wishes to be happy exactly like us. We’re so similar; we have different cultures and different colored skin, but we are so similar in that we all wish to be happy. And so the Buddha teaches us that in order to have happiness, we should cultivate a pure and virtuous mind with pure and virtuous deeds.

Now as a young person in a materialistic culture where’s there’s lots of Pepsi Cola and dancing and beautiful people and spring break from college happens on the beach in a bikini and you know, the hallmarks of our civilization, we look at that and we think, ”Pure conduct? Virtuous thoughts? How’s that gonna be fun?”

Well, here’s the problem: You see those young beautiful bodies on the beach, and you think, “Ah, once I had that, was like that.” And then you see they’re all dancing and having a good time and you think, “Ah, for a party. I haven’t had a party in such a long time. How wonderful to be that young and beautiful and have a party.” And then you watch them drinking and you think, “Ah, I used to drink once. That was great!” Because that’s what we were taught. We were taught that we should party and be happy. And that’s what you do with your left over money after you spend all your life making it. These are the things that we’ve been taught.

But the Buddha says, “Well, you have that wonderful body now, but every minute it’s changing.” And for those of us who have been there, and done that, seen that and watched it go, we look at that and we go, “It went fast. Man, it went fast. And you know, I put some effort into that.” And then we think about all the drinking, and that was fun for a little while until we became alcoholics and then it wasn’t fun anymore, or until our stomachs couldn’t take it anymore and then we discovered something. We’re drinking poison! It’s not good for us. So our society doesn’t teach us anything. It teaches us to bang into walls and hopefully from that we may learn something.

Taking Account of Our Minds

March 18, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “The Habit of Bodhicitta”

We rarely empathize with the needs of others. We may become aware of them on an intellectual level. And there is a great, vast difference between that and actually empathizing with the needs and hopes and fears of others. We rarely enrich our own life experience by really merging, really blending, really empathizing with the conditions of other people’s minds. Due to our self absorption and self- cherishing, and our inability to relate to the situation of others, we find ourselves able to entertain hostility, anger, pride, selfishness, all of those things that are really detrimental to us. We are able to maintain certain habitual tendencies that we honestly cannot see about ourselves. For instance, if I were to say to you, are you basically a kind person, almost everyone in the room would say yes. We’re here, we’re being spiritual, you know, that sort of thing. But if I ask you how much time you actually spend during the course of any given day actually doing for others in a real compassionate way—keeping the bodhichitta or the compassion alive within one’s mind—how much are you actually aware of the needs and unfulfilled desires of others, we would be shocked.Really, if we actually clocked ourselves in and out of such a realization, we would be shocked at how little time we actually spend doing that. So I think it’s sometimes really helpful to make a purposeful and directed effort, such as actually clocking in when you are aware of the needs and desires of other people and when you actively participate in trying to help in some way.

The help can take different forms. Sometimes the things that people want around aren’t really good for them to have. I mean, you have a teenage son that wants nothing better than a very fast car, and you know that that’s not quite right for him. So you don’t always give a person what they want, but you can certainly empathize. You can certainly be there in a very kind and profound way as a force for connection, for communication in someone else’s life.

We actually spend very little time doing that. We spend most of our time thinking about ourselves and our own problems and our ideas. So fixated on our own ideas, so fixated on our self-cherishing. Sometimes we don’t realize that we’re almost dyslexic about kindness. Or, what is the word? Maybe we perseverate about kindness. We have this idea that we’ve already done it, you know, that it is happening, and we don’t realize that it’s not being written down at all. It’s just not going out into the world. So sometimes it really helps to journal to really see what you’ve actually done during that day to bring kindness into the world. That would be extremely useful.

