The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Western Chod”
I eventually came to draw a lot of strength and a great deal of comfort from that early practice (Chöd) because I found out that I actually never ever had to make another decision. And that’s what we struggle with all the time.
The rest of my life became not a dilemma in some odd way, even though there are many aspects of my life that would seemingly be problematic. It isn’t a dilemma because already the mind is relaxed. That’s one of the great benefits of that practice—the mind becomes relaxed. You’re not tense in the position of getting ready to determine, getting ready to decide. That requires a great deal of mental tension. So that’s done. The mind’s relaxed and it’s all right. There’s a big yes happening. There’s a big yes happening. I agree. I agree. It’s already done, so I don’t have to reinvent that dilemma and solve that dilemma every time. It’s already done. That’s the great blessing of a practice like that.
I have to tell you, once you really examine the faults of cyclic existence that way, and the eyes of suffering… I really recommend that if you do this practice. you can do it sitting, standing, anyway you want to. Do it while you’re walking around. Just constantly think like this. My recommendation is fill your eyes with suffering. Not your heart, not your mind, your eyes. We walk around feeling insulated. We don’t want to see it. You’re flipping through the channels and you see that child in, what, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, someplace like that, belly bulging, ribs sticking out at the same time and limbs that big around, and crusty at the side of the mouth. And why? Because they haven’t had any food recently. And no good food consistently. They’re starving. The first thing we do when we see that? Change the channel because we have the habit of not wanting to see that. We don’t want to see that.
My recommendation is spend some time seeing it. Stop turning away from the sight of suffering. Use that as a tool. It doesn’t mean that you have to, you know, give Buddhism a bum rap. I’m not asking you to be unhappy. I’m telling you that if you really open your eyes and see, you are in a scene where you are half unhappy and half happy already. It’s already mixed. This is not something you have to pretend. All I’m asking you to do is face it. Really look at it. Do not turn your eyes away from it. Fill your eyes with suffering. Stop faking it. We are a nation of fakers. Stop faking it and really see it. See what hatred produces. See what it looks like. Look into the face of it. See what hunger looks like. Face it. See what bigotry looks like. Look at it, face it, see what it feels like. See what ignorance feels like—the kind of dullness and slothfulness that you can hardly get yourself together. Get a good mouthful of that! See what that looks like. Look at all of this concerning ordinary experience in samsara. And then, having filled your eyes with that, you can use that as motivation, as a reason to practice.
So my recommendation is practice deeply, practice consistently. Do not turn your eyes away from suffering. Practice with courage. Be really courageous about this, and never let yourself off easy in this practice. To the bone, and then give them up too. Practice to the depth of your being, until you are deeply satisfied, until you know that you would never take back that offer again, the offer to be a vehicle by which suffering might end. Do not give up your practice until you know that you’ve done that. Be a hero. All you have to do is be a hero one time, one time in your whole life, concerning giving rise to compassion for the sake of sentient beings. Be a hero. Be undaunted. Do not be happy or satisfied with yourself until it is complete. Do not be happy or satisfied with yourself until you have really seen the suffering of cyclic existence and it makes you sick to your stomach, that not only you, but everyone you see is caught in it.
Practice as deeply as you are able. And you are able to practice more deeply than you could ever have imagined. So the goal here, of course, is to give rise to the Bodhicitta, give rise to compassion to realize the faults of cyclic existence. I used to think this to myself, whatever I saw,”There’s no future in this.” So in the future when I picked up a bag of potato chips, I’d go, “Well I can eat it or not eat it, but obviously there’s no future in this!” And I could look at any scenario in life and I would go, “Pff, no future in it. I’ve examined it. I’ve been there, I’ve done it in my mind.” That’s the awareness and understanding that you should be armed with.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo All rights reserved
