Guided Meditation: Tonglen for Self-at-all-Ages
Download MP3I thought this morning that we would do a for self. And Tonglen is never done only for one's self, but it can be the primary focus of Tonglen meditation, even using a classical method. And I'll kind of guide you through an example this morning. But I want you to understand that when you are having difficulty, the self is not broken. That is never the case.
Speaker 1:You might be challenged. You might be sick. You might be full of anxiety. You are just out of balance, and some pieces have come forward which caused you to have the experience of being broken or so some people describe it. But remember that you are always by nature whole and complete.
Speaker 1:And this is not just some Buddhist philosophical thing. This is actually, I I believe, the nature of all things. So let's begin. And just in your heart, if it is part of your practice, take a refuge, which means to turn inward for the sources of freedom from suffering. And if you like to visualize the refuge tree or the presence of all of the great enlightened beings, do that by all means.
Speaker 1:The benefit of the visualization, it's a very bright and sparkling visualization, and it raises the energy in the subtle body. Little brightness. And to anyone that's a source of spiritual encouragement to you, strength, you can place them in that refuge tree, radiating light present with you, kind of cheering you on. You know? And then consider the suffering of all beings in all realms, so not just the human realm, but all of the six realms of sentient beings.
Speaker 1:And kind of take the 10,000 foot view on that, the wholeness, the completeness of suffering. And then sometimes I find it helpful to kind of zoom in on a particular suffering, something that I know will move my heart. And what we're looking for is that movement of the heart of Bodhicitta. It can be a flinch at suffering or a warmth in the heart or a slight expansiveness. And then the moment you feel that, alchemize that into energy for the practice.
Speaker 1:I do this for all beings that they might be free. I will awaken. I will use these methods of awakening for the benefit of beings. And setting that determination at the beginning of a practice, make sure that you don't turn this into a self improvement project. Having taken refuge in bodhicitta, if those are part of your practice, or beginning with this piece if you are a secular practitioner, visualize yourself exactly as you are in front of yourself and facing yourself.
Speaker 1:The size of that visualization doesn't matter. And in fact, I'm not sure that the original root text says visualize. It maybe says something which could also be translated as bring to mind. So it's not so important that the visualization is clear. And get a sense that you are there in front facing yourself.
Speaker 1:And if you would call to mind some experience of suffering so that you can refamiliarize yourself with the energetics of that experience, the feelings, the thoughts, the body experience, and dwell in that for a little bit, Not fixing, not really doing anything, just dipping into and absorbing that experience. And it is very important in all aspects of Tonglen practice that you be somewhat disciplined about thoughts arising, conceptual thoughts, stories, for example. And if they do, they will weaken the practice a little bit. So, just kind of cut the thought and return attention, rejuvenate that sense of feeling and energy. And you know and I know that there's no word in English that captures every facet of any suffering.
Speaker 1:And resist the temptation to name your suffering. It's not really harmful, but it makes it smaller than it is, less complex. And with the next movement of Tonglen for self, this is where you begin to have to let go into some confidence in the practice. So follow these instructions really carefully. Now you imagine that this very suffering that you have been contacting arises from the chest of the visualized you as a kind of dark, thick, smoky, vaporous substance.
Speaker 1:It doesn't look like anything. It's a cloud, kind of. And it arises from that chest. And while it's gathering, your actual self must cultivate the compassionate wish. I will take on this suffering and experience it so you don't have to.
Speaker 1:I will remove this suffering and experience it in place of you. Just kind of work that energy up, that compassion, little bit of courage maybe. And then on some in breath when you feel ready and it truly does not matter if it's the same breath or five breaths later, you breathe in that dark smoke into your chest, and you imagine that your visualized self is now free from that suffering. I like to stay there for just a moment, making sure that I trust that. And then on the out breath, as you know, we breathe out brilliant white light.
Speaker 1:It's really like the sun, kind of light that the sun emanates. And you breathe it out, and it goes between you and the visualized you, and it enters the visualized body as a brilliant light where it is absorbed into the body and mind of your visualized self. And it's pretty important to trust the universe to know exactly what you're sending. You don't need to know. Trust the wisdom of the fullness of being to know precisely the alchemical prescription that you need.
Speaker 1:Breathe that in, and it's absorbed by the body of the visualized you. And it is received. And you should check back in with your actual body mind and rest in the experience of noticing that it's fully received. So all suffering removed and all blessing received. And then you continue this on the in breath and the out breath.
