Astrology for 12/24/2015

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12/24/2015 Thursday by Norma

Happiness appears in the form of small gestures, polite interactions and generosity. Something that seemed moribund is coming back to life as a result of your careful attention. Hopeless causes are once again viable options, and a casual conversation triggers new thinking that’s exciting. Pay special attention to your partner today; this person has been providing the energy that keeps things moving. Dan Zadra said, “We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.” Kind words and actions make for a wonderful day, so zip around opening doors for people and treating everyone well. Love is in the air!

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

Guru Devotion – From a Consultation with Jetsunma

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HHPR and JAL

The following transcript was found while cleaning under an altar in Jetsunma’s house. Jetsunma has agreed to allow the teaching to be shared so others may benefit:

Teaching – September 8th in the early 2000’s

Question: Is the reason that the Vajrayana works so well… in following the Guru’s instruction without opinion (In regards to breaking down conceptualization allowing the Wisdom mind to BE – i.e., responding to Jetsunma’s previous instructions (teaching on the microcosm and the macrocosm being the same, inner and outer being the same, no distinction)

Jetsunma (from taped teaching): …that helps you let the Wisdom mind de-obscure or open up and be and assert itself in a way if you don’t make those discriminations. Then the Wisdom Mind begins to assert itself and you practice that by letting the Wisdom Mind, in the form of your teacher, assert itself in your life. It’s just the perfect practice, really because it’s so nuts and bolts you won’t long get away with faking it. It will come up one way or the other so to practice closely with your Guru like that is very, very important, even if you only get to do it a couple of times a month when your Guru tells you, look, I see what your mind is doing. Here’s what it is. Take advantage of this information. Practice like that. Do exactly what I say. You won’t get that any place else. That’s the value of being close to your teacher. See what I’m saying?

Student: I clearly hear what you are saying. Every time I hear you say something like that I feel so bad about how I haven’t.

Jetsunma: Well, you can go to guilt but now listen. You can go to guilt but I have found that just ends up with useless emotion that just shakes you up and gets you totally off point. Guilt is a pretty useless and time consuming emotion. You know. It’s just very rarely useful. Once in a while when you have to really take a look at yourself. But these times are for something different, instead of going to guilt you just have to follow it like a river. Just like, oh my teacher just put me in the water, pushing me. Now I’m going to swim in just that direction exactly. See what I’m saying? That’s exactly what you should do. It’s so much more fruitful. Don’t you see the logic of that?

Student: Absolutely.

Jetsunma: If you want to be guilty, do it another time.

Student: Even if the instruction was given a while back, you can start now?

Jetsunma: Exactly, exactly. The thing is not to make a big deal of that. It’s like if the teacher pushes you off, in that moment, in that space, and you are there, swim exactly the direction he/she pushes you. Just go exactly that way. You won’t get there anywhere else—it’s priceless in samsara—other than from your own Root Guru. Trust me.

Student: Who else could we trust?

Jetsunma: Right, of course. So if you want to practice being open-hearted and free of contrivance and letting that Wisdom flow and the Bodhicitta flow in your life, that is the moment to practice it. Right then. Do it like that with the Guru Yoga.

Astrology for 12/23/2015

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12/23/2015 Wednesday by Norma

Back and forth communication is everywhere: talk, letters and the news are all highlighted. Feel like plugging your ears? So does everybody! Do not give credence to most of what you hear today, the situation is very fluid and will change tomorrow. Negative prognostications are alarming but irrelevant. A Swedish proverb says, “Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.” Pay attention to a favorable development that is growing in the background. Something is slowly coming into being that is a satisfying success. This is the day to sponsor a charity, drop a donation into the box or extend a hand to one in need. An offering today comes back in myriad ways in the future, so loosen your purse strings and give!

the astrology post affects everyone differently, based on individual horoscopes. Look to see where this message impacts your life!

To Be a Practitioner

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An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series

If you realize that all sentient beings are suffering, and are then motivated to examine the other side of that law – that enlightenment is the cessation of suffering – and therefore commit yourself to attaining enlightenment in order to end the suffering of yourself and others, then you are a practitioner. Whether you call yourself a Buddhist or not, you are a practitioner.

If you realize the belief in self and in the ego configurations that surround self – the rigidity, the need for survival, the hardening of the mind – are the causes of suffering, and begin to eliminate them by living a compassionate life, purifying your clinging to ego, then whether you call yourself a Buddhist or not, you are a practitioner of the highest caliber.

