Teachings | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

Contemplating Impermanence

December 12, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Western Chod”

I tried to think to myself: So this life, what is it? What could it be like? I thought, “What is the best case scenario.” You know, this whole scene that I have right here? What’s the best way this could work out? I really played with this a little bit. (See “Best Case Scenario”)

I thought about what are the probable scenarios that will actually happen. Then I had to be more realistic and I really looked at my life. I didn’t fall out of love with it or anything. I just really examined it, in as dispassionate a way as I could. I also examined what the potential pitfalls are. I understood that you can eat health food, exercise all the time, sleep 10 hours per day, no matter what, and put yourself in a bubble where there are no chemicals in your environment,.You can do anything you want to, and no matter what, you are still going to experience the same end result and it’s still going to be samsara that we are caught in.

You cannot guarantee that even if you do all those things, the minute you step out into the street a truck’s not going to hit you. You can’t guarantee that. That’s why I understood that even though many things about this life appear stable, in fact they are not stable. So I prepared myself for that kind of understanding in that way. I would do that kind of contemplation everyday.

Best Case Scenario

December 10, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Western Chod”

I began to think, “This nature, this is something, this is really something.” So the practice that I engaged in (and this is how I was instructed to do so) was a practice of initially realizing the nature and then examining the cycle of death and rebirth, or what I now understand is called samsara. So I examined the cycle of death and rebirth. And even that term I didn’t have—cycle of death and rebirth. You have to understand I hadn’t heard any of these words before. So I was penning my own words to this idea or concept or reality that I was sensing and the concept that I was thinking about. So I began to think out what is this life that we are living then? This is this absolute nature. What is this life we are living now where we remain kind of blind to this nature? I began to really probe this life and tried to see: What is the best thing this life can give me or give anyone and what’s the worst? I began to examine all the different scenarios associated with ordinary life.

At that time I was living on a beautiful farm in North Carolina and I was 20, so I would have to say that I was a potentially aging hippy girl. I was living on this farm and I had the idea of going to back to the land. I was growing food. I was learning how to grow a garden. At the time I thought that I was so cool with that and so sophisticated. Later I found out that the farmers around us really thought that we were going to starve to death if we were any dumber. But, anyway, we were doing our best, and I learned how to can beans and all that stuff. So I had this wonderful thing going on. I was living at the foot of the mountains. I could walk out on my porch and see the mountains. I had a beautiful little baby boy, beautiful blonde hair. He looked like an angel. I had a wonderful husband and everything was just great.

I thought, okay, first of all, this is my initial demand: I never get old. No aging happens here. In my fantasy, these things weren’t going to happen, and when I am queen, they won’t. So I really thought that I am not going to age. This is the first thing: Nobody ages in this. We don’t age or, at least, I personally find the secret of how to use Este Lauder products perfectly, this secret which I am ever questing. I find the way to use them perfectly and finally she comes out with that new product, the one that I am waiting for, the one that makes everything better.

The same thing with my husband. There’s the male version of Este Lauder. We put it on him and he is great, too. My child does grow up, but, of course, he never ages either. Of course, my child grows up to be president or maybe first a doctor and then president. At his inauguration speech and, as well as when he receives his medical degree, at both of those occasions, he says, “It was my mom that made it possible.” Of course, I still look very young, and, of course, I am much more beautiful than I have ever been in my life.

So far this is working out pretty well, don’t you think? My husband and I never get into that place in marriage where you wake up next to each other and go “Hi”, ummm. We never got to that point. In this fantasy, it was always like those old Breck shampoo commercials. Every time we’d see each other we’d come bounding across the room and jump 10 feet into each other’s arms and land on our feet comfortably. It would all be very elegant. It would be choreographed perfectly, and we would both know our parts. I have a lot of romance in me, you see.

