Awakening Compassion in Ourselves
Just letting you know that I’m away on holiday next week, so there will not be a blog coming your way until the week after.
One of my favourite meditation practices, called ‘Tonglen’ focuses on awakening compassion within ourselves. It helps in developing compassion and learning how to apply it in everyday life. A form of taking in and sending out.
The practice involves imagining that as we exhale, we are sharing the light of well-being with everyone who needs it. As we inhale, we are relieving others of their darkness and suffering. In this way we can become more empathetic and awake.
In simple terms we are accepting the unpleasant and sharing the good. We link intention to the breath.
On the inbreath, we invite in the smoky darkness of negativity and suffering to enter our hearts where it will be transformed into light, by our positive intention and the natural goodness of our heart. The intention is to help relieve the world of its negative presence.
On the outbreath we send soothing rays of light, like moonbeams, to fill the world with their benevolent healing power – your wish to alleviate pain and suffering.
How to practice this meditation:
Begin with breath awareness – focus on your breathing in and out slowly. Take three deep breaths. Acknowledge distracting thoughts and emotions as they arise, let go of them, and return to connecting with the breath.
Reflect on a personal situation that is painful to you. If a friend or family member is going through a challenging time, breathe in their pain and darkness, with the wish that they be free of any pain they are having.
With the outbreath, send out happiness and rays of light and imagine them free of their suffering and relieved of their difficulties. Here we are sending out the soothing rays of compassion to bring peace and comfort.
Then expand the specific situation of taking in and sending out, with the in and out breaths– going wider to include all those you know who are experiencing similar distress. Breathe in the darkness, with the intention that they be free of this pain and breathe out feelings of peace and joy.
Finally expand again to include everyone in your local area. Then in wider and wider circles until the taking and sending covers the whole of the earth. Breathe in suffering and negativities. Breath out feelings of peace and joy.
Allow your heart’s natural goodness to shine unreservedly and touch the world with its grace.
As Pema Chodren says in her book, ’Welcoming the Unwelcome’ try doing tonglen for the whole planet, wishing that all living beings could go beyond the notion of ‘us and them,’ and regard ourselves as belonging to one family, living in peace and harmony. “We can use our personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.”
Simply breathe in stuckness and misery for all of us and breathe out relief for all of us.
Tonglen can be done for anyone in pain of any kind. It can be carried out as a meditation practice, described above, or on the spot at any time. If we’re out walking and see someone suffering, we can immediately breathe in their pain and send out relief.
Pema Chodron suggests as we practice tonglen, gradually over time our compassion naturally expands, alongside a realisation that things are not as solid as we thought.
Tonglen awakens compassion in ourselves and introduces us to a far bigger perception of reality.
Author of ‘Wearing Red, One Woman’s Journey to Sanity’
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