Last edit of this page 24/08/06
Tonglen is the Tibetan practice of sending and receiving. Tong means sending out or letting go, len means receiving or accepting.
This is an active practice of loving kindness, not a navel gazing exercise in self-absorption. With it we can calm the waters within and on the other side of the world. Western thought can embrace it through chaos theory's butterfly effect.
Tonglen uses a principle analogous to homeopathy or vaccination, that is taking poison as medicine. It is a challenging process of applied compassion, a kin to the committed action astivada tradition of Mahayana Buddhism. Tonglen grows pain into compassion. Here are the eight stanzas on thought transformation by Langri Tangpa Dorje Senge with commentary, one of the best nutshell summaries of the practice of Tonglen.
'Learn the alchemy true human beings know. The moment you accept what troubles you've been given, the door will open.' Rumi
In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, which has proven itself in my personal and clinical experience, Tonglen rests in a series of fifty-nine slogans called the Lojong teachings - the Seven Points of Training the Mind. For example, 'transform all mishaps into the path of enlightenment'. The lojong slogans and a commentary can be found on the fully resourced site linked above and in 'Taming the Mind' by Chogyam Trungpa and in the writings of his student, Pema Chodron particularly 'Start Where You Are'. She has an excellent Tonglen audio tape called 'Good Medicine' and plenty of material on her web site - including her teaching in streaming video simulcast 3x a week on the internet.
Although I would describe my path as more that of a lone traveler than the student of a teacher, I have a lasting love and devotion to the lineages of Chogyam Trungpa. However, the failings of this transplantation of Tonglen with yoga, grief work, traumatology and process work traditions are entirely my own viz. -
"Although I've sat in the presence of many sublime spiritual teachers, I have not become a reliable source to pass on the ambrosial teachings I've drunk. At times, I have practiced stupid meditations I've made up myself, and in dependence upon delusive dream appearances, I've diligently tried to put these teachings into practice. However, I have no hope of developing a strong sense of pride due to really developing my mind, since I haven't met any spiritual mentors who could lead me on the path. I don't have the conceit of being able to say, 'this is my experience,' since I have no wisdom qualities arising from genuine practice. My meditation is like achieving meditative stabilization, and then falling asleep. My meditation is like that of a hibernating groundhog!" From Crazy dharma of an idiot who wears mud and feathers for clothing!
In a related Tibetan tradition, I recommend exploring Tonglen in Sogyal Rinpoche's 'The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying' and beautifully developed on this page for the hospice setting, also in the book "Facing Death and Finding Hope" by Christine Longaker.
Introduction
'Adopt a "split-level" approach to all instructions: On the one hand follow the instructions exactly, so that you can discover the experiences to which they point. On the other hand be sensitive to yourself and your own body. Assume that only sound expansive experiences are worth having. The moment doing it feels wrong in your body, stop following the instruction, and back up slightly. Stay there with your attention until you can sense exactly what is going wrong.'
The commencing lojong teaching is, 'First, train in the preliminaries'. After setting the right attitude, the next preparation is to meditate.
1. Why meditate? It is not to become a better meditator, but rather to be a best friend to ourselves, to become more open minded and open hearted in our interactions with the world. It is to meet life as it is, fresh and alive without telling ourselves a story or running our lines on it, without repressing or indulging in our stuff. It is to be awake in the moment of the ordinary and everyday. 'Start where you are' and lean softly into the difficult stuff, going gently into places that scare rather than puling away in fear or loathing.
2. Why meditate every day? So that we meet whatever is there, not just meditating on the days when we feel good about ourselves and our world.
3. How do I start sitting meditation? Give yourself about 20 - 30 minutes in a place and at a time where you are likely to be free of interruptions. In a seat or if cross legged, on the floor on a cushion or cushions with your bottom raised sufficiently for the knees to be a bit below the level of the hip bone; torso comfortably upright, chest softly open rather than uptight or sunken; palms open, facing down resting on the thighs; eyes softly open, gazing slightly downwards one to two metres in front of you; jaw relaxed and teeth slightly open, lips touching; tongue soft curled backwards and underside tip touching the roof of the mouth (makes room for the saliva), ears soft, all facial muscles soft, expressionless; and then, gently aware of the out breath, soft almost peripheral awareness on the out breath, just the out breath. Just noticing. When the mind wanders, kindly name the process 'thinking' or 'planning' or 'story telling' or not and come home to the out breath.
