Astrology for 11/17/2016

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11/17/2016 Thursday by Norma

Food is your best friend and sentimental conversation with down home people brings happiness. Listen as tender issues are discussed: life, death, birth, marriage…the homely matters of life. Do not tell these stories in public, however, or you will undercut your professionalism. Know where you are and play the role appropriate to that environment. An inspiring moment changes things, heals issues and brings cheer to an old problem. Robert Heinlein said, “Don’t ever become a pessimist…a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun-and neither can stop the march of events.” This is a good day to try out new food, to spend time with old friends and to relax with a partner.

The astrology post affects everyone differently, depending on individual horoscopes. Look to see how this message reflects your life today!

Discovering Your Personal Ethics – An Exercise

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An excerpt from a teaching called Walking the Talk – Ethics by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

We are going to be talking about ethics, our lives and the structure of our lives.  I want you to think about this for a minute and really see if you can come up with a correct answer, not the one you think I would want to hear.  What I would like you to do is write down the three most important, and most visible ethical principles that you hold dear. Please spend some time thinking about this.  What are the things that you try not to let yourself get away with too much?  What is really precious to you?  Try to be as honest as possible.

Some of you may have ethics that sound like broad, sweeping statements about something.  And some of you may have ethics that are very simple and they apply directly to your life, and both of them are correct.  We’re not testing your ethics.  We are testing your ability to hold to them.  Whatever you say is OK.

Write down how you have upheld your ethics in the past week. Write down three answers – one for each of the three ethics. If it was not this week, because the circumstance did not come up, but was two weeks ago, you can write that down.

When you are finished write about sometime in the recent past when you did not hold fully to your ethics or perhaps even held to the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law.  In other words, when you fudged on your ethics.  Write down one for each of the three ethics you have chosen.  For those of us that say, “I always keep to these ethics and I never fudge,” my suggestion is to go back and re-examine, because I guarantee, particularly if your mind is that rigid, that you have held to the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law.  Just look for it. I can assure that it is in there.

Not everyone’s ethical system looks like the next person’s.  Of course, there are fundamental ethical structures that we all have to adopt or we cannot live together as a community, as a world or as a society.  Yet, many of us have different ethical slants, if you will.  Sometimes it depends on the circumstances of our lives.  The ethics that a person holds dear, if they were born poor in a third world country might be different than the ethics we were taught to respect here.  One is definitely not better than the other; they are simply different.  In asking these questions I am not asking you to feel that your ethics ought to be a certain way. Ethics teach us how to live in our world. So they may look different.  There are certain fundamental ethics that we should all adopt but what I am asking you to do is to look at your ethics, the ones that you hold dear, the ones that you really wholeheartedly agree with and hold precious.  So, they may not look like the next person and that is all right.  That does not matter for the purposes of this request.

Once you have written down some particular ethics that are precious and meaningful to you, ask yourself how you came to the conclusion that these are ethics that you want to hold?  What did you notice about your life? Be honest with yourself.  What made you arrive at these conclusions and when in your life did it happen?

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Astrology for 11/16/2016

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11/16/2016 Wednesday by Norma

A mechanical moment is inspiring early in the day. Space travel, computer techno-wizardry, film or audio-visual material, inventions of all sorts are fabulous. What’s also wonderful is the change of focus, the new direction that appears generating hope for the future and relief from current issues. Buckminster Fuller said, “No matter how overwhelming life seems to be, it is always because of one person that all the changes that matter in the world come about. Be that person.” Smart thinking is on the rise so put your brain to use! Think about how to solve today’s issues and forget the past for best results. A partnership that was never on stable footing is dissolving and turning into something different. Work is great and financial matters go well.

The astrology post affects everyone differently, depending on individual horoscopes. Look to see how this message reflects your life today!

Walking the Talk

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Kapala relic from Genyenma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Walk the Talk – Ethics by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, June 8, 1994

There is a direct relationship between a person’s ethics and their stage of development, spiritually.  If a person has a very loose, wobbly and insufficient ethical system, you can count on the fact that they have not trod very far on the spiritual path.  I think that is very clear.  However, before you make such a judgment it is not a good idea to get into the habit of evaluating people spiritually. Different people have different kinds of ethical responses according to their development.  What you want to see is whether the person walks their talk  – not necessarily what their ethical system is.

