A sacred space for everyone
The following is a full length video teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo offered at Kunzang Palyul Choling:
Jetsunma examines the various ways that the Judeo-Christian thought field in which we were raied has affected our thinking. We think we understand the concepts but often miss the point through our confusion.
© copyright Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo All rights reserved.
The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:
I just watched some program on TV about sociopathic criminals and killers. Fascinating stuff. They do not know their crimes are wrong.
The killers, particularly, do not have empathy, thinking they are entitled to murder. They identify all people to be “less” than them. And their victim’s pain is pleasure to them, sometimes even erotic. They fixate, and cannot disengage unless there is a new victim. They may obsess over the victim until their “personality” totally unravels and they cannot control their rage.
Some have awful childhoods, though not all. There is a genetic component. They also cannot cope with feelings inside them. It is all directed outward, toward certain types, race, religion, or the world at large. Facts don’t influence them, they construct their own.
Fascinating how different they are from the norm of society. Really interesting stuff, the interviewer was a retired FBI special agent. She was impressive, knew how to manage the prisoner to avoid agitation and was skillful.
I’m still scratching my head, because many who also have had childhood trauma manage to work it out. They do not abuse others but they do suffer. But they do the inner “work” and grow to care for others. That’s how they fix it. They work it until they can make a medicine, an antidote. They flush the hate and live with compassion and love.
© copyright Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo All rights reserved.
The following is respectfully quoted from “Compassion in Tibetan Buddhism” by Tsong-ka-pa
The fourth of the seven cause and effect precepts is love. The field of observation is all sentient beings, and the subjective aspects are three:
These are three levels of increasing strength which should be cultivated gradually until the point of spontaneity is reached.
The King of Meditations Sutra (Samadhiraja) says that the benefit of cultivating love with all sentient beings as the field of observation is immeasurably greater than that of offering to Buddhas and Bodhisattvas over many aeons even lands filled with food, drink, and articles. The Sutra of Manjushri’s Buddha Land (Manjushribuddhak shetra) says that there is a Buddha Land to the north-east of this world where beings have attained cessation of coarse feelings and discriminations, abiding most comfortably in meditative stabilization without suffering. Being so happy, they find it easy to behave purely, not killing, stealing, engaging in sexual misconduct, and so fort, for many thousands of ten millions of years. The sutra says that although the benefit of their practice is great, it is more beneficial to cultivate love here for the time it takes to snap the fingers.
One should first take as the object of observation a friend and cultivate the wish that this person have happiness. When this becomes easy, one should consider a neutral person and cultivate the wish as before. Then, one should consider an enemy and cultivate love until there is no difference between the wish for happiness that one has for the friend, the neutral person, and the enemy. The meditation should be extended slowly to all sentient beings throughout space, reflecting again and again on the disadvantages of not have the advantages of having happiness. One may then gradually ascent through the three subjective aspects.
Even if one meditates only for five minutes taking cognizance of all sentient beings and if even the love consciousness, due to unfamiliarity is weak, the virtue is inconceivable because the scope is so vast. For example, if a sesame seed is squeezed, only a little oil comes out, but if many are squeezed, a barrel can be filled with oil.
Initially the meditation should not be longer than fifteen minutes in order to avoid fatigue and retain enthusiasm. Later, it can be lengthened until immeasurable love, conjoined with meditative equipoise, is eventually attained. When love is cultivated little by little, very clearly, with all beings as the field of observation, it is as if one is repaying in part the immeasurable kindness that others have extended in former lifetimes.
The next step is to cultivate compassion. The field of observation of a compassionate mind is all sentient beings who have any of the three types of suffering – of pain, of change, and of being so composed as to be always ready to undergo pain.
The suffering of pain is actual physical or mental discomfort including in which are birth, aging, sickness and death. Many billions of years have passed since this world was formed; many have been born here, but there is no one who has managed just to stay alive. It is necessary to die and take rebirth again and again.
Sufferings of change are feelings of pleasure which, when superficially considered, seem to be pleasurable but can change into suffering. For example, if a person is out in the sun where it is too hot, he is pleased to go to a cooler spot, but if he stays there too long, he will become cold and sick. Similarly, when one becomes too cold and then goes to a hot place, if one gets too hot, one will fall sick. Although there is seeming pleasure in becoming cooler or warmer, if one stays in that state too long, it turns into suffering. This shows that these situations do not have an inherent nature of pleasure.
Similarly, in this world of beings–whether animal or human–mate with pleasure, but if it is not done in a moderate amount, the pleasure is lost. Excessive copulation can cause a disease called “cold and wind” in the lower abdomen, harming both male and female genitals. Though enjoyable at first, it can ruin the very basis of comfort in the vital channels (nadi). Thus, these feelings of pleasure are said to be contaminated and are called sufferings of change.
The third type of suffering is called that of pervasive composition. Whenever a sentient being takes birth by the power of contaminated actions and afflictions in the desire, form, or formless realms, there are periods when he does not have manifest suffering. However, if certain conditions aggregate, suffering will be generated because the basic causes misery pervade all types of life within the three realms. For instance, though one might have no manifest suffering now, if one is pricked with a needle, cut with a knife, or kicked, pain is immediately produced.
The field of observation for the compassionate mind is all sentient beings who have these three types of suffering; however, to understand the suffering of others, it is necessary first to know the immeasurable fault of one’s own birth in cyclic existence. One should think:
I have engaged in non-virtue since beginningless time and have accumulated bad actions (karma). I suffer pain and change. I am afflicted by being always liable to suffer pain.
One should contemplate the causes of suffering–the ten non-virtues, how one has engaged in them, and how one has suffered in this lifetime. There are three physical, four verbal, and three mental non-virtues.
PHYSICAL NON-VIRTUES
VERBAL NON-VIRTUES
MENTAL NON-VIRTUES
One should gradually call to mind one’s own non-virtues and reflect on the cause and effect process that induces suffering. It is appropriate to generate contrition, a sense of discomfort with former misdeeds, and a promise to refrain from those deeds henceforth.
Reflection on one’s own involvement in the causes of suffering ultimately generates an intention to leave cyclic existence. One comes to know that just as one has suffered in this lifetime, after death the process will begin again and wherever one is born–even as a god or a human, oe must suffer. Having formed a clear sense of one’s own situation, one should then consider a friend:
This person has the three types of suffering and is also engaging in the causes the further misery. Even when he finishes undergoing the suffering of this lifetime, he will have more in the next. How nice if he were free from suffering and its causes! May he become so! I will cause him to become so!
Then one should consider a neutral person and after that an enemy. Gradually and over a long period of time, one can slowly extend the meditation to all sentient beings.
Having developed facility first with respect to a friend, such as one’s mother, one is able to measure the progress with respect to neutral persons and enemies by comparing it to the strong feeling for the friend. Why should one make all neutral persons and enemies equal to one’s mother? If she had fallen into a ravine or a river, or into a chasm made by an earthquake, and if her own child whom she had helped from the time of his entry into her womb would not help her, who would?
The following is respectfully quoted from “Compassion in Tibetan Buddhism” by Tsong-ka-pa
If the intention to overcome the process of cyclic existence is not conjoined with altruism, one will attain only freedom from suffering, not the Buddhahood that is a perfection of one’s own and others’ welfare. Therefore, the altruistic aspiration, called the mind of enlightenment (bodhicitta) is most important.
Within Buddhism, those of the Hearer and the Solitary Realizer Vehicles cultivate the paths of a being of middling capacity – the thought to leave cyclic existence, together with the view of emptiness. Thereby they attain liberation, but due to not cultivating the altruistic mind of enligthenment, they cannot attain Buddhahood. The mind of enlightenment, in general, is of two types, conventional and ultimate, and the conventional is again divided into aspirational and the practical.
The aspirational mind of enlightenment is the wish to attain Buddhahood in order to help all sentient beings; it marks the beginning of a Bodhisattva’s accumulation of meritorious power in conjunction with wisdom and continues until Buddhahood, having twenty-one forms called ‘earth-like’, ‘gold-like’, and so forth, which are instances of its increasing in strength as one progresses. The practical mind of enlightenment occurs when, having taken the Bodhisattva vow, one actually practises the six perfections of giving, ethics, patience, effort, concentration, and wisdom. The ultimate mind of enlightenment is a wisdom consciousness in meditative equipoise directly cognizing emptiness attained at the time of the Mahayana path of seeing.
To become a Bodhisattva one must cultivate the conventional mind of enlightenment, specifically in aspirational form. As was explained before, it involves seven steps in the system transmitted from Buddha to Maitreya to Asangha:
Having practiced equanimity and reflected on the plight of cyclic existence in the two previous meditations, one is prepared for the first step, recognizing all persons as mothers.
This meditation is to visualize individually every sentient being that one has known, beginning with recent friends, then passing to neutral persons, and then to enemies, identifying each as having been one’s mother. One should meditate until everyone, from bugs on up, is understood as having been one’s mother. Since this is the door to generating the mind of enlightenment, its benefit has no boundary or measure as will become apparent in meditation.