If you prefer you might start with eyes closed and full awareness on the movement of both in and out breath, natural spontaneous breath. I often begin with this, settling myself in to my breath and then slipping into the practice above. Experiment with lips open; tongue resting flat; hands in lap; walking, sitting in a moving train or bus. Find a way that fits you and then find a way to do that with less and less effort.
In this mindfulness awareness practice, the out breath is the object of meditation. It is the nearest thing to the natural state of mind - relaxed and open whilst still having an object of meditation to return to, to bring the mind back home. We don't think about the last breath or that story about a breath we had decades ago, nor do we plan the next breath or worry about our breath way into the future. Breath is spontaneous and ever changing in the here and now. Mind is like that too.
4. Meditation is a naturally occurring phenomenon, a womb time experience - we only have to get out of the way for the process to unfold.
A summary of all of the above is - 'open the mind and relax' or 'calm mindful awareness'.
The Tonglen Practice
Tonglen rests intentionally in the breath. In other cleansing practices we breathe in light and healing from the universe, and breathe out the toxins from within us, perhaps sending them to some distant black hole, nearby compost bin or countless packmen nano-recyclers traveling through our tissues and fluids. In Tonglen we breathe in pain and darkness. We deeply embody this with our whole life experience and then, breathe out whatever gives relief and in whatever form that it takes. We send it to those in need including ourselves.
Stage 1
Begin by resting your mind in a state of spacious openness, in stillness and in gratitude for the inexhaustible generosity of life or of your teachers, maybe of friends and parents, of nature or of God. Take a long, slow, deep breath in and out with this in mind. This is the initial flash on absolute bodhicitta and is like touching the soft spot in your core. The one that teaches us we are all vulnerable. Always commence the practice with this heart opening inclusiveness.
The sensation of this is hard to describe - it is a little like sitting in a sunlit car on a bitterly cold, windy day or wading into the sea or a river on a blazing hot day - just melting with gratitude, surrendering to the support life gives you, refreshed.
- God give us rain when we expect sun.
Give us music when we expect trouble.
Give us tears when we expect breakfast.
Give us dreams when we expect a storm.
Give us a stray dog when we expect congratulations.
God play with us, turn us sideways and around. © Michael Leunig
This stage can take some practice before it fills your whole being in a one breath flash. Some people need to just hang around in this first stage of replenishment for a while before going on to Stage 2. What would your best friend or beloved advise you to do; stay here and breathe generosity in more fully or move on to the next step?
- God help us to live slowly:
To move simply:
To look softly:
To allow emptiness:
To let the heart create for us.
Amen. © 1991 Michael Leunig 'The Prayer Tree' Penguin
Stage 2
Next, begin to breathe in hot - the sensation of heat in the body and breathe out the sensation of cool. Build this up and then add breathing in the sensation of dark and breathing out the sensation of light at the same time. Build these four elements and then add breathing in the sensation of heavy and breathing out the sensation of weightlessness, at the same time. Do this through all the pores of body and with all the senses activated, as best you can, until each of these states or elements are synchronized with the breath. Embody these states as you would in Yoga Nidra, if you are familiar with it.
Breathing in the sensations of hot, dark and heavy is like the sense of claustrophobia. And breathing out cool, bright and weightless is like a sense of freshness. As you continue breathing these in and out they tend to come together (for some this may be synesthesia where you taste a sound or smell a colour). Start with the gross sensations and associations and then notice how the practice takes you to subtle shifts in and nuances of claustrophobia and freshness.
This experience alone may be quite challenging as it can bring up unpleasant feelings or associations, which outweigh the sense of freshness. Feelings of being contained, unable to get out or being held captive by darkness. These may relate to experiences in your life, which are in the process of resolution. So, already you will need to make a choice about whether this practice is okay for you at this point of time in your life or on this particular day. The guidance of a capable teacher may ease you into the practice and enable you to negotiate with such an obstacle, or you may be able to approach it more slowly on your own, by only breathing one of those pairs of qualities and with only one sense activated. NLP has useful techniques for moderating sense modalities.
If you decide to continue on this occasion, then keep practising with the breath, going deeper into your experience of these states with more and more full body awareness until you discover the gross states are becoming subtle and melding into just the energy of them or the sense of them combined in body and mind. It can become like colour breathing - in with red/black and breathing out blue or white, for example. This is like moving from particle to wave, from copper plumbing to an open river, from individual instruments to celestial sound.
This is a process of transforming dark energy into light, of allowing fear to give way to love. It is the reverse of what often happens every day, where we feed fear with fear, take in the good just for ourselves and chuck out the bad. We hope someone else will clean up the physical and emotional environment after us. Taking in the bad and transforming it with our own resources, is becoming responsible for our own mess and for cleaning up our own life. That is a big ask and Tonglen asks it of us. Chogyam Trungpa pictured.
There is a kind of covert symbiotic need in all of us, of a hope that there will be someone, someday who will meet all of our needs, who will take care of us. It is like a wish to return to the breast and have someone else wipe our bottoms. In Buddhist psychology it is called the hungry ghost, because that need is insatiable. It can never be satisfied. We con ourselves into thinking that it can be and sometimes even blame our loved ones, our teachers, life or God when they don't do it for us. The invisible third party in a lot of relationship conflict is 'God', where we expect our partner to read our minds, know what we want and give it to us and then clean up the mess left where we have abdicated leadership in our own life. Tonglen asks us to own up to the hungry ghost and just sit in it.
Paradoxically, although there is a process of ownership and purification, it is not your intent to purify the dark energy before sending it out as light. That can be an obstacle to the practice as you might wait for the energy to be good enough or pure enough before you can send it to someone else. Your intention at this stage is just to synchronize the breathing with the states or elements and clear the inner obstacles to undertaking the practice. When that has stabilized and is continuing effortlessly, synchronized and balanced in and out, let it go into the background and consider moving onto the next step. What would your best friend or beloved advise you to do; stay here and synchronise the breath more fully or move on to the next step? The next stage will bring up another set of challenges.
Stage 3- Beginners
Choose wisely a personal and painful situation to work with. This is self-tonglen. Do this with an understanding of whether you are a beginner or an experienced meditator and with the counsel of the beloved within. A beginner would start with a small, self-contained and recent frustration with somebody at work or at home. This could be like forgetting to complete a task you were relying on, forgetting to turn the lights off, a stuff up with a bill or an invoice, being stood up for coffee, missing out on a promotion. If any of these are repetitive or chronic issues at work or home, then you will know how deep the history goes and how big an issue the apparently simple event will be. Always choose a really simple one to start with, a situation or issue, which is real for you and then breathe that in just for you.
Notice the pattern of overwhelm if it arises in you - it might be that you have an inner objection to working with the issue you've chosen that you have not acknowledged. If so, back off a bit; return to just breath awareness; modify the sensations or the scope of an issue; return to stage 1 or 2, or take a break and reflect on how you chose.
As you breathe with this personal issue, you may start to become aware of what would bring you relief, peace or calm. That could be as simple as imagining the bill paid, the lights turned off, having the cup of coffee. Begin to breathe that out for yourself and send it to yourself as you were then at the event and as you are now.
This may mean imagining yourself as you were then or as you are now in that situation. Let's say the issue touches your earliest memories as a babe in arms or as a teenager in trouble. This may mean imagining cradling that child as you were then and loving her as only you can do now. Or of getting alongside the teen and just hanging out with the trouble. However it shapes up in your mind, make an energetic connection with yourself and breathe the love and the compassion with you. You may find it helps to breathe that directly toward the heart centre or another specific place where you feel the pain or distress of the situation.
