Teachings | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

Peerless Guru: His Holiness Penor Rinpoche

August 10, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Love Now, Dzogchen Later”

At the same time I first got to know His Holiness and we began to actually have conversations, I was talking a great deal to Gyaltrul Rinpoche, because I met him soon after that visit. But I remember first learning about Dzogchen, not from my teachers, but from other students, which was kind of horrible. I kept hearing the term. I questioned; I tried to find out what it was. I tried to read some books. I asked my teachers, and His Holiness particularly said, “Soon I’ll give you plenty of explanation so you will understand.” And I questioned. Actually I didn’t question His Holiness, but I questioned Gyaltrul Rinpoche, “ Why is it then that some people are talking about Dzogchen, but His Holiness seems to be holding back on Dzogchen.” And at that time Gyaltrul Rinpoche told me, “Well, you should ask him directly; but from the conversations I’ve had with him, Americans are not ready for Dzogchen. He says that they are, you know, too prideful, too arrogant. They don’t really understand the benefit. It would be like throwing something precious on the ground where it can’t be used, for instance, like a seed. You would want to throw it into fertile ground or put it into fertile ground. You wouldn’t want to put it on, you know, a highway where it’s never going to sprout.”

So that was the explanation I got, and I was satisfied with that. But then later on I kept seeing that more and more, particularly in Dudjom Rinpoche’s lineage, they were always talking about Dzogchen this and Dzogchen that. And if you didn’t know Dzogchen, they thought you were a little silly. You know, they didn’t think you were quite there. So I persisted in trying to find out. And His Holiness reiterated again and again, “You have to get the preliminaries. You have to build a foundation. Americans are not ready.” For quite a number of years, even though His Holiness returned here many times, he did not want to give out Dzogchen. And it was like that until he set up the summer program in New York where you could go Shedra style—step by step, stage by stage, from one level to the other. When he did that, he kind of reversed his direction in a sense, because he was real hesitant to give Dzogchen and really held back for a long time. And then suddenly he was offering it; and I remember thinking, ‘Well, students will have to go stage by stage no matter what.’ You know, they’ll have to do like in India where if a student wants to go to level 3, he has to graduate from level 2. That sort of thing.

And then I heard that His Holiness had totally opened it up where he left it to the student in conference with the teacher there to decide what practice, to say what practice they had accomplished and what they had done. And if you receive Year 2 the year before, you could always go on to Year 3 unless you were having terrible obstacles. You could always go on to Year 3, and then the next. It’s kind of like the “No child left behind.” No Dharma student left behind here. I remember at that time being completely blown away by that. I was so completely blown away because it was such a reversal for him, such a change. And I tried to seek the reason for that. His Holiness had switched his tone so thoroughly. He was saying, “Not much time left.” And, of course, that scared me. I thought he meant for him. “No, it’s not like that,” he said. “No, not much time left for sentient beings.”

And so, that was his decision. He is peerless. There is no lama like him. There is no lama that can top him in any way. He is extraordinary. He is a living Buddha. I mean he is extremely orthodox and yet extremely flexible, an unbelievable combination, because with orthodoxy comes dogma and rigidity. He is fully qualified and fully able to be the head of his lineage and to steer the course of this great ship, the Buddhadharma. Yet, he is completely flexible.

The Importance of Samaya

August 9, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is respectfully quoted from “Perfect Conduct: Ascertaining the Three Vows” by Dudjom Rinpoche:

6.b.1(e.4) Restoring through the general cleansing of three yogas:
As is taught in the Hasti-upapraveśya-tantra, the general cleansing yoga of the nest of remorse is the “Stirring the Depths.” By confessing in this way, there is nothing that cannot be purified. Practice this accordingly.

According to the tantra called Hasti-upapraveśya and the Vimaladeśanā contained within it, this is the sole text for practitioners of all three yogas who, having engaged on the path and then allowed their samaya to deteriorate, wish to confess and perfectly restore it. The king of all confessions is Narakakhadāpravāsaprasphotana (Stirring the Depths of Vajra Hell). Here, it is clearly taught that by offering the external gathering of substances, the internal gathering of own’s own aggregates, and the secret gathering of the awakened mind of bodhicitta on the fifteenth, thirtieth, or eighth day of the lunar month, all deteriorations will be fully purified. If that is not possible, but one still makes prostrations and recalls the deity in order to confess, purification will occur. It is important to persevere in this practice as much as possible.

As is said in this text, “To all the enlightened peaceful and wrathful deities and to their mandalas, I pay homage. I pray that I may cleanse all of my broken commitments without exception. There is no doubt that the five limitless non-virtues can be cleansed and that even the lower realms can be emptied from their depths and that beings will be led to the well-known pure realm of the enlightened beings of pure awareness. Since Vajrasattva is the essential nature of secret mantra and cleanses all of our karmic obscurations and obscurations caused by broken commitments, in order to empty the realms of cyclic existence, recite the mantra.”

Accordingly, if one just hears the names of the deities in this mandala, all deteriorations of one’s root and branch words of honor can be repaired. Signs of accomplishing the purification through confession include indications in the dream state; indications from the lama or deity; and dreams of bathing, putting on white clothing, ascending to the peak of a mountain, and the arising of the sun and moon and so forth. Until such signs arise, one should continue to make confession and apply the four remedial powers.

6.b.2 The faults of failing to restore broken words of honor:

If one fails to make confession in this life, extremely unpleasant consequences will ensue. In the next life, one will be born in the vajra hell of irreversible torment and suffering.

If mantra words of honor are left unconfessed, this becomes a cause for rebirth in what is called “vajra hell.” There is no place of greater suffering. As it says in the Guhyagarbha, “If the root or branch of words of honor deteriorate, the result is that falls to the lower realm.”

In the Prakativavictra-tantra, it states: “If a root word of honor deteriorates and no effort is made to restore it, one will fall to the vajra hell. If all the suffering of the ordinary hells were to be combined, that suffering would not equal one fraction of one hundred-thousandth of the suffering experienced in vajra hell.”

It can thus be understood that even an association with an individual who has accrued this degree of negativity can cause one’s own words of honor to deteriorate. Strong adverse effects may occur for those who even come into contact with such an individual. As it says in the Sarvasamudita, “Just as spoiled milk will taint are pure milk with which it mingles, a singe mantra practitioner who has allowed his words of honor to deteriorate can spoils the words of honor of everyone with whom he comes into contact.” Even if one precedes the breaking of samaya by discussing this with others as a means to communicate one’s intention, this too must be immediately confessed. As it says in the Mahānyūha, “If one harms lama, his or her retinue, or the vajra brothers and sisters by casually speaking negatively or by just a subtle sign of dissent, even if only in the dream state, this must be confessed and cleared from the mind. Actual and inadvertent neglect of samaya that remains unconfessed will cause one to fall headfirst into the hells.”

According to these teachings, it is clear that the loss of any root or branch word of honor is a cause for rebirth in vajra hell. However, there are differences in the degree and duration of the suffering experienced, which vary according to the severity of the downfall.

7. The benefits of guarding the words of honor:

With no deterioration, the maximum will be sixteen consecutive rebirths; the minimum will be in this life, at death, or in the intermediate period. Other benefits include accomplishment of the eight common powers; and obtainment of the seven features of a divine embrace. For this purpose, spontaneously accomplish the twofold purpose of self and others.

The words of honor are the source of all noble qualities and are the very support for the stability and presence of such qualities. As it says in the Samānya-sūtra, “Just as the planting of a seed is dependent upon the earth in order for the result to mature, the life essence of the Dharma remains within the words of honor, which fully mature into the unsurpassed state of awakening as the precious life-essence of virtue.”

Temporary benefits include the accomplishment of all that one aspires to obtain; an appearance that is pleasing to all; becoming an object of the veneration of others, including the most powerful worldly gods; and being blessed by the buddhas, bodhisattvas, dākas, dākinis, and all objects of refuge, who guard one like their own child. Having understood the importance of pure samaya by entering the path of all the buddhas, one will quickly ascend the stages of vidyādharahood to realize enlightenment.

If in one’s immediate life one is unable to persevere in the accomplishment of the two stages, yet never allows the words of honor to become defiled, then after taking sixteen successive rebirths enlightenment will be realized. This is the longest possible period of time it will take just through the force and purity of the words of honor alone. After at least seven rebirths, one will meet with the profound path of the two stages and gradually be liberated. The speediest result occurs if one maintains pure words of honor coupled with diligence in the two stages of practice, resulting in the realization of nondual vidyādharahood in that very life. Those of average sensibility will realize the illustrative clear light, which will become the actualization of absolute clear light at the time of their death, and the obtainment of nondual kāya that arises from training. If absolute clear light itself is realized, then at death the nondual kāya (arising from no-training) will be obtained. Those of common sensibility, due to their practice, faith in the lama, and strong aspiration for the pure realms, will be liberated in the bardo (antarābhava) [intermediate state] by arriving in the natural nirmānakāya pure realm.

These are not the only noble qualities that arise from pure samaya. In addition, both extraordinary and mundane spiritual attainments are obtained. The eight mundane spiritual attainments include the power to make an eye medicine, which, when applied, allows one to see without impediment or physical obstruction; speed walking; the sword accomplishment; seeing underground; making power pills; flying in space; disappearing; and extracting the essence. These eight powers are called mundane because they are still of this world and can also be accomplished by non-Buddhists. They qualify as accomplishments belonging to the paths that are both worldly and transcendental. According to Vajrayāna, these qualities are developed during the two yogic states and are thus termed common because they are not the ultimate result. In addition, the eight sovereign qualities are achieved.

Understanding Duality

August 8, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Art of Dispelling Anger”

So what happens in the awakening? Well, we’ve worked with our poisons sufficiently. We have some inner knowledge and honesty. We’ve worked some method and now we’re accomplishing view. That’s where we really start to get cooking is where we practice the view. The view is—I love this part—every woman you see is a goddess and I’m the queen. We see that all beings are Buddha. We see that the females, whether they look like goddesses or act like goddesses, are goddesses in their nature. They are Tara. They are, as are you, the primordial pristine state. We look at men, and rather than list their faults, which most of us do, we look at them and think, ‘This is Buddha. When you think of your husband, your child, your friend, your enemy and even President Bush, you think, ‘Yeah, this is Buddha, in his nature.’ And when we look around and we see that the appearance in relative view doesn’t look like Buddha, we shouldn’t take that as proof that the teaching is wrong and that we have a good excuse to hate. We should take that as a reasonable display of the fact that we are lost in samsara. Here we are in our nature, the very Lord Buddha. When we awaken, we are Buddha. And yet we are in prisons; we are in hell realms; we are in abusive situations; we are hungry; we are angry; we are at war; we suffer. And yet we are the very Buddha we aspire to follow.

In Buddhism we are taught there are the ground, the path, and the fruit. All three must be present in order for liberation to be possible. And this is one way in which we understand our natures. The ground is the basis of accomplishment. If you did not arise as phenomena from the fundamental primordial self-luminous view, if you did not arise from that, if you were not the very bodhicitta in its display form, if the Buddha seed did not rest within you, if it were not so that each and every cell of your body is replete with the entire mandala of peaceful and wrathful deities, if that were not true, there would be no basis for accomplishment. But in our nature, we are Buddha. That is the basis.

And then there is the path. The path is as important as the basis, because while we have the Buddha seed, we may not have method or a way in which to awaken to that or to bring it forth. A fly is Buddha. He also arises in the display of duality in the samsaric world; and yet his nature is Buddha. His nature is the very same, no different. We each of us stand in the presence of our root teacher, whether it’s in our private practice or whether it’s here at the temple, and we could be a fly. But the difference between you and the fly is the fly has no method. The fly cannot practice method. The thing he is doing is not prostrations. He’s wiping his thighs or something. So we have to apply method. That’s what the Buddha’s teaching is all about. It’s all about different methods at different stages for different people.

Relative Bodhicitta: HH Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

August 7, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is respectfully quoted from “Enlightened Courage” by His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche:

If I do not give away
My happiness for others’ pain,
Buddhahood will never be attained.
And even in samsara, joy will fly from me.

Enlightenment will be ours when we are able to care for others as much as we now care for ourselves, and ignore ourselves to the same extent we now ignore others. Even if we had to remain in samsara, we should be free from sorrow. For as I have said, when the great Bodhisattvas gave away their heads and limbs, they felt no sadness at the loss of them.

Once, in one of his previous lifetimes, the Buddha was a universal monarch whose custom it was to give away his wealth without regret. He refused nothing to those who came to beg from him, and his fame spread far and wide. One day, a wicked brahmin beggar came before the king and addressed him, saying, “Great king, I am ugly to look upon, while you are very handsome; please give me your head.” And the king agreed. Now his queens and ministers had been afraid that he might do this, and making hundreds of heads out of gold, silver, and precious stones, they offered them to the beggar.

“Take these heads,” they pleaded. “Do not ask the king for his.”

“Heads made of jewels are of no use to me,” the beggar replied. “I want a human head.” And he refused to take them.

Eventually they could no longer deter him from seeing the king.

The king said to him, “I have sons and daughters, queens, and a kingdom, but no attachment do I have for any of them. I will give you my head at the foot of the tsambaka tree in the garden. If I can give you my head today, I shall have completed the Bodhisattva act of giving my head for the thousandth time.”

And so, at the foot of the tree, the king took off his clothes, tied his hair to a branch, and cut off his head. At that moment, darkness covered the earth, and from the sky came the sound of the gods weeping and lamenting so loudly that even human beings could hear them. The queens, princes, and ministers all fell speechless to the ground. Then Indra, the lord of the gods, appeared and said, “O king, you are a Bodhisattva and have even given away your head, but here I have the life restoring ambrosia of the gods. Let me anoint you with it and bring you back to life.”

Now, the king was indeed a Bodhisattva, and even though his head had been cut off and sent away, his mind was still present, and he replied that he had no need of Indra’s life-restoring ambrosia, for he could replace his head simply by the force of his own prayers.

Indra begged him to do so, and the king said: “If in all those thousand acts of giving my head away beneath the tsambaka tree there was nothing but the aim of benefiting others, unstained by any trace of self seeking–if I was without resentment or regret, then may my head be once again restored. But if regrets there were, or evil thoughts, or intentions not purely for the sake of others, then may my head remain cut off.” No sooner had the king said this than there appeared on his shoulders a new head identical to the first, which had been taken away by the brahmin. Then all the queens, princes, and ministers rejoiced and administered the kingdom in accordance with the Dharma.

For those who can practice generosity like this, there is no suffering at all. Enlightened teachers, Bodhisattvas, come into the world to accomplish the welfare of beings, and even when they are ignored by people in the grip of desire, anger, and ignorance, who stir up obstacles and difficulties, the thought of giving up never occurs to them and they are totally without anger or resentment. As it is said:

To free yourself from harm
And others from their sufferings,
Give away yourself for others;
Guard others as you would protect yourself.