So after that we always had really good food to eat and everything is perfect. We live well—two cars and a chicken in every pot, or whatever, and all this kind of stuff. So everything is perfect. Then I thought to myself, “All this happens. Then what is the end of the story?” Well, the end of the story is just like the end of any other story that you can find in the human realm. No matter what Este Lauder does, we are going to get old because time is going to pass. She had not figured out the chemistry of time yet. So time’s going to pass. The end is going to be the same. We are going to be old. We’re going to, at some point, get sick and then we are going to die. I began to meditate on the fact that whatever comes together in samsara has to separate. That’s just the nature of it; it’s never been otherwise. Whatever is born, dies. Whatever is young, gets old. It’s the nature of it.

I meditated on that constantly. Then I would try all these other different scenarios. I tried to develop five or six best case scenarios and I gave myself total freedom. Well, suppose none of this here in front of me works out but, supposing the ultimate man of every woman’s dream rides up on a white horse and that horse does not do-do in the lawn, which white horses are likely to do. So all of that happens and the whole children thing works out where everybody’s rich and everybody’s happy, everybody’s famous or whatever. Well, in my case, it would be private not famous, but that would be the best case scenario.

With all of them, I thought of what it could be like. Every time I explored it, I found that the end result was always the same. It was always old age, sickness and death. The best ones, even if I had one of those funds where you prepare for your old age and even if it’s just prosperous and wonderful right up until the very end—I’d take up golf and die with a gold club in my hand, or something like that, whatever —it’s still going to end up the same way.

A Better World

December 9, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Western Chod”

I hope all of us will remember that, according to Lord Buddha’s teachings, there are many realms of cyclic existence, more than the human realm. There are lower realms of cyclic existence such as the animal realm, and there are non-physical forms of life. The Buddha teaches us that there are many different forms of life. Slowly, slowly in time as you continue to study Dharma you’ll learn exactly about them. For now it is enough to know that there are many forms and that most of them are not capable of engaging in some kind of practice because of the condition of their minds.

We may have very little time and it may be difficult for us Westerners to sit cross-legged very long, and we may make up all these different reasons why we can’t practice but, in fact, we are able to practice. If we apply ourselves and use discipline, we can also practice in such a way as to engage in compassionate care-taking for the other realms of cyclic existence and the other forms of life.

I hope that each and every one of you will think like that and engage in that practice, and remember that our practice and our lives really aren’t just about ourselves. They’re about benefiting sentient beings, all beings, considering them to be completely equal with and non-dual from ourselves. These are the instructions that I am giving the children. I am hoping that gradually throughout the course of their lives they will develop that really supreme, really extraordinary compassionate idea that is so rare and precious like a jewel in this world. I hope that those of you who have children will also raise your children the same way, because that is one way that we have of ensuring that in the future the world will be better than it is now. So, I hope that you will think like that.

Primordial State

December 8, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Western Chod”

Here’s what my practice looked like. At that time I didn’t know that it is better to meditate sitting up, so, I mediated some of the time laying down and some of the time sitting up. I actually found that when I lay down I would fall asleep. So, eventually, I developed the habit of sitting up. So, slowly, slowly, we find our way.

I would set up a symbolic altar. I had a dresser top that I would use for this purpose. I put representations of all things physical. I had some plants, leaves and things like that. I had some food (I think it was fruit generally), andpebbles, rocks, brightly colored things from outside. Then I put a mirror because somehow instinctively I understood. I was sort of in a quandary. I hadn’t had any teachings yet. I was extremely spiritually oriented, yet the only teachings I’d received indicated that God was kind of an old guy with a beard who sat on a throne somewhere. He was making x’s if you were bad and checks if you were good. That was pretty much my understanding of what religion was. I didn’t really buy into that. I really didn’t feel that that was appropriate or acceptable, and it seemed to me just not right.