As before, this will start in the gross form but as you deepen the practice this will move to a more subtle form and energy of what would bring relief. This relief can be as straightforward as imagining a warm bath; a hug; a cup of tea; it can be a positive thought; an image of a saint; white light; the scent of lavender, even a holiday from the crap.
As you synchronize your breathe more deeply and more balanced with both in and out breath, wider layers of the meaning and context of your own situation may arise in awareness. This can be intense and personal and may be received in an unfamiliar sensory channel. Allow awareness of this level of the truth to gently alter your practice.
Often the direction of these changes is toward more holistic, grounded understanding of the situation and a wider inclusion of all those involved: bystanders, perpetrators, the bio-community and our little planet hurtling through space. A paradigm to describe this holistic inclusion is that of holographic consciousness.
Stage 3 - Intermediate
As you progress in the self-tonglen practice, you can expand the practice to include one other. You breathe in for one other whom you know and are connected with, who is in the same situation as you or who suffers or struggles in the same way as you do. And then breathe out whatever is evolving in bringing relief to you.
Again it may help to direct your out breath of relief to a particular place with the person with whom you are working and/or to a particular time in their lives when they began experiencing the distress you are working with.
Don't attempt to guess what would bring relief to one who is in the same situation, just what works for you in your embodied experience of the issue and then breathe that out. In the knowledge of yourself is the answer to what works for others in a resonant situation. Knowledge is like the night sky. You can't possibly know all the stars, you can only hope to know your own light mind and in this there is great healing.
Deepen your experience of the issue by embodying it with full awareness as before and synchronizing with the breath in and out.
Comment: this appears a simple instruction but you can make it really hard for yourself by starting with too big or with a major personal or universal issue and with too many people also affected by it. Start small, with people in your immediate vicinity who are also struggling with the same issue and then as you get adept, grow the size of the problem and the number of people you are working with. Start local, go global.
Stage 3 - Advanced
It could take maybe a year of consistent daily practice in any style of meditation (or a 10 day silent meditation intensive) before you can effectively advance to this stage and keep your breath synchronised and mind balanced and open to any issue that arises in consciousness. At this stage you breathe deeper into and across the layers of the issue for yourself and breathe out relief into those layers in a group or family, adding one person at a time.
Start adding one at a time from those in your immediate family or community and then expand out to related groups or families, which you sense are connected to you through this issue. This is the most challenging stage.
Practitioners can feel overwhelmed by the enormity of suffering and catastrophe in the world and at the same time more deeply connected to limitless love and generosity. This is the beginning of the end to the feeling of isolation and a start to the work of compassion - the ultimate source of ethical action in the world.
It might help to represent the community you are working with in Tonglen by its guiding star or its animal spirit, its totem or mythic quest or by the saint who guards over the group or community with which you are working. Just don't get into story telling, only use metaphor as a reminder of the breadth of group or community. You are trying to open your arms as wide as you can to include all who are connected, not build an intellectual framework or a map. The map is not the territory.
Problems with the practice
1. If you find that you are taking on the negative energy of the people in the same situation as you and hanging onto it, then change your intention to that of breathing in for yourself and all those people who take on the negative energy of others and hang onto it. If colour has become your energy symbol, you may find that you are breathing out less blue or white for example than the red/black you are taking in. If smoke is your energy symbol, then the same applies. Work to bring it into balance, perhaps by letting go of what you're holding on to.
2. If you find yourself overwhelmed by the practice, then change your intention to breathe in for yourself and all those who struggle with compassion. Find what would give you relief and breathe that out. Whatever obstacle comes up, turn it toward the practice.
3. You may also experience this difficulty in other spheres of life, not just in meditation. You may be suffering from compassion fatigue. It may be that you are at a point in your life where you cannot work in emergency services, hospice, as a carer of a sick relative, with trauma, domestic violence, suicide, nor in counseling nor all the other places where the pain of life is full on and in your face. However, some workers in those situations have found that Tonglen is the only practice that has allowed them to continue dealing with the reality they face each day.