An extreme example might be if a person lived a very simple life and was very poor and the circumstances of their life were very cut and dried, such that when they milked the cow they got the milk.  There are many, many cases of great bodhisattvas that, for whatever reason not only manifest as the farmer that milks the cow, but sometimes manifest as the cow.  In any case, when you see someone who has developed enough spiritually to have a set of ethics that they simply do not transgress, then you know you have got something to work with there.  Or, at least the person has a set of ethics that they try hard not to transgress and they are mindful of that whole situation.  That is important. To the degree that a person keeps their commitments, to that degree, you are looking at spiritual advancement, spiritual development or distance on the path.

I gave you the ‘simple person’ extreme example. What about in the case of a lama? The one that comes to my mind immediately is the first Ahkön Lhamo.  Generally speaking, the stories specifically about her are about when she would be sitting in her cave doing whatever and people would come to her with some life threatening illness or something like that, and she would beat them with sticks to remove their obstacles.

Now, most people think, particularly if you are a nurse, that if a person comes to you with a life threatening disease, beating them may not be the best thing!  Did Ahkön Lhamo not hold to her ethics, whereas the simple person held to their ethics more strongly?  Well, of course not.  In the case of Ahkön Lhamo, she was removing obstacles to their lives and that was her method.  That was simply her method so that in the case of a very advanced bodhisattva or lama, you cannot look at the ethical system – you cannot even understand it, really.  They will hold to a different view.  It is as though you were looking at the world from a street corner – from the world on a street corner, you can see the street and you can see stoplights and you can see the cars coming from different directions.  You can see the buildings going up.  But the Lama might be looking from the top of the building, or maybe even up in a helicopter somewhere, looking down, and the lay of the land is quite different.  Where the person on the street may think that the big thing they have to do right then is to buy a loaf of bread on the way home, the one who is looking from the helicopter may be seeing that the big thing they have to do right then is stop a tragedy that is about to happen three blocks away and they might forget the bread.

It is a question not necessarily about determining what the ethics are or making a judgment according to that, but rather looking and seeing that whoever you are looking at is able to walk their talk, is actually able to live in such a way as to obviously display that they have a strong ethical system.  That is what you want to look at.  And in the case of sentient beings, there is often a very huge distance between our ethical systems that we have through even our own simple logic to understand and our performing of the ethics and holding and sticking to them.

For those of us that feel that we have strong ethics and feel that we always hold to them, then I have to say, unless you are a living Buddha, either you are lying to yourself, or you are not deep enough and not sufficient in your search of your own mind, which you should know better than a book by now.  I would say to you that you have not searched your mind and your heart, that you have not really observed yourself truly.  I would say that you are fundamentally being dishonest and you may not know it.  It is not possible for sentient beings to keep closely and truly their commitments easily. It is not that it cannot be done, but it is not easily done.  Generally when people do, they hold the commitment up like a shining bauble and they find circumstances that match up easily with their commitment and they are able to fulfill them and say, “See, I’ve done this” and they wear it a bit like jewelry or some sort of gaudy bauble.  In that case, you would say that that person is maybe, in a few cases, holding up the letter of the law about their ethical equation, but not the spirit of the law. The spirit of the law is much deeper than that.  The spirit of the law requires you not only to be happy when your life situations easily match up with your ethics, but rather in every circumstance.  When you practice your ethics deeply you look for a way to display your ethics in every circumstance. When that begins to happen, you are also going to look at your ethics and think they are not big enough, because you want to live a bigger life than that and you will be hungrier as you develop; hungry to live a bigger, broader spectrum of spiritual development.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Astrology for 11/15/2016

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11/15/2016 Tuesday by Norma

Talk! You can’t stop and neither can anyone else. The news is magnetizing and everyone has an opinion, both pro and con. Avoid negative prognostications and slip away from endless downbeat projections. Instead, put on your rational thinking cap and reason things out. Something that sounds logical is, in fact, logical, go with it. An Asian proverb says, “Peace is possible only when reason rules.” If you feel overwhelmed, go for a walk, a run or a drive. Manual activity is helpful today: build something, play cards, type, knit! As the day progresses a conversation with a friendly, diplomatic person sets things straight and happiness prevails.

The astrology post affects everyone differently, based on individual horoscopes. Look to see how this message reflects your life today!

A Courageous Life

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An excerpt from a teaching called Dharma and the Western Mind by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

I think a difficulty that Westerners have is so much input and so many different kinds of teachings.  Do you remember the first time you ever heard anything metaphysical? I don’t care if it was about flying saucers or about ghosts or whether it was the first time you picked up the Ouija board or did something weird like that. The first time you did anything that was metaphysical, you thought, “Hey I am on to something, this is it” and you got really excited and that excitement was a real joy to you. But haven’t you noticed that as you continued to go on this path in this direction you became less and less excited each time and finally you became a little cynical, and then suddenly you are just cool, “I’ve heard this before.”  When you start getting to the point where you say I am cool and I have heard this before, you are dead.  That is real cool.  That is about as cool as you can get.  But the problem is that most Americans are like that.