So my understanding of the divine nature, or what was called God, I had to develop from within myself. I didn’t like to use the word God because I thought that indicated we were talking about something separate. I really thought that whatever that absolute nature is, it is absolute to the point where it cannot be separated from one thing and another. Whatever that nature is, it must be all pervasive. It must be the same nature that causes fruit to ripen or flowers to come forth in the springtime as it is to make my own heart beat. And I really thought that was it. I didn’t know what to call it, but that was absolutely it. So as well as I could understand, I began to meditate on what Buddhists call the primordial wisdom nature or the uncontrived natural primordial view. There are many different ways to describe it, but that was what my meditation consisted of.

My altar had a mirror on it; it had of all these things that represented earth. In my mind that represented all that is form and all that is formless. I didn’t have the word “samsaric” and I didn’t have the idea of things that are contained in the cycle of death and rebirth. I merely thought of things that are displayed in form and those things which were absolute and natural and uncontrived, and I thought my altar encompassed both elements of reality. I was pretty satisfied with that as being something that I could work with.

So, I began my practice. I used to mediate on this absolute nature. I used to think, ”This nature, this nature, what is it? What is it like? What is this thing?” And I would think to myself,

‘Well, this is the same nature that causes flowers to open, the same nature that causes my heart to beat, the same nature that causes my son to be born to me, the same nature that makes people love each other. It must be that this nature is the fundamental foundational underlying reality”. I thought like that.

Instinctively, I understood that this nature was natural and uncontrived. For instance, if we were to meditate or rest in that nature we wouldn’t be thinking, “Oh, I want this or I don’t want that. This is beautiful and that’s ugly.” We wouldn’t be thinking like that. I understood that that nature was some kind of restful state that was spontaneous and luminous, but free of contrivance, free of the distinction of self and other, free of the distinction of good and bad, hot and cold, ugly or beautiful, here or there even. I didn’t even think that in this state time and space actually applied. I realized that this state was free of that kind of defining or discriminating conceptualization. I thought to myself, “This is the underlying reality”.

When I meditated on that state, I knew, or I tasted, that upon holding the mind in that natural restful state free of contrivance, free of discrimination, there was no potential for suffering in that natural state, because nothing that causes suffering was there. Grasping and desire weren’t there, hatred wasn’t there, selfishness wasn’t there, anger wasn’t there, ignorance wasn’t there. We meditate on that state; we are not blind to that state. So, I didn’t feel like there was ignorance there or dullness or any of those things that cause suffering. I felt we were not inherently there in that nature.

Introduction to Western Chod

December 7, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Western Chod”

The main thought about this teaching that I am going to describe to you is that all of this occurred before I ever met with my root guru, with either one of my root gurus. I have two root gurus,;I hadn’t met with either of them. I had not met with the path called “Buddhism”. I had not read any books about Buddhism. I did not know anything about Buddhism. In fact, I am embarrassed to say now that I thought the Tibetans were kind, smelly, old guys who sat on rugs. I really did think like that. I am sorry, but, you know that is the truth. I am bound to tell the truth.

I was about 20 at the time. I had known for about one year that I had to engage in a course of preparation for some later events in my life. I really didn’t know what the later events were. I had no idea about being connected with Buddhism or anything like that. But I had always known that there would be something, and I had always known that I should prepare for it.

At the age of 19 I received certain indications that it was time to prepare. I had already begun on my program of meditation. Right around the time that I was twenty I gave birth to my first son, and he was a very cooperative son. He was willing to take naps during the day so that I could meditate. I swear that I didn’t bonk him over the head or anything. He just took naps. So, I was able to engage in meditation early in the morning, then in the afternoon during his nap time, and then later on in the evening. I was very much involved with it. My feeling for my practice was that this was really the main part of my life, that everything else was kind of black and white, and, that was the colored part somehow. Every time I would come to a place where I felt as though I had engaged in a certain element of my practice for long enough, or it just simply felt naturally time to move on, I would request inwardly to, I would have to say, the absolute nature (which is the way I understood divinity at that time). What was the next step? How could I practice? How should I continue to grow and engage? And this one time I received an awareness, and an indication and instruction that I should begin to practice in a certain way.