His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche: Revealed Treasures

August 4, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is respectfully quoted from “Journey to Enlightenment” by His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche:

Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö asked Khyentse Rinpoche to go to Amdo province and give the Treasury of Rediscovered Teachings. Here is Rinpoche’s wife’s account of the journey:

Rinpoche traveled to Rekong, in Amdo, near Lake Kokonor. One very cold day, some herdsmen invited Rinpoche to their tent and offered them and his party a large quantity of butter, dried meat, and sweet cheese for the journey. Rinpoche usually warned one of his attendants to look after the horses carefully. When the time came to leave, the attendant rushed in exclaiming that the horses had disappeared; he had left them for a while and they must have been stolen. Fortunately, the herdsmen had many yaks and gave some to Rinpoche, who reached Rekong after a month’s journey.

In Rekong, Rinpoche gave the empowerments of the Treasury of Rediscovered Teachings over four months to 1,900 yogis. When Rinpoche’s hosts heard from his monks about the theft of his horses, they were quite upset; but Rinpoche told them that he had arrived safely and so it was now of no concern. However, some of the Rekong yogis, known for their magic power, said they could not just leave the matter like that. Two weeks after Rinpoche started teaching, the robbers arrived with all the stolen horses and begged Rinpoche to take them back. Rinpoche replied that he no longer needed the horses and they could keep them, but the robbers refused to listen. After the theft of the horses, they said, everything had gone wrong for them. When they milked their cows, they got not milk but blood. One boy had been attacked by vultures–something quite unheard of–and many of the clan had fallen ill. Finally, they just left the horses near the monastery and rode away.

Rinpoche stayed at Rekong monastery for a year, and gave teachings at a beautiful hilltop site where the famous nineteenth-century yogi Shabkar Tsogdruk Rangdrol had lived. There was a large rock, with a tree behind it, on which Shabkar use to sit and sing his famous spiritual songs. The local people offered this seat to Rinpoche, and when he improvised songs there, rainbows appeared and snowflakes fell gently, like flowers. Everyone said that he must be a reincarnation of Shabkar.

Rinpoche had an attendant, a ritual master called Achog, whom he often had to reprimand. One night Achog ran away, leaving a piece of cloth as an offering and a note saying that he felt unable to serve Rinpoche properly and had therefore decided to leave. After walking for a month, he reached a herdsmen’s camp in Golok, and in one of the black yak-hair tents a mother and daughter asked him to perform some ceremonies in exchange for food and lodging. It was freezing cold and he had nowhere else to go, so he agreed. By then he had fallen quite ill.

One day the mother called out to Achog that a stranger, a tall lama on a big horse, was approaching the tent. Achog looked through the door and saw Khyentse Rinpoche with an attendant riding straight up to the tent. Rinpoche dismounted, came in, and asked: “Achog, how are you?” Achog was so astounded that he began to cry. Rinpoche told him there was no need to cry and that he had better come back with them. The old mother offered Rinpoche tea, milk, and curd. In answer to Achog’s questions, Rinpoche’s attendant said that no one had told them where to find him; nor had they met anyone in the snow-covered landscape to give them directions to the camp. Rinpoche said it was time to go, and all three came back home together. In those days, people use to say Rinpoche had incredible clairvoyance.

On their travels they stopped at many pilgrimage sites and monasteries. Khyentse Rinpoche writes of one such occasion when he revealed one of his main spiritual treasures (terma), the Pema’s Heart Essence of Longevity cycle, which encompasses the whole spiritual path:

Stopping at Ladrö Monastery along the way, we went to the Gyamgyal Crystal Lotus Mountain, a pacifying holy site of the vajra family and one of the twenty-five important sacred places in Dokham. There we went to the Infant Milk Lake in front of Dothi Gangkar, where I made offerings to the local deities and performed the feast offering of Dharmakaya Master Amitayus from The Heart Practice Dispelling All Obstacles for a few days and even wrote a guidebook to the sacred place. There were many pilgrims at the light blue lake, and as the waves were stirred by the wind, a vivid pattern of a peaceful mandala complete with doors appeared on the lake, along with other auspicious signs. I also saw the Black Lake at Gyam and performed a feast offering. That night in a dream, I saw a text of The Nine Deities of Infinite Life in Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo’s handwriting. This appeared to me as a mind treasure, Pema’s Heart Essence of Longevity, which I wrote down.

His spouse, Khandro Lhamo, added to this:

Once, at the monastery called Karma Monastery, the seat of the first eight Karmapas, there was a very precious dharmaphala temple, which contained an image of Palden Lhamo and the protector Bernakchen in union. When the door of the room was opened, Khyentse Rinpoche saw Mahakala as if in reality and was given a yellow scroll–many people saw the scroll emerging from Palden Lhamo’s sleeve. The scroll contained dakini script for the Kilaya cycle according to Nyak Jnana Kumara’s tradition, which is one of Khyentse Rinpoche’s main spiritual treasures. Another time, Rinpoche went to Crystal Lotus Mountain, where he had a vision of Guru Padmasambhava in the form of Amitayus, the Buddha of Eternal Life, and received the mind treasure of Pema’s Heart Essence of Longevity. He received many termas in similar ways.

