After praying this morning Jetsunma was moved to look at the relics on her altar. She found they had multiplied, on even spinning gold:
Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
Think Before You Leap
An excerpt from a teaching called Intimacy with the Path by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
For those of us practicing the Buddha Dharma, there is the tendency to act and practice like new practitioners. When I say new practitioners, I don’t mean practitioners that have been practicing for only a week or six months or two years. We act like a culture of new practitioners, which we are. The Buddha Dharma has only recently been introduced into our culture. Our culture is more determined by Judeo-Christian thought than it is by Eastern thought and so many elements of our culture do not comfortably embrace the way the path is taught, including our language, and most especially the way that we live – our life style. We are in a culture that is materialistic and extremely competitive. These two ideas of competition and materialism are taught to us as virtues from childhood and so “collecting things” or “going somewhere” are very pivotal ways of viewing our progress through life. For those of us on the path, that becomes somewhat difficult, and we have to translate what is basically innate Eastern thought into a western context or culture. I think that I am good at that because I was born an American and I think that’s helpful, if one has some understanding of the path.
Our problem as we face either beginning on the path of Buddhadharma or continuing on the path, is the sense that the path has to become really married or bonded with the way that we utilize our mind and our perception. We have not really been able to do this yet, even if we’ve been practicing for some time, even if we are wearing the robes, even if we have a daily practice that we are extremely committed to. It tends to be the case that we don’t actually bond or marry with the path in a way that is truly intimate and lasting. Unfortunately, we tend to externalize the path.
What are the reasons for that and how does it manifest? First of all, in our culture and way of thinking, we externalize everything. This is not unusual. Everything that we see is a road in front of us. Of course this isn’t only typical of our culture. It’s typical of the way that human beings perceive things altogether, but particularly in this culture we think of things that must be accomplished and things that must be collected. We find ourselves facing something that is in front of us, a path that is in front of us. And although the teaching of the BuddhaDharma is extraordinarily different from spiritual and esoteric philosophy as we understand it in this Judeo-Christian society, we are not able to make that transition. We practice Buddhism like Christians, which is really not how Buddhism ought to be practiced at all.
If we understand the source of our misunderstanding and how it is that we externalize the path, we can begin to repair the damage and begin to rethink and reassess. The great thing about us is that we can learn. We are that particular unusual kind of computer, which can learn from its own programming, reassess and reevaluate. We are capable of that. If you watch us in our lives, you’d never know it, but we are capable of learning.
If you are practicing a method that did not arise from the mind of the Buddha, from supreme enlightenment, you are not practicing a path that can also result in supreme enlightenment, because the seed and the fruit have to match. An asparagus plant will not produce an apple. They have to match. It’s one of those fundamental, commonsensical, “2 + 2 = 4” kinds of reality that we like to conveniently leave out on a regular basis.
Why do we do that? Is it because we have a particular shtick that we need to fulfill about what religion is all about? Is it preconceived notions that we have? Yes, there are elements of that, that’s true, because we are intellectual people, we have formed ideas that are difficult to change once they are formed. We have the habit of clinging to ideas almost in the posture that if our ideas were to change, the result would be so mind-blowingly chaotic that surely we would die. We have this habit of wrapping ourselves around our ideas in a very firm way. Flexibility, of course, is an unheard-of skill.
That’s certainly one reason why it is difficult for us to think logically about the path. Another reason why it is so difficult is that, if you really examine us, we have very little familiarity with, or habits geared towards, really thinking something through, from cause to result, in any area of our lives. We like to take these flying leaps at reality. We like to take these great plunges thinking, “I want that and I’m here, so jump!” It’s that kind of thinking. Just jump! And jump again! But heaven forbid, don’t stop and think what cause would produce that result. We don’t have that habit.
We spend a good deal of our lives incapacitated in certain ways because each one of us has a particular problem to deal with. Some of us may have confused mental states. Some of us may have really strange habitual tendencies that produce unhappiness for us again and again. Many of us engage in patterns that we just can’t seem to shake and they always produce for us these habits that make us unhappy. When we make ourselves unhappy, we withdraw from that unhappiness and we whine and we blame the faith and we blame the people next to us. We take these flying leaps at our lives without really thinking through any kind of cause and effect relationship.
We have been given definite teachings on what kind of virtue and activities produce happiness, but we don’t want to practice virtue. We want to take flying leaps. We’re used to it and we don’t want to change. Regarding the path, it’s the same way. We see the path as being in front of us. It has certain characteristics, and so we see ourselves as separate from that and we take a flying leap in that general direction, without thinking out what is original cause, what is the basis, what is the method. What is the result, and how to really reason that through. We don’t seem to be able to do that. We seem to like to take these flying leaps.
