This is a brief excerpt of a discussion related to a spiritual practice called Tonglen [tung-len]. I first came across this practice several years ago when I was going through a very difficult time in my life and found it to be enormously helpful.

The practice is very simple to do -- it doesn't require any special training, a book, or a specific environment. You can do it at home, on the bus, or while you're out walking your dog.

It is a Buddhist practice, but you don't have to be Buddhist to do it. Neither is it likely to infringe on any other spiritual practice you may follow.

What I found most helpful about this practice was it took me out of my aloneness, and this eased my pain. Therefore, I often recommend tonglen practice to others as a method of pain-relief.

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<font color="purple">Tonglen: Pema Chodron

During this session I'm going to teach tonglen practice. And I'd like to talk first about different styles of tonglen.

The very simplest style -- which I think would be helpful for every single one of us -- and something well worth cultivating in one's life, is taking a tonglen attitude towards pleasure and pain whenever it arises in your life.

I've gotten into the habit of doing this, and I don't always remember to do it... but more and more, it becomes spontaneous and natural. When things are painful -- in any form -- when things are difficult, usually that in itself will remind me, just the quality of difficulty, the quality of struggle, or pain, or dissatisfaction, or unpleasantness. That itself will remind me to just have the simple thought: "Other people feel this."

Now that sounds so simplistic, maybe not all that important. But, believe me, it makes a big difference because what happens with pain is the sense of isolation get so strong, the sense of our particular personal burden and the loneliness of that, and the desperation of that. So this simple thought, which sometimes is quite challenging to people -- you say it but you don't quite believe it ... you think -- you're the only one. And I've had people, many times, say to me, "This pain that I feel, I think no one else in the world feels this." And then I can say to them with tremendous confidence: "Wrong."

But what is not wrong is that we do have that feeling often, that I am the only one that has this particular pain. So maybe it will be quite a challenge to you to say this and it might not seem genuine. But even that is beginning to shake up your complacency about pain being just your individual burden. It somehow shakes it up just to even contemplate that other people feel this.

And in many cases my own experience is just that, that which could become so introverted, a downward spiral of depression and isolation, just the thought that other people feel this opens it up -- it's what Trungpa Rinpoche used to call, "Thinking Bigger".

And I think I've said this before, I'll say it again, that compassion or the sense of shared humanity, of our kinship with each other, this is what heals. This is what heals the desperation we can feel, the darkness we can feel and the chain reaction of aggression, or chain reaction of misery that gets triggered off by just sometimes a slight shift in the energy and we feel uneasy, or agitated, or unhappy in some way, and then that spirals into a chain reaction of ... pain. One thing leading to another, a sort of struggle to try and get away from that uneasy, uncomfortable feeling.

So this is a basic tonglen logic: When you feel the discomfort, just have the thought: "Other people feel this." And then if you want to take it a rather dramatic step further, you can say, "May we all be free of this." But it's enough just to acknowledge that other people feel this. Then the most dramatic and probably the most difficult, taking it even a step further would be to say: "Since I'm feeling this anyway, may I be feeling it so all others could be free of it."

So it's kind of three levels of courage. The least courage is just to say, "Other people feel this," and that is enough. But if, in that particular moment of time, it feels genuine, say, "May this become a path for awakening the heart for all of us." And then the one that sometimes you might feel really genuinely able to say just because of how you're feeling in that moment of time, to take it the deepest level of courage, is to say, "Since I'm feeling this anyway, may I feel it so that others could be free of it."

This is the tonglen attitude towards pain. It doesn't involve the breathing in and breathing out, but it's the spirit of tonglen.

Source: © Changing Pain into Compassion

See also: © The Practice of Tonglen[/list]



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