4. Tonglen can be considered as a form of intercessory prayer but for some it may be a practice that conflicts with Biblical doctrine. If you are teaching Tonglen in a Christian context, you may need to take this into consideration.
For example, God breathed in the wrongs of the world and sent out His Son. Rabbi Jesus took on the sins of the world and breathed out his life. Only Christ can take on the suffering of the world, we are already forgiven. For a European Buddhist-Christian dialogue try here.
'And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?' WB Yeats from 'The Second Coming'
5. Or you may be clutching your heart instead of letting it lie open.
6. At the end of the time you have allotted for the practice, closure may be an issue if you have taken on more than you realised when you chose the issue to work with. Leave a symbol of ongoing healing where you leave off the practice, thank yourself for working with the issue, and thank the others with whom you are connected by the issue and make an appointment to return to the practice another day.
Specific application when under personal or professional attack
- when it feels like you and others have been attacked, real or imagined.
Some psychological and/or institutional abuse has a quality of being covert or indirect, for example, rejection under the guise of indifference; a damning public statement disguised as an 'innocent' question; a fake acknowledgement from an institution where one was injured or abused. Others are direct assaults on one's professional integrity. There are many challenging ethical issues in these areas.
In health, education and welfare employment, statutory complaints procedures magnify the distress of a vexatious complaint. For example with proportional enforcement policies requiring a public and thus humiliating removal from the work place often without due process and before a finding of fact. In these circumstances it is a challenge to believe a narcissistic and unwarranted attack from a dissatisfied customer is from 'my supreme spiritual friend'. To 'give gain and victory to others, take loss and defeat for ourselves' is the Tonglen approach to those situations.
When we choose to remain a caring professional, an attack on professional integrity inevitably hurts. The embodied nature of our reactions to misrepresentation and injustice, for example feeling kicked in the guts or shafted as a scapegoat, makes it the perfect insult for self-discovery and self-mastery in Tonglen and in daily life. But that isn't a recommendation to lie down and take it!
Maintaining healthy boundaries in professional relationships whilst remaining appropriately open and vulnerable with clients/students/customers. At the same time, of course one mounts a robust defence of the professional conduct under attack, where to not do so would inflict self-harm.
How I handle this
Whenever one of these covert or overt attacks has occurred and I have remembered to practise Tonglen, a lot of other stuff comes up. Particularly painful is the feeling of abuse, that is of having been attacked without the ability to immediately defend myself. This goes straight to my own personal history and so that piles on top of the most recent trigger. By the time I get to think about how I could respond to the perceived attack, I'm submerged and isolated.
I start to breathe in something like the poison on an arrow head and I get stuck with breathing out. Nothing comes to me. I just feel blocked by rage, hurt, impotence and fear. So I keep breathing in the poison, driven into my chest and sometimes remember the lojong teachings 'always meditate on whatever provokes resentment' and 'abandon any hope of fruition'.
Sometimes I breathe it in without thinking about anything, it's just a habit. And then, after maybe minutes or on and off for hours in the middle of the night, suddenly, boom I get it. A smile comes over my face and I start to breathe out what would give me relief and send that to them. On one occasion that was a brilliant, wise and compassionate response immediately I felt attacked. I send the energy of that triumph of timing to them.
And then I start to feel for all the other people who are attacked and can't immediately defend themselves. I breathe in for them and send out the energy of conscious good timing, for example. By then I don't remember the isolation, I just feel the connection with the breath synchronised, in with the bad out with the good. If I continue with it I inevitably come to the real or imagined perpetrator, who themselves are somewhere abused and wounded. So I breathe in for them as well and send them relief. And this builds connection with the disavowed - the 'I'm not like that or them' belief.
And then the big one for me, to breath in for all the perpetrators who suffer like the real or imagined offender in my personal drama and send them that which will bring them relief.
That's hard for me to practise because I have all sorts of rational objections to breathing in for people who I believe belong on death row or in a war crimes tribunal but who are likely to get away with it. 'Why should I relieve them of any suffering?', I ask myself. 'Let the law of karma deal with them, why should I?'