Oddly enough, we expect that these dramatic, utterly unfounded and ungrounded flying leaps are going to make us happy. So we spend most of our lives just thrashing and flailing around.
In most regards, we don’t have the habit to understand the relationship between cause and result. It’s a particular kind of delusion that seems to go hand-in-glove with our human reality. When it comes time for us to really become intimate with and marry into the path, we look around for some way to do that, and the difficulty is obvious.
For many of us who have been practicing for some time, when we engage in the path we will try to make the path its own satisfaction. If we understood the basis for the path, and what the fundamental underlying ground of the path actually is, and what the result of practicing the path in a certain way will be—not because it’s magic, not because the signs point in that direction, not because of superstition, but because ground and result cannot be separated—we would begin to understand that in fact, under those conditions, the path disappears.
The path as a separate entity then doesn’t exist, not in the way that we understand it. It becomes inseparable from our own primordial wisdom nature, our own Buddhahood in its causative, seed form, and it becomes completely inseparable from the full-blown result of Buddhahood, actual awakening. If you understood this, you would not be engaged in thinking, the way we do now, “Okay, today I’m really going to get into my practice. So instead of doing an hour of practice I’m going to do two hours.” What kind of thinking is that? I mean, yeah, at some point you might have to decide how much time you have to put into it, but that’s not what it’s about. That’s not going to make a bit of difference if that’s the approach.
The kind of thinking that we have now also is “I’ve been out of it with my practice and so now I have to get back into my practice.” Even that kind of thinking is deluded thinking. To get back into your practice means that you’ve walked away from something that is infinitely connected, completely inseparable from that which is your nature. You can’t walk away from that. No matter where you go, there it is.
© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo
The Three Faces of the Path
An excerpt from a teaching called Intimacy with the Path by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
When we think of the path, we think of something that is external, separate from us, something in front of us that we have to move towards or attain. A different understanding of the path might be that the path is something that actually engages with what you might call three faces. But these three faces are very much like us. You could say that each one of us has at least three faces. Each one of has the face of anger or discontentment, the face of joy, and the face of balance or contentment. There are many different faces that we have.
The path also has faces and when we truly study them we can understand what the nature of the path actually is. You could say that the path exists as part of a three-part system and if you were to think of the path itself in a true and more profound way than we normally think, you would understand that there is no way to tell where the path begins and where the path ends. We would understand that comprising what we call the path are three faces which are (1), the ground or basis from which the path arises, (2) the path or movement itself, the display of that source or fundamental nature from which the path arises, and (3) the fruit, which is the direct result of that fundamental nature as well as the direct result of the activity of that fundamental nature.
These three things, the ground, the path and the fruit or result cannot be separated in any way, shape, manner or form. The moment that we begin to separate these three aspects, we have lost touch with what the path actually is. We have lost touch with an intuitive understanding of how to practice the path, and we experience a great deal of delusion concerning the path when we separate ourselves from the understanding of the threefold face of the path: the basis or ground; the movement or path itself; and the result of the path.
Without this understanding, anything that we do becomes a path. Any activity that we engage in becomes a method. That method connects something with something or it wouldn’t be a method. But on the path of Buddha Dharma we have to remain connected with the ground, the method, and the result. These three have to be considered as threefold.
How is it that we can use this understanding to determine the validity of the path and to remove from ourselves the tendency toward delusion? First of all there is the teaching on the relationship of the seed and the fruit. There is that kind of good old-fashioned, common-sense wisdom that if you really want to have an apple tree in your orchard, you’ve got to plant an apple seed, that if you wanted an apple tree in your orchard and were to plant cabbages, it simply would not work. You would have cabbages, not apples. If you wished for some apples and you were to plant asparagus, that’s not going to turn out really well for you unless you really determine that asparagus is your thing. I know it sounds like I’m being silly and belaboring this point. The moment we get it, I’m going to stop nagging about it, because as yet we haven’t got this one and it’s really, really important.
The Buddha Dharma is not a path or a method that arises in any common or ordinary way in the world. In other words, someone didn’t get born at some time and simply compose a path. A team of experts or technicians didn’t get together and engineer a path. NASA didn’t design this one. This path was not a dream or a vision that someone had about twenty years ago that remains unproven or insubstantial.
