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Tonglen meditation.
I was introduced to tonglen meditation a few years back while reading Pema Chodron's book "When Things Fall Apart." Chodron is a Buddhist nun from the Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia and she has written many books that introduce Buddhist concepts to a wide variety of readers.
I knew I had suffering. I knew that sometimes my emotions would lead to impulsive or destructive decisions that caused more suffering. I was at the beginning of my mindfulness training whereby I was detaching from my emotional self and just "observing" the thoughts as they came into my awareness.
I had a concept that meditation was done sitting in full lotus position on a floor cushion (zabuton), hand gentle curving in a mudra, throat resonating a thrumming "ooooooohhhhhmmmmmmmmm" in unison with a group of others similarly seated. I thought meditators could control their breath and still their minds to achieve otherworldly states and from my experience a tab of acid did that for me with much less hubbaloo and preparation. But when my concept of the world was failing me I realized I needed to be mindful of what I was thinking, feeling and sensing before I could see the patterns which bound me tightly to the wheel of my life.
But sometimes, while being mindful I realized that I would have terrible suffering happen. Overwhelming feelings of shame or guilt, or fear or anger would take me and I would find myself inserted back into the memory of the fear, reliving it like it was happening again. I would quickly skate out of the memory and into something else, anything else. And my mindfulness would break.
Tonglen gave me a way to sit through my uncomfortable feelings. To keep mindfulness during suffering and to keep my heart open and my being compassionate. This is one practice which has allowed me to fortify myself from inside. It has allowed me to be strong and vulnerably honest at the same time. It has helped me transcend the feelings that tied me to unwanted patterns of behavior.
So what is Tonglen meditation? (from http://www.shambhala.org/teachers/pema/tonglen1.php)
THE PRACTICE OF TONGLEN
Transforming Confusion into Wisdom
City Retreat | Berkeley Shambhala Center
Fall 1999
In order to have compassion for others, we have to have compassion for ourselves.
In particular, to care about other people who are fearful, angry, jealous, overpowered by addictions of all kinds, arrogant, proud, miserly, selfish, mean —you name it— to have compassion and to care for these people, means not to run from the pain of finding these things in ourselves. In fact, one's whole attitude toward pain can change. Instead of fending it off and hiding from it, one could open one's heart and allow oneself to feel that pain, feel it as something that will soften and purify us and make us far more loving and kind.
The tonglen practice is a method for connecting with suffering —ours and that which is all around us— everywhere we go. It is a method for overcoming fear of suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our heart. Primarily it is a method for awakening the compassion that is inherent in all of us, no matter how cruel or cold we might seem
to be.
We begin the practice by taking on the suffering of a person we know to be hurting and who we wish to help. For instance, if you know of a child who is being hurt, you breathe in the wish to take away all the pain and fear of that child. Then, as you breathe out, you send the child happiness, joy or whatever would relieve their pain. This is the core of the practice: breathing in other's pain so they can be well and have more space to relax and open, and breathing out, sending them relaxation or whatever you feel would bring them relief and happiness. However, we often cannot do this practice because we come face to face with our own fear, our own resistance, anger, or whatever our personal pain, our personal stuckness happens to be at that moment.
At that point you can change the focus and begin to do tonglen for what you are feeling and for millions of others just like you who at that very moment of time are feeling exactly the same stuckness and misery. Maybe you are able to name your pain. You recognize it clearly as terror or revulsion or anger or wanting to get revenge. So you breathe in for all the people who are caught with that same emotion and you send out relief or whatever opens up the space for yourself and all those countless others. Maybe you can't name what you're feeling. But you can feel it —a tightness in the stomach, a heavy darkness or whatever. Just contact what you are feeling and breathe in, take it in —for all of us and send out relief to all of us.
People often say that this practice goes against the grain of how we usually hold ourselves together. Truthfully, this practice does go against the grain of wanting things on our own terms, of wanting it to work out for ourselves no matter what happens to the others. The practice dissolves the armor of self-protection we've tried so hard to create around ourselves. In Buddhist language one would say that it dissolves the fixation and clinging of ego.
Tonglen reverses the usual logic of avoiding suffering and seeking pleasure and, in the process, we become liberated from a very ancient prison of selfishness. We begin to feel love both for ourselves and others and also we being to take care of ourselves and others. It awakens our compassion and it also introduces us to a far larger view of reality. It introduces us to the unlimited spaciousness that Buddhists call shunyata. By doing the practice, we begin to connect with the open dimension of our being. At first we experience this as things not being such a big deal or so solid as they seemed before.
Tonglen can be done for those who are ill, those who are dying or have just died, or for those that are in pain of any kind. It can be done either as a formal meditation practice or right on the spot at any time. For example, if you are out walking and you see someone in pain —right on the spot you can begin to breathe in their pain and send some out some relief. Or, more likely, you might see someone in pain and look away because it brings up your fear or anger; it brings up your resistance and confusion.
So on the spot you can do tonglen for all the people who are just like you, for everyone who wishes to be compassionate but instead is afraid, for everyone who wishes to be brave but instead is a coward.
Rather than beating yourself up, use your own stuckness as a stepping stone to understanding what people are up against all over the world.
Breathe in for all of us and breathe out for all of us.
Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.
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So that is my discourse on Tonglen meditation. Please feel free to ask any questions or to comment on what was just read. I find that this is a very useful technique when I encounter "threatening" situations in which my natural response is one of fear or denial and I want to evade or ignore the uncomfortable part of the situation and bury my head in the sand. If, at those moments I can take a big breath and breath IN my discomfort and then to a moment of tonglen and expand that feeling of mindful awareness to those around me who are experiencing similar feelings, then I can get right back into mindfulness and I approach a situation from a much stronger position.
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