Thursday, March 11, 1999
An interview with Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo, the First Female Tulku Reborn in the West - What Is Enlightenment magazine
I first heard about Jetsunma Ahkön Norbu Lhamo, the first Western woman to be recognized and enthroned by Tibetan lamas as a tulku (an enlightened teacher who reincarnates in whatever form can most benefit all beings), when I read about her in Vicki Mackenzie's book Reborn in the West four years ago.
...
Jetsunma was born to a Jewish mother who was a grocery store cashier. Her stepfather was an Italian truck driver who drank too much. Both parents beat the kids. She was baptized a Catholic and went to a Catholic school. Even though she experienced an inexplicable attraction to Buddha statues, she claims to have known absolutely nothing about Buddhism until her destined meeting with Penor Rinpoche when she was thirty-six. "There was no one who put me in touch with Buddhism," she told Mackenzie. "The only thing that could have connected me, but didn't, was that my mother took me to Coney Island, and a palm reader there told me I was an old Tibetan.
...
When Jetsunma first saw the five-foot-three-inch Tibetan master, she burst into tears. "Now I'm not the sort of person who usually does this sort of thing, you understand. I'm a hard-headed lady. I'm from Brooklyn, for heaven's sake! But I just could not pull myself together. I cried and cried. I just looked at him and thought, 'That's my heart . . . That's my mind . . . That's everything.'" Penor Rinpoche then went with Jetsunma back to her house where he interviewed all of her students in great depth, probing to find out exactly what she had been teaching them. When Jetsunma herself asked the lama where her teaching was coming from, he said, "In the past you were a great bodhisattva, a person who works throughout all time to liberate sentient beings. You have attained your practice to the degree that in every future lifetime you will not forget it. You will always know it; it will always come back to you. It is in your mind and will not be forgotten." ...
I first heard about Jetsunma Ahkön Norbu Lhamo, the first Western woman to be recognized and enthroned by Tibetan lamas as a tulku (an enlightened teacher who reincarnates in whatever form can most benefit all beings), when I read about her in Vicki Mackenzie's book Reborn in the West four years ago.
...
Jetsunma was born to a Jewish mother who was a grocery store cashier. Her stepfather was an Italian truck driver who drank too much. Both parents beat the kids. She was baptized a Catholic and went to a Catholic school. Even though she experienced an inexplicable attraction to Buddha statues, she claims to have known absolutely nothing about Buddhism until her destined meeting with Penor Rinpoche when she was thirty-six. "There was no one who put me in touch with Buddhism," she told Mackenzie. "The only thing that could have connected me, but didn't, was that my mother took me to Coney Island, and a palm reader there told me I was an old Tibetan.
...
When Jetsunma first saw the five-foot-three-inch Tibetan master, she burst into tears. "Now I'm not the sort of person who usually does this sort of thing, you understand. I'm a hard-headed lady. I'm from Brooklyn, for heaven's sake! But I just could not pull myself together. I cried and cried. I just looked at him and thought, 'That's my heart . . . That's my mind . . . That's everything.'" Penor Rinpoche then went with Jetsunma back to her house where he interviewed all of her students in great depth, probing to find out exactly what she had been teaching them. When Jetsunma herself asked the lama where her teaching was coming from, he said, "In the past you were a great bodhisattva, a person who works throughout all time to liberate sentient beings. You have attained your practice to the degree that in every future lifetime you will not forget it. You will always know it; it will always come back to you. It is in your mind and will not be forgotten." ...
Labels: past lives
| Get a hit counter here. |
