Your Treasure Is Heart | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

Willingness and Bodhicitta

June 9, 2011 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Your Treasure is Heart”

How do you practice this Bodhichitta? In the beginning, the most important posture is to start from where you are. That is your time and space grid, That’s your place, your posture, your “now.” You have to start there. Now that may seem like restating the obvious. “Of course you’re going to start from where you are, oh queen of the department of redundancy.” But most people never start exactly where they are, with that kind of self-honesty, being genuine on their path. No baloney. No games. You look and see what your habit patterns are and what your practice has been. You really look inside yourself and see what your qualities are and face them honestly. It’s not necessarily going to be good news. Some of it will be good, but not all of it. Trust me on this. You look at it the way a child looks at a world it doesn’t have the capacity to conceptualize.

When we look at something, we judge it immediately. We don’t know how to look at something without judgement. When a child looks at the world, it looks at the world with a sense of wonder. In a way, it has no idea what it’s looking at. I read about a perfect example of this in a book. For instance, a one-year-old child, playing in their yard might stop dead in their tracks because they can feel a vibration, but they have no idea where it’s coming from. They don’t even know where to look. And suddenly they just look up and see this thing. They don’t know it’s a plane. They point, go “uh uh uh” you know. It’s shining and it’s moving; and they remain completely absorbed in it until it reaches the end of the sky. And then it’s gone and they just go “wow!” in baby talk of course, whatever their particular way of describing that is. Just two years later, by the time the child is three-years-old, they are going to hear the noise, know where to look, look up at the sky and go “airplane,” and then go back to whatever they were doing. That wonder, that freedom to reinterpret, to actually see everything, is gone. Literally, from that point on, they never see another airplane. It’s like that with all of our ideas and concepts, particularly these subtle concepts about ourselves and about love.

We have very little understanding about how to look at ourselves and to see ourselves fresh and new, so that we can determine how to give rise to the Bodhichitta within our lives. That takes a great degree of self-honesty. If you are not willing to see yourself, whatever poop you have produced, and whatever negative habitual tendencies you have, as well as, and equally with your good qualities, there is no way to actually know yourself. You’ll be like the three-year-old who says, “Oh, airplane.” From the moment that unwillingness occurs, you never see yourself again, not ever.

So here’s the trick. Be willing, in an honest way, to really look at yourself and see where you are, and from that point, you can freely and honestly begin to practice the Bodhichitta. That is a very important first step.

Letting Go of Concepts

June 8, 2011 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Your Treasure is Heart”

How are you going to practice Bodhichitta? That’s the question. What’s it going to look like for you? Do not make the mistake that so many people make by trying to adapt a saintly demeanor where everything is love and light and there are no real feelings, only fabricated ones. As if all of those neurotic little ulcers in our personality are neatly covered with bandaids and we’re not seething underneath them at all! That’s not the mistake that you want to make. That’s not even what compassion looks like. Why should it? What difference could it possibly make to any other person, really and truly, that you look saintly? How is that going to help someone else, unless that’s exactly what that person needs to see? Then, as a Bodhisattva, that’s what will happen.

I have to say, for the most part, my experience has been that love is not neatly tied up in little bundles or appearances. It doesn’t necessarily fit in a box. Love, we should all know by now (unless we’re just stupid) is not convenient. It is just not convenient. Love is messy.. It doesn’t have any particular appearance, because it appears exactly as it needs to appear. So don’t make that terrible mistake of doing something that’s the equivalent of playing dress-up, putting on your mommy and dad’s clothing and walking around like “Oh I’m a Bodhisattva now.” That’s not it. Adapting a certain demeanor that you feel is some sort of compassionate ideal has nothing to do with love. It brings no real benefit. All it does is stroke your ego. In one way, the most self-absorbed thing that you can do is to selfishly use Bodhichitta as a costume for yourself. Instead toss all those images out the window.

