Tonglen Technique Stage Three:

• In the third stage you work with suffering, This part of the practice should be very, very real. It should be totally un-theoretical. It should be heartfelt; it should be tangible, and honest, and true to you, and vivid.
• The third stage is actually in two parts: you might want to think of these as three “a” and three “b". In three a, you are working with specific suffering, specific pain, specific klesha. And it is a very personal sense of pain or suffering, yours or someone else’s. In three b, you are extending that sense of suffering out to include all sentient beings. So you need to work with both of those situations. If you just had the idea of extending out to all sentient beings, the practice would be very theoretical. It would never actually touch your heart. On the other hand, if you just had the sense of working with your own or someone else’s fixation, it would lack vision. It would be too narrow. Working with both of those situations together makes the practice very real and heartfelt; at the same time, it provides vision and a way for you to work with everyone in the world, as well. At this point, I would like to describe how that works.
• You should start with three a, working with specific fixation, starting with something very close to home, It could be your own anger, for example, that you might be feeling at that moment; or it could be the fixation of someone else, whom you love very much, someone with whom you can connect very easily without any complications.
• As a maitri practice, the way it works is as follows: either sitting in the shrine room doing tonglen or in post-meditation, you bring all of your unfinished karmic business right into the practice. In fact, you should do that; you should invite it right in. Suppose that you are involved in a horrific relationship: every time you think of a particular person, you get furious. That is very useful for tonglen! [Laughter.] Or perhaps you feel completely left out. The seminary experience is making you feel more wretched every day, and you feel completely poverty stricken. It was all you could do to get out of bed and come to hear this talk. In fact, people in your delek actually had to knock on your door and drag you here. You’re so depressed that you want to stay in bed for the rest of your life; you have actually considered hiding under your bed, [Laughter.) That is very useful for tonglen practice. It should be real, just like that.
• Let’s use another example. You may be formally doing tonglen or just sitting in the lobby having your coffee. And. . . “Here he comes”...... . “Here he comes.” [Laughter.] This example actually goes along with the slogan: “Three objects, three poisons, three virtuous seeds.” The object is,” Here he comes,” The poison is either passion, aggression, or ignorance: you want to hit him, grasp him, or wish that he weren’t there at all, just forget about him altogether and not pay any attention to him.
• Let’s use anger as a specific example. The object is, “Here he comes”; and here comes the poison, fury. Then, you breathe that in. The idea is to develop sympathy for your own confusion. And the technique is that you do not blame him; you also do not blame yourself. Instead, there is just liberated fury, It is hot, black, and heavy. And you experience it as fully as you can.
• You breathe the anger in; you remove the object; you stop thinking about him. In fact, he is just a useful catalyst. You could be grateful to everyone. You could drive all blames into yourself, breathing them in. This doesn’t mean to say that you blame yourself, but you own it completely. It takes a lot of bravery, and it’s extremely insulting to ego. In fact, it completely destroys the whole mechanism of ego. So you breathe in.
• Then, you breathe out sympathy, relaxation, and spaciousness. Instead of just a small, dark situation, you allow a lot of space for that feeling to exist in. Don’t slow down the process by trying to think what the proper antidote would be. Just allow space. When you breathe out, it is like ventilating the whole thing, airing it out. Breathing out is like opening up your arms and just letting go, altogether. Fresh air. Then you breathe the rage in again: rage ...the black, heavy hotness of it. And then you breathe out, ventilating the whole thing, allowing a lot of space.
• What you are actually doing is cultivating kindness towards yourself. It is very simple in that way. You don’t think about it; you don’t philosophize; you simply breath in very real klesha. You own it completely and then ventilate it, allowing a lot of space when you breathe out. This, in itself, is an amazing practice, even if it didn’t go any further--because at this level, you are still working on yourself. But the real beauty of the practice is that you then extend that out, which is stage three, part "b".
• Without any pretending, you can acknowledge, you can actually know, that about two billion other sentient beings are feeling that exact same rage in that second of time. They are experiencing it exactly the way you are experiencing it, They may have a different object, but the object isn’t the point. The point is the rage itself. So you breathe it in from all of them, so they no longer have to have it. It doesn’t actually make your own rage any greater; it is just rage, just fixation on rage, which causes so much suffering.
• Sometimes, at that moment, you get a glimpse of why there is murder and rape, why there is war, why people burn down buildings, why there is so much misery in the world. It all comes from feeling that rage and throwing it out, instead of taking it in and airing it. It all turns into hatred and misery, which pollutes the world and, obviously, perpetuates samsara in a drastic way. So because you feel rage, therefore you have the kindling, the connection, for understanding the rage of all sentient beings. So first you work with your own klesha, and then you quickly extend that and breathe it all in.
• At that point, sort of. Simultaneously, it is no longer your own particular burden; it is just the rage of sentient beings, which includes you. You breathe that in, and you breathe out a sense of ventilation, so that all sentient beings could experience that. This goes for anything that bothers you. The more it bothers you, the more awake you’re going to be when you do tonglen.
• These things that really haunt us and drive us nuts, actually, have enormous energy in them. That is why we fear them. It could even be your own timidity: if you are very, very timid and afraid to speak, afraid to walk up and say “hello” to someone, afraid to look someone in the eye. There is enormous maintenance and energy in that. It is the way you keep yourself together. So you have the chance to own that completely, not blaming anybody, and to ventilate it with the out breath. Then you might better understand why some other person over there looks so grim: it isn’t because they hate you; but they also feel the same kind of timidity and don’t want to look anyone in the face. So your own pain is like kindling, or a stepping stone. In this way, the tonglen practice is simultaneously a maitri practice and a practice of compassion.
• By practicing in this way, you definitely develop your sympathy for other people, and you begin to understand them a lot better. As you do this practice and your heart develops more and more, even If someone comes up and insults you, you could genuinely and without a second thought understand the whole situation. You could feel that sort of pain--like the hair on the eyeball, instead of the hair on the hand--because you understand so well where everybody’s coming from. You also realize that you can help by simply breathing in the pain of others and breathing out that ventilation. So the second way of doing tonglen is to work with other people.

Actual Point of Practice:

• That is actually the point of the practice, altogether: working with others and developing your sense of caring for others.
• Almost everybody can begin to do tonglen by thinking of someone they love very dearly. For instance, you could think of someone who was kind to you when you were a child, or you could think of your own child. It is sometimes easier to do this for your children than for your husband or wife or mother or father. Sometimes, even though you love someone, it can get complicated. But there are some people in your life whom you love very straightforwardly without complication: they tend to be old people, or people who are very ill, or little children, or people who have been extremely kind to you.
• Last year, the Vajracarya told me that when he was young he always began his tonglen in the same way. He would think about a puppy he had seen when he was eight years old. This puppy was being stoned to death by people who were laughing and jeering as they killed it: it was whimpering and dying. And when he did his practice it was so straightforward: all he had to do was to think of that dog, and his heart would start to be activated instantly. There was nothing complicated about it. He would have done anything to breathe in the suffering of that animal and to breathe out relief. So the idea is to start with something like that, something that activates your heart. That is why, traditionally, it is said to start with your mother.
• Gradually, having started the practice this way, you could extend it out to people who are somewhat “neutral.” These may be people whom you also love, but when you think of their faces, rage or some other kind of confusion occurs. At that point, you are actually doing tonglen for them, and for your self, and for the space in between you- -if you know what I mean. And then, gradually, the practice moves out to include people whom you actually hate, people you consider to be your enemies or to have actually harmed you. This expansion actually evolves by doing the practice. You cannot fake these things; therefore you start with the things that are close to your heart.
• And so you think of a puppy, for instance, being stoned and. dying in pain, and you breathe that in. Then, it is no longer just a puppy. It is your connection with the realization that there are puppies and people suffering unjustly like that, all over the world. So you immediately extend the practice out and breathe in the suffering of all the people who are suffering like that animal.

Conclusion:

• That is why it’s useful to think of tonglen practice in three stages: step one is spaciousness; step two is working with the texture, establishing the synchronization of the in and out-breath; step three, part “a” is particular suffering, and part “b” extends out to everyone
• The main thing is to really get in touch with fixation and the power of klesha activity in your self. This makes other people’s similar situations completely accessible and real to you. Then, when it becomes very real and vivid, always remember to extend it out. Let your own experience be a stepping stone for working with the whole world.
• Pema Chodron - Author of the Tonglen Instruction - Ane Pema Chodron http://www.shambhala.org/teachers/pema/index.html

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Avalokitshvara the Buddha of Compassion
Image courtesy of Ratnashri Malaysia - Drikung Kagyu Tradition
- May we be as Avalokitshvara -

- OM MANI PADME HUM -

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The Ten Virtues of Incense (Koh) Burning
Incense burning opens the mind to divinity.
Incense burning cleanses the mind.
Incense burning diverts the mind from worldly impurities.
Incense burning wakes up the mind.
Incense burning encourages the mind in solitude.
Incense burning affords the mind leisure when it is busy.
One cannot burn too much incense.
Yet, even a little incense is enough.
Age does not affect the efficacy of incense.
Habitual use of incense causes no harm.
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