Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [77]
I highly recommend that you begin your sending-and-taking practice with thoughts of your own being, your life, and your journey. When trying to generate compassion for all beings, it is essential to remember that you are one of them. You have to be strong, confident, and accepting of yourself before you can begin accepting others. Use tonglen to forgive yourself for the things about which you feel guilty, inadequate, or responsible; use tonglen as a spiritual healing, and return to wholeness and wellness through this soulful healing practice. As Lao-Tzu said, “When you accept yourself, the whole world accepts you.”
EXTEND YOUR LOVE AND
ACCEPTANCE TO OTHERS
After you have warmed your own heart with love, extend the circle of beings for whom you feel love and compassion. Begin with those who are close to you—your parents, your family, your children, and friends. Gradually extend that circle until you are able to encompass enemies as well as friends. Finally, extend your circle of compassion until you feel that all the beings in the world are soothed and healed by the tenderness of your love.
EXCHANGE HAPPINESS AND LOVE
FOR SUFFERING AND PAIN
Begin the tonglen practice by relaxing and centering yourself. Return to yourself, come home to the present moment. To start this practice, just for a moment flash on absolute bodhicitta as you understand it. Pure presence, being itself. Gaze into the sky and become aware of emptiness. Everything is empty, like a dream. But it’s not just like an empty room; it’s a sparkling sunlit day, and the sun is filling all the spaces. Awaken to ultimate presence, and dissolve in the luminous emptiness of the moment. Open to the infinite boundless expanse, startling yourself into total wakefulness. Enjoy this natural great perfection, things just as they are.
RIDE UPON THE MOVING BREATH
In the tonglen meditation, you follow your breath. Ride the in-breath; ride the out-breath. Concentrate. Follow the inhalation; follow the exhalation. Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. Breathe in and out, again. Accept the in-breath; let go of the out-breath. Don’t be stingy; take it all in, and breathe it all out. Let it flow, let it go. Why hold back?
As you breathe, visualize that you are inhaling darkness, like smog. Hoover it up like a giant vacuum cleaner. But you’re not getting stuck with this dark smog. You hold the breath for a moment, letting everything dissolve. Everything is resolved in the spacious, clear awareness of bodhicitta. Then exhale; visualize all that smog streaming out of you as shining light. You are exhaling luminosity, like sunlight and cool fresh spring breezes.
MEDITATE ON INTERWOVEN SENDING
AND RECEIVING AND BEGIN THE
RECEIVING WITH YOURSELF
This is one of Atisha’s slogans from the “Seven Points of Mind-training.” The practice begins by inhaling your own conflicting emotions, your own negative karma, and your own difficulties. A moment of transformation. Then exhale, as you visualize all this negativity riding out as a breath stream of happiness and joy.
Continue exhaling and inhaling—riding the breath, as you begin to empathize with the problems of the world. Inhale all the darkness, disease, unhappiness. Inhale: “May all the difficulties, doubts, and fears in the world be absorbed into the empty nature of my mind.” Exhale: “May all beings have all my happiness, faith, and fearlessness.”
A HEALING ATTITUDE
As we think, so we become. The tonglen meditation is done with the hope of healing one’s attitude and restoring it to wholeness, as well as healing the troubles of the world. It helps train us to be genuinely present with difficult situations, and to bring more enlightened principles into daily life, without excessive reactivity. Through tonglen practice, we can change the entire atmosphere. We can loosen up and dissolve the dualism between light and dark, good and bad, positive and negative,