When recognizing a tulku, generally more than one Lama recognizes the tulku. In the case of Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, His Holiness Penor Rinpoche confirmed her recognition with Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, who was, at that time the Supreme Head of the Nyingma Tradition, and Second Dzongnang Jampal Lodro Rinpoche. Jetsunma received teachings from Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche when visiting Nepal in 1987.

Beginning Spiritual Training

July 30, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is respectfully quoted from “Reborn in the West” by Vicki Mackenzie:

‘There was no one to put me in touch with Buddhism. Not at all. The only thing that could have connected me, but didn’t, was that my mother took me to Coney Island and a palm-reader there told me I was an old Tibetan. That was all. I had no idea about Tibet. Not a clue. When I thought about Tibetans I thought of smelly old men on rugs!’

When she ran away from home on the advice of the police she headed for Florida, where she met a man, and married him. She had a baby and they moved on to an isolated farm in North Carolina. That was when Jetsunma’s spiritual story began. Finally away from the hubbub of city life and the distress of her own family situation, the greatness that was lying within her began to evolve. Without any particular emotion or even interest in her voice, she explained the extraordinary series of events that followed.

‘I started to have a series of dreams–I’ve had odd dreams all my life. And in these dreams I would be told what to do. A succession of very strange things happened.

‘Most of these dreams told me to look for a sign. The first involved meeting a an old woman, she was like a witch in a turreted castle. This woman placed a circle on my forehead and said, “This is who you are, now you have to commence.” Three days later a friend of mine asked me to go with her to this woman who did astrological charts, which interestingly are drawn in a circle. We thought it would be a bit of a lark, and so we went. This woman opened the door and, as surely as I’m sitting here, she was exactly the same as the woman in my dream. She had the same face and was wearing the same clothes. I remember breaking out in a sweat!

‘She was really old, but somehow I was very attracted to her. I remember looking at her and thinking she was beautiful. Anyway, she said she wanted to do my chart. After a while she came back and said, ‘My dear, I have nothing to say to you. Your whole life is laid out, you don’t need any advice from anybody.’ I think she was very skillful because she didn’t crystalize anything–she let it stay fluid.

‘Three days later I had another dream which showed me the farm where I was living, but there were extra cars outside the porch. A thunderstorm blew in, and the sky was unusually green. Well, three days after this dream–it all seemed to be happening in three-day-periods–I’d gone out shopping and come home with some friends in their cars and the thunderstorm happened. In the dream the voice had said, “When you see this, it is time to begin your meditation.”‘

To say Jetsunma was taken aback would be an understatement. She was just nineteen years old at the time, and wondered why these things were happening to a poor ‘girl from Brooklyn’. Furthermore, she had no knowledge of or training in meditation.

‘I went out to the front porch and looked at the scene to make sure it was exactly like my dream. It was. Then I went back into my bedroom and lay down! I knew that if I prayed for guidance I would get to learn how to meditate, as the dream had instructed. That was the start of my real spiritual training.” she said. It was to be highly individual and quite unorthodox.

‘The first thing I was “told” was that I had to make a very deep commitment that everything I did from here on would be a channel for blessings. So I use to do this meditation where I would say things almost as if I were chanting a mantra: “I commit myself to benefitting all beings, my life has no meaning other than the benefit of all beings.” Unbeknown to her at the time, she was uttering stock Tibetan Buddhist concepts in stock Tibetan Buddhist jargon. Every day she diligently continued feeling her way along her meditations.

‘The picture I had was of being a faucet–the water was in there, and I just had to turn the faucet on, kind of thing. I tried to align myself with the principle of broad-spectrum compassion.”

Meeting Her Teacher

July 29, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is respectfully quoted from “Reborn in the West” by Vicki Mackenzie:

I spent a couple of days at KPC admiring the grounds and meeting some of Jetsunma’s followers. One of them was Wib Middleton, a friendly, open man who was one of Jetsunma’s earliest students and is now the chief administrator. I asked him for his impressions of this first female Western tulku as she ventured out on her mission.

‘When we met her it was 1981 and she and her family had moved to Washington. We were really drawn to her. We were a group of seekers, about ten of us, New Age-type people who felt there was a lot more to life and who had an innate sense of wanting to contribute to society. But we didn’t have a vehicle for that. We looked around, but a lot of the New Age stuff seemed to be so self-focused and self-centered. When we met her she had a very expanded way of talking about things. She talked about “planetary consciousness and planetary quickness” and the “vibrational zero” which was her word for emptiness. It was really amazing stuff,’ he said.

‘We went and asked her to teach us, and said said “Sure.” So we began meeting in living rooms about once a week. She started teaching us meditational practices and we’d have discussions which she would lead. Looking back, I can see that she was addressing the specific needs of people around her,’ he said.

‘Although she taught confidently, as though from an inner authority, she never made claims for herself in terms of what her abilities were,’ he continued. ‘She has never done that. In fact, she has always publicly refuted the idea that she has any special qualities at all. She was always very humble. She says things like she is not a very good teacher, that she has no particular abilities. Still, we could see that she had developed certain inner qualities and crossed certain lines of consciousness,” Wib said.

If Jetsunma’s spiritual life was accelerating, her material life was deteriorating quickly. Money and physical comfort were in extremely short supply. She and her family were living in a one-roomed place with crates for furniture. She had steadfastly refused all payment for her meditation classes and was working in the clothing department of a big store while her husband was trying to find a teaching job. When things got really right, Jetsunma announced that she was thinking of returning to North Carolina where her husband had the chance of a teaching position.

‘When we heard that, we went crazy,’ said Wib. ‘We thought, “This is our teacher, we need to keep her around.” The group had grown to about a dozen or more. Late one night we dashed over to her place, knocked on the door and said, “Look, here’s the deal. We’d like to start formal classes. We’ll pay. We’ll start an organization, and the organization pays you.” She replied, emphatically, that she didn’t want to be paid to teach. We said we’d worked it out so that it wasn’t like that. We’d have an organization with a board of directors and we’d take care of it. And that’s what we did. We started formal classes and an organization called the Centre for Discovery and New Life. We had a little logo and a board of directors,’ he recalled.

After that the organization grew organically. Soon there were two classes a week, then three. And all the time the teachings that Jetsunma was giving were becoming deeper and deeper.

‘Every week it would be more mind-stretching, more amazing than the week before. We would walk in and think, “There is no possible way that the information she is going to give us could get more profound”, but it was. She was teaching about the nature of mind, the void, different subtle bodies. At that stage we were between Western metaphysical language and Eastern concepts. We certainly weren’t calling ourselves Buddhists.’

The teachings continued pouring forth out of Jetsunma–week after week. Little did the group know it then, but they were all being prepared for what was to follow. “When it happened, they didn’t notice it at all.”

‘One of our friends introduced us to a Tibetan called Kunzang Lama from a monastery in south India,’ continued Wib. ‘He came to our centre on a rainy night with a lot of carpets he was trying to sell to raise money for the monastery. He also had a book of pictures of small Tibetan kids–mostly young monks who needed clothing, books and food. At the meeting we decided to take them on as a project. None of us knew anything about Tibet and we knew very little about Buddhism. Our knowledge was restricted to Vietnamese monks burning themselves–and there was some confusion with the Hare Krishna movement! It was the typical American response to somebody else’s culture and religion,’ he said, laughing.

Entranced by the pictures of the little monks, they realized there was an excellent opportunity to put Jetsunma’s teachings into practice. ‘Right from the beginning she had emphasized compassion, seeing suffering and doing something about it. She said that suffering came about because thought of ourselves as “separate”. She talked about “union consciousness”–recognizing that there’s one operating principle–and that the one way to understand our own and everybody else’s nature was through love and kindness. She talked a lot about “stewardship” and “caretakership” of the earth and all the creatures on it.’

Within two or three weeks of the carpet-seller’s visit they had managed to sponsor seventy-five children back in south India, and a rewarding correspondence followed. They learned what the little monks were doing and discovered it wasn’t so different from what they were doing in Washington. They also learned that the abbot of the monastery was called His Holiness Penor Rinpoche, who was the head and 11th throneholder of the Palyul lineage of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism.”

The tale fast-forwards a year to when the group received a letter from the carpet-seller saying that Penor Rinpoche was making his first-ever teaching tour of the United States. He wanted to visit Washington to meet and thank the people who had generously sponsored so many of his young monks.

The group was delighted, but had no notion of who or what Penor Rinpoche was nor how to treat him. By this time Jetsunma had moved to a bigger house because they could no longer fit into her living room, but she was still doing everything herself, including all the cleaning, setting out chairs, organizing the coffee and snacks, and of course looking after her family.

Penor Rinpoche arrived in spring 1985. When the group went to Washington Airport to meet him they found a large crowd of Chinese students already waiting to greet their guru. Unknown to the members of the Centre for Discovery and New Life, Penor Rinpoche was an extremely eminent lama with several established centres in Asia. Later they learned that back in Tibet he had been responsible for a hundred thousand monks and nuns situated in over a thousand monasteries. Like most of the great Tibetan lamas he had left his homeland in 1959 after the Chinese invasion. Starting with three hundred followers, he arrived in southern India fourteen months later with only 26: the rest had died on the perilous journey. Undeterred, he took the five acres of land and the elephant that the Indian government offered and, against what seemed insurmountable odds, proceeded to build a monastery that could hold five hundred. When Jetsunma and Wib met him his monastery was crammed to overflowing with 650 monks, many of whom had fled from the continuing persecution in Tibetn.

“Penor Rinpoche had a burning life.” Since he was young he had prayed to meet, in this lifetime, the reincarnation of Genyenma Ahkön Lhamo, the female Tibetan yogini who with her brother had founded his lineage, the Palyul sect, back in 1665. Penor Rinpoche was sure she was living on this earth somewhere. He had already met Ahkön Lhamo’s brother, a Tibetan who was also teaching in America in Ashland, Oregon. But he knew female reincarnates were immeasurably harder to track down. Tibetan yoginis, although reaching the same exalted peaks of consciousness as their male counterparts, were generally free spirits who did their meditations alone in caves. There was no system set up for finding them.

None of this was known to the small group of Americans who turned out to meet Penor Rinpoche’s plane on that spring day in 1985. What followed next was a scene befitting a Hollywood movie. Jetsunma described it to me in detail.

‘We arrived at the airport and there was this huge group of Chinese people who had got wind that he was coming and had arrived with a limousine. They knew who he was. We didn’t have a clue. They were all grouped around something or someone I couldn’t see, clicking their cameras and carrying on. Now Penor Rinpoche is short, about five foot three inches, and fat. I tower over him. I thought, “Well, I guess he’s in there somewhere, but what’s happening?” Somehow the sea of Chinese people parted, I saw him, and burst into tears!

‘Now I’m not the sort of person who usually does this kind of thing, you understand. I’m a hard-headed lady. I’m from Brooklyn, for heaven’s sake!’ she joked. ‘But I just could not pull myself together. I felt like such a ninny. I cried and cried, I just looked at him and thought, “That’s my heart…That’s my mind…That’s everything.” ‘ Her voice was soft. “How do you feel when you have just seen everything? I just knew that was it. That was what I’d been looking for my whole life. And the tears poured down my face.’

I asked her precisely what that meant.

‘Padmasambhava, the founder of Buddhism in Tibet, actually said, and I’ll paraphrase “I will reappear as your root teacher, the one with whom you have such a relationship that you understand the nature of your own mind. When you meet your teacher you will in some way see your own face, and it will be the face that turns around and moves you. It is the beginning of your awakening.” ‘

Transforming Appearances Into Dharma

July 27, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is respectfully quoted from “Drops of Nectar” as translated by Rigzod Editorial Committee of the Ngagyur Nyingma Institute:

Chapter II
Transforming Appearances into the Dharma

Again at this time, having brought forth strong renunciation and disenchantment with my own and other’s perceptions and the activities of this present life, I sing this song of the points of training.

On the great plane of the ground of all experience, which has no beginning and end,
An ignorant person wanders about with the feet of grasping and fixation,
Oppressed by the suffering of boundless samsara.
Mistaken one, to you I now offer this advice!

Without contemplating the suffering of cyclic existence,
Renunciation and disenchantment with it will have no time to develop;
Without contemplating the difficulty of achieving the freedoms and favors,
There will be no time for joy and inspiration in the sacred Dharma to come forth.

If you do not constantly contemplate death,
Heartfelt Dharma practice will never occur.
If you do not regard the benefits of liberation,
There will be no time of achieving unsurpassed enlightenment.

Without contemplating the causes and effects of virtue and evil,
the white and the black,
You’ll have no time to grasp what to adopt and what to abandon, what is Dharma and what is not.
Without casting off the activities of this life,
You’ll have no time to accomplish the sacred Dharma for the life to come.

If heartfelt renunciation is not born within your mind-stream
There will never be time to give up distractions and diversions.
Without toppling, down to its foundation stone, the wall of amicable relationships,
There will be no time for the mind that is too attached to others to end.

Without leaving behind all deluded activities at one go,
Although you’re busy day and night, you’ll never have time to recognize.
If you don’t always keep humbly a low position,
You’ll never have time to tame your unwholesome mindstream.

Please pursue this excellent permanent aim from today!

The first virtue is to develop the mind of renunciation and weariness,
The second virtue is to abandon concerns for this present life,
The third virtue is to maintain the examples of the holy masters.
This is upholding the permanent domain of Dharmakaya, the permanent domain of the Victorious Ones!

From the Vajra Song of Instructions for Rousing Myself (Longchen Rabjam), this completes the second chapter of transforming appearances into the Dharma.

Phowa

July 26, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

OM AMI DEWA HRI

Throughout all lifetimes

Wherever I am born

May I obtain the qualities of birth in a higher realm

May I met Dharma swiftly after taking birth

And have the freedom to practice well

May I please Guru Rinpoche

And practice Dharma day and night

Understand Dharma, drink its pure nectar

May I traverse the ocean of worldly existence in this life

In the world, may I expound highest sacred doctrine

And never become bored or weary of helping others

By my loving and dedicated service

May all beings attain Buddhahood together

Together, oh together

I see the Buddha that you are

I will return, I will come back

I won’t abandon you

Never, never leave you

Never in this world

AH, AH, AH, AH

I will return, I will for you

HRI, HRI, HRI, HRI, HRI, HRI PHAT

I will never abandon you

What is a “Good Death”

July 25, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo offered during a Phowa retreat:

While there are individual experiences in the bardo of dying, let’s talk about the general ones so that we can prepare. Since we are talking about the six bardos, in general, we want to be very clear on the bardo of the moment of death, and that’s the last subject that we will cover today. It is a very, very important one, because we are all, in our way, preparing for death and we will all definitely experience death.

So, first of all, the bardo of the moment of death. We have talked about the point preceding death. Preceding death there is a period of time during which—and a person may or may not know—one has met with the conditions that will bring about the death. Now for those people who have a disease, a heart disease, or AIDS, or some disease that is degenerative or progressive in some way, the moment that the disease occurred to them was the moment that they entered into another bardo. Although it is still contained within the bardo of living, it is the bardo that preceeds death. What we’re talking about now is the actual bardo of the moment of death. That is when death is marked; it can be seen from the outside, and it actually occurs.

Before I begin I want to make something very clear. We have funny ideas about death. We have some terrible ideas about death. First of all, we’re scared to death of death. That’s the truth. I really didn’t mean to make a pun, it sort of happened that way. But we are scared of death, we are terrified of death, and it’s because we are unprepared. That’s the only reason to be afraid of death. And preparation, as it happens, will dispel the fears of death. I even think that during this week some of your fears of death may be dispelled, because you will be better prepared. But, in truth, until that time, we are terrified of death, and that is the main feeling we have about it. We do not understand death. We think that death is a horrible, sort of killing thing that we have to go through, and that the best way to go through it is unconscious. That’s the kind of idea we have. People often will actually pray, “Let me die in my sleep. Let me die unknowing that I’m going through the death experience.” And there are other people that say, “Let me die quickly.” Well, for my money, I would like to be one of the fortunate ones who know for some period of time before their death that they have caught the cause of their death or that they have the cause of their death. For my money, that’s what I wish would happen to me if I were an ordinary sentient being. If I were in that position where I was caught in samsara—and we all feel that way, we all are—I would wish to have preparation time. I would wish to know beforehand.

Those of us who are aging gradually and staying clear and in good health through the aging process, we are fortunate, because our minds are clear; and yet we can clearly see in the mirror that we are approaching this time. Clearly we are not the same person we were ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years ago. Clearly that is true. We have pictures to prove it. These people are fortunate. We are fortunate. Because seeing the evidence of death approaching, we have time to prepare. Yes, we have to experience the discomfort of knowing that death is approaching, but it’s like going into the room, turning on the light, and seeing exactly where the stuff is so you can get around it. Remember we used that analogy early today, of walking through a room with all kinds of furniture. You want to do it when the light is on; you want to know how not to stumble. So this is what we are experiencing if we can prepare for our death.

Particularly, think about the tremendous suffering of diseases like AIDS. We talk about the tremendous suffering of something like that; and the biggest and most horrible part of it is that we die younger than we would have died if we did not have the disease. And that’s how we think about it. And yet, a disease like that gives us an opportunity. In a way, it is half of a blessing. In a way, it is the quintessential suffering of cyclic existence, couldn’t be worse. It is, in a nutshell, what cyclic existence actually is when you take away the barbiturate effect that it has on us. Yet, in another way, it is a way to understand —you understand clearly as never before—that death is imminent. There is a way to understand that you could not have had any other way, and it gives us extraordinary time. It gives us an extraordinary clarity of time to be able to practice because we’re motivated. It’s just that clear. We are motivated. We know we have a date to keep. Those of us who don’t know what that date is, we’re a little more vague about this. We don’t want to be bothered, frankly, and so we are at a disadvantage.

Less lucky is the stuff that most people pray for: a quick death. Instantaneous. “Hit me with a truck.” That kind of thing. That’s how people think, “Get it over with. Get me out of here.” And it’s because they don’t understand what death is. They do not understand that once the eyes are closed and the breath has stopped, it sounds like a pun, but basically life goes on in one form or another. One continues to continue. That is the nature of what we are. And so there is no true cessation other than the cessation of breath. To die a quick death may save a little bit of discomfort for the unprepared, but it gives us no time for preparation. Even the dissolution of the elements occurs in an untimely and hurried way so that we cannot cope with them well. So do not pray for an instant death.

Neither should you pray to die in your sleep, because it is too confusing. You are already in the sleeping bardo. The sleeping bardo has a heavier level of delusion in a way than the waking bardo, because you literally are not slowed down by the time it takes physicality to process itself. For instance, if I want to walk from here to that door it’s going to take me a certain amount of time and effort because of the physicality of the situation; but in the dream, I’m there, I’m out, I’m gone. I can go anywhere. So in a way there is even more delusion there. You do not want to die in the middle of the dream state unless your practice is so good that you would recognize the bardo even in the dream state; and that can only be hoped for if you are the kind of person who has complete control and direction over your dreams. Always. And that ain’t you. So instead, pray for a time of knowing and a time of preparation. Pray for the leisure to prepare for your death. That is the appropriate and best prayer.