Serious thought must be given to important matters today. These involve joint finances, taxes, expenditures and estate planning. Mortality is in the picture…how long does life last, and what arrangements need to be made for those who are to come? Something brings you down to reality! Decisions are good ones but they’re hard to make. People who chatter away are cut off promptly, so state your business and keep moving! Make it short and sweet. A communication may be hard to hear or understand. Be sure you have your facts straight. Elsewhere, a breezy, “What, me worry?” emotional attitude is out of touch with reality. If this is you, return to earth promptly! Lao Tsu said, “Saneness or sobriety is more basic than frivolity. Calmness or self-sufficiency is superior to being agitated.” Later in the day an inspiration strikes that works! Food and family are still wonderful.
The daily astrology post affects everyone. Because individual charts vary, the circumstances outlined in the post will affect people differently. Some will feel this energy in the personal arena, some in finances, some with children or family, some in work and so forth. There are many departments of life. Look to see where the dynamic affects you!
This is an excellent day for forward progress. Women are on your side and will give you all the support you need. Apply for a loan, pay off your debts; handle hidden matters. Make a will if you don’t have one. Listen to secret matters and be supportive. Oswald Spengler said, “The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious.” What you must not do today is speak openly to the general public of the private matters that consume you. Yet you must inform everyone you regard as an ally, they have a right to know your plans. An emotional flare-up is possible if someone learns they’re not in the loop, and it won’t end soon. (“What ELSE didn’t you tell me?”) Be aware of pride as an issue, yours and others. In a different vein, a burst of love is fun, emotional happiness characterizes the day and you’re still smiling at everyone.
The daily astrology post affects everyone. Because individual charts vary, the circumstances outlined in the post will affect people differently. Some will feel this energy in the personal arena, some in finances, some with children or family, some in work and so forth. There are many departments of life. Look to see where the dynamic affects you!
An early-day inspiration is exciting. Tell your closest friends what you think, the people on your wavelength. Agreements are made, and communication with others is powerful. Four planets in the sign Scorpio are working imperceptibly, making genuine progress. The image is of a clear glassy ocean teaming with large and small aquatic beings busily leading their lives just below the surface. You can’t see them, but they are there! Positive things are happening. The trick is keeping quiet about your progress while being diplomatic and gregarious. Not an easy task! Warren Buffett said, “You only have to do a very few things right in your life – so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.” Love is in the air, and life and death issues are playing out unobserved.
The daily astrology post affects everyone. Because individual charts vary, the circumstances outlined in the post will affect people differently. Some will feel this energy in the personal arena, some in finances, some with children or family, some in work and so forth. There are many departments of life. Look to see where the dynamic affects you!
People are still smiling their way to success and tossing in compliments as well. This is fun and somebody likes it! A powerful person is attracted to your cause. Someone with a great deal of energy and shine joins you. Make a place for this person promptly: don’t huddle with your inner circle and lose the newcomer! Edna St. Vincent Millay said, “So silent I when love was by, he turned and walked away. Now sorrow clings to my apron strings, I have so much to say.” Be inclusive, don’t be intimidated and you will keep the newcomer. An infectious sense of family is satisfying. Visit relatives, call your mom and spend time eating a large meal with loved ones. You can come up with a brilliant plan today that sends you in the right direction. Just don’t speak of it openly.
The daily astrology post affects everyone. Because individual charts vary, the circumstances outlined in the post will affect people differently. Some will feel this energy in the personal arena, some in finances, some with children or family, some in work and so forth. There are many departments of life. Look to see where the dynamic affects you!
A new month-long cycle begins today, and your game plan is in place. Diplomacy! You will smile your way to success! You (and everyone) plan to be so nice that everything will fall into place. Alas, others in the equation have a different agenda and they have problems to which you are oblivious. People smile back at you and they still must do their job. H.L. Mencken said, “It is hard to believe a man is telling you the truth when you know you would lie if you were in his place.” Do be nice, and be smart too. An important person is publicly inaccessible but privately available. If you remain aware of the position others are in, a whole world of frustration can be avoided. Food, family and home are great, and a long-term goal is in fact coming into view. Just don’t stop working on it.
The daily astrology post affects everyone. Because individual charts vary, the circumstances outlined in the post will affect people differently. Some will feel this energy in the personal arena, some in finances, some with children or family, some in work and so forth. There are many departments of life. Look to see where the dynamic affects you!