The path of Buddha Dharma as we know it only arises when the condition of the Buddha nature appears. It arises from the mind of enlightenment – the Buddha nature. Lord Buddha did not begin to teach the path, although he had attained varying degrees of what you might call cosmic consciousness or something like that, before he actually attained supreme enlightenment. He had various degrees of consciousness that he could communicate and various qualities that he could teach to others—teachings on compassion, Bodhicitta, practicing meditation—but in fact he did not teach until he awakened into the primordial nature that was his true nature, Buddhahood. And then at that time he was able to display the path or method to the world.
The path or method actually came forth from his realization. It did not come forth even one millisecond before his realization. Once he achieved that precious awakening, he was able to bring the path to the world. During the course of Lord Buddha’s life he discovered that there were many different displays of consciousness, many different levels of attainment and attunement that one could accomplish and he did accomplish many of these before that ultimate moment. But it was that ultimate awakening that he presented to the world as the Buddha Dharma.
The seed of the method that we practice is enlightenment, the Buddha nature itself. It is not the human nature. If it were the human nature he would have taught before that precious awakening and that would have been something from the human capacity. But it was not until supreme realization that he began to teach the method and he taught only that method which leads to supreme enlightenment. So the seed and the method are completely married and not separable.
© copyright Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo All rights reserved.
Bliss Happens
An excerpt from a teaching called Awakening from Non-Recognition by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
There are so many amazing ways that you can practice. I’ve seen it again and again in the greatest practitioners, but only in the greatest, so we aspire to this. I think about stories I’ve heard about the Tibetan Bodhisattvas. For instance, during the tragedy when Tibet fell, literally 20,000 Tibetans (my teachers among them) tried to cross the Himalayas to get to India to safety, and only 20 arrived. These people endured incredible amounts of death, killing, all kinds of terrible sufferings. And then you think about great Lamas like His Holiness the Dalai Lama and my teachers who have said that instead of hating the Chinese who caused them so much loss and so much suffering, they feel almost worshipful in a sense, recognizing that the Chinese are their gurus. Now how does that happen? Are you thinking, “Well, this is maybe more than I can swallow? You know, if anybody is going to destroy me and my culture, I think I’d rather not like them, thank you very much!”
What has happened here is that these great Bodhisattvas recognize that everything is the mandala of the guru. With faith, everything is the display of the guru. So this tragic event is understood as a wrathful display that gives us the opportunity to cut off ego clinging at the root. Whatever they decided to do with this information, Tibet fell. Those things happened, so you basically have two ways to go with this. You can use this as an excuse to fall deeper and deeper into samsara with hatred and prejudice, or you can use it as a ladder to climb out of samsara through practicing renunciation and the cessation of ego clinging. It’s already happened. Those are the only two choices you have! Now, if we were a good practitioner and broke a leg, we’d say, “This is truly the display of the mandala of the guru. This is the guru’s blessing because now I can’t hop around the way I normally do. I have to sit my butt down and pray.” You can use that opportunity or you can sit that same butt down in front of the TV and watch soap operas all day long and wail and gnash your teeth about it.
In my situation I think like this. Many of you know I came from an alcoholic and abusive home. To me that is my most precious gift, my most precious empowerment. I have received until this date no more precious empowerment than that. It’s not to say I want to do it over again. It was a nightmare. It was horrible. The days of suffering were endless, but I understand what I could not have understood any other way: that samsara is something to be reckoned with, that all sentient beings are suffering, that I wish to see suffering end. I don’t think I could ever have understood this as well if I had not experienced what I experienced. So that has become my empowerment, and I feel that this is the guru’s blessing. Hopefully, I have come to a point in my practice where I can say this without resentment. I feel that I can look to the face of my guru and say, “Thank you for this skillful means that you have offered me so that I will benefit sentient beings. Thank you for this.” Without resentment I can truly say that. In the next breath I’m also likely to say, “Please let’s not do this again by the way, if you don’t mind.” But the recognition is there. So it has become for me an empowerment.
The bottom line message of Guru Yoga isn’t about subservience or about losing power or losing strength. If anything, it’s about recognizing that the ball is in your court. You have and will have the experiences of samsara. What are you going to do about that? Even if you lay down and die, you still have to go through the bardo and then you do it all over again.
You have choices, but they’re not the kind you’d like to have. You’d like to choose to be either here or not be here, choose to be happy or be sad, choose to have one experience or another happen to you. What you can choose is what you do with what happens to you. If you were to enter into the practice of Guru Yoga deeply and be truly empowered by that, this entire life could be an empowerment. We can transform all of the whining and moping and gnashing of teeth that we do into strength.
