Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

Mindfulness: Letting Go of Reaction

December 22, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Stabilizing the Mind”

If you can get to a place of natural awareness, you can remain mindful in a way that isn’t really describable in words. You can begin to sense a little bit of space between the calm, natural awareness and the reaction that you have quite automatically, instantaneously. It’s really necessary to develop the skill of sensing that little bit of space, because your tendency is to run off and react to every thought that you have. Just look at what you’re doing in your mind right now. What are your thoughts? You’re reacting. Everything is a reaction, and you’re floating on it. You’re up and down with it all the time.

If you can just begin to sense a little bit of space between that natural awareness and the reaction, you can begin to have the skill to not be so at the mercy of the conceptual proliferations of your mind. That little bit of space is exactly what you need to begin to disengage the ego, to begin to disengage desire. You need space in your mind to meditate even on the problems that desire brings up for you. You have to have some space in your mind to meditate on true nature. You have to have some space in your mind to meditate on emptiness. That kind of space can be developed all the time. If you practice in that way constantly, or at least as often as you are able, to remain mindful, and increase that mindfulness and increase that kind of practice, you’ll find yourself doing it more and more naturally.

But don’t try to keep yourself locked up. That’ll make you crazy. That is not a solution. You make yourself crazy when you say, “I’m not going to be happy now. I’m not going to be unhappy now. I’m not going to follow my mind around the block. I’m not going to do that.” Really, that is not a good solution. If you practice the spaciousness in your mind in the gentle way I have just described, you’ll begin to be able to be more mindful and more aware of the validity of the Buddha’s teaching.

Spaciousness: The Foundation of Practice

December 21, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Stabilizing the Mind”

If you are romantically involved with Dharma, then you have developed no space in your mind and you will be constantly up and down, skating on your own dramatics with no stability in the mind. And you are completely at the mercy of suffering. Where there is no space, there is nowhere to go. There’s no quiet place where you can rest. You are either going to be suffering or feeling exhilarated — an intensity of a different kind. Ultimately it’s all suffering. You’re going to be into the intensity with no spaciousness in your mind. You’ll be stuck there with nowhere to go. You just ride on your emotions. If you have not developed spaciousness in your mind, you are the victim of the highs and lows and the mind’s conceptual proliferations. For example, you’re completely at the mercy of pain. Have you ever had really intense pain? It can make you lose all awareness. It’s unbelievable. You just lose consciousness, and it’s because there’s no space in your mind. Pain is a concept; it’s something in your mind.

You are completely at the mercy of emotionalism of all kind, and you know that of yourself. You follow your emotions constantly. They’ve been high, and they’ve been low. They’ve been big, and they’ve been small. They’ve been in, and they’ve been out. Have your emotions ever made you happy for a long time? Have your emotions ever been dependable companions? They never have if you really think about it.

So if you develop spaciousness, you have at least a fighting chance, if you will excuse the phrase, to begin to practice in such a way that your mind has some potential for liberation. In other words, there’s a little spaciousness in which you can practice. It’s very, very important for you to try to do that. If you develop a little bit of space, you can start building up these bricks of the Buddha’s teaching. You can evaluate the teachings for yourself. From that calm place, from that place behind all of the concepts, you can see that following the mind leads to no happiness. You can see that desire is the cause of suffering. You can sense the potential for enlightenment or at least for disengaging from that phenomenon that you are so involved in. You can sense that there is something behind all of your concepts that’s very profound. You can begin to build the solid blocks that are necessary in order to follow the Buddha’s path until you achieve supreme enlightenment.

How to Practice Mindfulness During All Activities

December 20, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Stabilizing the Mind”

While you’re practicing you have to find a way to stabilize your mind. I cannot emphasize mindfulness enough. It is what will result in a stabilized mind. One of the best things that you can do, no matter what experience you’re having – whether you’re getting excited about something new that you bought, some new project that you’re doing, some new idea that you’ve been presented with, some new relationship that you have, or depressed about the loss of any of these things, whether you’re having a high or low experience – ask yourself in the midst of that circumstance, “Who is the taster here?”