I find that when I teach new students the first thing that I have to do is a little razzle dazzle. Why? To get their attention.  We have heard so much stuff and everybody has got a sales pitch.  Of all the nations on earth this has got to be the nation with the most salespeople.  Of all the nations this has got to be the only place where everything gets sold, no matter what and you get to pick and choose no matter what and there are four different varieties.  It is almost a sickness.

It is a problem because now we are presenting Dharma, which is an ancient path, it is a path that describes supreme enlightenment, it is a path, which lays out the technology of supreme enlightenment, and it does it very well.  It does it consistently, and it does it purely.  It has done it in the same way for such a very long time and it has had proven results.

We even have stories of people who have practiced Dharma who have achieved what is called the rainbow body and have incredible miraculous signs at the time of their death. We think,  “Make me a believer, I dare you.”  We think like that and we act like that and we hope that someone will convince us.

I have found that another problem with Westerners is that we become a little hard.  I love you desperately, this is not an insult but we are a little cynical, a little hard to please. We have to have a certain percentage of entertainment value while we are being taught the Dharma.  I understand that but it’s a hard row to hoe.

Finally when we get this fire, this incredible love, this feeling that we only want to live this courageous life in order to benefit beings then we are okay but it is hard to get our attention and so this is another thing that I wish you would examine: how much you have been exposed to many different kinds of spiritual thought, and how many things you have been excited about that if you went back and examined, you would find were a puff-ball.  How many different systems have you thought, “Wow, this is exciting, this sounds right” and then you go back to it and you ask and find, “Who is it invented by, nobody; nobody that knows anything.” And nobody that got anywhere, anyway. Where did it come from, you can’t trace it back, you can’t figure it out.  Did it come from the mind of supreme enlightenment, maybe not?  If you go back and see the things that you got excited about you may find that from time to time you have been a little duped.

Mom told us that we would be happy if we did this and this and this.  The old idea about being rich, marrying a doctor, having children and dressing them nicely and wearing Polo shirts and Carter’s underwear; if you get all these things right then we will be happy.  We have become disappointed because we did everything correctly.  We got educated and we got a little prosperous. We have a Crock Pot; there is a chicken in it that, even as we speak, is overcooked.  We did all of these things and in mid-life we have a crisis.  It is so normal in our society that we write books about it.  The ‘Mid-Life’ crisis, the one you are bound to get to. It is weird if you think about it.   We tried all these things and we are not happy any more and we never were happy and it didn’t work. Basically what has happened is that we have become cynical and we are afraid to try.  We are one culture that has a particular problem: we are not believers actually, we are afraid to try. We say, “I have heard this and I have tried this.  I am not going to do anything hard.  I am going to get by and then I am going to die and that is how I am going to work this thing out.”

I find that Westerners have a tremendously hard time with the idea of making a real commitment with their lives, saying “Okay I get it.” I see that everybody is suffering, I see that there must be an end to suffering, I see that desire may be the cause of suffering, I see all of these things and I now understand the nature of emptiness.  Maybe it isn’t so dark and bleak and horrible.  Finally I can see where practicing Dharma would be right, I can see where this is what you should do with your life.”  But that moment at which you say, “Let this life only be a vehicle in order to practice Dharma, let that be the value of this life, let that be what I do” and be really courageous about it; that is hard for us.  We have a hard time. Understanding that the real value of this precious human rebirth is that we can accomplish a path to supreme enlightenment is a little difficult for us to get inspired about in that way.

If we could devise a way to help us to be less in love with what we should collect in our society, and how to be prosperous and have meaning in a material society, if we could become less involved with that idea and more involved with understanding the really important factor – the way in which we cultivate our minds and practice a proper technology to accomplish a pure and awakened mind state.  The point is to be of benefit to beings, to be awake as the Buddha was awake so we can bring about the end of suffering for ourselves and for all sentient beings.  The moment that which we discover this and it becomes meaningful to us we also need to divine a way to accomplish it.

©Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Astrology for 11/14/2016

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11/14/2016 Monday by Norma

Two interpretations are possible in every instance today, give each respectful consideration and things go well. Hold to one opinion, refuse to give credence to others, and watch your base disappear. Sideline the notion that you are right and others are wrong, and work to build consensus. Epictetus said, “Quietly accept events as they occur.” Full moon craziness is on display early in the day but as time passes mental acuity is highlighted. Use your best thinking to plan ahead, to determine what comes next, to return to handling your life. Associations that take you in an organized, predictable direction are favored over those that send you down a less clear path. Stay in well lit places and avoid the dark: no climbing into deserted mine shafts or consorting with questionable characters today!

The astrology post affects everyone differently, depending on individual horoscopes. Look to see how this message reflects your life today!

Emptiness = No thingness

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An excerpt from a teaching called Dharma and the Western Mind by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

I like Dharma and I have a Western mind. I feel that this is something that I need to talk about a great deal.  I also feel that there have been certain challenges that I have become aware of in speaking to Westerners, and that these things need to be addressed, brought out in the open where we can examine them, see what they mean and how they affect us.  In doing so we will derive some useful answers that will help us to remain firm in our practice and keep us on the path of Dharma.

There are certain ideas and kinds of conceptualization that are natural for each culture.  Each culture formulates its own specific ideas about reaching conclusions, and accepting ideas and conceptualizations as their own.  We reach our own conclusions about norms and what is right, what is normal and what is appropriate. When you bring a system or a teaching to a culture, it is necessary to address the peculiar way in which that culture listens.  In order to do that you have to understand the way in which that culture hears.

When I first began to teach Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist ideas, I found that there was a tendency for Westerners to hear certain ideas in a particular way otherwise it turned them off. However, if these Westerners were given the idea in a different way it would be all right and appropriate.  They would understand it and it would not be distasteful to them.  I found that it was a particular challenge to speak to Westerners in this way. I would like to express some of what I learned about that to you.

When you speak to a Westerner about the Primordial Wisdom State it must be done very carefully.  I discovered that trying to convey to Westerners the idea of self-nature as being inherently empty is a very difficult thing for Westerners to deal with.  We hear emptiness and we think about something that we don’t like.  We hear “empty” and we think empty pocketbook, empty stomach, empty, dark, cold, lonely, and no good.  That wasn’t the emptiness that Lord Buddha was talking about.  That was not the idea to be conveyed.  When we think of emptiness we think of the opposite of fullness and that is not what Lord Buddha is talking about.  When we think of emptiness we think of something that is bereft of any comfort, of any meaning, of any glory and of anything beautiful. We are an emotional people and we like our ‘glory’ and our ‘beautiful’ and all that stuff, so we think that emptiness is not good.

Actually when the Buddha spoke of emptiness, he spoke in such a way that he was delivering his message from a state that does not distinguish between emptiness and fullness; a state that actually understands emptiness and fullness to be the same taste, the same nature. When we speak of emptiness we actually don’t speak of emptiness as nothing and cold but rather we speak of “no thingness.” In this case nothing doesn’t mean gone, it doesn’t mean black, it doesn’t mean terrible, it means no thing, just what it is supposed to mean.

The Buddha spoke of a state that was actually free of conceptualization.  For the most part all that we perceive, everything that we have ever known in fact, is conceptualization. We know nothing then of that underlying nature which is empty of that conceptualization.  We think that to not have that conceptualization is simply not to have – that there is an absence rather than a fullness.  This is very difficult for us.

One of the reasons that it is so difficult is first of all we have not become awake to the Primordial Wisdom State and we have never had a taste of it.  And that taste is important; it is important to sense the reality of it.  Also, we are a materialistic society.  We are a society that is based on ‘thingness’ and all of the things that become important to us, all of our goals, are so much a part of our pattern of thought.  There is a tendency to wrap our minds around ‘thingness,’ it is all that we know, all that we are aware of.

© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Astrology for 11/13/2016

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11/13/2016 Sunday by Norma

It is possible to buy happiness today, so shell out for something you love! You will congratulate yourself in the future for your choice. Emotional stability is the gift of the day. Look at pleasant sights, spend time with people you enjoy and take the easy option if you have a choice. (“Shall I climb Mt. Everest or sit here and enjoy the scenery?”) Group activity is energizing and conversation is spirited; offer others your best wisdom and accept theirs. Taro Gold said, “Always say what must be said.” This is a nice day to form or solidify a partnership, to treat others with diplomatic courtesy and to build bridges. Consider your long term objectives and act accordingly. Ignore passing impulses that don’t advance your goals. You’ll thank yourself later.

The astrology post affects everyone differently, based on individual horoscopes. Look to see how this message reflects your life today!

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