Often students will come to me and say, “I have this particular problem. This particular problem makes me unusual and unfit. My mind is stuck on it. So let’s make a big deal about my particular problem so that we can talk about it together and then we don’t have to practice. We can just have this particular problem.” Well, my answer to that is great, because if you have that particular problem, when you solve that problem, you’re going to have that particular strength. That’s what you’re going to have. This is golden. This is gravy. So we take this problem and we transform adversity into bliss, and the bliss occurs when we move into a state of recognition. We understand that we are not victims anymore. We understand that this kind of dualistic thinking is unreasonable and unwarranted and pointless, and we begin to understand “I am here. I am that. And the capacity to display this nature is something holy, a gem, a jewel that I possess.”
We learn this within the context of Guru Yoga, through the friendship of our teacher, through recognizing what is not ordinary. But try to remember, if we insist on maintaining the same habitual tendency and interact with that which is holy as though it were ordinary, and are not able to make that bridge or that transformation, it’s like taking a precious jewel—the most precious in the world, in all worlds, that could buy you anything that you want, a wish-fulfilling jewel—and making, as a six-year-old would make, a play pretty out of it.
It’s not that one way of being would make you a bad person and the other not. It’s that one is a terrible tragedy, a terrible waste, a terrible loss, and the other is empowerment. That’s the difference.
As we hold in our mind the intention to awaken as the Buddha is awake, as we hold in our minds the information about the difference between what is ordinary and what is extraordinary, as we begin to move into a state of recognition through the practice of Guru Yoga, this will facilitate every happiness, every result of the path. Gradually, over time, we will prepare for the opportunity of recognition, and it will occur. This is the truth. I would not lie to you. I have no reason to lie to you. These are the Buddha’s teachings. Again you have the opportunity to pit your ordinary process of conceptualization, as it arises from samsaric tendencies and samsaric means, against what the Buddha speaks, which is the truth of your own nature. This the Buddha has taught, “I will appear as your root teacher.” This Guru Rinpoche has taught, again, “I will appear as your root teacher.”
Perhaps this teaching will give you some beginning understanding of how to approach the practice of Guru Yoga. I hope that it is helpful to you, and I hope that it helps you to move across certain stuck places that we as practitioners find ourselves arriving at again and again. Thank you very much.
© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
The Student-Teacher Relationship
An excerpt from a teaching called Awakening from Non-Recognition by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
This relationship between the student and teacher absolutely depends on the connection between what appears to be two things. On the part of the teacher, the relationship requires the capability to express, display and communicate Dharma, and certainly the intention of Bodhicitta first and foremost. The student’s well-being and realization, recognition, awakening, enlightenment is the goal of the relationship. The teacher’s responsibility is to connect with the student in order to bring about that result and to provide all of the necessary components on the path in order to achieve that result.
What is the student’s responsibility? The student’s responsibility is not to treat this relationship as an ordinary thing, once you have determined that it is not of the world. That would be inappropriate. Have you ever seen children make collages? They take a piece of construction paper and they glue pretty sparkled things on that piece of paper and then they give it to mom. They just make a play-pretty. That’s their artistic endeavor because they can paste and glue. You don’t think students do that with their teacher? The equivalent would be to take a most precious jewel, like the Hope Diamond, exquisitely precious, immeasurable in worldly and monetary terms, put some Elmer’s glue on it and stick it on a piece of paper right next to all the fuzzy things and play-pretties and sparkles and colored macaronis and all the things kids use to make collages, and say “Because I can paste and glue. Because I’m six years old now and I can do this.” That would be the equivalent. You would take that precious jewel and paste it on that piece of paper and just throw it around with the other things you make because you can, because you’re smart, because you’re human, because you’re American. Can you see what I’m saying here?
This precious relationship should not be dealt with in that way. It’s absurd. You cringe when you think of a diamond—that’s worth so much money that it could probably feed all the homeless in our entire country for at least a period of time—used as a play thing, pasted on construction paper with colored macaroni and stuff. It’s exactly the equivalent of practicing Guru Yoga in the way that we practice it.
That precious relationship provides a format in which we practice recognizing. When we are born in samsara we have a certain experience. As a human being we are born of a mother and a father. You can’t get away from that. As far as I know, no one has just appeared somewhere. If you have, please tell me. I want to see that you’re missing a belly button. We pass through the birth canal and we experience the world as infants and then we grow into consciousness. There seems to be this continuum that expresses itself in time. Why does that happen? Well, it’s because we believe self-nature to be inherently real. Self-nature is not the same as the Buddha nature. It has a certain kind of limitation, and the format seems to be that it moves through space. It takes place in space. To take place in space you need to take place in time also. So we have this experience and we take it for granted. That’s simply the way it is.