When His Holiness Penor Rinpoche was giving the Rinchen Terzod, he gave us lemon juice and then honey, and he asked, “Who is the taster? Who says one is sweet and one is bitter? What is the meaning of this taste? How does taste come about?” It is important to remember that taste is a perceptual thing.

You should practice this type of mindfulness when you’re feeling intense emotion of any kind – whether great joy, great sorrow, great pain, great physical pleasure, even during sexual activity, during any of those intense experiences that run the gamut of human emotion. Center into a natural awareness. A good way to do that would be, for instance, to just watch your breath with gentle attention. It’s not forceful; don’t go, “OK, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in…” It isn’t like that. It’s a gentle, nonintrusive, passive attention on the breath, a light awareness. Just lightly watch the breath for a few moments, and let that be what you’re doing right then. Then observe, while you’re breathing, “Who is the watcher?” Observe the natural awareness that occurs when you just gently watch your breath. Try to sense that natural awareness.

If you really ask yourself the question, “Who is watching the breath?” then your mind is going to come right back at you and say, “I am.” Then you have to play the game with your mind that goes, “Who is I?” And you get sort of tense about that. So you don’t want to really ask yourself who is the watcher. There will be a sense of peeling away layers until you get to a place of pure awareness.

What you want to do is to gently sense the watcher without forming any conceptualization about it. Just sense and go behind the concept. If you gently observe what you are doing, you have a concept about the watcher. Go behind that concept and sense behind that. And if you develop another concept about the watcher, go behind that, gently, gently, gently. You can practice this technique quite naturally while you’re typing or doing anything.

It’s also good to use this technique in meditation, but there are more formal techniques that you can use at that time. This is a good, ordinary technique that you can use while you’re doing anything – while you’re listening to music, while you’re thinking, “I’m having a good practice” or “I’m having a bad practice” or whatever it is that you’re reacting to. Take yourself out of the realm of reaction and watch the breath. Just concentrate on your breathing for some time with light attention and go behind the concepts one after another until you have somehow gotten gently behind or underneath all of the concepts that you have about who the watcher is, until you get to a place of natural awareness where there isn’t so much the question of who the watcher is.

Caught in a Dream

December 19, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Stabilizing the Mind”

In order to practice the Buddha’s teaching with any meaning, you first have to understand that all sentient beings are suffering. Now I have to ask you: Have you really seen that with your own heart, with your own eyes, with your own mind? Have you seen that all sentient beings are suffering?

If you have seen that you are suffering, then let me describe a funny little thing that you still do that cannot coexist with that knowledge. You have circumstances throughout the day (and throughout the month, the year, your life) that either please you or displease you, that either make you happy or make you unhappy.

You may think, “Oh, I’m really down today.” Then you talk to someone, and someone has an upbeat thing to say to you. It’s meaningful, it’s good, and it pleases you. So what happens to you? You go up, right? There’s a nice sense of warm fuzzies, and you go up.

Or let’s say you are a renunciate, a monk or nun, and when you wake up in the morning, it’s a ho-hum day. You’re in a flat-line zone, a kind of grey zone. And let’s say you manage to get in all of the practices that you want to do in the morning, and you manage to have a pretty good experience with them. You feel buoyant in your practice. You feel stable in your practice. You’re able to hold your visualization. Somehow that magical thing that happens every now and then happens. You had a good practice. Then you have your breakfast, eating your cereal by the window like a guy in a commercial, and you say, “Morning is my time!” But later on the dog urinates on your one robe, you are too busy to eat any lunch or any dinner, and you have a bad practice. That’s the worst thing – you have a bad practice – and things are no longer going so well.

These things happen to all of you, and yet, although you say you know that there is suffering from the depth of your heart, you have looked to satisfy the end of suffering in a way that is different from what the Buddha taught. We let our minds float on an ocean of waves like a buoy, up and down. What is “up”? What is “down”? And who is feeling it? Who says morning is your time? Who says evening is not? Who says life is good when you go out to a restaurant and have a glass of wine? These are concepts that are part of your mind, and your consciousness floats on them. For some of you, there is not a moment of spaciousness in your mind where your consciousness is not floating on some circumstance you contrived all by yourself. Why does that happen?

You say that all sentient beings are suffering and that the end to suffering is enlightenment, yet you allow your mind to be satisfied going up and down according to circumstances. All of the beings that you say are suffering are doing the same thing. Has anyone achieved happiness by allowing the mind to float on that ocean of concept that we call samsara, affected by circumstances, lifted up by what we call high circumstances, put down by what we call low circumstances?

No one. Never. The Buddha tells us that samsara is not happiness, that the contrivances of the mind are not happiness, that sentient beings are suffering, and that the only end to suffering is enlightenment. Yet we allow ourselves to slide up and down every day. We get excited about some project, we get enthusiastic, but it always comes to a dead stop. It always ends. It has never, never, never, never, never continued until it gave you supreme happiness.

So here’s the point I am trying to make. First brick: All sentient beings are suffering. Now, we’ll put the next one on top of it: There is an end to suffering, and it is enlightenment. Just two bricks, and already we find that we are not secure behind those two bricks, that we don’t believe. Yes, you say that you believe that all sentient beings are suffering. Yes, you say that you believe enlightenment is the end of suffering. Can you tell me how that can coexist with the tendency to let your mind drift, relying on circumstances to make it happy, being the victim of circumstances that make it unhappy? How do we allow that?

We forget. We’re caught in a dream, and we lose faith. So how are you going to practice this Vajrayana, the Diamond Vehicle, the Tantric teachings of Buddhism, passed from teacher to disciple, that can lead to the attainment of enlightenment in one lifetime, a path with sincerity and stability for the rest of your life until some potential comes for you to achieve supreme enlightenment? Do you believe that that can happen?

Why Practice Dharma?

December 18, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Stabilizing the Mind”

Do you really understand why you are practicing Buddhism?

Ultimately, when you come to understand what the Buddha and all the great lamas have taught, you will come to understand that it basically boils down to the fact that all sentient beings are suffering, that desire is the cause of suffering, that there is an end to suffering, and that end is enlightenment. There are different ways that you can attain enlightenment, but they all have to do with ending attachment and desire in the mindstream. They have to do with realizing that one’s nature is not the same as the conceptual proliferations that we live with, the desire that we live with, and the ego that we perceive as ourselves. I really think that once you understand enough so that you can look at your life – with all its emotional highs and lows – and realize that it is impermanent, that you’re just riding on your own concepts and that by doing that you can’t make your mind stable enough to break free of the compulsion to revolve in cyclic existence for eons and eons that awareness becomes the taskmaster. That realization becomes the teacher.

If you don’t realize that circumstances are impermanent, if you’re practicing because you have some crazy idea that you’re going to be a great being some day or that you’re going to triumph in the end, and that it’s all about self and self-cherishing, if you have some romantic notion about ordination or about practicing at all, you won’t be stable in your practice. Understanding the teachings about impermanence is the stabilizer, the real teacher. Understanding from the depth of your heart that desire really is the cause of suffering is the taskmaster. Looking at your mind in some stable way so that you can understand that the mind just floats helplessly, constantly, on its own concepts, whichever way the concepts go, up or down, and that these concepts are the cause for suffering and that there’s no lasting happiness in them, gives you a firm foundation. It is then that you understand why you practice, and although the circumstances of your life may change, you will never turn away from practice. You may go to work or you may stay home; you may have children or you may not; you may take robes or you may not. Whatever the circumstances are of your life, as long as you know these things, you will remain firm. Your infatuation with the culture, with the music, with the color, with the ritual of Tibetan Buddhism will never be enough. You have to understand the heart of the Buddha’s teaching. You have to understand the value of compassion. You have to understand how important it is to end suffering and what the means are to end suffering in order to stay with the Dharma, in order to be stable and safe in the Dharma.

