Tibetan Buddhist Altar

Caring for the Precious Sangha

January 28, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

As a student, one of your responsibilities is to uphold and protect the Sangha, one of the Three Precious Jewels. The way that works is this. The Sangha is one body. If one part of the human body goes sour, if there is some negative consciousness rattling around somewhere – and nowadays even doctors know that there is some connection – the body will develop a cancer. If even one part of it has become disorganized, then the whole body becomes sickened. So the Sangha’s responsibility to one another is virtuous conduct.

By virtuous conduct I mean that in the Sangha there should never, ever be gossip and slander. NEVER! I cannot say this strongly enough. If there will ever be a time when the Buddha’s teachings are destroyed, it will be from the inside because there is nothing on this earth, other than Buddhist practitioners, that have that power. If the Buddha’s teachings and their purity are ever destroyed, it will be by Dharma practitioners committing non-virtuous acts. Gossip and slander that are harmful and disruptive to the Dharma community is a heinous crime because the Sangha is like a beautiful, virtuous, supreme and exalted body; not an ordinary body, but a body that leads to liberation, a body that walks to liberation, a body whose sole purpose is to bring about the liberation of all sentient beings. This is purity itself. This is truth itself. If instead of upholding that truth by keeping samaya with the Lama, the Sangha instead engages in this kind of non-virtuous conduct, this cancer is created. This is such a heinous crime because of what is lost. Where else in samsara can we find such great benefit as from the Sangha or spiritual community? Where else will such help and support come than from the Lama’s extended body, this pure activity in the world? So because something very pure and precious has been harmed, the weight of the crime is very great.

I particularly have a strong dislike for gossip and slander. I have seen what kind of harm it can do in religious communities. Even in the ordinary context in this day and age, gossip and slander have gotten to be so stylish and so outrageously prevalent and hip that we don’t even seem to mind closing down our government so that we can do it. We don’t seem to mind paying any price, including completely disrupting the responsibility between people in office and the people they serve. Not to say that any of these things that are said aren’t right, but this kind of gossip has become such a thing, such a fad. In other religious communities as well as Buddhist communities, it is a general religious phenomena. But there is always gossip and slander. It seems to be that if people think a teacher is pure, other people have to knock that teacher down. Or if people think a particular faith is pure, other people have to gossip about it. Why does it have to be that way?

As far as I am concerned, if you bring gossip and slander into this community, which is the Lama’s body, being the Lama here, I take it very personally. If you bring gossip or slander into this community, you are wrong, wrong because you brought it. Even if the story you are telling is right, you are wrong because what we are doing here by creating gossip and slander, is to harm the body of the Sangha, and there is a breakage of samaya. We have not upheld the three objects of refuge.

Now, of course, if there is ever a problem with misconduct on the part of any religious leader, anything like that, we hope that those who are engaged in this conduct will turn to their teachers and receive spiritual guidance. But the antidote to that is support and compassion. The antidote to that is not the hatred, disease and sickness of gossip and slander. That only harms the body and creates a cancer in the Dharma community. So part of the samaya between students and teachers – and I will tell you that if I could legislate that it would be 100 times as strong here – for any of you who are truly committed to being my students, you must cut out gossip and slander from your life immediately, whatever it takes. Purify that non-virtue. Stop now. You help no one and you harm yourself. It brings nothing but unhappiness.

Astrology for 1/28/2017

January 28, 2017 by Norma

1/28/2017 Friday by Norma

A feisty, go get’em attitude urges you to get moving, be active and express yourself! Competition is in the mix, replacing the grin-and-bear-it mode of the recent past. En garde! It’s time to get out there and show the folks what you can do, strut your stuff and look good. All sports are highlighted, debates are great and forward motion goes well. This is the day to launch your satellite, to race your sports car and to take action. “Heinrich Boll said, Something must happen!” Activity is the antidote to everything that ails you nowadays. Partnership is great, friends are wonderful and it’s a whole new world.

Beginning to Look Deeper

January 27, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Entering the Path”

What I would like to talk a little bit about is how it is when one first comes to the path. Many of you new students, as well as those of you who are not new students, find that eventually things come full cycle. And when you meet with certain problems on coming to the path, it’s likely that you don’t completely solve them. When we first come to the path we’re generally not equipped to make the great gains that we need to in order to solve most problems, and we come to another cycle of meeting with a certain kind of problem. So let’s talk about that just briefly.

As a Dharma practitioner, or as a beginning Dharma practitioner, or perhaps as a practitioner who is simply testing the waters and hasn’t committed yet to practicing Dharma, it is no longer suitable, now that you have begun to study, to think of things in a superficial way. The way that we used to think of our lives, the way that we used to try to understand the events in our lives, was on a very superficial level. We did not look for depth. We did not understand. Our minds were filled with ignorance, and we simply tried to determine the events of our lives with a value system that could not possibly understand what was happening because we were looking only at the surface.

For instance, if something happened to us in our lives and it was uncomfortable or caused us suffering, we would simply look at that as being an external phenomenon that was happening to us. We did not try to understand the deeper ramifications of what was actually occurring. Now we’re way past that, or at least we should be past that, and it is no longer suitable to take phenomena and events within our lives at face value. It is time now to plumb the depths of our practice in order to understand more deeply what is actually occurring.

According to the Buddha’s teaching, all things are a display of the primordial nature. It is the lack of understanding of the primordial nature that makes the display unclear and deluded. It is the lack of the awareness of the primordial wisdom nature and the belief in duality instead that absolutely ensures that we are going to see events happening to us as though projected from the external, and it’s going to be very difficult for us to understand. Now, as practitioners we begin to understand in a different way.

Astrology for 1/27/2017

January 27, 2017 by Norma

1/27/2017 Friday by Norma

Friends and groups are fun, fun, fun! “The more the merrier,” is the correct phrase for today. Going to the post office? Take your four best buddies! Everything goes better with a group. A final push on a sensitive matter comes and tomorrow everything changes. Water is highlighted, things are in flux, and medical treatments turn out differently than advertised so be careful. Pay attention to the here and now rather than to the past. Ludwig Wittgenstein said, “He who lives in the present lives in eternity.” What’s good today? A surprising sense of freedom and excitement, and renewed opportunities.

Respecting the Three Jewels

January 26, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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

When we examine the student’s responsibility in the teacher/student relationship, we have to think like this: First of all, according to the teaching, the lama, as the spiritual teacher or spiritual master, is the condensed essence of the external and most familiar objects of refuge–the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. So, regarding the student’s samaya or commitment to the teacher, there are three aspects of commitment.

As the lama is the condensed essence of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, the first commitment is to honor and uphold the Buddha’s teachings. That is to say that if we are practicing the Buddhadharma, we should never disrespect the Buddhist prayers and the Buddhist text. We love and respect them as the Buddha’s own speech, the Buddha’s own speech emanation. We should never throw them around or put them under our seats or step on them or treat them as though they were any like other object in samsara, like a rag or something. We should never treat any objects that are representative of the objects of refuge like that, such as statues, Dharma texts, and images of the Buddhas.

It’s not that Buddhists have a superficial, external, worship of images. It is not like that. This rule or practice is meant to develop discrimination in the student’s mind so that the student can discriminate between what is precious and extraordinary and what is ordinary. Ordinary things are things that arise in samsara and result in samsara, even things that we need, like enough water to live on. Water is in the world, you can get it from the world and it results in the satisfaction of worldly thirst. Water is not the same as Dharma. Dharma arises from the mind of enlightenment, results in enlightenment and is not ordinary. Water will support my life temporarily, so it is impermanent. If I drink a glass of water and then don’t drink any more, I will last four or five days. But even though it may be necessary for me to drink that water in order to stay alive long enough to read the Buddha’s teaching, I won’t forget the teaching because it is extraordinary and does not arise from samsara.

This commitment not only supports my life temporarily and in this moment, but it also provides a path or a method by which I can accomplish Dharma, by which I can enter into the door of liberation and be free. This is a miracle. This is a treasure that doesn’t only last one life or one moment or four days. Life after life after life this treasure lasts,. So these things are held up as extraordinary. Part of the student’s commitment to the student/teacher relationship is to honor this external object of refuge–the Buddha image, to honor the Buddha’s presence in the world, to propagate the teaching, to hold it up and protect it.

Astrology for 1/26/2017

January 26, 2017 by Norma

1/26/2017 Thursday by Norma

A surprise comes early in the day, and something that seemed solid is toppled. A fence, your favorite tree? Fear not- something better replaces what came down. This is a terrible time to “express yourself” to someone, to recount your most tragic feeling of victimization or to declare your secret love. Ridicule or derision is possible. Oscar Wilde’s cynical statement, “One must have a heart of stone to read of the death of Little Nell without laughing,” sums up the mood. What’s good? Medical interventions are excellent, business prospers and a situation that seemed unmanageable is brought under control.

Supplication to Mandarava

January 25, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

From: The Lives and Liberation of Princess Mandarava

“Dissolving in the expanse of space

like a rainbow, without remains,

She departed to the

Akanishta Paradise of Pamavyuha.

She transformed into the embodiment

of the supreme consort,

The secret primordial wisdom dakini.

To the feet of Mandarava, I supplicate!

Together with nine hundred

pure awareness holder disciples,

After dissolving into a rainbow body,

she manifested herself once again

for the benefit of others.

Mandarava emanated unceasingly,

manifesting herself as a dakini to tame

the minds of beings in

every essential way.

To the feet of Mandarava I supplicate!”

— Guru Padmasambava

Astrology for 1/25/2017

January 25, 2017 by Norma

1/25/2017 Wednesday by Norma

Head back to your normal routine today for stability, and notice the inspired thinking that prevails as you come up with a new plan for action. This is a great day to make five, ten or twenty year plans for your future, and be sure to put safety and security first. If an emergency strikes, follow the rules for the situation immediately. A disappointment looms in the next day or so as a result of holding too strictly to your belief system. Flexibility is crucial. Change one part of your plan and success is possible, give nothing and disappointment ensues. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said, “The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.” What’s good? Friends, groups, conversations, and partnership.

This Very Moment

January 24, 2017 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

To begin to develop Aspirational Bodhicitta is to understand the faults of cyclic existence, to understand the cessation of cyclic existence, to understand something of the nature of awakening or at least to understand that that is the cessation of suffering; and then to begin to develop from these foundational thoughts a caring and concern for all parent sentient beings. Aspirational Bodhicitta can take the form of just thinking as you ordinarily think. In the same way that you think of what will I have for dinner tonight, or in the same way that you think of what you would like to wear, or the ordinary things that we think of that concern ourselves. in that same ordinary way, without any kind of high-falutin’ dogma, you can begin now to develop a sense of the need and plight of sentient beings. And you can begin to speak what is in your heart, because it is in there somewhere in the natural state—the hope that all sentient beings will be free of suffering.

Each of you has a seed potential of that hope. You could not approach a truly spiritual path; you could not approach the Buddha’s teaching. You would have no karma to hear anything of the Buddha’s teaching if you did not have the hope that all sentient beings would be free of suffering. Because in order to be involved in these auspicious conditions, in order to hear the Buddha’s teaching, in order to have the opportunity to practice and the inclination to do so, in order to even begin the idea of moving onto a path that leads to supreme enlightenment, you must have accumulated an enormous amount of virtuous karma in the past and to accumulate an enormous amount of virtuous karma, there had to be kindness. So you should not be afraid thinking that you have no compassion.

Some people tell me they have no compassion. That is completely erroneous. That is impossible. But you must begin to dust off that jewel. You must begin to consider these foundational teachings, and to begin in whatever way you are comfortable with, to amplify and systematically develop Bodhichitta, the Aspirational Bodhicitta. You can begin to make wishing prayers for other sentient beings. One of the reasons why we built the Stupa that we built outside was to have a place here in this area that would have the fortunate quality of being able to enhance our prayers. Because of the cosmology of the Stupa—the way in which it is built, the empowerment that goes into actually consecrating it, and the wonderful relics that are present in it—because of the blessings of the prayer, the blessings of the mantra, because of all of these things, the Stupa actually has the ability, with faith, to amplify our prayers. We are taught to circumambulate in a clockwise direction making wishing prayers for all sentient beings. You can begin to do that. You can begin to make wishing prayers on your own, at any time. You can just think wishing prayers as you walk about. You can begin right now to developAspirational Bodhicitta in the same way that you develop muscle. You have the muscle fiber. You only need to strengthen it through use. That discipline is essential.

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Bodhicitta”

Astrology for 1/24/2017

January 24, 2017 by Norma

1/24/2017 Tuesday by Norma

An irritation will pass quickly today provided you behave in a reasonable manner. Leaders are not at their best and are advised to remain in seclusion, considering their next move. Stridency combines with feelings of victimization to create a sense of dismay and sadness. The solution lies in group activity, in joining up with others who agree with you, and in a sense of camaraderie. Benjamin Disraeli said, “Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for truth.” What’s good today? Continuing your normal routine, engaging in business as usual, medical interventions, and a powerful sense of belonging with a group that shares your values.