As a practitioner, you should consider these things: the idea of compassion, of living selflessly, of living an extraordinary life solely to benefit beings, to end their suffering, to bring about a situation in which they can create the cause of happiness rather than the cause of non-virtue. If you can live an extraordinary life, not only are you purifying your mind – because that is the antidote for self-absorption, and self-absorption is the cause of suffering – but you are also a contributor to a very precious idea: the idea of a world, of all worlds, free of pain.

These things you can consider. You can consider them in accordance with Buddhist teaching, or you can consider them separate from Buddhist teaching, even though they are not. You can consider them from whatever angle you wish. But I hope from my heart that whoever you are, and whatever your game plan is, that you will consider these things to the extent that your mind will be softened, and that you can adopt the two ideas that are foundational in the Buddha’s path: renunciation and compassion.

Astrology for 12/22/2015

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12/22/2015 Tuesday by Norma

Negotiation is highlighted today and authority figures get serious. Tell people exactly what you will and will not do, sign on the dotted line and seal the deal. A generous spirit leads to a favorable outcome that satisfies everyone. Employees are incredibly good-natured and hard working, give yours a bonus if you haven’t already! Work is fun and inspiring today. Vivekananda said, “Believe in this world-that there is meaning behind everything.” This is a great day to go shopping, to make financial deals and to engage in small, satisfying tasks. The tidier you are the happier you are today, so clean up! Avoid debates with hotheads, smile and agree with every assertion. You’ll be glad you did later.

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

Why We Die

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An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series

Did you ever watch yourself when you were young? Did you see what you did? Do you watch young people now? Look at the teenagers you know. They are invariably right. They know everything. I knew everything at that age, too, so I understand. They know beyond everything. If there is more than everything, they know it. They have all the answers.

We are also like that. We are locked within a time-and-space grid. When we drop something, it falls, immediately. What makes it so immediate? If it were to hang in the air for ten years, then fall, invariably we would convince ourselves it’s never going to fall. But since it falls immediately, since when we stick our hands in the fire, it hurts immediately, we believe that. Old age, sickness and death we don’t believe. We sort of get it, but it’s in the back of our minds somewhere.

Why is it we don’t fully believe in cause and effect, even though we take into account the passage of time? It’s because we are trying to be happy, so we convince ourselves that cause and effect is not absolute. Why is that? How is it that we can understand that we create the causes of suffering in our mind, and yet still convince ourselves it will not bear the fruit of suffering? It’s because karma appears to ripen in different ways. Karma can ripen immediately. If I drop something and it falls, this is karma ripening. I dropped it; it fell. Karma can also ripen in a different way.

Because of your belief that self-nature is inherently real, you have created the delusion of a self. Self has a beginning and it has an end, and that is the cause for death. The cause for death is the belief in self-nature as being real; that is why people die. Yet you will convince yourself it is okay to believe in self-nature, that there is no problem as long as you can find a way to make self happy. You think it’s going to be okay. But you are still going to die. We are doing this to ourselves, and we don’t even realize it. The self is a finite thing. It had a beginning, a time when it was conceived. There was a time when the thought of self-nature as being inherently real first manifested. Since that is so, then it also must end. If there is a beginning, there is an end.

In the same way, we are constantly engaged in creating things that are the karmic causes of our own suffering, but we don’t make a connection. The reason we don’t make a connection is due to the other kind of karmic ripening, the one that you don’t see in this life. The karma that ripens after a long time, an intermediate time, or even a short time, are karmic ripenings that you actually do not see in this lifetime.

Here then is a problem. Here is one of the reasons why it becomes very difficult to realize the unchangeable truth that all sentient beings wish to be happy, and yet not realizing how to create the causes of happiness, create instead the causes of suffering.

Many of the things that we have suffered in this lifetime seem to have been put upon us in an innocent way. We were innocent. Why is someone born with a cleft palate? Why are some of us born with a crippling condition, some handicap? Why do some of us become ill or die when we have tried to live a good life, when we have done everything we can to be kind to other human beings and have never killed anyone? It is because many of the causes that we see in this lifetime have come from a time before.

© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Astrology for 12/21/2015

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12/21/2015 Monday by Norma

An overload overhangs the day: too much to do creates a jumpy energy and the potential for misunderstanding. A seemingly rude or brusque person is tired and under pressure so be kind to others, and if you get snappish relax and take a break. Bob Talbert said, “Time neither subtracts nor divides, but adds at such a pace it seems like multiplication.” A loss may occur, but you can have it back with an adjustment. Visualization, music and water sports are highlighted as are all forms of creativity. Sing away your troubles, hum everywhere you go and tell people you like them.

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

Courage

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Make the point and let it roar

Soaring through the moment

Doing what was hard before

You don’t have to worry

Now you’re holding all the cards

Time and space are yours now

Stand up tall and give your heart

I’ll be here beside you

Doing all I can for you

Loving from inside you

You and I can see it through

You don’t have to worry

Now you’re holding all the cards

Time and space are yours now

Stand up tall and give your heart

 

Strike out from this moment

With the power in your hand

Filled with strength of purpose

Caring for your fellow man

Bright and shiny moment

When you finally decide

To make this life worth living

Love and strength you can provide

Wake up bright and happy

Change a life to gorgeous play

Ripe fruit of compassion

Offered in a sweet display

You don’t have to worry

Now you’re holding all the cards

Time and space are yours now

Stand up tall and give your heart

© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, April 20, 1992

Astrology for 12/20/2015

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12/20/2015 Sunday by Norma

An external irritation appears early in the day. Ask “What’s the problem?” and a solution comes that improves relationships all around. This is a good day for long distance travel, study and spiritual activity. Someone is planning a treat for you and it’s fun to know that you are so highly regarded. Be careful to avoid judgmental comments that lead to disturbed feelings. Move away if you are on the receiving end-no good comes from this. Leonard Levinson said, “He who says what he likes, hears what he does not like.” Food is the best solution for upset feelings. Call your mother, take a bath, eat something and everything goes well.

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

Many are More Precious than One

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A Teaching from Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

Three thousand years ago Lord Buddha introduced the idea of great compassion to an unknowing world. After his enlightenment he was asked to teach others the means to supreme realization. Although he was tempted to simply leave — knowing that almost no one would be interested in his teachings, and of those who were, few would try to follow them and fewer still would succeed — he nonetheless replied, “For those few, I will remain.”

Buddha is the exceptional teacher who teaches the development of great and selfless compassion as part of the technology of the path to enlightenment. But to develop such great love, it is first necessary to familiarize oneself with the nature of suffering and especially with its causes. Amidst the array of spiritual teachings, this perspective is unique because most people do not understand the reasons for suffering or how suffering appears in the world.

The Buddha taught us that human happiness through ownership, eating, drinking, gaining love, stature, approval, or even the happiness of engaging in pleasurable activities is at best temporary. These experiences do not prevent suffering because between these happy times we can experience times of distress.

Nor do happy times solve questions concerning the nature of suffering and why it arises. The Buddha taught that the happiness of enlightenment is not composed of impermanent things but occurs when one cuts out the sources of all unhappiness. Through understanding and meditation, one liberates the mind into true awareness, a state free of conditions and defilements. This pure awareness is a lasting state.

Ultimately, the attitude of care-taking or being responsible for the wellbeing of others, of caring for planet earth, its inhabitants and all the 3,000 myriads of universes described in Buddhist cosmology  is the true cause for ultimate and permanent happiness. Being responsible for all sentient beings is a spiritual technology the Buddha taught to be the supreme antidote to selfishness, compulsive desire, self absorption and all other symptoms of the ego.

When we remain selfish and neurotically fixated in the ego, we remain deeply unhappy. When we are in a state of profound generosity, having a relaxed mental attitude and pure motivation, we remain stable in a state of joy. Yet if we view caring for others only as a medicine, we may miss the beauty of it.

No sentient being is born with pure, unconditional, constant love. In the beginning, selflessness and generosity require discipline. Like all things, they must arise from a cause. One must break old habitual tendencies, and this requires discipline. Initially, one must understand the values of generosity and the pitfalls of selfishness. One cannot then rely on one’s feelings, because they are products of an ego distorted by the self-centered habits that produce unhappiness and disregard for others. It is necessary to understand the cause and effect relationship here.

Happiness does not just appear. Enlightenment does not just appear. Neither do unhappiness or suffering just appear. When one understands this apparently simple truth, it is possible to make generosity part of one’s activity in a true and lasting way, because one has a basis of understanding that will support and uphold the discipline necessary in the initial stages.

Ultimately, through persistence one can soar. There is a point at which a great leap takes place and one moves into an experience of effortlessness. This is because ultimately, in the pure state, compassion is part of one’s nature. We each, in fact, live in a world of our own making and have the choice of living selfishly, trying in a futile way to get happiness through gaining or having more phenomena (whether external or internal)  or we can live a life of generosity and responsibility, cognizant that there are many more sentient beings than just our selves.

Because their value is equal, many pieces of gold are worth more than a single coin. So it is with sentient beings. Many are more precious than one. Fortified with that awareness, one can live and act accordingly with simplicity, generosity and respect for life. The attitude of cherishing all sentient beings as though they were truly the same as you is a deeply moving and personal experience. It is a life changer. It is also the cause of happiness.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo

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