Speaker 1:Go slowly so that you don't miss a piece if it's possible to do so at your own pace completely. And then to layer a little more complexity into the practice. As you do this, taking and sending, you are meant to notice your internal mechanism, your kind of the architecture of your internal experience. Does it flow easily? Is it stuck?
Speaker 1:And you're not really supposed to do anything with that. It's okay to relax and, you know, start fresh with the next breath. Those small micro adjustments are fine, but you are absolutely not meant to contemplate or analyze this. It's 100 energetics. And then let go of that contemplative exercise and rest for a little bit.
Speaker 1:If you were having some difficulty, great difficulty, angst or something, I would do that for twenty minutes. So you just rest. Maybe rest for a minute or two, noticing the energy, noticing, and you should be seeing is it settling, not settling. It doesn't matter if it settles or doesn't settle, but we should always train in noticing. And since you are freshly in touch with this experience, now bring to mind someone that you care about that has some similar package of suffering related to this sibling or a friend or people you know about or of.
Speaker 1:It helps if there's some warmth in the relationship, easy connection. And interestingly enough, you don't actually have to like them. You just have to care. And now you get into touch. And, of course, we're always projecting here, visualizing that person in front of you, facing you, letting go of worry about this notion of projection.
Speaker 1:Just imagine that their suffering, which is similar to yours, which you know something about, gathers into the heart space as a dark, thick smoke. And on some in breath, when you feel ready, you make the wish that you could experience this. So just even for a moment, they could be free, not carry it. So you pick it up for them. You breathe it in on the in breath, and you trust the the universe to understand that, to know it, to place it, to absorb it.
Speaker 1:And on the out breath, you send out all manner of blessing on brilliant shock of white light, which goes from your body to theirs through space, is absorbed into their body every kind of blessing, healing the mind, the body, the spirit at the cellular level and physical level. Maybe this impacts the visualization a little bit, And you just continue this taking and sending for a few breaths. And then you let that visualization go and relax. Watching the experience in the body and the mind, like watching snowfall just relaxed. And in these in between phases of settling, notice every little experience, pain in the knee or sound outside.
Speaker 1:And don't carry any assumption about whether they're related or not. Rest into noticing. And now call to mind a random group of so called strangers. Just collect, you know, 20 people that you don't know so well or two or five, doesn't really matter. And with the understanding that the suffering that you have, no matter what it is, is felt in some way by all of those people.
Speaker 1:We can get caught up in the story about my suffering, but, actually, it doesn't work like that. It may be balanced differently, like some dishes have lot of salt and some have little bit. But because you know something about that suffering, you know not just about the suffering, but the pain that it causes. Using that little bit of compassion generated for practicing for yourself now, imagine those people in front of you just present. It doesn't need to be visualized.
Speaker 1:And imagine that that bit of suffering, whether it's big or small, same or not, arises from their bodies like a dark smoke. And try the experiment, not predicting or preferring any outcome, but on the in breath, breathe it in with the wish that they be relieved of that particular suffering. And on the out breath, send blessings. Trust the universe to know what blessings. It's not really your business.
Speaker 1:And imagine their bodies filled with light and radiant and in the process of healing and joy, each expressing and experiencing quite differently. And then let that visualization go and rest. And then I invite you to imagine someone with whom you have Please don't choose a trauma based relationship. It can be ordinary annoyance. That's enough.
Speaker 1:And spend a moment generating, accelerating that energy, that resistance that you have to this person so you're familiar with your own piece of the equation here. And understanding the fact of their sentience means they also have the suffering that you have to some degree in some way, though it may look quite different in addition to their many other sufferings. And so remembering back a bit to your experience of the weight or the sharpness or whatever it was of your own suffering. Just connecting with that a little bit. You imagine that the suffering arises from the heart of this disliked person as a dark smoke, and you breathe it into your heart space, giving it over to the universe, experiencing it, and then letting it go.
Speaker 1:This moving energy. Sometimes it even helps to visualize. It comes into the heart space and out through the back. As long as you experience that on the way. And then you return with the bright light and the blessings, and just do that for a few breaths.
Speaker 1:Stay in touch with the entire experience. And now let that rest. And notice the settling. Don't go into checking out during the settling of the energy. Stay clear.
Speaker 1:And now you imagine all beings. All beings. This should not just include humans if you've been practicing for a while. It should bring up animals and other beings. A vast infinite cloud of living beings.
Speaker 1:Even though they may be small as a pinpoint, their own life is as complex and precious as yours. And understanding that all beings have all suffering and all everything else as well. But knowing from your own life experience the vastness and the depth, even of the suffering of the 100 people you know the best, You know that pain. And so connecting with that energy, you imagine that from this vast cloud of beings comes a vast, dark cloud of suffering. And in some way, which is just dreamlike, you make the wish that you be able to that you do take it on and that they are relieved.