The following is respectfully quoted from “Reborn in the West” by Vicki Mackenzie:
Before receiving her bodhisattva vows she had told Penor Rinpoche of her own vow that she was teaching to her students: ‘I dedicate myself to the liberation and salvation of all sentient beings. I offer my body, speech and mind in order to accomplish the purpose of all sentient beings. I will return in whatever form necessary, under extraordinary circumstances, to end suffering. Let me born in times unpredictable, in places unknown, until all sentient beings are liberated from the cycle of death and rebirth.
Taking no thought for my comfort or safety, precious Buddha make me a pure and perfect instrument by which the end of suffering and death in all forms might be realized. Let me achieve perfect enlightenment for the sake of all beings. And then, by my hand and heart alone, may all beings achieve full enlightenment and perfect liberation.’
Penor Rinpoche had rocked to and fro in unbridled mirth, slapping his thigh in amusement. She had replicated, almost exactly the same prayers that Tibetan lamas spoke. It was another proof of her identity.
He handed her another certificate, authorizing her to teach. ‘This is important,’ he said. ‘People will say you haven’t been studying the dharma, that they have never heard of you. They will not understand. With this paper no one will doubt that you are capable of teaching the dharma.’
Penor Rinpoche went on to tell Jetsunma a little about her famous ‘predecessor’. The first Ahkön Lhamo was the direct student of Tertön Migyur Dorje, a famous revealer of secret teachings, he said. She was a great dakini and spent decades in retreat, only coming down from her cave to help her brother with his monastery. Otherwise people would go to her to receive healing and teaching.
I asked Jetsunma if she were curious to find out more about Ahkön Lhamo or had any memories of the yogini who had lived in Tibet in 1665 and had inspired a religious order that had survived to this present day.
‘I discovered she was pretty wild,’ she replied. ‘She stayed up in her cave and looked pretty wretched, with her hair sticking out all over the place,’ she said, picking up her own unruly locks. ‘She was a crazy yogini type. Some things never change! There was no water in her cave, of course, and she never bathed. Her clothes were rotting on her. But people said whenever they went to her cave it would smell like perfume. Penor Rinpoche told me that people would give her turquoise, gold and coral, but she would refuse it. She was probably holding out for gifts she could accept, like hair-driers! She was probably waiting for electricity to be put into her cave and she could have central heating!’ she joked.
‘As for any memories, I don’t like to make any fuss about the inner experience I have. I can tell you I have some awareness of it, but it’s pretty “Swiss cheesy”. I am curious. I want to go back to Tibet, to see the cave where she practiced. Gyaltrul Rinpoche, the reincarnation of Kunzang Sherab who is now in Oregon, said that when he went back to Tibet he remembered a lot. It’s as though the airways are clearer there.’
There is at least one concrete link between this latter-day bodhisattva, the girl from Brooklyn, and the seventeenth century Tibetan yogini who had helped found a Buddhist lineage. Ahkön Lhamo’s skull, or part of it, is still in existence. It bears an unmistakable hallmark of sanctity. On its top is etched the holy sanskrit syllable ‘Ah’.
The story goes like this. When the first Ahkön Lhamo passed away, they prepared a pyre to cremate her and duly put the body on it. When the last vestige of flesh was burnt away, the skull rose up in the air in front of hundreds of people and flew about a mile before landing at the Palyul monastery, at the foot of her brother Kunzang Sherab’s throne. This was considered the final ultimate display of Ahkön Lhamo’s power and spiritual accomplishments. The great dakini, who was already known for the many miracles she performed, had revealed her true greatness.
The skull became a most treasured relic and was used as a kapala, and instrument used in ritual ceremonies for holding nectar. It remained intact until in the mid-twentieth century the invading Chinese hacked to pieces everything of spiritual significance, including the precious kapala at the Palyul monastery. A lay person saw a piece of the skull among the rubble and, hiding it in his clothes, took it to safety. It was some years before Penor Rinpoche got word that at least part of the holy relic had survived.
The was a vast gap in time between 1660 and 1949, when the present Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo was born. I asked her the same question I had asked Tenzin Sherab. What lives did she think she had been living in between?
‘I think there were other incarnations, but as Penor Rinpoche told me, they don’t keep track of women. It wasn’t because they were prejudiced against women’s wisdom. In fact, dakinis are the primordial wisdom beings and are held in very high regard. Generally, though, dakinis were not the lineage holders. They spent their lives in solitude, doing spiritual practices. Penor Rinpoche says, and I feel, that there have been many incarnations.