Do you think that Bodhichitta should always appear as sweet words and sugary kindness? No. No, if sweet words and sugary kindness always worked, if that’s all that it took, you could go to Dale Carnegie or something like that modified to fit this particular need. You could learn how to speak words of love and light, and how to be so sweet that everybody loved you. If that’s all it took, how easy it would be. I mean, really, it would be a no-brainer. Somebody could write a list of statements and responses that you could have all typed up on a laptop computer. Whenever you got hit with a situation and didn’t know how to practice Bodhichitta, you could just key it in and come up with a response—see the blue aura, give the blue speech. It could work, but that’s not how love is. Love is messy. Love has to reinvent itself every single moment, because it’s constantly looking to see what is needed. The moment love becomes a concept, it is not love. The moment you have a concept about what love should look like, you are not loving. Love is not the way you think.

Compassion in Real Life

June 6, 2011 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Your Treasure is Heart”

When we begin to practice the Bodhichitta, we become more in tune with the idea that the great Bodhisattvas are willing to do whatever it takes regarding the suffering of sentient beings,. We, in our practice, should follow accordingly, and use them as our example. When we look at the world today, and when we study in the texts, we see that sentient beings, as numberless as grains of sand on the earth, are revolving in the six realms of cyclic existence. And we are suffering horribly— horribly and needlessly. Needlessly because, other than our own habitual tendency, our desire and our own distorted perception, there are no chains that bind us here. And so the Bodhisattva is moved to tears watching the suffering of sentient beings and seeing that even here in the human realm where things are pretty terrific and we have the capacity to practice, we are still suffering from old age, sickness and death. And there is nothing we can do about it.

When the Bodhisattvas see that, they consider that enough is enough and they feel a heartfelt courage or concern come up within them. Therefore, their determination to be of benefit to sentient beings and to do, literally, whatever it takes is born. So now we are on the path of the Bodhisattva. How should we engage on that path? We really don’t know how the mechanical appearance of it should look in our lives,. This is a big dilemma for westerners. I’ve noticed this myself. Once we vibe with the idea of compassion, we seem to understand it. When so many of the ideas of Dharma seem foreign, why is it that the idea of compassion is somehow more palatable and more understandable? Well, probably because we’ve seen the idea before, in other religious systems in our culture with which we are better acquainted. So we have the idea in our minds already. I think also, for those of us who are American, we have this national identity of being a great country, or a prosperous country, and therefore we feel that we are in a position to minister to others. It’s almost like a subtle national identity that we all seem to have. We know we’ve got more food , more clothes , and better conditions than a lot of the other guys. So, in a national or group way, we are aware of our capacity to be an elder brother or sister in the world. I really think that that’s part of us. Our national identity is definitely a factor here..

Where the terrible confusion comes in is that we don’t know what Bodhichitta should look like. When we actually get down to the nuts and bolts of our practice, something is missing. Something just flies the coop. It really doesn’t quite connect in our mind. So we try to draw on these archetypal pictures that we have in our culture. One of the pictures that we have is a saintly archetype. Does it come from medieval time? Probably, I would think so. I would say that we are very slow to change some of our ideas. We’re pretty quick to change our fashion sense, our idea of how to get educated and how to remain current in certain things in the world, but subtle archetypal ideas take a long time to change. We have the idea that that we would look saintly practicing compassion, the idea that a Bodhisattva has to be something that… Well I don’t know. What did medieval saints look like? Maybe a little anemic, you know? Like if you were too robust, or maybe had a pint too much blood, you wouldn’t look very saintly. I don’t think I’d pass for a saint either. You know I think I look like a make-up expert or something else, a beautician.

So we have these pictures and our saintly image is somewhat anemic. We have this idea that saintly people should never really let out a good guffaw, and have absolutely zero capacity to find anything truly amusing, most especially not themselves. Lord knows that saintly types have no capacity to laugh at themselves. In fact, all they are able to do for the most part is to roll those eyes ever skyward and look pure. So we have some kind of ridiculous idea of what sainthood or compassion actually ought to look like.

Well, I don’t think compassion looks like that at all. I think compassion can look like a banana, if that’s what sentient beings need. I think compassion can look like a puppy if it brings comfort to sentient beings. I think compassion can look exactly like whatever it takes. Actually all the teachings about the great Bodhisattvas say that they literally appear in any form in order to bring benefit to sentient beings. In The Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, which I hope each and every one of you will buy a copy of at some point, there are many beautiful and heart-wrenching prayers, like, “Let me return as a bridge so that sentient beings may cross over. Let me return as food so that sentient beings will be nourished. Let me return as shelter so that sentient beings will be protected,” this heartfelt cry to return in whatever form necessary in order to be of benefit to sentient beings.

I don’t think that a bridge or a banana or whatever it takes will necessarily look like some anemic saintly thing. Instead, I think compassion can be pretty exotic and meaty stuff. I think it can look like meat and potatoes. I think it can look like whatever it damn well pleases, so long as it gets the job done.

Wrathful Compassion and Dispelling Obstacles

June 4, 2011 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Your Treasure is Heart”

For Americans, the activity of the lamas can be confusing because sometimes the lamas will engage in wrathful compassion. This has happened to me and I know it has happened to my students as well. Sometimes because of the karma and the love and concern between the student and the teacher, the lama will see in their meditation that some terrible obstacle has arisen in the mind of the student, or in the path of the student, or in the life of the student in some way. Maybe it’s an obstacle to the student’s life. Maybe it’s an obstacle to the student’s path. Maybe it’s simply something like a brick wall where the student will meet up with their habitual tendency and not be able to make much progress. If there is the right kind of karmic relationship, if the causes have been given rise to and the devotion is there and all of the different catalytic necessities are in place, then the lama will often engage in wrathful activity in order to cut this obstacle.

Let’s say, for instance (and this often occurs), that the lama sees that within the student’s mind some negative, nonvirtuous karma has been catalyzed or drawn to the surface, or has begun to ripen. Then the lama will see that this could be dangerous and the lama will be very wrathful. How does that work? Well, first of all, the lama, knowing what the student’s capacity is, will do that skillfully in such a way that eventually, even if not at first, the student will fully understand the lama’s gracious activity; and even though wrathful activity has occurred, the student will remain fully devoted, fully respectful, fully loving and confident in the lama’s kindness.

That pure inner posture is a posture of true devotion, purity, spirituality in every sense of the word. When the lama takes all of your habitual tendencies and all of your issues and smacks you in the head with them, it takes a tremendous amount of vajra courage to continue with love and confidence. If the student is lacking in a certain kind of virtuous karma, or virtuous ripening at that particular time and is also, perhaps, having the ripening of some nonvirtuous karma, that interaction between the lama and student may turn it around, and can turn it around just like that, because of the student’s capacity, even in the face of such a difficult situation, to remain fully devoted, fully confident and fully vulnerable. Vulnerable means opened up and not protected. In order to continue on this path of compassion and wisdom, that determination, that vajra courage, is such a tremendously virtuous inner posture in which to remain, that often this negative tendency or negative event will be cut.

This has definitely happened to me as I described once or twice before, where my own teacher, out of the clear blue sky with no seeming cause, began to be very angry at me and accused me of something that I would never do. It would be the equivalent of my accusing you of murdering babies with chain saws. It was just so far from reality it could never be true. So my teacher began to be really angry at me and scolded me and raged at me to the point where I was shaking in my shoes. I was unbelievably terrified. Then when he felt the obstacle had been cut he just stopped and he said, “O.K., we’re done now. Try not to get mad. See you later.” Sort of like that. Try not to get mad! I was trying not to make my own gravy if you’ll excuse the expression. I was terrified. I’ve never been so terrified in my life. I barely shuffled myself out of the room. And then I realized that physically I felt completely different and that something had changed radically. I went to my other teacher who was also here (two of my main teachers were here) and he said “Oh yeah. His Holiness saw an obstacle to your health and he cut it.” Interestingly, from that time forward I felt about 10 years younger, the ultimate face lift. My love and respect and regard for my teacher, and also the courage to really make myself spiritually vulnerable to his care, grew by that situation because I knew in my heart that he had brought me great benefit. That’s the kind of thing that one sees on the path of Vajrayana.