The next step is to cultivate mindfulness of the mothers’ kindness, first with respect to friends, then neutral persons, and then enemies. The essence of the practice is to become aware that even if persons are now enemies, neutral, or friends, they have in the past been as kind as one’s own mother of this life.
What is the kindness of a mother? First of all, one enters her womb while she copulates with a mate. At that time one’s mind has entered into the soft substance of the father’s semen and the mother’s blood. During the second week the fetus becomes a little hard, like yoghurt; in the third week, it becomes roundish, and during the succeeding weeks bumps appear that develop into limbs – head, arms, and legs. Then, while one’s body grows by stages over many weeks, one undergoes indescribable discomfort due to the way the mother lies, eats, and so forth, and she also suffers great physical and mental discomfort as one’s body forms. Still, she considers the child more important than even her own body; fearing that her child might be harmed, she makes great effort at proper diet, habits of sleep, and activity.
When about to be reborn, the baby turns around inside the womb and begins to emerge, causing the mother such pain that she almost swoons. Though finally her vagina is torn, her body harmed, and she has undergone great suffering, she does not throw one away like faeces, but cherishes and takes care of her child. Her kindness is greater than the endearment she has for her own life.
One should also reflect on the delightful ways a mother holds a baby to her flesh, giving her milk. She must provide everything; she cannot tell the baby to do this or that; she must attentively do everything herself. Except for having the shape of a human, the child is like a helpless bug. She teaches it each word one by one, how to eat, sleep, put on clothes, urinate, and defecate. If one’s mother had not taught these, one would still be like a bug. Even when a cat gives to a kitten, one can directly see that the cat undergoes great hardship to take care of the kitten until it is able to go on its own.
Just as one’s present mother extended great kindness, so those who now are enemies were mothers in former lives and extended the same kindness, and in later lifetimes they will again protect one with kindness. If it were necessary to become angry when it is determined that someone is an enemy, then since one’s present parents and dearest friends were enemies in a former lifetime and will be in the future, it would be necessary to hate them. But if one’s mother became incensed and attacked oneself, would it be right to become angry and beat her, or would one try to calm her and restore her mind to its usual state? In the same way, an enemy is one’s own best friend who has lost control and, without independence, is attacking oneself. He is not at fault; he is not attacking under his own power. He has helped before and will help again. When one was inside his womb, how much suffering he underwent! After one was born, how many difficulties he had to bear!
The thought is:
Each and every being, upon taking birth in cyclic existence over t beginningless continuum of lives, has protected me with kindness, just like my mother in this lifetime, and will do so again in the future. Their kindness is immeasurable.
When, having considered friends, neutral persons, and enemies, one is clearly mindful of their kindness, one should cultivate the third step, developing in the intent to repay their kindness:
I will engage in the means to cause all to have happiness and to be free from suffering. Just as they helped me in the past, now I must help them.
One should alternate analytical meditation – analyzing the reasons for repaying the kindness of others – and stabilizing meditation – fixing on the meaning understood – finally gaining a measure of the kindness of each and every being throughout space and developing a sense of the need to respond.
The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:
Tons of people partying now, paying crazy prices for the Superbowl.
The poor and hungry are still hungry. The homeless have no homes.
I feel ashamed. So much money to entertain the “haves.” While the poor weep, we mindlessly party. Chips? Pizza? Not food groups. Hunger needs real food.
Does USA still have a heart? I can’t tell. But I see the eyes of the poor, hungry, cold and they haunt me. Where is the love?
It is hard to celebrate America’s games while so many are in dire need. Are we celebrating the great divide? Some get seats, others not! When did American values get turned upside down? Wait. I remember. Not worth blaming. Only worth fixing.
Anyway, I once wrote songs about the truth.
So we feed and clothe the poor and sing our songs, desperately praying for relief. For their sake – we the people.
© copyright Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo All rights reserved.
The following is a full length teaching offered by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:
Every religion has a concept of what is considered compassionate or virtuous. What we find is that often we “look” compassionate instead of deepeing in our practice of Vajrayana. This generates the ultimate result of enlightenment.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved
The following is a full length video teaching offered by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo at Kunzang Palyul Choling:
Live for the benefit of others – let love guide everything in your life and you will be moving toward the Bodhisattva ideal.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved
The following is a full length video teaching offered by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo at Kunzang Palyul Choling:
Begin with love and you will produce love. Jetsunma goes into why reach for something “not of this world” like Enlightenement to solve your quest for happiness. Do it for yourself and for all beings.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved
The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:
Hello to all from this secret place, where we are buried in snow. So much wind I can’t tell how deep it is. Wow. It is peaceful and lovely.
