Teachings | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

Denial: The Big Picture

April 9, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Bringing Virtue Into Life”

The Buddha teaches us that this precious human rebirth is very, very brief, as brief as a waterfall going down a mountain. You know there is no way that you can appreciate that when you’re young. There is no way. I know because I’ve been young and now I am middle-aged. There is no way. No matter how smart you are. No matter how spiritual you are. No matter how you try to stop and think about it. It is so difficult to understand how quickly our lives pass. When we reach middle age, the big hubbub everybody talks about, we all have mid-life crisis. Well, that’s what it’s about. It’s during the middle of our lives when we realize that basically we have been on a weekend pass and, honey, it is Saturday night late, and the only thing you’ve got left is Sunday. Remember how you used to feel when you were a kid? You looked forward to the weekend so much all week long and by the time it was Saturday night you had this kind of funny feeling realizing that it was pretty much gone. The only thing you had left was Sunday and you had to go to church! So that’s how we think, and right around mid-life we begin to understand that life is very short. But it’s very difficult to understand it before that, particularly since in our culture we are not permitted to see death very much. When our relatives die, they put them in a bag and cart them off. We never get to see them. We get to see them when they look pretty. That’s true! They pretty them up, and then they show them to us after that; but we never really understand what has happened. So we’re shielded even from having that kind of sensibility.

Not only is life quick but there are certain hidden rules within our lives that we cannot take in. Why can’t we take them in? First of all, our minds don’t want to take them in, in the same way that when we are in a traumatic situation we often shield ourselves by being in denial about that situation. How many of you know about that little psychological trick of denial? Ever had any denial in your life? Any of you married? So we have that wonderful trick of denial. We are in denial about what is happening with our lives. We just don’t think about it at all.

Then the other thing about it—if you think about how our minds work—what are your earliest memories? Some people say they can remember infancy. Some people say they can remember two years old, some people say four. Usually it’s about three or four years that you can have your earliest, earliest shreds of memory. Usually that’s the case. From that time until the age that you are now, that’s all the real memory that you have. So you have a problem, and that is you cannot learn cause and effect. There is no way that you can learn cause and effect thoroughly from your life. Do you know why that is? It’s because many of the causes that have caused your life to be the way that it is now did not happen in this lifetime. According to the Buddha’s teaching, you have lived many times before—not once, not ten times, but uncountable times in many different forms. And most of the causes that bring about the results of your life right now have been brought about or have been birthed previous to this incarnation, so you can’t possibly make the connection between cause and effect.

Many people resent the idea that it’s actually karma, or cause and effect, that causes us to suffer, because we don’t like the idea that we actually deserve this. We don’t like that kind of idea. We don’t like the idea that we may have been bad in the past. That kind of thinking is a bit childlike, isn’t it? Truly, it’s a bit childlike. When you look at your life right now…, let’s say you are experiencing extreme poverty, or let’s say you are experiencing some kind of terrible illness. If you are experiencing extreme poverty, it’s probably because in the past you have had a lack of generosity towards others. If you are experiencing some terrible disease, it’s probably because in the past you have broken some vows or commitments that you made with your body. These are the Buddha’s teachings.

Those things may have happened in this lifetime, but probably have not happened in this lifetime. Maybe in this lifetime you are very generous. Maybe in this lifetime you are keeping as many commitments as you can possibly manage. Maybe you’re doing the very best that you can. Doesn’t it seem unfair, therefore, that you would suffer from something that happened in a previous incarnation? What’s really unfair about it is that you can’t connect the dots. That’s the problem. You can’t connect the dots. There’s no way that we as ordinary samsaric beings, ordinary sentient beings with limited view, can possibly connect those dots. It’s impossible. What if you were seeing that your life was filled with terrible poverty and that, no matter what you did there was no way to get out of it? And yet you look at your life and you think, “Well, I have been generous. I’ve tried, you know. I mean, I’ve tried to give to others. I’ve tried to be kind. I mean I haven’t always done it perfectly, but I tried. So why do I deserve this poverty?” It’s very difficult for us, under that kind of situation, to do anything other than feel sorry for ourselves, and that’s what most of us end up doing. We end up perpetuating the myth that nothing is connected with nothing, that we don’t have to work at it, we don’t have to think about it. It’s just the luck of the draw. So we end up spending most of our lives in denial and complaining, and just not getting the big picture. That is the worst thing about samsara.

Facing Reality

April 7, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Bringing Virtue into Life”

Why is it we’re not facing that? Because of the very nature of samsara. It is like drinking alcohol. It is like taking a narcotic. There is something about the way we perceive in samsara. There is something about the way we register data that causes us to not see time passing, to remain fixated on a certain internal idea and not really taking into account what is actually happening. We learn instead to accommodate ourselves. We start dying our hair. We put on more makeup than we did 10 years ago. What else do we do? If we are men, women are not the only ones who dye their hair. This I have found out! This is the truth! Women are not the only ones that are doing it. Men are doing it too, or they use that, what is that stuff that you comb in and it takes, Grecian formula. Yeah. Some men use the Grecian formula.

Then others of us, we have different ways of not dealing with reality. You know, you get to be maybe 45, 50 years old and you realize that you can’t do what you did before. You just cannot. You don’t do it. You don’t want to do what you did before, but you simply cannot. Physically you cannot do what you did before and so the way you deal with that, instead of really dealing with that and really looking at that, is you sort of change your life style and you think, “What I’d really like now is a change of life style where coincidentally I am slower. I don’t have to walk or run as fast. I coincidentally would like to have a house with less stairs. I coincidentally would like to have clothes that are a little looser on me than they used to be.”

Some of us, the men for instance, when they are younger what they really want most in this world is motorcycles. You want a motorcycle so bad you can taste it! You’d do anything for a motorcycle or maybe a new guitar or fast car or whatever it is that young men really want. Then when we get older we don’t face the fact that we’re older, but suddenly we want a town and country car, the kind that has a special kind of seat for lower back pain. Then we get one of those beaded things you put on the seat for hemoroids. It’s all right, because nothing has really changed. I’m still a good looking man. You know, that’s the way we think. We’re just missing something here. We are not facing reality.

Examining the Waterfall

April 6, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Bringing Virtue Into Life”

My experience has been that here in the west, when students come to Dharma, when they embrace Dharma and even when they’ve been practicing Dharma for a long time, they have the attitude that we, as people, are going to that church or that temple which is out there somewhere. It’s an incorrect attitude that bears examining. We go there and we act in a certain way according to the beliefs of that church or that temple, and then we go home and we continue on with our lives as though our lives have not been changed, as though nothing has been heard at this church or temple that is relevant to our lives. We don’t even realize that we’ve done that, but it’s such a deep prejudice that each of us has—this idea that one’s spiritual life or one’s religious life is somehow separate from the rest of one’s life. For westerners it is a deep prejudice to the point where it is almost invisible. It is so much a part of us that it has become, in a sense, part of our background, part of the landscape within our minds. It’s hard for us, at least, to pick this out and say “Look at that. I act this way when I’m around the temple and I’m thinking about Dharma and I’m thinking about the Buddha’s teachings. Specifically when I’m doing particular Dharma practice, I act this way. Then I go home and I proceed as though I had never heard of it.”

We don’t even realize to what extent we do that. Oh, it’s not to say that we don’t hear anything and we don’t try to do anything with our practice. For instance, if a teacher were to say to us “All right, now I’ve given you this empowerment.” And often when a teacher gives empowerment, the teacher will say “Now I’ve given you this empowerment, I need something from you in exchange. And what I need from you in exchange is the commitment to good moral conduct,” let’s say. Or “What I need from you in exchange is the commitment to never kill or harm another living being.” So when we have a directive like that we can fixate on that. We can put that in our pocket. That’s a direct order. We can hear that. That’s something we can carry around and it’s easy.

Maybe we go home and maybe we don’t kill anything anymore. Maybe we do things like, instead of getting out the old fly swatter, we capture the flies and we take them outside. So that’s our big effort as a Buddhist. The flies are thrilled. But the rest of what the teacher taught—those thoughts that should gentle the mind and turn the mind toward Dharma, that should make us see more clearly, that should make us live better and in a higher way, a more responsible way—these things we often miss. These things we don’t carry home with us.

A good “for instance” is the idea that samsara, or the cycle of death and rebirth, is tricky, seductive, that it is a narcotic, that samsaric living deludes us into a feeling of safety. In fact, our lives are samsaric lives. Since we have been born, they are involved in the cycle of birth and death. Our lives, in fact, according to the Dharma teaching, pass as quickly as a waterfall rushing down a mountain. This is an excellent example. This is something that every teacher will teach you the first time they see you; and they will teach you every time they see you until the last time they see you. In one form or another, you will hear this same teaching and these are some of the thoughts that we are taught that turn our mind toward Dharma. That’s an interesting thought, and actually that’s a very interesting image. It’s a perfect image, in fact, by which this teaching can be taught. The reason why is that when you look at a waterfall rushing down a mountain, you might see a waterfall that has been rushing down a mountain for hundreds of years, thousands of years. You could go to someplace where there is a very high mountain. Perhaps there’s been a waterfall there for a thousand years and you might think to yourself “My life is going to be as fast as a waterfall rushing down a mountain. Good deal.” Except that’s not how it’s meant, you see, because what the Buddha is talking about is that, if you took one cup of water and dropped it from the top of the waterfall, it would be down at the bottom of the waterfall in a flash. You couldn’t even follow it with your eyes, it would happen so fast, and that is how fast our lives pass.

Now when we are looking at our lives, we look at them the way we look at a waterfall going down a mountain. We don’t see the cup of water. We don’t think like that. We don’t want to think like that! Who wants to think like that?! We see the waterfall as being something stable, so this analogy becomes perfect. When we look at our lives, the evidence is clear. I don’t know about you, but I don’t look the same way as I did ten years ago. Do you? Even if you are 20, ten years ago you were ten. You still don’t look the same way as you did ten years ago. When you are 45, you know you don’t look the same way as you did when you were 35. So the evidence is clear and you see it every morning. You see it every morning when you brush your teeth or you do your hair or shave, or whatever it is that you do. You know about it. In fact, you’re playing this little game with yourself. I know because we all play this little game. Trust me on this. Especially the women can really identify this. We play this little game with ourselves. We’re not graying because we can go to the hairdresser and he will fix it. Every now and then we get really brave when the guy is up there fooling with our hair and putting the glop on. We say, “O.K., how bad is it? How gray am I?” And I don’t know about your hairdresser, but my hairdresser takes my hand and lovingly speaks to me and says “You will never be gray. I will help.” So the delusion goes on. See? It simply goes on, and we’re not facing it. We’re not facing the fact that this thing that we are most afraid of is actually happening.

Uncover the Treasure

April 5, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:

While every being is sacred and precious, and has within the seed of Buddha-nature it is also difficult to see sometimes. Neonatal nurses in the “old days” could plainly see that babies are born different. To say that now is not politically correct, just not done. However it is true!

Some come out kicking and punching, wailing their healthy lungs out. Some babies come out peaceful, contemplative, eyes open like little old folks. Some seem dull and dazed. Other babies seem joyful, alive, innocent, devilish, comical, sleepy. Many nurses feel a “bad” energy under some conditions. A creepy feeling this child will come to no good. Why is that? Not every odd “feeling” child will grow up to murder their parents. But many babies that don’t feel right do act out. Why? In Buddhism we say this is a reflection of past karma and habitual tendencies. Of course to every mom her baby is a personal event, either yearned for or unwanted. Still, they carry the essence of Buddha. Yet some do grow up haters, mentally unstable, thieves, murderers and meanies. While others become saints, clerics, monks, nuns, caregivers.

Why? We are taught the negative patterns of past lifetimes still reflect in one’s mind stream now. If we apply self honesty and examine our activities in this life we will see. Look in the mirror. Have you caused suffering or benefit? Do you find the habit of helping others or the habit of criminals? You can see and you can change to reflect the precious triple gem within, waiting like a lotus to bloom from the mud, as all lotus must do. Rise up. Bloom, bring beauty. As it is our nature to do so, we must!

At birth we are beings with potential. Mixed karma, good and bad, mixed potential. Yes, the ultimate treasure is within. But we must uncover and polish it until every single facet shows its ultimate potential. And do it with joyful spirit. We are, after all, Buddhas. We have method, intention, and power to benefit all beings. We are free to love and deepen. Free to choose the ground, path and result. EMAHO!

Knowledge & Wisdom

April 4, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “How Buddhists Think”

The fourth “Noble Truth” taught by the Buddha was “The Eight-fold Path.” In our Mahayana tradition, this is condensed into “Knowledge” and “Wisdom.” Knowledge is not facts we can know and collect. Rather, it is the awareness of all cause-and-effect relationships and their function as the building blocks of cyclic existence, or samsara.

The Buddha had omniscience. When looking at a sentient being, he could see all the cause-and-effect relationships that brought that being to the present moment. If he were here now looking at you, he could discern all the generosity, all the accumulated virtuous actions that make it possible for you to hear these teachings. He could also see all the obstacles that have prevented you from being a Buddha. He would have a panoramic view of all your accumulated non-virtue and egocentric fixation, knowing not only the facts of your life, but also understanding how the causes and effects were interdependently related. This is knowledge in the Buddha’s view, and it is the only really valuable knowledge.

The Buddha also had complete wisdom. Contrary to ordinary understanding, this wisdom is not related to any accumulation of facts. It is the natural awakened state, the awareness of the primordial empty Nature. It is the awareness of emptiness, the understanding of “Suchness.”

Cultivating Authentic Experience

April 3, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Marrying Spiritual Life with Western Culture”

I remember I went through a process quite naturally even before I found Buddhism. I was sitting in front of a stream meditating, and I meditated very deeply on my essential nature—this nature that is without discrimination, beginningless and yet completely fulfilled, both empty and full, beyond any kind of discrimination whatsoever. I meditated very deeply on that. Then I found that I couldn’t tell where I ended and where the water began. It was almost a psychological “Ah ha!” but so much deeper, like “I am that also.” Well, you can’t even call it “I.” It’s suchness, and it’s everywhere. Then I started expanding that to other living things—people and bugs and any phenomenal reality that appears external. I knew the nature that I am is just as easily that. I knew blacks and whites are the same, that my culture and your culture are the same, that this and that are the same.

Memorizing that kind of understanding is a deadening experience, because something inside of you is hidden and unchanged and unmoved, and something outside of you has been laid on top of it—bash-to-fit, paint-to-match religion. That’s what that is.

We do a lot of that with religion. I don’t believe it’s the fault of religion. I think if you listen to the original teachers of almost any religion, it’s good stuff. We are the ones who do not know how to practice religion. If we understand the Buddha’s teaching, which is such a living, dynamic, eternal, present thing, it is as alive in this world today as it was when it was first brought into this world. But if we practice it today, not with the energy of recognition of intimate association, not happening in this present moment, but happening 2,500 years ago, it’s not going to work. It has to be living for you today. It has to be alive for you today. Otherwise you’ll say, “That religion was brought into the world 2,500 years ago. Things are different now.” Well, yes, so? Liberation is not different now. The faults of cyclic existence are not different now. Nothing that matters is different now. All the rules still apply. It’s just that we don’t understand them on a deep level, because we haven’t invested in feeling and knowing in intimate association with these truths. We are simply playing church.

How to understand that your faith is alive? Try being alive in your faith. The ball’s in your court, and you’re not going to get away from that. You cannot change the religion and think that it’s going to suit your needs, because then you’re doing something else entirely. You’ve already decided what it’s going to look like and how you’re going to act. You’re on a track that is unbendable, unmovable, unadaptable, and you’re going to bend things around you to fit. You cannot do that to the world any more than you can do that to yourself. Bash-to-fit and paint-to-match doesn’t work.

The Door of the Heart

April 2, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:

It is difficult when we love one person especially. Might as well poison yourself, grief comes. Love all beings equally, you will never be alone. There is nothing outside your own heart that will make you truly happy. Without training our hearts to love altruistically we will never recognize love. The door of heart opens from within.

Why do I say this? Because I love you. You, you.

Why do people doubt the motivation and truth of love? Because they cannot feel it. They cannot imagine it. To some, love is the enemy; the proof that all sentient beings are equal. One ego is nothing.

In truth without altruistic love we are not truly alive. This is the mark of a human life! Our capacity. Oh, Father Sun, Sister Moon kindly bless us and our Mama Earth at this time of change, deciding and endurance. Prayer needed.

May wind come as a caress. May rain gently cleanse and nurture. May the sun show his wisdom. May all sentient beings be happy.

Living the Path

April 1, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Marrying Spiritual Life with Western Culture”

It’s interesting to realize that when we come to the temple, we’re already interested in Dharma. Why are we interested in Dharma? There are lots of different reasons. We like the look of it: It’s interesting and exotic. The statues are really cool. The colors are nice. We have a feeling, a concept of what Buddhism looks like. It looks like people who are sitting very straight in those wonderful positions that I wish I could get myself into. And the Buddha’s eyes look out into space. We see ourselves doing this, and we think, “Wow that is so cool!” We have no idea what’s going on inside, but from the outside we’re looking at this going, “Oh man, that is so cool.”

So when we come to this path, we already have an idea of what it’s supposed to look like, and we play into that. Then we hear the foundational thoughts about Buddhism and the thoughts that turn the mind. Here’s the important part, “Oh, yeah, those are good reasons to do what I wanted to do already, which is to sit there like this, or to be involved in this really exotic thing, or just to be the coolest kid on the block because I read all those Buddhist books.” We all have reasons. We feel a certain affinity to it, whatever it is. I’m making it goofy so that it’s fun, but you can see and adapt what I’m saying to your own personal situation.

This is not the way it is in other cultures. The thoughts that turn the mind have to do with understanding impermanence, understanding cause and effect relationships, understanding that virtuous conduct brings excellent results of happiness and prosperity, non-virtuous conduct brings bad results of either unhappiness or being reborn in lower realms and so forth. Once we come here we think, “These are things to learn, and they are good reasons to stay on this path. So I am going to memorize them.”

But in a society where people grow up seeing children born and their elders die before they are even able to understand the words of these teachings that turn the mind toward Dharma, where their movement through time occurs very naturally—(Nobody has a facelift in Tibet. The wrinkles just pile on, unbelievable amounts of them, because there’s no Estee Lauder. This is why I don’t live there!)—a person approaches Dharma because it does not seem reasonable to walk from birth to death with nothing in your heart, with nothing to work with. It doesn’t seem reasonable that this [movement through time] should be the main weight of your experience; that this is what you should take refuge in. Why would you do that? It’s like taking refuge in a car wreck. It’s going to hurt and it’s going to get worse.

But in our society, because we are technologically and intellectually advanced, we are not connected to the rhythms of life. So when this person who is connected to the rhythms of life, and has seen it even as a child, is told everything is impermanent in their life, this is not a big piece of information. This is not a missing piece of the puzzle. It simply organizes the thoughts for a person who has been exposed to a more natural environment, and puts words to a conceptual understanding that they already have about life. They can see there is some fun in life, some good in it, but they can also see its faults much more easily than we can in our society.

On the other hand, when we hear those thoughts that turn the mind, we have so much time invested in staying young, keeping it easy, keeping it light, making it pretty, collecting everything we’re supposed to collect, that we really have to keep that information outside of us. We can’t really let it come into us. For instance, in our society identifying with and understanding the teachings on old age, sickness and death is terrifying, because in our society the loss of youth is the loss of love. We don’t even value the wisdom that is gained in maturity enough to have it even bear mentioning.

But in other cultures, people have gone through these incredible experiences in a very natural way. They have a maturity of wisdom at the end of their life because they have seen themselves age. They have seen the beginning—the promise, the beauty, the joy. They have seen how it matures, and they have seen that you can’t take anything with you. In our society, that isn’t valued. In fact, it’s recommended that we think forever young.

Now that I’m maturing I feel, “Why would you want to do that! Young people don’t think. So to ‘think forever young,’ that’s like ‘military intelligence’!” In my experience of teaching students, I find that this is the single most dominating factor in their own dissatisfaction with their path. Why is that? Again, in our society, we learn a bunch of rules. These rules are connected to our fundamental material attitude, that collector’s attitude. In our society, we feel separated, alienated, isolated. There is a feeling of inner deadness. If you don’t know that inner deadness in yourself, then it’s deader than you think, because you can look in the eyes of anyone you know and you can see there is an inner deadness.

Now if we approach our spiritual life in the same way— by following these rules that are external because the Buddha said they’re out there, without ever viewing them in an intuitive and intimate way—we are going to go dead on our path. The path which is so precious and so unique—that amazing reality that does not arise in samsara but in fact arises from the mind of enlightenment and therefore results in the mind of enlightenment—this precious inimitable thing becomes only one more set of external rules, like a girdle that you have to wear in order to be successful, to be part of our environment.

When the path becomes bigger, which it has to do, it has to be part of your life. It isn’t something you do only twice a week. There are practices that you do every day. There are ethical situations, moral situations that you have to evaluate and look at for yourself. There is a coming to grips, a connecting with, that has to occur every minute of every day. It’s a way of life. It’s not really a church thing. Once the path becomes big like that, you find that it must influence everything about you—from offering your food before you eat it, to closing your altar before you go to bed at night, to doing your daily practice, to thinking about everything that you do and re-evaluating it. Should I kill bugs? Should I actively work towards benefitting others? Where is prejudice in my life? These are some of the issues that you have to re-evaluate.

At some point, if the path is external and you have not come into intimate touch with it, when these things start coming up, they are going to be “stuff” you have to do. They are not going to be the love of your life. They are not going to excite you. Let’s say as part of your path you have to examine one of the Buddha’s teachings, “All sentient beings are equal.” That means you have to get rid of cultural, racial, religious, gender, even species bias. All sentient beings are equal. What could be a more exciting and dynamic process than that? Wow!! Think about it! What if you really did it right, if you went inside yourself and found that place where all sentient beings are equal? What if you made it your job to really know that? What if it was something that became so moving and overwhelming that it changed every aspect of your life? What an exciting and dynamic process! How changed you would be! How much more luminous, beautiful, noble your life would be from just that one little thought.

But that’s not what we do with the Buddha’s teachings. We say, “All sentient beings are equal. Okay, I’ll memorize that. I guess that means I can’t kill anything. I guess that means that I really have to try to consider all things as equal. I guess it means I’m supposed to think that cockroaches and human beings are fundamentally equal in their nature. I really don’t think that way, but it means that I have to remember that as being one of the rules.” Rules that are outside, that you don’t take responsibility for, that you don’t connect with, are deadening. They will kill you. They are bad. Rules that you take in as pieces of information, explore deeply and know for yourself, are empowering. They give you a sense of living for the first time.

The Missing Link

March 31, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Marrying a Spiritual Life with Western Culture”

What is the missing link? What causes us to shunt ourselves off in that direction and create a scenario whereby we either don’t relate deeply to our path or it cannot nourish us, or we find ourselves feeling dead inside? How does that happen? One of the things that you have to remember—and it’s really important to think about—is that it is more and more prevalent in modern society to not see some of the natural currents of life. This is particularly true in our country with our level of technology and all the civilizing factors that have come together to make us what we are.

For instance, here we are so technologically advanced and removed from certain natural occurrences that we rarely have the opportunity to see the beginning of life carried all the way through to the end of life. Unless we ourselves have had a baby and daddy went into the birth-giving room and mommy had a mirror—unless we do that—birth to us is a mystery. We do not see what birth looks like. We have pictures of it. We may have seen a movie, but the direct sensual experience of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling, we have not experienced. Even those of us who are parents are somehow absent from this experience because many people do not have a real direct experience of their own birth-giving. They go to sleep during it or they’re drugged or something like that.

Neither do we have an experience of dying. When we die, we will have that experience; but until then, it’s hidden from us. We have no way to prepare ourselves for the reality of death in our society. We have no way to understand what is gained and what is lost during a life. Watching someone die is an interesting experience because you can see that everything material is left behind. You have a sense, once that consciousness has left the body, has moved on, that there is a really distinct difference between what the body is like at the door of death—even if it was unconscious—and what it’s like after consciousness has actually left. It’s quite different. Any of us who have seen loved ones immediately after their death will know this. You know that there is nothing in there, unless you’re completely out to lunch, which I also have seen! But you can see that something essential has left and that everything material has been left behind. It’s such an eye-opener, particularly if the person who has died is not very old. Perhaps they were still at the point in their life where they took a great deal of pride in their body or thought of themselves as being very vital. You might remember different things about the person. You might remember that the person didn’t like their figure, felt that they were too fat. Maybe you know that during the person’s life they obsessed about this. They felt really bad about being fat and they tried to do things about it without success. Then you see that person die. When the consciousness leaves, you realize that everything they struggled with doesn’t matter. Whether that body was fat or skinny, it didn’t go with them.

An understanding of how superficial such a struggle is occurs when you naturally see the rhythms of life and death. Do you see what I’m saying? There is a natural understanding that no one else can teach you. You have to see it yourself.

To understand what we are, it’s also good to see a number of babies being born. Babies are different when they are born. Hospital nurses who care for babies right after they’re born can tell you this for sure. Babies are not blank slates. Some babies are very aggressive and very active, and you can tell that they have tiny, little, confrontational personalities already. They’re just that way. And then other babies are just wide-eyed and open. They’re like little jelly fish. My two sons have always been polar opposites—from the first moment they were born. A mother who has had more than one child can tell you that’s how it is.

Many of us are completely separated from these natural events, yet they teach us very profound things about how to approach spirituality. Even the story about the Buddha indicates this. At first the Buddha was prevented by his father from seeing the suffering of old age, sickness and death. After having witnessed these sufferings, he found the strength to go on in his path because of compassion, because of the deeply felt recognition that occurred to him on some subtle level. That’s a metaphor for the problem of our society. What a display Lord Buddha gave us when he showed us that, because on several different levels we are prevented from seeing suffering by our society.

We take dead bodies away and put make-up on them. (Can you believe that? I want all my make-up on my body before I die. I do not want someone to put it on after I’m dead. All of you can remember this? That is not the time for a face lift.) On an internal level, because of these subtle messages that we get, we do not come in contact easily with any real internal processes. We avoid them in the same way we are taught to avoid them externally. We’re told, “Don’t go there, it’s not safe. Just don’t go there!”

We are told not to approach things in a really intimate way. Now in the story about Lord Buddha’s life, when he saw the suffering, it bothered him, hurt him, upset him, scared him and shocked him, and he had to—oh my—go through transformation, that “T” word that scares us so much. Transformation is related to change, the other word that really scares us. So, yes, he had to go through all of that, but what was the result? The result was he became deeply empowered and was able to make some very difficult choices.

He decided not to live an ordinary life in which he was extremely happy. He was a prince with all the blessings. He loved his family. He had a beautiful and devoted wife, and they were very close, very intimate. He had a beautiful newborn child and was not a distant or absent or unconnected parent. He loved his greater family as well, his father and mother—the king and queen. But for the first time he saw the suffering of old age, sickness and death, and it moved him to his core and enabled him to make choices that are very difficult. He came to the point of deep knowing within himself, that if he wanted to really love his wife and his baby, he had to find the way to liberation for their sake. The phrase “for their sake” became real to him. It’s not real to us.

Spirituality in the West

March 30, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Marrying a Spiritual Life with Western Culture”

How does our culture affect our sense of personal practice, our sense of taking refuge? How does it connect with all of that? We find ourselves in a difficult situation. We are really limited, and we can’t see where the limitation is coming from. We don’t know how deep we can quest or search, and how profoundly we can make the connection between the external environment, between the ordinary view, and our deepest, most intimate spiritual nature. We feel somewhat limited in knowing how we can make that connection.

Let’s look again at some very important factors. Think of how we follow religion in our country. For the most part, here in the West, we believe religion is one of the many things that you should have in order to live a moral life. It’s part of the palette of a moral life, but it may not be the basis of a moral life. This is kind of interesting, isn’t it? Many of the people who are deeply religious, according to our society’s capacity, have adapted their religion from their upbringing. Somehow they got the message that in order to be part of that big, successful, materialistic picture you have to maintain a certain status quo concerning moral, ethical and spiritual issues. It isn’t your heart. No, you wouldn’t want that, because that’s that flaky stuff. It’s really hard to have all that you’re supposed to have if this religious thing is so in your heart that it is your heart, that it speaks to you every minute, that all of your decisions are based on what you know to be true spiritually. There’s not much chance that you’re going to be the big accumulator your parents hoped you would be if you go like that. So religion is tamed. It becomes insipid. It becomes a thing that we do as part of the whole picture of who we are, but it does not really nourish us in the way that we want it to. And we end up blaming the religion or the minister or the teacher or the prayers or something. In America, our religious spiritual picture is not empowered. It is not deepened, not in the way that would set us on fire. I don’t mean this in a fanatical way. I mean this in a way where we are never very far from what feels like spiritual truth, from what we know to be good, from what we know to be deep and meaningful. It is very difficult for us to maintain that kind of spirituality in this culture.

We are told, for instance, that in order to be a good person you have to do a certain amount of church-going. That church-going idea is deadly. It’s really the antithesis of a spiritual path. And I find that here as well. Our Sangha also plays church. Whenever I see one of us do church-going, I don’t know what to do. That church-going thing drives me nuts! When we come here, on the proper days—Sunday, during retreats and maybe for a midweek class—we think, “Well I’m here. It’s Sunday and I’m fulfilling my spiritual obligation.” We have that church expression: We look all spiritual and fulfilled and we say the nice things. Going to church in that way is deadening and disempowering. It’s a very destructive way to approach our spiritual life. Our spiritual life is something that requires no church. It requires no temple. It is an ongoing, internal, profound experience to which we have to marry. We shouldn’t marry simply because we’ve come of age, which many of us do, but because we are truly wed in our hearts and our minds with a deeper kind of friendship and understanding regarding our spiritual path than we’ve ever known before.