Speaker 1:And on the out breath, you send infinite blessing. And be sure that the magnitude of this visualization or this sensing experience is complete. So, further than you can see, expand yourself far beyond your body, your life, all of those things. And you breathe that suffering into the heart space, all of it, completely, every last bit. And on a subsequent out breath, you breathe out infinite light, imagining that the suffering of the world is quelled and that healing extends in infinite direction without preference.
Speaker 1:Do you do that for some breaths? And then let that visualization rest. Just rest. And now we'll do the simple dedication of merit. By this virtue may I quickly realize Mahamudra and establish all beings without exception in that state.
Speaker 1:So I want to go over the architecture of this practice with you just a little bit so that when you do it, you're clear about the steps. These steps are called dissolving the barriers, and the barrier that's referred to there is our sense of separateness. You know, I am me and I end at the edges of this body and so forth. And so it's kind of the opposite of the truth of interconnectedness. This, among all the practices we do, I do, this one really must be done nonconceptually.
Speaker 1:Every time you give rise to a story, oh, I don't know what I should give this person, you dilute the efficacy of the practice. So cut the story and do this practice completely as energetics, just completely. A light show, sometimes Michael used to say. So do it as a light show. But, really, it must have you must be connected to the practice on the heart level.
Speaker 1:That's why the bodhicitta at the beginning of this practice, really important that you if you're having a day where you are not or can't yet be connected with the suffering of the universe, you need to know that going into the practice. Like, I have checked out so completely, it will be hard for me to access compassion and possibly wisdom. But do the practice anyway. No problem practicing in difficult circumstances. When you do the practice, then again, the visualization is not nearly as important as the confidence that the other beingness, the other life energy is there.
Speaker 1:That's what's important. That's what will boost the practice. And remember that from the very beginning at the Tonglen for Self, you're dividing your attention into kind of track A and track B. Track A is attending to the mechanics of the practice. And after five, ten years of Tonglen, you won't need hardly any energy for track a.
Speaker 1:It just will come for you like riding a bike or driving your car. And so you're doing that with the rest of your energy. You are noticing the shifts, the energetic shifts in your body. I'm open. I'm closed.
Speaker 1:It was painful. It was you know, I'm stuffing something. And then also the experiential the physical experiential shifts. Like, I had a pain in my chest on the right side. And you're not meant to track these.
Speaker 1:You are meant to connect with that energy and intimate attention. It has something to teach you. It is not there by accident. And so in a kind of poetic way, would say, just collect, connect in the intimate attention with that energy to receive that little piece of cosmic wisdom fluff, you know, that's out there that's got your name on it. The reason that we go through myself, I think most of you know this, but since we're recording, myself and a person that's, that I care for and then neutrals, we are connecting to the truth of interconnectedness.
Speaker 1:It's not like a Valentine exercise, you know? It's not exactly like that, a best friends exercise. It's not like that. You're meant to connect with the truth. There is me, but me is also energetically related to, connected by tendril to an other.
Speaker 1:And so we start with an other that's easy. That's why some warmth should be there. And then the neutrals, and you're meant to notice, like, we are definitely also connected and rummaging around in Tonglen. Most often, we can easily find, yeah, those people, they're not so different from me. All those folks in the grocery store at this minute, you know, we're kind of in the same boat.
Speaker 1:And even I remember Michael saying to me once, yeah, it's not kind of like there's only one boat. There's only one boat. And so we're there, and then we're connecting with people with whom we have difficulty. That's the flexing of the bicep of Tonglen. Work it a little bit.
Speaker 1:So that point, we await with it. That one comes after the neutrals because we want to have enough settledness and enough clarity in the meditation and perhaps a little bit of energy that we've received from the visualizations, then we can take on the disruption of our own distaste of this person. Alright? Because that's a higher energy, and so we want to go into that ideally with a little bit higher energy ourself so that when we need it, we're not absorbed by the negativity. Not that that's a problem, but we're trying to get to the state where we can be open and be absorbing that or present with that.
Speaker 1:And then you do all beings because that's the ultimate truth, that we are just a piece of that. And this whole energetic play is the nature of mind and the nature of all phenomena, the truth of emptiness and interconnectedness. So you don't have to know any of that stuff. In fact, maybe in some ways, it's better to just do tonglen. It's very simple.
Speaker 1:You know, very simple. And then remember that this can also be done as a pocket practice in a truncated form. It's okay. So a dog is walking across the street and you see it limping and you feel a little, oh. Sometimes easy for animals.
Speaker 1:Right? Like, oh. And you just breathe in their suffering. And you do you do cultivate this idea. It relieves the dog, and you breathe out.
Speaker 1:What you must not do is turn that into an identification or a story. That story, that experience should not be turned then into solidity. This is not a magic show. Though if the world is entirely energetics, then great beings with great minds, I I believe this is true, like Dalai Lama or someone else, could cure other beings through Tonglen. And there are many interesting stories about that, and that's a rather broadly held belief in Tibetan culture.
Speaker 1:I believe it just based on experience. But at the very least, you are the beneficiary of your practice as you move along this path of wisdom and compassion. Yours getting bigger and bigger. And thereby and this is a piece I've been trying to express to people in the last couple of weekend interviews. When you're doing this and your own wisdom and compassion are ripening, your suffering is going down.
Speaker 1:So, you can't always tell that your suffering is getting less because you might be stirring up, you know, like new old wounds opening, and so you feel like you're going deeper into suffering. But that's just a piece of the mechanism. I was in the gym yesterday, weight lifting, and I was talking to the trainer that I use, and I said, You know, this is about my age, the process of weight loss, right? But it's also muscle building. And he said, Yeah, that's a little tricky.
Speaker 1:So, you're losing weight, but you don't want to lose muscle, and also the muscle is heavier than the fat. And so you're in this constant flux. And so, he said, You're going to have to trust me and trust the process, that what's happening right now is in perfect balance. And he said, I've been doing this fifty years. I know and I can feel it when someone hits that point.
Speaker 1:And he said, You're exactly right there. It's exactly working. And you could, even unless it gives you motivation, quit paying attention to all the numbers. And I think Tonglen is like that. It is not measurable.
Speaker 1:It's mystical experience. So find your own way with that. Yeah. It's not science. Not only not rocket science.
Speaker 1:It's not science at all. And yet, the method is absolutely important. So read the books and listen to some teachings. The instructions the way I gave them today. So ideally there would be no instruction, no interruption of analysis and using the brain to cognize in that way, in a conceptual way.
Speaker 1:Right? That actually moves to a different part of the brain. So it's okay. This is a kind of high beginner level instruction. In a beginning class, because we are so fixated on solution building, fixing the idea that everything is broken, we're so oriented towards that as a society, I will often say things like, you know, pick the healing quality that you want to send because people will be doing that anyway.
Speaker 1:And so and this idea, I've been really puzzling for about twenty years over how to give Tonglen to work inside the Western mind. You know? And so I want to be sure that you always know where to find the root text and the true instructions for Tonglen, and the answer is not the Internet. Absolutely not. So much junk on the Internet around Tonglen.
Speaker 1:But Pema Chodron, also when I listen to her instructions, she gives very beginning level Tonglen instructions. But when you're doing real Tonglen, it's going to be it's going to have a dreamlike quality. And the effort of of doing the Tonglen will be almost like remembering the unfolding of an opera. It'll be very subtle, and very dreamlike. It will take no energy from your day.
Speaker 1:Time? Yes. But energy? No to do Tonglen. In fact, it should infuse the subtle body with energy.
Speaker 1:And so it's a good practice to do if you're sick. It's an excellent practice to do if you're sick. People have great difficulty in this culture, and I'm not sure that it's globally universal. I think it's not. But in our culture, we have great difficulty wanting to take on more suffering, and trusting that there could be a means by which we could be relieved of suffering if we encounter it directly.
Speaker 1:All of our mechanisms are about fixing and avoiding suffering. I think that's pretty easy to see. And so one of the roadblocks that people run into in beginning Tonglen is they breathe in suffering and they feel like a little kind of panic, you know? Ah, I'm taking a risk of that thing. And so I've been using this instruction that you do raise the wish to receive it instead of the person, which is the classic instruction.
Speaker 1:You do experience the suffering, and then it goes through the back and out into space. That is not the classic Tonglen instruction. It does not go through the body and out on the other side, but it would go through the body because there is no body. The body is like an event. Right?
Speaker 1:And so I also think there's nothing wrong with that instruction, nothing technically wrong. I encourage you not to bend instructions until you've been working with a practice for a very long time. But this one I feel confident about. It seems to help some people move past the angst of, oh my god, I can't take on one more ounce of suffering. It's very hard to believe that the removal of suffering will be met by understanding the nature of suffering, what it's made of, its primary characteristics, and by facing it directly and not in a stoic way.
Speaker 1:I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about wide open intimacy. That is the foundation of fearlessness, those two things.