The practice will be presented in upcoming posts…

You Can Make It

December 6, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Bodhicitta by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo given after her return from India and Nepal in 1996

In Nepal, right next to one of Guru Rinpoche’s caves where he practiced chemchok, lives a wonderful Dakini. She is the consort of Lama Tulku Orgyen. And she’s been there for years and years, practicing and practicing. We had the pleasure of meeting her. Whenever you go there, you can hear her ringing those bells and practicing. She never stops. She’s so beautiful. She’s actually kind of old, but when you look at her, her face is completely unlined, she’s got beautiful black hair and really deep eyes. She’s just gorgeous. We went in there and gave her a scarf and tried to do prostrations, but she wouldn’t let us. Sangye Khandro came with us to translate, since the Dakini doesn’t speak any English, of course. And she just practices all the time. She sat us down and we talked for a little while.

I told her that we have a Sangha here and that a large percentage is women. And I said, “Would you give some advice to women practitioners in the West?” She said first of all that there’s no difference between women and men practitioners. There is no difference. Women tend to think that they are held back by certain issues – family issues, lover issues, blah, blah issues, stupid issues. There is no difference between women and men. In fact, she said, women actually have a deeper sense of primordial wisdom. They are closer to that Dakini archetype. They have a deeper sense of that. They’re more internal in some way. She said women have an excellent chance to be practitioners. And she said, “I would give this advice to both men and women equally. You have to be courageous. You have to never stop. You have to decide that you are going to achieve the rainbow body and you will do whatever it takes because you really want to incarnate in such a way that you can help this world or any world that you land on. You have to have courage. You have to never let any circumstance stop you. You have to practice as though it’s the most important thing in your life. You have to remember that this is the only important thing there is.” And she said, “Practice constantly with great faith and great courage. Then you need to be sure that you are with a teacher that you have absolute faith in. And you need to be with a lama who can give you initiation that can ripen your mind. With all those factors, especially great courage, you can make it, even in this degenerate time.” She said, “You can make it.”

It was one of the most moving speeches I ever heard. But she kept saying, “Have courage; don’t stop. Break through whatever stops you. Have courage.” And my feeling when I watched her is that it must have taken tremendous courage for her to completely renounce the world that she lived in. She is right up there in that little building right next to the cave. It’s one room. She’s got thangkas and rugs, it’s kind of nice, but there is no place to go to the bathroom. You have to wash out of a bucket. She has renounced the world and all the stupid trappings that go with it. She’s going to make it. When that Dakini dies, you are going to see signs and they’ll find her again when she reincarnates.

What Drives You to Practice?

December 5, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Bodhicitta by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Some of you show up for practice because you think your teacher will get mad at you if you don’t. So you make yourself visible. Some of you show up for practice because you’ve got to get it in today. When do you do practice because you are sick of delusion? When do you do it because you are sick of death? When do you do it because you are sick of watching sentient beings suffer and yet are helpless to help them? When do you say those prayers so deeply that your heart and your mind are purified of delusion and of hatred, greed and ignorance, so that your heart and mind are so deepened that you will absolutely incarnate in such a way to benefit beings?

The single most abundant deepening quality that you all have is your great love and desire to help others. If that’s the ticket with you, ask yourself if you really want to help others or if you want to look like you are helping others? Sometimes I think people want to look like they are helping others so they can be a nice person. As soon as you’re finished with that and you decide that you really help others because you really can’t bear to see their suffering and are finished with watching people suffer, then use that.

Why do you just practice by the book? Why don’t you walk around the temple and make prayers constantly, visualizing the refuge tree; walk about the living quarters of your Lama and the temple itself and the Sangha that’s in it saying, “In this way, let me follow you forever. In this way, let me always revolve around the Three Precious Jewels. In this way, let me be born under whatever circumstances to help sentient beings,” making these profound and sincere prayers. Maybe you can break through into depth.