After this kind of struggle within myself I do, finally, come to breathe in for all of us and send relief. I get there in part, through a gentle act of will. I have learnt from past experience with the practice that it does release me from territoriality and from the bondage of fear and hate. I trust the practice. The practice is the teacher.
Tonglen in intimate relationships
Tonglen can be undertaken standing up, in walking meditation and in the moment of an insult or attack in an intimate relationship, when the impulse is to react and throw it back at them - with interest. This is where the sweetness of a love relationship, the kindness of friendship or the hard won truce suddenly turns to bitter recriminations and recycling old issues. In a step or blended family setting it can be even tougher to practise Tonglen at those moments.
Tonglen practice can sometimes interrupt these repetitive hot and heavy troubles, which erupt unaware, senselessly and mindlessly and make our connections dark and claustrophobic rather than bright and fresh. These negative patterns of relationship remind me of a cartoon of someone twisting their upper body and pulling out the back of their underwear to look at its bulging contents, with the caption 'Who shat in there?'
Coming to one's senses through mindful awareness of body process in these situations, may also give the space and time for choice to intervene, rather than allowing the same old reactions to breathe out, powering another cruel re-run of the old-brain, fight/flight pattern of survival.
At that time, breathe in the claustrophobic relationship toxins and send out re-invigorated relationship health. If that doesn't work, breathe in Tonglen 'not working' and find what would give relief and breathe that out. The aware energy of that self-responsible 'woops! it's my shit' process, may invite your luxuriously 'out of control' relationship to slow its rush for the cliff's edge, again and again like there was no tomorrow and endless flushing toilets.
It's no use righteously quoting this or recommending Tonglen to the other, to cool them down. Meditation can't become another way to withdraw or to pay back or to demand entitlements. You have to practise it for yourself alone, whilst at the same time being connected, vulnerable and with good boundaries in the relationship.
It requires practice with sitting and walking Tonglen to get the hang of multi tasking it during a fight - of being strong, clear, soft and aware and in the moment of conflict.
One aim with intimacy is to honour your relationship with yourself at the same time as remaining in relationship with the other. That requires having an honest, intact relationship with yourself to start with. On that foundation you can stand in your own shoes at the same time as knowing when and where to stand in their's and communicating that with respect.
It doesn't work to take their side and abandon yours. Nor to stand in neither yours nor theirs.
To do both with strength, kindness and authenticity you need to feel safe in your own body, safe in relationship with your own process. If you struggle with that level of safety anyway, then maybe there's an old wound, out of awareness, which pops out in a close/familiar relationship drama where probably before commencing the current relationship you were earlier wounded. Maybe in your family of origin.
Intimacy is juicy, fleshy, tactile, contactful, resilient, challenging, growthful, respectful, soft and strong. It is learnt/modeled in our first caregivers' arms and develops over the whole life cycle. We get better at it with practice, no matter how damaging our first experiences were.
Intimate friendship is one of the best workshops on the planet. Imagine how much one would have to spend on a live-in therapy team to expose our sub conscious processes, our trance-like conning of ourselves/blaming of the other and to polish our awareness for the same number of hours we spend with our loved ones at times, doing exactly the same things.
Knowing the following great truths is not enough - 1. Everything changes, nothing is permanent. 2. All our attempts at denying or preventing the first truth's operation are unreliable and thus lead to suffering and 3. There is nothing in the world that is of ourselves alone, everything is contingent upon something else, which itself is dependent on other events and so on into infinity.
After discovering the Buddha's truths for yourself, you then have to discover a way to handle the automatic, mal-adaptation of our million year old, territorial nervous system. Tonglen is the medicine of the Buddha. Physiological reactivity and territoriality don't stop when wisdom lands - how we handle our reactions does.
- When the heart
is cut or cracked or broken
Do not clutch it.