The Buddha is able to look at you and see everything about you, every single condition that brought you to this present moment. What kind of perception is that? When the Buddha looks at this experience, the Buddha sees in awareness, in the awakened state. In that recognition there is something else. There is an appearance of this nature in a display form, like the sun’s rays coming from the sun. The Buddha understands this nature and does not distinguish between this and that, between empty and full, between high and low, between hot and cold, between solid and non-solid. The Buddha recognizes that face, that nature, that ground-of-being simply in emanation form.
When we meet with our teacher, there is a different relationship, and this is how we have to understand the necessity and power of Guru Yoga. If you have chosen your teacher correctly, the teacher is a Bodhisattva with enough wisdom, enough awareness, and enough accomplishment in meditation so that there is recognition, so that the teacher knows your nature. The teacher recognizes this potential, this seed, and the teacher/student relationship is completely based on that recognition. Even though the teacher may occasionally interface with a student in a way that appears to be ordinary, it’s always about bringing the relationship full circle until the student’s recognition occurs. That is the basis of the relationship. Don’t make it ordinary. It’s not about a warm fuzzy. It’s not about being comfy cozy. It’s not about feeling good. It’s not about whether we both like to ice skate or have the same color skin. It’s not about any of that.
It’s about the appearance and the recognition of that appearance. The student has an incredible opportunity and that is to begin to practice entering into a state of recognition, utilizing the Guru Yoga, utilizing the teacher. Why should we utilize the teacher rather than sit down and chant “Om” and just meditate and see if we can recognize our natural state? Well, because it’s not likely to happen that way, that’s why.
We are ordinary sentient beings lost in samsara. We have been conceptualizing self-nature since time out of mind. We have unbelievably strong habitual tendencies. If you think addiction is strong, as it appears in the world now with drugs and alcohol, it’s nothing compared to the level of addiction to a habitual tendency that we have in our clinging to ego as being inherently real. It doesn’t even come close!
In this relationship we are going to conceive of something different. We are going to determine what is ordinary and what is extraordinary. We are going to go through this whole process we’ve outlined. We determine that this relationship is extraordinary. It arises from the Buddha nature. It results in the Buddha nature. In the middle is the path or the method. This being the case, we begin to understand that if this relationship arises from the Buddha nature and it is the Buddha nature and that is our nature, when we see the teacher, we have at last seen our own face. That precious moment—when that face that is our nature arises in some way that we can recognize—is the beginning of recognition.
Now it seems external. It seems like the teacher is out there. It is the student’s responsibility to practice in such a way that they begin to recognize this appearance as the most precious, holy experience. It’s not like worshiping a statue. It’s not like that. It’s recognition of the nature. What is the nature? It is the Buddha nature, indistinguishable from our own nature, therefore the recognition of our true face.
We talk about how to see our teacher when we meet him or her for the first time during the day. There are practices and beautiful writings—I myself have even written things about this and spoken about this, but it’s not my particular talent. In our heart without pride, with surrender, with beauty, with gentleness, with regard, without rigidity, without ideas, without taking that jewel and putting it on that collage, on that piece of paper, we behold the teacher and we say, “This is my heart, my mind, my breath. All that is precious and holy to me, all that is beautiful in this world.” And we place the teacher in our practice above the crown of our head. Are we stupid people worshiping something else? Are we kind of limp or weird? Are we maybe not American anymore? Try to understand. This is not about a personality cult. This is not about putting one being or body or personality above any other. It’s not like that. This is about recognition. The same pride, confusion and preconceived ideas that cause us to say, “Well, I just don’t know. This person is just an ordinary person and maybe I should just be friendly and try to do some practice and some reading.” That kind of holding oneself back from recognition is the exact same holding oneself back from recognition that is occurring right now to you and causes you to remain suffering in samsara. If you insist upon putting the teacher in the ordinary category, you insist upon putting the nature in an ordinary category. It’s the same problem, the same habit, the same disease.
© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
Your Chance at Recognition
An excerpt from a teaching called Awakening from Non-Recognition by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
Guru Yoga must be seen not as an end but as a means to an end. Quite frankly, speaking for myself and I’m sure most other teachers, we could care less. I’ve described this many times before. I just hate the whole prostration thing. It takes me forever to get through a room. If one practices in a profound way, these prostrations are an opportunity, and that’s why I allow them to be practiced here in the same way that they are practiced generally in our tradition. Otherwise I wouldn’t, because they bother me, but I allow them because it is an opportunity to make an offering and to move immediately—body, speech and mind—into a posture of recognition. You are speaking, “I take refuge in the Lama. I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the Dharma. I take refuge in the Sangha.” You are engaging in conduct with your body. You are engaging in intention with your mind. With body, speech and mind you are connecting to recognition, and that’s why I allow it.
The relationship with one’s teacher is utilized as the water of life or some sort of ultimate nectar or ultimate empowerment that provides a way for us to begin to recognize that which is holy arises in the world and that each of us is that. Each one of us should practice like that. To the degree that we hold the teacher above the crown of our head and then take the teacher into our hearts, without finding reasons not to—because those reasons not to are the very reasons we are using to remain lost in samsara—to that degree we learn to recognize. Yes, we know you’re clever enough to find reasons not to recognize the nature. If you need to be clever in the way Americans need to be clever in this day and age, you are already clever, very good, now let’s move on. Let’s see if you can learn recognition.
The relationship with the teacher then becomes this precious opportunity, this precious bridge. We see that the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha and, all three-in-one as the Lama have appeared in the world, and we see that this is not separate from us. So in the beginning we start practicing by contemplating the difference between what is ordinary and what is extraordinary. We begin to move into relationship with the teacher. We begin to practice devotion. We try to practice some pure view, understanding that this is the appearance in the world and that this is holy and we let it be that way. We simply let it be. Then gradually we move into a much deeper practice where we understand everything is the mandala of the guru. In that practice we begin to learn to turn adversity into bliss.
© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
Life on the Merry-Go-Round
An excerpt from a teaching called Awakening from Non-Recognition by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
According to the Buddha’s teachings and according to everything that we can surmise from the information we receive as we travel along the path, we as sentient beings, are in a state of non-recognition. When you hear a term like “non-recognition,” it’s hard to really understand what it means. When we think of the word “recognizing,” we think in superficial terms such as “I recognize you” or “you recognize me.” We recognize people with whom we are familiar.
That concept still holds true, but there needs to be a deeper, more able way to understand what non-recognition means. According to Buddhist philosophy, we contain within us the seed that is the Buddha nature. It is not smaller than the Buddha’s nature. It is not bigger than the Buddha’s nature. It is not different from the Buddha’s nature. It is the same. It is that nature inherent within us that is the primordial wisdom state or the natural ground-of-being that is our nature. As we move toward enlightenment, we don’t construct that nature. It doesn’t become complete. It doesn’t become bigger. It simply is what it is, but we move from a state of non-recognition into a state that the Buddha clearly described as being awake. And that’s the only difference.
In our culture we tend to think in a materialistic way even about things that are very subtle, very pure, very profound and very spiritual. We tend to think that perhaps the Buddha or a great Bodhisattva or even one’s teacher has a bigger Buddha nature than we do. Somehow their Buddha nature is bigger and maybe more muscle-bound, more fit or stronger than ours. At the risk of being crude, we wonder if the teacher’s isn’t bigger than ours. According to the Buddha’s teaching, that is not the case. The simple difference is recognition. One Buddha nature is not different from another.
As ordinary sentient beings we are locked in the state of non-recognition, and that non-recognition is so all-pervasive that it becomes invisible. It’s like being born on a merry-go-round. If no one ever stops the merry-go-round and you spend your whole life on the merry-go-round, you will never know that you’re on it. You will never know anything other than that reality. Our condition of non-recognition is very much like that. It has always been this way. We project everything outward onto a screen. We know no other way to be aware. So that is the dilemma of sentient beings. We wish to awaken as the Buddha is awake. We wish to come to understand our true nature, our primordial wisdom nature, which is the ground-of-being, and yet we are locked in a state of non-recognition.
© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
Devotional Yoga
An excerpt from a the teaching, When the Teacher Calls, by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
In Buddhist tradition and particularly in Vajrayana Buddhism, there is a kind of practice called devotional practice. One of its most meaningful and foundational aspects is developing a relationship of pure devotion with one’s lama or teacher. In Vajrayana, the teacher is considered to be the door to liberation because even though the Buddha was once on the earth and even though the Buddha’s teachings are written in books, it is just about impossible to enter onto the Path without the blessings of the teacher. The lama, who is necessary for empowerment, transmission and teaching, is considered to be the blessing that is inherent in the Path.
In the Vajrayana tradition there is a devotional aspect to every practice that is done,from the most preliminary to the most superior practice, and it is considered to be the means by which blessing is actually transmitted. In the Nam Chö Ngöndro, the preliminary practice accomplished at this temple, there is a beautiful song of invoking the lama’s blessing called “Calling the Lama from Afar.” It has haunting melody, and it is done from one’s heart in order to soften the ego and make the mind like a bowl ready to receive any blessing.
