This morning I’d like to do a meditation that we haven’t, I’m not sure we’ve done it during these sessions, but if you’re familiar with any Tibetan Buddhism practise, you might have heard of this meditation and it’s called Tong-Len and essentially the translation is giving and taking the Tong means sending out, giving and the Len is receiving, taking and essentially what we do with this practise is we imagine, it’s a visualisation practise, and what we do is we imagine, we visualise that there is a radiant orb of white light in our heart centre and this light, it can represent whatever you want it to be, if you’re a Buddhist, you might consider it to be your Buddha nature, your primordial consciousness, if you believe in the oneness of consciousness, then you might imagine that. If you don’t have those kinds of beliefs, but you can recognise that your core you have your wisest self, your most compassionate self, your resilience, your strength, all of these really positive, admirable qualities, then you could imagine that that’s what it represents. And very simply, we’ll start with ourselves, but we imagine taking the suffering of others, their difficulties and extinguishing it in this orb and then we imagine breathing out from this orb, all of the compassion, the love and kindness, the wish of happiness, and joy to others. I’ll explain afterwards why this is a beneficial practice, what this does for our well being, but just like trying to describe the taste of chocolate, it’s better if you just get a taste, so we’ll do the practice first, so please find a comfortable posture. Many people prefer to do this meditation seated, but of course, if that’s uncomfortable for you, you can be lying down. 

Bell Rings

And so, I invite you to find a comfortable position. Wherever that is for you, whether that’s sitting cross-legged or in a chair, lying down, and as for all practises, it is preferable that you have your spine straight, so whether you are lying down or sitting, be at attention. We begin as always by relaxing, releasing, letting your awareness descend down into the field of the body, right down to the ground, experiencing ourselves as being supported by the Earth.  

And setting your body at ease, resting in stillness, so, breathing into any areas that feel tight or tense, just inviting yourself to relax that. You might let the shoulders drop if you’re holding any tension there, you might notice that you’re holding your belly, contracting it in a way, so perhaps let the belly be soft. Relax deeply into the out breath. Make sure that all the muscles of the face are relaxed and soft as well and also with every exhalation release any thoughts, memories, anything that’s bubbling up in the mind, any hopes, any fears. Let it all go with every out breath. So that with every out breath you release your awareness., you let your awareness come to rest, releasing its entanglement with its identification with all the movements of the mind. You can let these thoughts come, let them go, but rest in stillness, so you set your mind at ease. 

As we rest here in this stillness, relaxing with every out breath there are many things that we can become aware of for different sounds, sensations in the body, perhaps smells, but one thing always seems to be a constant and that is this rhythm of the respiration, this gentle ebb and flow. And so for a few moments, let’s just attend to this rhythm of the breathing. 

You might notice it most in the belly, perhaps in the chest and if your mind does wander, that’s OK, we just gently guide it back to the rhythm of the breathing once again. No need to get caught up in these shoulds/should not of the practise, what we’re doing, just utterly practise without grasping, without expectations. 

Now we can begin to use the creativity of the mind by first of all attending to ourselves. Each of us is a human being embodied, having a mind, a personal history, having a future of some kind. Each of us wishing to be free of suffering and its causes wishing to find happiness, an enduring sense of well being and its causes. So let us first of all, cultivate compassion for ourself. Embracing the aspiration, may I be free of suffering and its causes. Now, using the creativity of your awareness, I invite you to symbolically visualise your own pristine awareness your Buddha nature, your inner resilience, wisdom, compassion, the wellspring of all well being, visualise it symbolically as an orb of radiant white light in the centre of your heart. And from this centre look upon yourself with compassion and imagine all the sufferings, the difficulties that you might encounter in the future, the causes of those, the inner causes.  

And you can imagine that as a darkness, as a dark smoke, and as you breathe in, see that it Is extinguished In this orb of white light. Extinguished in the orb of white light that represents your compassion, your wisdom, your inner resilience. The strength that you do have. And then see the person you will become and continue to become always evolving, always changing, and arouse that aspiration. May I be happy? May I find the happiness that I seek, and you might imagine that as you breathe out that this light pervades your entire being. Breath by breath, imagining yourself becoming free. Not that you’re going to avoid every unpleasant circumstance, that adversity will never happen, but that you will have the inner resilience not to succumb to fear or mental suffering. 

And then we expand the field of our awareness and embrace those who are around you, as perhaps in your home, those who are close to you but might not be physically close and also, wherever you live, wherever you are now, there are other sentient beings around you, human and nonhuman, each of them also wishing to be free of suffering in many cases not knowing what are the true causes of suffering and they may act in ways that bring them distress. And so attending to those around you, those close to you, physically and emotionally, embrace them in your awareness and with every inhalation. Imagine drawing in just in the same way the darkness of their suffering, the darkness of mental afflictions. With each in breath aroused that compassion, draw in the darkness, and extinguish it in that orb of white light. Breath by breath. And imagine those around you finding and experiencing the relief that they’ve been looking for. Imagine the turbulence of their minds calming. Imagine them finding peace and safety. You might also imagine the outer causes of suffering, such as this virus, any illness, may this pass swiftly. Thus as we draw in this darkness of the suffering of those around us, extinguishing it in the light of our heart, and once again, with every out breath arouse that wish for happiness for all those around you, breathe out the light of loving-kindness, may you like myself be well and happy. You can imagine this light, passing from your being to theirs, imagine them feeling that loving-kindness and that joy finding the happiness that is their heart’s desire. Imagine their specific needs, desires and aspirations being fulfilled, finding the true causes of genuine well-being, contentment. 

And now breath by breath at your own pace, expand the field of your awareness, encompassing more and more beings, in an ever-increasing sphere of loving-kindness and compassion, and just breathe out and breathe in that wish, as you’ve done before. Expand above and below and all the sides out over your town, your country, your continent. Above and below, especially where there is great pain and great fear in the world. Suffering of the pandemic, the suffering of refugees of other illness, poverty, loneliness, wherever there is suffering and its causes, breathe it in and free those who are bound by it. Let the light of your loving-kindness fill the world. 

Be the unknown friend to everyone around you. See that you’re embracing this whole world with light you’ve drawn in and extinguished, the darkness that obscures everyone. Breath in, may each one be free of suffering, and its causes may each one be forever free, and may each one find the happiness that they most deeply seek the joy of freedom from suffering. 

And to end this practice, if you wish, you might end with an aspiration, a promise to devote yourself to improving your well being, finding the true inner causes of happiness, releasing the true inner causes of suffering and helping others to do the same. For as long as space remains, may I remain to help others. Then you can release that visualisation, bring yourself back to the felt sense of the body for a few moments. And we can bring this practice to a close. 

Bell Rings

So, it’s an interesting practice if you haven’t done it before. It can be interesting to see what comes up and there are different ways of practising it. The classic approach is to take specific people just like we do with the loving-kindness meditations a friend, stranger, enemy and so it’s all about taking on that suffering of others, giving them our happiness. The reason we do this practise, the reason it’s it’s taught, is it helps transform our attachment and our aversion into instead loving-kindness and compassion, so it’s about transforming what we call self-cherishing in Buddhism, which is this way that we view our ego, ourself and we see my happiness, my views, my wishes, my everything is more important than anybody else is and sometimes if this is quite strong in us it can lead us to obsess about our own suffering, my own fear, my anxiety, it leads to sort of more stress hypersensitivity, cutting us off from others, if we’ve got quite obsessed with our own happiness that leads to a lot of craving, a lot of frustration, a lot of dissatisfaction. In some people that ego can create an over-exaggerated sense of self-importance which leads to a lack of consideration for others and competitiveness, jealousy, these kinds of things. And so, this practise is an antidote to that, because self-cherishing doesn’t want to take on the suffering of anybody else, self-cherishing doesn’t want to give happiness to anybody, so the point of this practise is we just start to open our hearts a little bit, and of course, it’s a mental activity, we’re not actually taking on the suffering of others, as people sometimes ask of this practise, “Will I actually get the suffering of other people. I don’t feel like I can do that, I can take on other people’s suffering”, but it’s a mental exercise, it’s a meditation and the point of it will be that you’re the main beneficiary of the practice. It helps to reduce that self-centeredness, increase your loving-kindness or compassion, that sense of connection with everyone around you. 

And so how does it help others? Indirectly, you’re going to be more likely to help others in a more genuine way if this is the place that you’re operating from, a place of genuine sort of loving-kindness and directly as well, somebody who has love and kindness in their mind, somebody who I think we talked about it last week, there was somebody on this talk who said that they were helping a friend and they were operating from that place, people can sense it, people can really feel it if that’s where you’re coming from, your energy, that’s what you give off. 

So this love and kindness that we’re cultivating is about connection, first of all, we’re connecting to ourselves, acknowledging our desire for freedom, from suffering and experiencing our whole heart and mind and then we’re connecting to everyone else, one another, and it’s not about sort of just liking somebody or love as the sense of, I love ice cream, but it’s about knowing deeply that you are just like me, you also wish to be free of suffering, just like I do, and that our lives actually have something to do with each other. That there are these constructs of self and other us and them but at a certain intimate level of reality, it’s all about “we”. That interconnectedness, that everything we do and everything others do, has an effect on everyone else., that’s just how it is, we’re all in this together. 

Sharon Salzberg, she’s a meditation teacher, you might have heard of her, and she tells the story of a time that she was driving with a friend and they were caught in what she described as terrible, hideous traffic and they were complaining about it the whole time and getting quite worked up about it and then at one point her friend said, “You know, we’re the traffic too.” And all of a sudden she realised, Yeah, there it is, there’s that sense of privilege., that sense of centrality, that sense of me in the middle, these are my roads, these people are in my way and where were they going on my Saturday, why are they affecting my life? It’s this sense of “I’m in the middle.” 

And so, what happens when that sense of everything revolving around us drops away for a minute? We might realise these other people in the traffic are saying the same thing about us. They’re also saying why are these people in my way? Where are they going? We are all the traffic.

What happens when we have this sort of centre and these people are in the margin, and how that shapes our worldview? Is it does lead to a lot of that sort of jealousy, that frustration of the position that we’re in, but when our worldview loosens up a bit when that sense of centrality falls away and it’s “us”, not I and you, that’s the recognition, that’s the result of loving-kindness. That’s the result of understanding interdependence, and it’s not weak or mushy, and it’s not religious or spiritual either, it’s just true that we are all interconnected in this way. 

So that’s the whole point of this practice and the other point of this practice, just as a side note, is in the cultivation of bodhicitta. If anybody is interested in, the Buddhist side of this practice. Bodhicitta is this wish to achieve enlightenment for the sake of all beings. This wish, I don’t just want to free myself but how can I leave everyone else behind, I must help everybody else, and that’s the point of this Tong-Len practise, is to acknowledge it’s not just your own wish to be free, but you want to be able to help others for that. 

Transcript by: MK