Let the wound lie open.- Let the wind
From the good old sea blow in
To bathe the wound with salt
And let it sting.- Let a stray dog lick it
Let a bird lean in the hole and sing
A simple song like a tiny bell
And let it ring. © 1990 Michael Leunig
Trauma and forgiveness
Sometimes after trying this practice many times with a personal issue, without experiencing a shift or breakthrough into resolution, spaciousness and generosity, it may be necessary to consider first healing the trauma and then forgiving yourself or another before being able to deal with hurt or betrayal through Tonglen.
To heal trauma effectively, find a good trauma therapist. If that is not possible then try the self help approach of EFT - a surprisingly simple and effective tapping of acupressure meridian points.
This forgiveness practice on my site is a good place to start letting go and moving on.
Thought Forms
You may have found in practising Antar Mouna that a particular thought pattern or thoughts in general would hide like rabbits from you when you tried to catch them or that others were so persistent and painful that you could not sit with them. You can do Tonglen on those thought patterns as if they had a life of their own, as if personified.
You breathe in the pain those thought patterns contain and breathe out whatever would unfold the pattern. You extend it to thought patterns like them in one other person and then a wider group, and you send relief as you have before.
Sometimes these thought patterns are like a thought field or a time spirit that surrounds and engulfs a whole community.
For further exploration of the practice visit this well resourced Tonglen page. Here is a list of other Tonglen pages on the web.
Here is an Acrobat .pdf version of this article generated 27/01/05
© 2005 Ziji Fox All Rights Reserved www.peterfox.com.au
Pre-commitment relationship education study cycle: Mental Map * Unexamined life * Mythic Quest * Turning points * Tough Love * 'Successful' marriage * Boundaries * Life intro 1 * Life intro 2 * Fidelity 1 * Fidelity 2 * Fidelity 3 * Fidelity 4 * Fidelity 5 * Forgiving * Tonglen * Marriage Quotes * John Cleese on families.doc * Kopp's manifesto
From THE GREAT PATH OF AWAKENING, by Jamgön Kongtrul, translated by Ken McLeod. Shambhala Publications Boston.
"Be grateful to everyone
Work on taking and sending with these considerations in mind:
In general, all methods for attaining buddha hood rely on sentient beings. Therefore, to the individual who wishes to awaken, sentient beings are as worthy of gratitude as buddha's. Specifically, all sentient beings are worthy of gratitude since there is not one who has not been my parent. In particular, all those who hurt me are worthy of gratitude since they are my companions and helpers for gathering the accumulations of merit and pristine wisdom and for clearing away the obscurations of disturbing emotions and conceptual knowledge.
Do not be angry, not even at a dog or an insect. Strive to give whatever actual help you can. If you cannot help, then think and say: May this sentient being (or troublemaker) quickly be rid of pain and enjoy happiness. May he come to attain buddha hood
Arouse bodhicitta: from now on, all the virtuous acts I do shall be for his welfare.
When a god or a demon troubles you, think: this trouble now occurs because 1, from time without beginning, have made trouble for him. Now I shall give him my flesh and blood in recompense.
Imagine the one who troubles you to be present in front of you and mentally give him your body as you say: here, revel in my flesh and blood and whatever else you want.
Meditate with complete conviction that this troublemaker enjoys your flesh and blood, and is filled with pure happiness, and arouse the two kinds of bodhicitta in your mind. Or: because I had let mindfulness and other remedies lapse, disturbing emotions arose without my noticing them. Since this troublemaker has now warned me of this, he is certainly an expression of my guru or a buddha. I'm very grateful to him because he has stimulated me to train in bodhicitta.
Or, when illness or suffering comes, think with complete sincerity: if this hadn't happened, I would have been distracted by materialistic involvements and would not have maintained mindfulness of dharma. Since this has brought dharma to my attention again, it is the guru's or the jewels' activity, and I am very grateful.
To sum up, whoever thinks and acts out of a concern to achieve his or her own well-being is a worldly person; whoever thinks and acts out of a concern to achieve the well-being of others is a dharma person.
Langri-tangpa has said: I open to you as deep a teaching as there is. Pay attention! All faults are our own. All good qualities Are the lords', sentient beings.
The point here is: give gain and victory to others, take loss and defeat for ourselves. Other than this, there is nothing to understand."