Those With Hopes of Us

December 4, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Antidoting the Mantra of Samsara”

The Buddha teaches us that there are literally so many sentient beings that, not all the great Bodhisattvas and lamas have connections with all of them. That’s how many sentient beings there are. We don’t have connections with all of them. That means that there are sentient beings with whom you have connections, sentient beings that you have been involved with in one form or another since time out of mind, and their only connection to future practice, to being liberated from samsara, to practicing Dharma, is you. Literally there are sentient beings right now who are waiting for you to achieve liberation. The more you dance around with this, the more they suffer and the longer they wait.

From the moment that you begin to practice Dharma, these are the ones that you should live and breathe for—these precious ones who have hopes of you. You should think of them as your children, as your purpose, as your parents, as your beloved because without you, they have not much hope. That’s why we practice Dharma. That’s why we work hard at it— to alleviate suffering for self and others. And we consider that to be completely nondual and equally importantSofor this reason it’s time to face the music, go deeper, and that hated word, commit. That’s what it takes.

Where is Your Heart?

December 3, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Bodhicitta by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

What makes you a deep practitioner? What makes you a deep practitioner is really having renounced cyclic existence. Those of you that are casual practitioners are practicing, but your mind is still a mind of distraction. You are still running hither and yon, doing this thing and that thing, and you’re superficial. You have to do this activity over here that is so important, so you go to the meat market. And you have to do this thing over here with your family. All these have-tos have to happen. There is nothing wrong with going to the meat market, and I want you to have a wonderful family, but it’s that life of distraction that I am arguing with. It’s that distracted mind that keeps you practicing superficially and keeps you a casual practitioner.

After having received all this teaching, all this loving, after all that you have felt and known in your own heart to be truth, if you are still doing that after all this time, then somehow you have not fully taken refuge in the Three Precious Jewels. You are not a renunciate. In your mind, there is still something in the world out there to be accomplished, something that you feel is going to meet your need or answer your problem. In other words, you still believe in the world of appearances. You still believe that this apparent reality has some solution or has some basis in realness. You still believe that something is there and you haven’t let go of it. You haven’t really turned your mind away from it.

When I say turn your mind away from the world, I don’t mean that you have to become a monk or a nun necessarily. I don’t mean that you have become a nerd or a dead person. I don’t mean that you are limp and you just don’t have any fun anymore. That’s not what I am talking about. You can engage in any activity that you feel to engage in, but you simply don’t take refuge in it. It’s not something that you get tense about. It’s not something that you get compulsive about. This is Nyingma philosophy.

Right now your mind is all divided. You are off here and off there. As you are running off in any of those directions, if someone were to say to you, “Where is your heart?” You’d have to feel around for it, because you don’t know where it is. You’re not thinking about the teachings of Lord Buddha. You’re not thinking about the precious Dharma. You’re not thinking about the Sangha, you’re not thinking about the Lama, you’re not thinking about the Buddha. You’re not thinking about clear mind. You’re not relating to that at all. You’re all over the place. You are all over the map. You want this and you want that.

The reason why you haven’t renounced apparent reality, even though you know it’s going to kill you – this is a fatal condition we have here, even though it’s never answered your problems – never in the past and it never will, even though you know that, you still have one problem. It’s a big problem and that problem is desire. You have not overcome desire. You have desire for this and that, and they are baubles. This is one of the first teachings of Lord Buddha. And if you listen to the teachings, after you get that bauble, even if you can get it, it is impermanent and if it doesn’t break apart or destroy itself in some way, you will die clutching it and then you can’t take it with you. It’s all impermanent. Even if you attain this bauble that you probably won’t attain in the first place, because it’s nothing but a conceptualization and has no basis in reality, after you’ve wasted all your time going over this desire, you have no guarantee. Even though you were practicing the Dharma, that even though you’ve completed Ngondro, if you still have desire and you have not completely become a renunciate – a person who has renounced cyclic existence – you have no guarantee that you will not be reborn as a hungry ghost. Hear what I am saying?

What Does Love Taste Like?