As Many Paths…

March 16, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Take Control of Your Life”

Society will teach you wrongly until it understands your nature. The Buddha is the perfect teacher—the perfect one because he so thoroughly understood our nature. It is said that when a student came to him for the first time, and said, “I would like to become Buddhist,” or “I would like to take teaching with you,” he could see in an instant all the causes and conditions that brought that student to that moment where he faced the Buddha. He could see every cause and condition and could give each and every student the antidote necessary to provide the blessings for enlightenment.

That being the case, we can trust in the Buddha’s teaching. He doesn’t say, “You’re a bag of chemicals. Now you’re breathing. So good, go get a job. Make yourself happy. Have a chicken in your pot, or a pot with some chicken”. I don’t know…” Have a drink on Friday nights.”—whatever it is that makes people happy. He doesn’t say, “Follow in your culture.” He tears the veil apart and he says, “Based on your nature, this is what must be done. Based on your path, this is what must be done.” And there are as many methods in the Buddhadharma as there are sentient beings to follow them.

Peeling Back the Veil

March 15, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Take Control of Your Life”

In contemplating our lives and in proceeding mindfully, we begin to understand that the Buddha has peeled away the veil a little bit to show us that we are not only material beings affixed on the time and space grid, that we are not these lumps that are there. The Buddha has peeled back the veil a little bit and shown us that we are spiritual beings. That our very appearance is the display of primordial spiritual essence and that the events and activities in our lives are merely the result of causes that we have definitely created in the past. That we are continually, by our habits and by our thinking and by our activities, by our consciousness, continually creating the causes for the future. This is what the Buddha has taught.

Now in other religions, there are good laws, like don’t kill, don’t steal. All the religions have the same basic laws. But in the Buddha’s path, he teaches us about cause and effect. We are made to understand the relationship between cause and effect. The potency implied in that is that for the first time, we are humans with tools, rather than humans with sticks and stones. It’s as though spiritually we moved into the new age of having actual tools rather than being some sort of homo sapien who just kind of, in an animal way, deals with what life brings the best that it can.

Yes, the Buddha has given us tools. But do we understand how to follow them? And how to use them? And here’s the problem. What we don’t understand is this—and this is not necessarily the fault of each and every individual although we must take responsibility for our own habits and thoughts, it’s the only reasonable and healthy way to move forward: We are born in a culture that does not explain reality. In fact, we are born in a culture that believes in the solidity of form, believes in division and delusion and duality and doesn’t understand cause and effect relationships very much at all. We live in a very externalized culture where yes, we understand that if you steal something, if you get caught, you’ll go to jail or get in trouble with the law. But we also think that if you steal something and don’t get caught, that the stealing didn’t happen. I remember thinking how many times I have met up with students that you can tell they’ve been taught that. You’re ok as long as you don’t get caught. Most of us learn how to manipulate our lives and manipulate our environment so that appearances meet in accord with our society. But we have never been taught what are the real tools for happiness. We have never been taught that. We’ve never been taught that the stealing produces future cause whether or not you get caught in this lifetime.

There are other reasons for stealing. I personally don’t believe the fear of punishment is going to stop too many people who are hungry from stealing some food. If you’re hungry, your mind is different. Or for a person who is so poor that they can’t think of any other way to get by, the fear of punishment won’t stop them. But perhaps, if they lived in a society that taught from birth the fact that if you are poor now, it’s because you have not been generous in the past. If you wish to achieve more prosperity, the best thing to do is to be of benefit to others, because stealing will only make more impoverishment, more poverty. We’re not taught that. We’re only taught to look at the external.

But in a Buddhist society, we are taught that our minds are important. We are taught that we must tame the mind. Within the mind are the five poisons and without being tamed, they will result in unhappiness if they are left to run wild. We have the poisons of ignorance, anger, slothfulness, desire, jealousy. We have them all.

Ignorance in this case doesn’t mean that you didn’t go to school. Ignorance in this case means that you have no wisdom. It means that you do not understand the nature of reality, have not been taught the cause and effect relationships and karmic relationships that provide the future reality nor what creates your present reality. So we are ignorant of how we are, what we are, and how we have come to be here.