This type of practice functions like a cultivator. Think of planting a field of grain. One has to plow the field and work the soil so that it’s capable of receiving the seed. Otherwise, if the soil were not ready, when seed was thrown out it would just bounce, as on a hard surface. Likewise, devotional practice is considered to make one ready. Its benefit is immeasurable. Without it there is no possibility of the blessing being fully received.
Devotional yoga is meant to benefit the student. The teacher is not “pleased” by devotional yoga. Rather, the teacher is pleased by movement and the softening, the gentling and the change that occurs within the student. In the same way as the student calls the lama from afar in traditional practice by putting one’s heart in a position of surrender, we may talk about what the lama experiences when the lama calls the student from afar and the student responds to that call.
When a student calls the teacher, with his or her mind and heart like a bowl, many things are happening. First, there is fantastic auspicious karma ripening. In order for a student even to make that step, he or she must have accumulated a tremendous amount of merit or virtue in the past. A nonvirtuous mind cannot call the teacher with devotion.
When the student calls the lama, it’s because the student has realized certain things. First of all, they have looked around and have seen that cyclic existence or ordinary life is flawed or faulted. Sometimes it’s older students who, in some ways, are able to do this more readily because they’ve seen their lives pass, and they have looked around and said, “What have I done? I’ve worked so hard my entire life, and what have I really accomplished? What am I going to take with me?”
At any rate, the student that is prepared to call the teacher has been awakened, stimulated, has understood that much time has passed and that very little can be really accounted for. There has been some fun. It’s been up and down. We’ve all experienced getting older; we’ve all experienced sickness, and we will certainly experience death. At some point we look at all of this and ask ourselves, “Isn’t there something more? There must be something!” We begin to think in this way, and then we see someone who can give us a path, not just thoughts about the path, not just ideas that are popular in the New Age, but a technology that is succinct and exacting, a method that has shown itself to give repeatable results. When students see this they become hopeful and joyous. Suddenly they’re excited, and they begin to want to come in closer to this experience. It’s a beautiful, precious moment, but that moment can only happen due to the virtue of the student’s previous practice.
Eventually students will come to the point, due to the virtue of their practice, where they will do anything because they know their time is short. They know that they’ve tried everything and nothing has worked. Nothing has produced permanent happiness, so they are looking at the door to liberation, and in part, that is how the teacher is considered. They want to walk through that door.
© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
Offering Oneself
An excerpt from the Mindfulness workshop given by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo in 1999
In our Ngöndro practice we find the practice of offering oneself, the practice of generosity. It’s called the practice of Chöd. Chöd can very easily be practiced constantly. The practice of Chöd is based on eliminating ego-clinging through transforming oneself into that which is beneficial to all sentient beings and offering oneself. In Chöd there is actually a visualization where you see all your different elements separated into piles: skin and bones and muscles and fat and eyeballs and stuff like that. All of that stuff is put into little piles and you cook it all up and you offer it up to the Buddhas. And you’re thinking, “That’s kind of an interesting little practice there, isn’t it? Whoa, dude!” But just remember that this is meant to antidote our ego-clinging because as we walk through our lives, we are all about ‘what can you do for me, and what do I want?’ Remember, as we’re walking through our lives as ordinary sentient beings, our mantra is “Gimme gimme gimme, I want I want I want I want.” So this kind of practice is meant to antidote that.
The very habit that we have of assuming self-nature to be inherently real and reacting with hope/fear, want/not-want to our environment and the things in it constantly perpetuates itself! So, we are taught instead that, wanting to make oneself useful in some way, wanting to be of benefit and awakening compassion, one way to practice that is by offering the self, offering self-nature, and transforming it into something that is useful to sentient beings.
So how can we do that as we’re walking around? Try to remember that we’re practicing Recognition. Here’s a great way to think about it. Have you heard about the guy who recently had a cadaver’s hand sewn onto his arm, and it’s working? Now those of you that have heard about that, what did you think about that? You probably said, “Ugh!” I mean, it sounds amazing in one way, doesn’t it, that somebody who didn’t have a hand now has a hand, but it’s not his hand. So when we think about it, that’s kind of gnarly, right? Just think about it: you know what your hand looks like. You’ve seen it your whole life. It changes, but it’s your beloved hand. It’s so recognizable. It has a certain shape, and it feels a certain way. Well, now suppose you had an unmatched set, and one of them was not your hand. Think how you’d feel. This kind of clinging is so automatic that until we hear something like that, we don’t even know we do it. It is the very basis for our recognizing one another and ourselves as selves.