December 2, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

In this excerpt from a teaching called The Dharma of Technology, Jetsunma is speaking to her students who had recently received the Rinchen Terzod from His Holiness Penor Rinpoche who conferred the Rinchen Terzod at Kunzang Palyul Choling in 1988

Do you remember in the empowerments in the Rinchen Terzod we had the opportunity to taste different things, something sweet and something bitter, then His Holiness said, “Who is the taster? You know what makes this sweet and this bitter?” The taster does, because if you tried to find the essence of the thing that you’re looking at, remember, if you divided it down and looked at it under the microscope you would never find its thing-ness. In fact, you would never find its sweetness. Which molecule is the sweet one? You would never really find that. What is sweet is sweet to the tongue and the tongue is the determiner of that taste. Who does the tongue belong to? The tongue belongs to you. So you, in fact, are the one that determines whether the thing is sweet or not. You are the taster. And so when you examine yourself and you boil everything down and smear it on the microscope, you can’t find where you are, then you realize that sweet and sour, sweet and bitter are concepts and they are just proliferations of the mind.

In the same way, this person that drives you crazy and this person that is the precious jewel in your life are equal. It is the hatred and the desire, the hope and fear, the attraction and aversion in your mind that causes you to make a difference between them. If you looked at them with the mind of enlightenment, you would see that they are the same. Yet we all have our likes and dislikes. But somehow through our practice, we have to accomplish such pure view, free of desire and on fire with love that they are the same. We have to give our lives equally for both of them. We have to be willing to eat an ocean of suffering for the ones we can’t stand and for the ones we truly love. It’s easy to make sacrifices for the ones you love. It’s easy to make sacrifices for your children. That’s not hard. Anyone can do that. I was reading the other day about a creature called a midge. It conceives its children inside its belly and then as the children grow, they eat the mother from inside out and the mother dies. It’s a shell and it opens up and the children come out. And then after a while they reproduce in the same way. If a little bug can do that, if it can give its life to nurture its children, you can do that. That’s not hard. That happens even on the lowest realms.

What’s really hard is to give your life for all sentient beings, the ones that you know and the ones that you don’t know and to do so in a way so that the ones that you can’t stand are equal to the precious pearls in your life. They have to be the same. If you give only so much and you stop giving, only extending your love to your family or friends and to the people that you know here, or your nation or your planet or even your universe — what about the other 2,999 myriads of universes? What about all of the sentient beings who are, with hatred in your heart, not worthy of your love, but with love in your heart, the same as you?

That’s when you have accomplished Dharma, when your love is that great, when you are that mindful of compassion, when through your meditation and through your practice, and through your understanding of the Buddha’s teachings, you have come to understand the equality of all that lives, that they are the same mind, the same uncontrived primordial wisdom nature, that they only appear to be different. They suffer, they live and they die because of their confusion. What makes the ones you hate so hateful? First of all, it’s your vision of them. You are the taster. Someone else loves them. Who loves them is the same as you and you’re the same as them. The difference is the particular karmic pattern of attraction and repulsion, of desire that manifests in your life.

The one that you hate is the same nature as you with the same capabilities, with the same desire to be happy. The difference is that this person may be confused and the only way they know how to reach for happiness is in the ways that make them unhappy. And of course you, in your hatred and your greed and your ignorance interpret their activity because of the karma of your mind. This sounds like elementary stuff. The sun pours forth and it doesn’t say, “Well, I think I’ll go to violets today and roses are going to be in the dark.” The sun doesn’t do that. Its nature is to pour forth and embrace all life and it is the source of life. Your compassion, your mind is like that in its natural state. It is that all-pervasive compassionate reality, that all pervasive non-dual mind state and so your love has to be that way. Your accomplishment of Dharma has to be like that, with that understanding.

It sounds elementary. It sounds simple. But we still hate. We still judge. We still have the seeds for war in our bodies and in our minds. We still have the seeds for old age, sickness and death. We still have the seeds for all the six kinds of suffering in all of the six realms, and so in that way, we have not accomplished Dharma.