It seems, fairly, the US Attorneys announced they are seeking appeal in the case where I am the victim: US vs William Cassidy. Maybe I will be able to go home sooner than later. The case, and my situation, are still up for grabs.
But patience is the only remedy here. And I’m staying strong. I am not at all afraid so long as the stalker is being held and watched. The other haters I face all day don’t frighten me. They don’t actually threaten. So it is just emotional imbalance. And the things people do behind the safety of a screen.
Just need protection for my family, my pack, and myself, as well as my life’s work. Most haters don’t have a violent felony past, just feelings of inferiority and failure in life that they can’t own up to. So they want to “compete” in a world where for some types credentials are superfluous (not me!)
I have compassion for those who feel like they have nothing. Not important to anyone. For those who assault and threaten? Not so much.
There are times coming where we will all need to re-evaluate everything. How much less we can get by with, lotsa government, stricter control, toxic food, Earth etc. So it is time to grow up. Stop whining, throwing rocks at each other, and justifying bad conduct, because something scared you.
I’m in a safe house, but making the best use of my time here, not ruminating, crying, whining. My door wasn’t knocked down, it was my life.
All I care about is getting back to work and family in the short time I have left, so that I can be of benefit to others. I’ve never had any other aspiration, (well, music) and wish to contribute to the well being and safety of other threatened women at risk.
We women are half the world. We are not cattle. We matter. We should not have to run!
We are everywhere. Strong – and not going away any time soon.
Love and blessings to all women – there are so many! Stay strong. Stay safe, I’m with you!
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved
The following is an excerpt from Patrul Rinpoche’s “The Words of My Perfect Teacher”
Now surely, if anyone takes harmful spirits as something to be killed or beaten, it must be because his mind is under the power of attachment and hatred and knows nothing of great impartial compassion. When you think about it carefully, those malignant spirits are far more in need of compassion than any benefactors. They have become harmful spirits because of their evil karma. Reborn as pretas, with horrible bodies, their pain and fear is unimaginable. They experience nothing but endless hunger, thirst, and exhaustion. They perceive everything as threatening. And their minds are full of hate and aggression, many go to hell as soon as they die. Who could deserve more pity? The patrons may be sick and suffering, but that will help them exhaust their evil karma, not to create more. Those evil spirits, on the other hand, are harming others with their evil intentions, and will be hurled by those harmful actions to the depths of the lower realms.
If the Conqueror, skilled in means and full of compassion, taught the art of exorcising or intimidating these harmful spirits with violent methods, it was out of compassion for them, like a mother spanking a child who will not obey her. He also permitted the ritual of liberation to be practiced by those who have the power to interrupt the flow of evil deeds of beings who only do harm, and to transfer their consciousness to a pure realm. But as for pandering to benefactors, monks and others that we consider to be on our own side, and rejecting demons and wrongdoers as hateful enemies — protecting the one and attacking the other out of attachment and hatred — where are such attitudes mentioned in teachings of the Conqueror? As long as we are driven by such feelings of attachment and hatred, it would be futile to try to expel or attack any harmful spirits. Their bodies are only mental and they will not obey us. They will only do us harm in return. Indeed, even if our feelings for such gods and spirits are very positive — not to speak of desire and hate — we will never subdue them as long as we believe that they really exist.
When Jetsun Mila was living in Garuda Fortress Cave in the Chong valley, the king of obstacle-makers, Vinayaka, produced a supernatural illusion. In his cave, Jetsun Mila found five astaras with eyes as big as saucers. He prayed to his teacher and to his yidam, but the demons did not go away. He meditated on the visualization of his deity and recited wrathful mantras, but still they would not go.
Finally, he thought, “Marpa of Lhodrak showed me that everything in the universe is mind, and that the nature of mind is empty and radiant. To believe in these demons and obstacle-makers as something external and to want them to go away has no meaning.”
Feeling powerful confidence in the view that knows spirits and demons to be simply one’s own perceptions, he strode back into his cave. Terrified and rollingtheir eyes, the astaras disappeared.
This is also what the Ogress of the Rock meant, when she sang to him:
This demon of your own tendencies arises from your mind;
If you don’t recognize the nature of your mind,
I’m not going to leave just because you tell me to go.
If you don’t realize that your mind is void,
There are many more demons besides myself!
But if you recognize the nature of your own mind,
Adverse circumstances will serve only to sustain you
And even I, Ogress of the Rock, will be at your bidding.