You Can Make It

December 6, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Bodhicitta by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo given after her return from India and Nepal in 1996

In Nepal, right next to one of Guru Rinpoche’s caves where he practiced chemchok, lives a wonderful Dakini. She is the consort of Lama Tulku Orgyen. And she’s been there for years and years, practicing and practicing. We had the pleasure of meeting her. Whenever you go there, you can hear her ringing those bells and practicing. She never stops. She’s so beautiful. She’s actually kind of old, but when you look at her, her face is completely unlined, she’s got beautiful black hair and really deep eyes. She’s just gorgeous. We went in there and gave her a scarf and tried to do prostrations, but she wouldn’t let us. Sangye Khandro came with us to translate, since the Dakini doesn’t speak any English, of course. And she just practices all the time. She sat us down and we talked for a little while.

I told her that we have a Sangha here and that a large percentage is women. And I said, “Would you give some advice to women practitioners in the West?” She said first of all that there’s no difference between women and men practitioners. There is no difference. Women tend to think that they are held back by certain issues – family issues, lover issues, blah, blah issues, stupid issues. There is no difference between women and men. In fact, she said, women actually have a deeper sense of primordial wisdom. They are closer to that Dakini archetype. They have a deeper sense of that. They’re more internal in some way. She said women have an excellent chance to be practitioners. And she said, “I would give this advice to both men and women equally. You have to be courageous. You have to never stop. You have to decide that you are going to achieve the rainbow body and you will do whatever it takes because you really want to incarnate in such a way that you can help this world or any world that you land on. You have to have courage. You have to never let any circumstance stop you. You have to practice as though it’s the most important thing in your life. You have to remember that this is the only important thing there is.” And she said, “Practice constantly with great faith and great courage. Then you need to be sure that you are with a teacher that you have absolute faith in. And you need to be with a lama who can give you initiation that can ripen your mind. With all those factors, especially great courage, you can make it, even in this degenerate time.” She said, “You can make it.”

It was one of the most moving speeches I ever heard. But she kept saying, “Have courage; don’t stop. Break through whatever stops you. Have courage.” And my feeling when I watched her is that it must have taken tremendous courage for her to completely renounce the world that she lived in. She is right up there in that little building right next to the cave. It’s one room. She’s got thangkas and rugs, it’s kind of nice, but there is no place to go to the bathroom. You have to wash out of a bucket. She has renounced the world and all the stupid trappings that go with it. She’s going to make it. When that Dakini dies, you are going to see signs and they’ll find her again when she reincarnates.

What Drives You to Practice?

December 5, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Bodhicitta by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Some of you show up for practice because you think your teacher will get mad at you if you don’t. So you make yourself visible. Some of you show up for practice because you’ve got to get it in today. When do you do practice because you are sick of delusion? When do you do it because you are sick of death? When do you do it because you are sick of watching sentient beings suffer and yet are helpless to help them? When do you say those prayers so deeply that your heart and your mind are purified of delusion and of hatred, greed and ignorance, so that your heart and mind are so deepened that you will absolutely incarnate in such a way to benefit beings?

The single most abundant deepening quality that you all have is your great love and desire to help others. If that’s the ticket with you, ask yourself if you really want to help others or if you want to look like you are helping others? Sometimes I think people want to look like they are helping others so they can be a nice person. As soon as you’re finished with that and you decide that you really help others because you really can’t bear to see their suffering and are finished with watching people suffer, then use that.

Why do you just practice by the book? Why don’t you walk around the temple and make prayers constantly, visualizing the refuge tree; walk about the living quarters of your Lama and the temple itself and the Sangha that’s in it saying, “In this way, let me follow you forever. In this way, let me always revolve around the Three Precious Jewels. In this way, let me be born under whatever circumstances to help sentient beings,” making these profound and sincere prayers. Maybe you can break through into depth.

Those With Hopes of Us

December 4, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Antidoting the Mantra of Samsara”

The Buddha teaches us that there are literally so many sentient beings that, not all the great Bodhisattvas and lamas have connections with all of them. That’s how many sentient beings there are. We don’t have connections with all of them. That means that there are sentient beings with whom you have connections, sentient beings that you have been involved with in one form or another since time out of mind, and their only connection to future practice, to being liberated from samsara, to practicing Dharma, is you. Literally there are sentient beings right now who are waiting for you to achieve liberation. The more you dance around with this, the more they suffer and the longer they wait.

From the moment that you begin to practice Dharma, these are the ones that you should live and breathe for—these precious ones who have hopes of you. You should think of them as your children, as your purpose, as your parents, as your beloved because without you, they have not much hope. That’s why we practice Dharma. That’s why we work hard at it— to alleviate suffering for self and others. And we consider that to be completely nondual and equally importantSofor this reason it’s time to face the music, go deeper, and that hated word, commit. That’s what it takes.

Where is Your Heart?

December 3, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called Bodhicitta by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

What makes you a deep practitioner? What makes you a deep practitioner is really having renounced cyclic existence. Those of you that are casual practitioners are practicing, but your mind is still a mind of distraction. You are still running hither and yon, doing this thing and that thing, and you’re superficial. You have to do this activity over here that is so important, so you go to the meat market. And you have to do this thing over here with your family. All these have-tos have to happen. There is nothing wrong with going to the meat market, and I want you to have a wonderful family, but it’s that life of distraction that I am arguing with. It’s that distracted mind that keeps you practicing superficially and keeps you a casual practitioner.

After having received all this teaching, all this loving, after all that you have felt and known in your own heart to be truth, if you are still doing that after all this time, then somehow you have not fully taken refuge in the Three Precious Jewels. You are not a renunciate. In your mind, there is still something in the world out there to be accomplished, something that you feel is going to meet your need or answer your problem. In other words, you still believe in the world of appearances. You still believe that this apparent reality has some solution or has some basis in realness. You still believe that something is there and you haven’t let go of it. You haven’t really turned your mind away from it.

When I say turn your mind away from the world, I don’t mean that you have to become a monk or a nun necessarily. I don’t mean that you have become a nerd or a dead person. I don’t mean that you are limp and you just don’t have any fun anymore. That’s not what I am talking about. You can engage in any activity that you feel to engage in, but you simply don’t take refuge in it. It’s not something that you get tense about. It’s not something that you get compulsive about. This is Nyingma philosophy.

Right now your mind is all divided. You are off here and off there. As you are running off in any of those directions, if someone were to say to you, “Where is your heart?” You’d have to feel around for it, because you don’t know where it is. You’re not thinking about the teachings of Lord Buddha. You’re not thinking about the precious Dharma. You’re not thinking about the Sangha, you’re not thinking about the Lama, you’re not thinking about the Buddha. You’re not thinking about clear mind. You’re not relating to that at all. You’re all over the place. You are all over the map. You want this and you want that.

The reason why you haven’t renounced apparent reality, even though you know it’s going to kill you – this is a fatal condition we have here, even though it’s never answered your problems – never in the past and it never will, even though you know that, you still have one problem. It’s a big problem and that problem is desire. You have not overcome desire. You have desire for this and that, and they are baubles. This is one of the first teachings of Lord Buddha. And if you listen to the teachings, after you get that bauble, even if you can get it, it is impermanent and if it doesn’t break apart or destroy itself in some way, you will die clutching it and then you can’t take it with you. It’s all impermanent. Even if you attain this bauble that you probably won’t attain in the first place, because it’s nothing but a conceptualization and has no basis in reality, after you’ve wasted all your time going over this desire, you have no guarantee. Even though you were practicing the Dharma, that even though you’ve completed Ngondro, if you still have desire and you have not completely become a renunciate – a person who has renounced cyclic existence – you have no guarantee that you will not be reborn as a hungry ghost. Hear what I am saying?

What Does Love Taste Like?

December 2, 2016 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

In this excerpt from a teaching called The Dharma of Technology, Jetsunma is speaking to her students who had recently received the Rinchen Terzod from His Holiness Penor Rinpoche who conferred the Rinchen Terzod at Kunzang Palyul Choling in 1988

Do you remember in the empowerments in the Rinchen Terzod we had the opportunity to taste different things, something sweet and something bitter, then His Holiness said, “Who is the taster? You know what makes this sweet and this bitter?” The taster does, because if you tried to find the essence of the thing that you’re looking at, remember, if you divided it down and looked at it under the microscope you would never find its thing-ness. In fact, you would never find its sweetness. Which molecule is the sweet one? You would never really find that. What is sweet is sweet to the tongue and the tongue is the determiner of that taste. Who does the tongue belong to? The tongue belongs to you. So you, in fact, are the one that determines whether the thing is sweet or not. You are the taster. And so when you examine yourself and you boil everything down and smear it on the microscope, you can’t find where you are, then you realize that sweet and sour, sweet and bitter are concepts and they are just proliferations of the mind.

In the same way, this person that drives you crazy and this person that is the precious jewel in your life are equal. It is the hatred and the desire, the hope and fear, the attraction and aversion in your mind that causes you to make a difference between them. If you looked at them with the mind of enlightenment, you would see that they are the same. Yet we all have our likes and dislikes. But somehow through our practice, we have to accomplish such pure view, free of desire and on fire with love that they are the same. We have to give our lives equally for both of them. We have to be willing to eat an ocean of suffering for the ones we can’t stand and for the ones we truly love. It’s easy to make sacrifices for the ones you love. It’s easy to make sacrifices for your children. That’s not hard. Anyone can do that. I was reading the other day about a creature called a midge. It conceives its children inside its belly and then as the children grow, they eat the mother from inside out and the mother dies. It’s a shell and it opens up and the children come out. And then after a while they reproduce in the same way. If a little bug can do that, if it can give its life to nurture its children, you can do that. That’s not hard. That happens even on the lowest realms.

What’s really hard is to give your life for all sentient beings, the ones that you know and the ones that you don’t know and to do so in a way so that the ones that you can’t stand are equal to the precious pearls in your life. They have to be the same. If you give only so much and you stop giving, only extending your love to your family or friends and to the people that you know here, or your nation or your planet or even your universe — what about the other 2,999 myriads of universes? What about all of the sentient beings who are, with hatred in your heart, not worthy of your love, but with love in your heart, the same as you?

That’s when you have accomplished Dharma, when your love is that great, when you are that mindful of compassion, when through your meditation and through your practice, and through your understanding of the Buddha’s teachings, you have come to understand the equality of all that lives, that they are the same mind, the same uncontrived primordial wisdom nature, that they only appear to be different. They suffer, they live and they die because of their confusion. What makes the ones you hate so hateful? First of all, it’s your vision of them. You are the taster. Someone else loves them. Who loves them is the same as you and you’re the same as them. The difference is the particular karmic pattern of attraction and repulsion, of desire that manifests in your life.

The one that you hate is the same nature as you with the same capabilities, with the same desire to be happy. The difference is that this person may be confused and the only way they know how to reach for happiness is in the ways that make them unhappy. And of course you, in your hatred and your greed and your ignorance interpret their activity because of the karma of your mind. This sounds like elementary stuff. The sun pours forth and it doesn’t say, “Well, I think I’ll go to violets today and roses are going to be in the dark.” The sun doesn’t do that. Its nature is to pour forth and embrace all life and it is the source of life. Your compassion, your mind is like that in its natural state. It is that all-pervasive compassionate reality, that all pervasive non-dual mind state and so your love has to be that way. Your accomplishment of Dharma has to be like that, with that understanding.

It sounds elementary. It sounds simple. But we still hate. We still judge. We still have the seeds for war in our bodies and in our minds. We still have the seeds for old age, sickness and death. We still have the seeds for all the six kinds of suffering in all of the six realms, and so in that way, we have not accomplished Dharma.