We grow attached to the shape of our face, the shape of our head. Even if we don’t like the shape of our face and the shape of our head, we grow attached to it because it is us, (we think), and so it constantly perpetuates that idea of self-nature being inherently real. It constantly perpetuates that ego-clinging. Our bodies are, for us, something that we have to protect. Even if you think that you’re very brave and not afraid of being hurt, or not afraid of even losing your life, I say to you, baloney! I’ll start chopping, and you tell me when to stop. We protect our bodies. If anything scary comes around us, we react, “Aaaggh!” And if we can’t protect ourselves any other way, we protect our head because that’s the part that keeps us going — we think. So we have this automatic clinging. Any sense of recognition of oneself as self is a clinging kind of phenomenon.
To antidote that, we practice Chöd, separating all the parts. When you’re done separating all the parts, you can ask yourself, “Well, what part am I? The skin or the bones or the fat or the muscle or the brains or the tongue or the eyeballs? Which part am I?” Of course, we begin to learn that that question is not answerable because ‘I,’ or self-nature, is simply a concept. It’s simply a concept.
How can we practice this as we walk around through our lives? Well, one way to do that is to develop the habit of when it is you notice yourself…do you notice yourself? You notice yourself constantly! It’s all you notice. We notice our hands; we notice the position that we’re in; we constantly move to be in a different position, don’t we? We think, “Do I want my hand like this or like that?” We are constantly doing that. It’s a constant phenomenon.
Suppose we were to develop the habit of considering the hand. “Well, this one matches that one. I like that.” But what if we were to consider our hands in a different way? Instead of thinking, “This hand is mine and it looks like this,” think, “How can this hand be of benefit to sentient beings? What use is this hand?” Consider it. You can develop a sense of Recognition of the true nature of our body parts. You can think to yourself, “Do you know what I like best about me? I really like my eyes.” I like your eyes too, but I like my eyes, and so when I think about that, I think, “Oh, you know, wherever I go, I have these eyes, and they can see. That’s really cool. And other people can see me.” And I can work those eyes, can’t I? And that’s really something. All we know is that our sight, our eyes, are part of us: that is us. We cling to that. Suppose we were able to understand our eyes in a different way. Supposing when we think of our eyes and how wonderful the capacity to see is, or how amazing it is that we can express ourselves with our eyes, we can offer that entire scenario, that entire experience, to the Buddhas and bodhisattvas for the benefit of sentient beings. Your relationship to your own body parts, your own eyes, for instance, your own hand, becomes different. Rather than thinking, “These are my brown eyes and I have great brown eyes,” or “This is my right hand and it’s a great hand” — rather than thinking like that as an extension of our ego, we can develop the habit of offering the whole phenomenon of sight, the whole relationship to our different body parts, by evaluating how it is that these eyes can benefit sentient beings, and how it is that we can offer them.
© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo
The Longing to Awaken
An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called Longing for the Guru
You were born with the longing to awaken. You were born with a longing to know your own nature, to taste that nature. You were born with a longing and a homing instinct to find your Teacher. You were born with a longing to find a pure path and there were no words for that when you grew up.
You compensated by substituting other things as the object of your longing. You made lots of mistakes because of it. That’s not the point, though. There is nothing you can do in one lifetime that is as meaningful a miscalculation as reaching for that nature and trying to find it in something small. That is the biggest miscalculation that any of us can make and we do it constantly. That’s what keeps us revolving endlessly in cyclic existence.
The relationship with the Teacher is especially difficult for Westerners. We have lots of training on authority figures. We have lots of training on mothers and fathers. But we have no training on to how to deal with this longing. The ways we have dealt with it have brought us a great deal of pain and suffering because we have acted in ways that we do not understand. We are people who have had a particular karma that did not quite fit in with the karma of the society in which we were brought up. If that were not so, then more of the society in which we were brought up would be able to approach the idea of awakening, and the idea of having a Teacher in order to follow a supreme path to achieve that great awakening.
If we can reprogram ourselves by looking back at that original longing, understanding its depth, understanding the ways in which we compensated and forgiving ourselves and confessing the lack of recognition, we will then be able to establish a relationship with the Teacher, the path, the Buddha and the meditational deities that we practice. If we can establish that relationship anew, the quality of the path that we practice will be completely different. The quality of the experience that we have will be completely different. We will feel healed, and the need for that healing is very sharp and very strong.
© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo