(This is Part 19 of a series. Go back to Part 18.)
The other powerful antidote to complaint mode is the ancient practice, derived from Buddhism, of tonglen.
There are many variations of tonglen, but now I'd like
to talk about a version that is particularly well suited to working with the whole emotional palette of complaint and resentment.
The essence of tonglen is simple: On the in-breath we
take in suffering, pain, unhappiness from wherever in the world we're focused on it. This is our compassion breath.
Then on the out-breath we send out peace, joy, happiness to that same place. This is our loveingkindness breath.
In this version we focus on a specific person, one who easily brings up feelings and thoughts of complaint or resentment. This person might be our mother or father, our spouse or lover, a brother or sister, a co-worker, an ex-friend, etc. It can be someone in our present or past, living or dead—it doesn't matter, it works equally well.
We focus on this person, trying to breath in their suffering and breath out peace and joy to them, but it doesn't work very well, because what keep coming up are feelings of resentment, anger, dislike or hatred, etc. When those feelings are well amped-up, so to speak, we then switch the focus of our tonglen onto those feelings themselves.
Now on the in-breath we take in our own dark, hot, dense feelings of suffering. We take in our own painful feelings of resentment, anger, separation, complaint, etc. in our in-breath. We feel compassion for these painful, dark, hard parts of ourselves.
Then on the out-breath we send joy, kindness, tenderness to those same suffering parts. We send peace, coolness, love, happiness—whatever brings relief to those areas, whatever feels the most real and genuine.
And we continue like this, breathing in and out, taking in our own suffering hardness on the in-breath and sending out joy and softness and love to it on the out-breath.
Then the final step, and perhaps the most important: Now we generalise the tonglen, broaden it out.
First we broaden it to those beings who feel as we do in our dark and dense parts. We breathe in their suffering and we breathe out relief and spaciousness and peace.
Then we broaden it to include everyone we know—our family, friends, associates, even our "enemies" or people with whom we have difficulties. We breathe in whatever distress they feel and breathe out to them love and caring.
Then we broaden it again, to include our world and all
the beings on it. We breathe in the suffering of prisoners, animals, the ill, the grief-stricken and all the rest of us who suffer—at the least—the assorted slings and arrows of everyday life—and breathe out relief, serenity, delight.
And then, from there, we broaden it out to include all of existence, now breathing for existence itself as we take in suffering everywhere in all its forms and breathe out love, peace, compassion, kindness, tenderness and great joy to all beings and all existence everywhere.
(This is the end of Part 19. Go to Part 20.)
—jim sloman, 12.23.05
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