But this present one, as the American woman doing it ‘her way’ as undoubtedly she always had, was the life that was to capture widespread attention. Jetsunma left the United States as a married woman, mother of two and teacher of New Age metaphysics with a bent for worldwide caring, and returned a recognized tulku, a reincarnate lama. For her students this took some adjustment. While they had been happily following the teachings of a woman whom they treated as their equal, they now had to contend not only with a ‘Buddhist’ but also with someone whose rank placed her on an entirely different footing. There was protocol to observe, a new language to learn for the same concepts they had learnt, and the mantle of an old and established ‘religion’ from the East to adopt. Some disciples fell out, but most survived the transition.
Whatever misgivings they might have had about the authenticity of their teacher’s new lofty reincarnate status, however, were completely dispelled when Penor Rinpoche came to see them for the second time in 1988. “He arrived at Poolesville with twelve monks in attendance and conferred the Rinchen Terzod, the revealed teachings of the great Padma Sambhava to all member of KPC. It was the first time he had ever performed the task in his lifetime, and the first time in North America”.
He then conducted an official enthronement of Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo. News of the thirty-nine-year-old woman who had been recognized as the reincarnation of a famous Tibetan yogini reached the media. Newspaper reporters and television crews descended on KPC. ‘Meet Ahkön Norbu Lhamo, Tibetan Saint,’ blazed the front-page headline of the International Herald Tribune. ‘The Unexpected Incarnation’ cried the Washington Post. She appeared in the popular People magazine. Leading Japanese and German magazines ran articles on her. This was when my own journalist’s antennae, primed for good stories, must have picked up the importance of the event and stored it away for later use.
Three different things demand your attention today, and they are in direct competition with each other. Avoid all three and head in a different direction. Work is excellent and quite satisfying, so do something small. Tend to matters that you know how to do! Private issues must not be disclosed, and secrets must be kept. Situations that require a show of authority are stymied. Not knowing what to do is the problem, and leaders feel it most. Action for its own sake won’t work. A Dutch proverb says, “A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains.” Feel serene in the knowledge that any brand new initiative won’t work; just noodle along with the usual stuff of life. When a friend reaches out to you, return the affection. Emotional satisfaction is the winner today.
The daily astrology post affects everyone. Because individual charts vary, the circumstances outlined in the post will affect people differently. Some will feel this energy in the personal arena, some in finances, some with children or family, some in work and so forth. There are many departments of life. Look to see where the dynamic affects you!
The following vows were composed by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo who received permission to offer them to her students from His Holiness Penor Rinpoche:
Renunciate Vow for Lay Practitioners
From this very moment forward I offer this life as a gift to the three precious jewels. My pure intention is to accomplish the purpose of Self and Others – Supreme Enlightenment – quickly and surely. Thus I vow that all my life, every portion, shall be used to accomplish that goal.
All my activities shall accomplish that goal.
All my thoughts and feelings are directed toward that goal.
All my possessions shall be to strengthen and support that goal.
I shall seek all appropriate teachings, empowerments, and spiritual activities in order to secure that goal.
My own enlightenment is now considered to be equal to, and non-dual with the enlightenment of others. Therefore I vow to support fully and without hesitation the practicing spiritual community.
I vow to support fully and with unconditional love the three precious jewels and their manifestations: the Sangha and temple.
I will not kill.
I will not lie to accomplish selfish purpose.
I will not steal.
I will not become intoxicated and therefore forget my purpose and vows.
I will not engage in adultery, or promiscuous activity by which my intention will be compromised.
I fully intend to do all that I can to accomplish the liberation of all sentient beings and my own equally.
I consider the realization of all beings to be equal with my own and of equal value.
I fully support the spiritual community and its purpose on earth.
Should any activity or possession or relationship be contrary to these purposes I will systematically change it or eliminate it from my life.
This I promise so that there will be an end to hatred, greed and ignorance within my mindstream and within the three thousand myriads of universes and so that myself and all beings shall achieve the precious awakening.
Bodhisattva Vow
I dedicate myself to the liberation and salvation of all sentient beings. I offer my body, speech, and mind in order to accomplish the purpose of all sentient beings. I will return in whatever form necessary, under extraordinary circumstances to end suffering. Let me be born in times unpredictable, in places unknown, until all sentient beings are liberated from the cycle of death and rebirth.
Taking no thought for my comfort or safety, precious Lama, make of me a pure and perfect instrument by which the end of suffering and death in all forms might be realized. Let me achieve perfect enlightenment for the sake of all beings. And then, by my hand and heart alone, may all beings achieve full enlightenment and perfect liberation.