So we have these five poisons and never understand that these five poisons are not our nature. They are occlusions in the diamond mind. They are dirt on the pristine window that is consciousness. In their pristine nature, they are the five primordial dakinis; they are the five primordial Buddhas in their nature. They are the qualities of Buddhahood: omniscience, omnipresence, compassion—these kinds of qualities and activities. And so as Buddhists, the veil is brought to the side so that we can look and see cause and effect and the nature of mind.

And Yet We Still Ignore It

March 14, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is respectfully quoted from “What Makes You Not Buddhist” by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche:

Two thousand five-hundred thirty-eight years after Siddhartha walked out the palace door–at the time of year when many millions of people are celebrating, making merry, and anticipating a fresh start, the time to remember God for some, the time to take advantage of discount sales for others–a catastrophic tsunami shook the world. Even the most coldhearted of us gasped in horror. As the story unfolded on television, some of us wished that Orson Wells would interrupt to announce that it was all fabrication, or that Spiderman would sweep down to save the day.

There is no doubt that Prince Siddhartha’s heart would have broken to see the tsunami victims washed ashore. But his heart would have been even more broken by the fact that we were taken by surprise, proof of our constant denial of impermanence. This planet is made of volatile magma. Every land mass–Australia, Taiwan, the Americas–is like dew, about to drop from the grass. Yet construction of skyscrapers and tunnels never stops. Our insatiable deforestation for the sake of disposable chopsticks and junk mail only invites impermanence to act more quickly. It should not surprise us to see signs of the end of any given phenomenon, but we are very difficult to convince.

Yet even after a devastating reminder like the tsunami, the death and devastation will soon be camouflaged and forgotten. Luxurious resorts will be erected on the very spot where families came to identify the corpses of their loved ones. The people of the world will continue to be caught up in compounding and fabricating reality with hopes of achieving long-lasting happiness. Wishing for “happily ever after” is nothing more than a desire for permanence in disguise. Fabricating concepts such as “eternal love,” “everlasting happiness,” and “salvation” generates more evidence of impermanence. Our intention and the result are at odds. We intend to establish ourselves and our world, but we forget that the corrosion begins as soon as creation begins. What we aim for is not decay, but what we do leads directly to decay.

At the very least, Buddha advised, we must try to keep the concept of impermanence in mind and not knowingly conceal it. By maintaining our awareness of assembled phenomena, we become of aware of interdependence. Recognizing interdependence, we recognize impermanence. And when we remember that things are impermanent, we are less likely to be enslaved by assumptions, rigid beliefs (both religious and secular), value systems, or blind faith. Such awareness prevents us from getting caught up in all kinds of personal, political, and relationship dramas. We begin to know that things are not entirely under our control and never will be, so there is no expectation for things to go according to our hopes and fears. There is no one to blame when things go wrong because there are countless causes and conditions to blame. We can direct this awareness from the farthest regions of our imaginations to subatomic levels. Even atoms cannot be trusted.

Impermanence: From “Treasury of Precious Qualities” by Jigme Lingpa

March 13, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is respectfully quoted from “Treasury of Precious Qualities” by Jigme Lingpa, with commentary by Longchen Yeshe Dorje and Kangyur Rinpoche, as translated by Padmakara Translation Group:

Impermanence

1. The stable world with all its moving occupants is said to last a kalpa.
Which, by its nature, has four ages: forming, dwelling, ruin and the void.
It is disparaged with the name of Basis of Decay,
For it will be assailed by seven conflagrations and one flood.
2. The teachers of gods and humankind perceive our trust in permanence
And therefore, though they have supreme and adamantine forms,
Relax their hold on indestructibility
And joyfully display their passing into peace.

3. Those perfect in samadhi may sustain great spans of life,
But all to no avail, they must endure mortality.
Brahma, Shiva, Ishvara and all the Chakravartins
Find no way to flee the demon Lord of Death.

4. For those who flock so carefree in the wholesome vales of higher realms,
The hunter lies in wait, his weapon in his hand,
Conspiring how to rob them of their lives.
He thinks and thinks of it and has no other thoughts.

5. Tormented by the summer’s heat, beings with pleasure
In the clear light of the autumn moon.
They do not think, and it does not alarm them
That a hundred of their days has passed away.

6. A powerful bowman’s shaft is swift indeed,
But not as swift as pretas moving on the earth.
The pretas in the air are swifter still,
And swifter yet the gods of sun and moon.
But swiftest of them all is human life.

7. The prime of youth is ravaged and brought low by age.
Disease disturbs health’s equlibrium
And perfect situations are all ruined by decay.
So soon does death lay siege to life!

8. Defeated in their struggle with the Lord of Death,
Beings plunge protectorless and friendless down in the abyss.
The glow of life is dimmed; the senses fail;
And doctors with their cures all turn away.

9. Then comes feeble twitching of exhausted limbs,
The failing breath that rattles in the throat,
The family and friends who stand around and grieve
And pray their useless prayers that death might be delayed.

10. The movement of breath, now fine as horse’s hair,
Is severed by the sharp ax of the Deadly Lord.
All beauty now departs; the grin of death appears;
And karma brings the bardo’s deep, black night.

Right Before Our Eyes

March 12, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Take Control of Your Life”

These are important teachings. The Buddha taught us that yes, we will live many times and we will die many times. It’s so important to think of this particular life as one increment in a great long inconceivable span of lifetimes. Lord Buddha taught that we have been born again and again and again in cyclic existence in so many forms and so many times that, literally, every being that we meet must have been our kind mother or father in some past incarnation. So we should think of all beings—including dogs and cats and worms and iguanas and creatures that perhaps we have very little emotional connection with, but even those—if we have the opportunity to meet them or even be stung by one of them, like a bee, that in some past life, some ancient life, we have had definitely some intimate connection with them.

We had another good lesson recently. We watched the death of the woman with brain damage, Terri Schiavo What an amazing karma played out right out in front of us. Amazing karma! If you just step back away from the emotions and look, it’s so easy to see that this is some ancient, profound, terrible karma playing out between these people—the husband, the family and the woman herself. Amazingly, her death was brought about by a deprivation of food, and yet the very cause of this terrible fate of hers was practicing bulimia. So you see a kind of instant karma playing out, and then you see it hooking into this devastating ancient karma with the other people, with the family that she lived with. How amazing! What a study that was!

I found myself this past week, between His Holiness the Pope and this Schiavo woman dying, I found myself fascinated by these two things. Watching everything the Buddha has taught us playing out right in front of us for those of us that could see. My students, my attendants, the people that are close to me say, “Jetsunma, what should they do? Should they feed her or not feed her?” Well, my advice would have been to allow the entire karma to play out, completely unscathed. Let it play out exactly without any kind of interference, exactly the way it would in the world, because this karma between them is so profound. Better that she, in this relatively unconscious condition, can go through this terrible karma and live it down, finish it, end it, rather than to have to come back and finish it, because it perhaps wasn’t finished. So from a wisdom point of view, to watch this karma is a blessing. Because we understand how it is with us, we can get a much deeper understanding; and yet to watch this karma is gut wrenching. It’s heart breaking because we see how samsara is. We see how we can mistakenly think that loving concern is just that—loving concern—when sometimes it’s power. We can see also that sometimes when we feel the most powerful, powerful love, that often its basis is very self-oriented, very selfish. Not meaning to be selfish. We think we’re thinking of the other, and yet it’s really about how we feel.

Photo of the Day: HH Penor Rinpoche Offering Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo Empowerment

March 11, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is a photo of His Holiness Penor Rinpoche offering Empowerment to Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo: