Tibetan Buddhist Altar

From a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:

What is “Right Speech” in Buddha Dharma? Mostly as with the Eight Fold Path, we must do no harm. To understand right speech one must first understand what non virtuous speech is. That is where one speaks in a way as to be hurtful, offensive to another. Like name- calling and bullying others. Hate speech, in other words. Any speech that elevates oneself at the expense of others. Mean speech, speech without foundation, especially, which is gossip. Divisive speech. Speech that is not factual – lying. Telling tales to hurt a person’s livelihood. Lying speech causing one to prosper while others cannot as a result. Some think brutal honesty is right speech. Not so. Take the brutality out. Some think they are always right so brutality is necessary. Never the case!

We can always use right speech if we try. And to try we must be warm hearted and caring. Willing to take a back seat and applaud another’s efforts. At that point we can develop right speech, that is helpful. We can nurture, build confidence, benefit others with right speech. It is teaching, helpful and loving. When right speech is accomplished, in a future life one’s voice will be gifted and empowered. One will bring happiness and good result from teaching. One will be born with a beautiful voice, that is well loved and can transmit many blessings. That is the power of right speech, and one can see if they have spoken kindly in a previous life. The voice will be a beautiful thing, like a golden magical flute. All will benefit and Dharma will be spoken.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved

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

The Buddha has taught us some main points. These main points necessarily pervade all other levels of Buddhist doctrine or Buddhist philosophy or Buddhist teaching. They are the foundational thoughts that you have to use to think through the logic of the Buddhadharma. Without these fundamental thoughts, nothing that we accomplish in Dharma will make any sense or have any real weight. We are encouraged as Dharma students not to have some kind of blind faith based on no recognition of cause and effect relationships, but instead to have a faith that is based, yes, on heart, but also on logic, on reasonableness.

Lord Buddha himself taught that you should examine the teachings. If, having learned these foundational thoughts, they do not seem reasonable to you, if it doesn’t seem thoughtful and reasonable and intelligent to continue on in the way the Buddha has prescribed, then you shouldn’t do it.

The Buddha has taught that the Dharma should be logical and reasonable. And the way that the Buddha laid it out, it is. It is. For myself (some of you know my story), I was not born in the Tibetan monastery. I was found here, in America. I was born in Brooklyn of half-Jewish, half-Italian heritage, a little Catholic, a little lox and bagels. When my teacher found me, I was 38 years old, so I was already established in whatever habits I had, probably most of them bad. We have a lot of bad habits by the time we are 38, don’t we? By the time I found my teacher, I was quite established in a certain way, but I have found that in that meeting with my teacher a certain communication about the Buddha’s teaching has come to me that is logical and reasonable. There is a certain way to follow through the teaching that even appeals to a hard-headed, Brooklyn-born, half-Jewish, half-Italian gal like me. Now, I am a very practical person, a very practical person. So when I view the Buddha’s teachings, I want to know that they make sense to me. I want to know that they are reasonable. I, myself, would have difficulty following something that did not seem reasonable to me in some way.

Taking into account that sentient beings cannot actually gather all the necessary data by which to evaluate this logical Buddhist teaching, we have to rely to some degree – to a large degree actually – on the Buddha’s perception. For instance, all sentient beings do not have the capacity to actually evaluate samsara or the wheel of death and rebirth, conditioned life, realistically. In the same way, if we had no TV cameras and no satellite communication, none of our modern tools, we wouldn’t know for sure, let’s say, that there are people in China. We could hear about it. We could even hear Chinese people in America tell us that it exists, but for ourselves, unless we had gone there, we would never know. Not really, not for sure. But today we have TV and news reporters and newspaper pictures and satellites that broadcast information, and we can see China with our own eyes, even though it is on the other side of the world. So in a way, the Buddha acts like that for us.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved

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The following video was filmed live at Kunzang Palyul Choling in Maryland. Khenpo Tenzin Norgay offers advice on the challenges of practicing Dharma during the degenerating times:

An excerpt from a teaching called “The Importance of Shakyamuni”

Without the teachings of Lord Buddha, there would be no perfect path by which to achieve supreme enlightenment. There have been and still are paths on this planet by which one can move forward spiritually. There are many ways in which one can accumulate merit. There are many ways in which it is possible to make some kind of spiritual progress. But the kind of spiritual progress that produces supreme enlightenment is quite different.

Lord Buddha said that all beings are suffering, and he didn’t say that to be negative. He said that because he looked around and saw that even those beings that were most happy, most beautiful, and most productive would still get old, sicken, and ultimately die. Each being of the six realms of cyclic existence ultimately gets old, gets sick, and dies.

That is why Lord Buddha said that there is no comfort and no happiness in cyclic existence. He wasn’t denying the possibility of achieving some sort of momentary happiness or fleeting joy. Everyone knows we feel really good when we can eat a piece of chocolate cake or watch our favorite TV program or go swimming or have some friendly conversation or something like that. But the kind of joy that Buddha wished for all sentient beings was long lasting, one that ultimately did not betray us. The kind of joy that is available in cyclic existence has a beginning and therefore an end.

When Lord Buddha saw that, he wished in his great kindness and great compassion to present a way by which we could overcome cyclic existence, not merely make progress. That really is the difference between the teachings of Lord Buddha and other spiritual teachings. The teachings of Lord Buddha have one goal and one goal only: supreme realization – ultimate liberation from samsaric existence and the final overcoming of the mind of duality that produces the conditions of samsara. This is the path that Lord Buddha created.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved