Bringing Virtue Into Your Life: Full Length Video Teaching

The following is a full length video teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo offered at Kunzang Palyul Choling:

 

The narcotic of samsara encourages us to believe that we will stay the same forever. Self-honesty tells us differently. Jetsunma helps us see the reality of impermanence and karma in our lives. Living a life of virtue will bring us ultimate happiness.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo.  All rights reserved

 

Keep Your Practice Alive: Full Length Video Teaching

The following is a full length video teaching offered by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo at Kunzang Palyul Choling:

 

For us in the west the most important part of Dharma practice is within your heart. Practicing the foundational thoughts that turn the mind will help you keep that alive.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Moods, Bodhicitta and Mental Discipline

The following is an excerpt from a teaching called “Your Treasure is Heart”

In order to understand how mental discipline will help you feel more compassionate, you need to understand that compassion is not an emotion.  Bodhichitta is not an emotion.  It doesn’t exist on that dense a level.  It’s not as dense as an emotion.  Emotions are actually reactions.  If you take perception, delusion, duality, confusion, hatred, greed and ignorance, all of those things that are characteristic of samsara, and you shake them up in a jar, the bubbles that you would get, like the bubbles from soap, are roughly the equivalent of emotions.  Emotions are the result of conceptual proliferation, whipped up into a very exaggerated state.  They are reactive. Bodhichitta really has nothing to do with that.

When we begin to give rise to the Bodhichitta, we do so, first of all, through mental discipline.  As we begin to practice, we have some understanding of the suffering of sentient beings and why we should engage in loving concern for them.  When we examine the thoughts that turn the mind, we really tune into the sufferings of samsara.  We tune in, as well, to the fact that we have lived so many lifetimes that literally anyone that we can see, or see a picture of, or hear or think of has been our own kind parent in some previous life.  Yet these beings are wandering in samsara just like a bee that’s caught in a jar, absolutely clueless as to how to create the causes by which their terrible suffering might end.

Once you learn that, you discipline your mind not to ignore it.  We like to surf on the sensual pleasure of the moment.  We like to enjoy, and try to get as high in our daily routine as possible, so we can just surf on the moment of experience.  We don’t want to think about the condition of sentient beings.  So this mental discipline is required in order to be a serious practitioner. You can’t cut corners here. If you don’t put in the time, your practice will never be up to snuff.

Many students come to me saying “Well, I just don’t feel this compassion.”  My answer is, so what!  Compassion is not an emotion.  Nobody is going to benefit by how you feel.  They’re going to benefit by what you do.  So do the practice.  Discipline yourself to contemplate the causes and conditions of both happiness and suffering; and particularly contemplate the suffering of sentient beings,  These contemplations cannot be short-circuited. They must be delved into with everything you have. Once you do that you begin to feel a certain kind of determination and motivation, and it begins to make sense.

When I was 20, I had not met with the path of Dharma yet, but I was actually given these contemplations directly in my own meditation and in the dream state. So I began to practice them.  What happened to me was I realized that compassion is the only thing that makes sense.  Think about the logic of it. Here you are, one sentient being on our planet where in the human realm alone, there are roughly six billion of us.  On our planet there are also uncountable animal forms.  You can’t even count the number of ants in an ant hill.  Each one of them is a sentient being with the Buddha nature within them, just as surely as you are, yet they appear in this form due to their own habitual tendency and the way that their consciousness is functioning. How many uncountable sentient beings can be seen with the eye on this planet alone!

If this absolute Buddha nature, this ground of being, is my nature, and you are that also, and yet we appear in these multitudinous forms, wandering and suffering in samsara, it made perfect sense to me to dedicate my life to the liberation and salvation of all sentient beings.  Nothing else seemed logical or reasonable.  And from that, gradually, this determination grew.  For about ten months,  I went through the mental discipline. I practiced for eight to ten hours a day only on those contemplations until I could see clearly for myself that this is the only game in town that made sense.  With that knowledge, living any other kind of life seemed like whoring or prostitution to me, and it didn’t seem reasonable.  So my discrimination was born.

In the Buddha’s teachings we are told that there are three thousand myriads of universes, three thousand myriads of universes.  That’s just one number that gives us some understanding that we’re talking big!  The Buddha also teaches us that there are formless realms, and there are uncountable sentient beings in these formless realms.  So logically, if my nature is this Buddha nature, completely inseparable from the very Lord that I call Buddha, completely inseparable and indistinguishable from all these sentient beings, it is logical and reasonable that I would do everything that I can to bring benefit to others instead of spending my entire life in ego-gratification and self-cherishing.  It is logical and reasonable also to me, that I will never be happy until every sentient being is free.  That’s what seems reasonable to me.

Once you have that kind of understanding, you have to go through the process of reminding yourself, keeping it alive every step of the way.  If any of you have been married, you know that taking the vow is not the end of the issue.  If you want to remain in that situation, you really have to work at it.  Giving rise to the Bodhichitta is like that .  The effort doesn’t stop once you come to the great conclusion.  You have to remind yourself every day.  It’s part of the discipline of practice so that you remain mindful.  On the path of Dharma these contemplations are crucial.

So this is how it starts.  It starts in mental discipline which gives rise to determination.  Where’s the emotion in all that?  Emotions become inconsequential.  Once you realize that there are six billion humans, that you know of, wandering in samsara, not understanding how to create the causes of happiness, whether you have gas at that moment or are in a good or a bad mood, those kinds of things become a moot point.  You learn that it’s OK to be a Bodhisattva in a bad mood.  But you don’t get to stop, you see, because you’ve learned something.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo.  All rights reserved

Turning Away from Samsara

From a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:

Whoever believes that one’s actions do not create specific cause and result, has an atheistic, nihilistic view.  At death rebirth will be taken in the lowest hell realm.

Such a view is destructive towards oneself and is harmful to others.  It is never the case that the result of karma is less than exacting.  Karma will produce the exact result of whatever was causal.  This is interdependent origination.  Cause and result are created at the same time.

There are ten activities that create a great storehouse of merit; composition, offering, generosity, attentiveness; recitation of Dharma, memorization and teaching Dharma, as well as praying, contemplation and meditation.  These are virtuous and produce an auspicious rebirth.

When deeply committed and accomplished in Dharma, one is like a traveler who has their storehouse stocked and fully prepared for anything.  If for the three jewels one offers a flower, incense, or a simple butter lamp/candle consistently rebirth is taken in perfect Samadhi.

When I see the suffering, the faults of cyclic existence, I feel deep sorrow.  I have long ago abandoned the jail of the realms of samsara.  I abandon non- virtue, and persist always in the effort to teach and help to liberate beings!  This is the promise, life after life!

© Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Faults of Cyclic Existence

It is gorgeous today! Breezy, cool in shade, mostly sunny. A day to be in love with! Our neighbor came up and told us weird news.

Two of their beef calves were killed in the field last night. They were nearly 300lbs each. What could have done that? Bear? Big Cat?

I wonder about mountain Lion or something. I’ve sent someone over to see carcass. Looks like some flank torn, leg pulled back and up.

OM MANI PEDME HUNG for the poor things, will offer my practice for them. 🙁 But you know what? They said the next stop was the feedlot.

It is hard to imagine the suffering these calves go through in a feed lot. They live in pens, have a fetid environment, and they live to be to be killed, to be delicious. They live with their feet hurting always, not allowed to move. Just marble up, KIDS! Stand and eat!

This brings to mind Buddha’s teachings about the sufferings of all beings. Animals suffer from fear and stupidity. Farm animals can easily overpower their keepers. Elephants in the Circus and other animals can take trainers down. But they are fearful and ignorant and unaware they can be in charge.

OM TARE TU TARE TURE SOHA may mother Buddha Tara bless and care for suffering beings. May all suffering in all forms end! Humans suffer from old age, sickness and death. Most never think about that. They think about distraction with which to hide the inevitable.

Buddhists plan, practice and work for a noble death and a good, high rebirth. I do. May ALL beings awaken!

We should awaken in recognition of the clear, undefiled emptiness of the Primordial wisdom state. This is the very ground of being.

It is our very NATURE, as it IS. We must apply method diligently in order to awaken to the true state of recognition- Buddhahood!

And then return, life after life awakened and able to bring much benefit. This is the path of every Bodhisattva! The way of Buddhahood.

From a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

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