This is a meditation on Tonglen.
Tonglen is a method of using the breath to transform difficult emotions that are persistent and the general quality of suffering.
To begin,
Find a comfortable seated position,
Upright against a wall,
A chair,
Or anywhere where you have support.
Start to pay attention to the body.
Keep your back upright,
But let the rest of your body be relaxed.
Remove any tension from the brow,
The facial muscles,
The cheeks,
And slowly scan down your body and see if there's anywhere where tension can be released.
To begin,
Empty all the air out of your lungs and remain empty for just a second.
Now slowly fill up all the way,
Expanding air into all of the pockets of your lungs.
Hold at the top and now let go.
Slowly,
Gradually,
And consistently push all the air out until you're empty again.
Remain empty for a second and now repeat,
Filling up all the way,
Pushing air into the pockets of the lungs that do not always get it,
Holding,
And exhaling to resume a normal breath cycle.
For Tonglen,
We can imagine some kind of difficult emotion,
Something we may be struggling with,
Something that is persistent and difficult and not seeming to go away easily.
You may imagine in some exercises the suggestion may be to expel that negative energy,
Let it out.
In Tonglen,
We're actually doing something different.
In Tonglen,
The idea is that we're using our bodies as a means of purification of this energy.
So on the inhale,
We take in this difficult emotion as if it belongs somewhere in the air and we breathe it in.
We take in the difficulty,
The suffering,
The restlessness,
Anxiety,
Whatever it might be,
And imagine that there's something in the lungs which can take this quality out of the air.
We become this purifier.
Some pure energy exists within us,
A pureness of consciousness,
And we use that to draw the suffering quality out of the air.
And then on our exhale,
With this pure,
Clean air,
We can exhale this pure air that is removed of all suffering and contains in it nothing but the infinite,
Abundant,
Universal consciousness from which we all stem.
So it's a back and forth process,
And we can begin by taking in this breath and thinking about this suffering,
How it feels in the body,
The nature of its difficulty.
And we exhale out pure energy with complete equanimity.
And we repeat this process over and over.
You can continue in your own time.
After a while,
It may be helpful to try and slow down the breath a little bit.
The mind and the body can sometimes enter a meditation with more energy than is necessary from the inertia of the day and all of the maybe frantic energy of existing in the world.
But now that we're sitting and now that we've been resting for a few minutes,
We can lengthen these breaths and think on each inhale about this quality of this difficulty and take the time and space to hold it,
Be present with it.
Not rushing away,
Not grabbing it,
Not forcing it,
Not trying to push or manipulate it,
To externalize it onto circumstances or people or situations,
Just feeling what is this difficult feeling.
We create this space by slowing down our breath.
And if we can hold at the top of our breath,
We can practice what it's like to stay with this.
But not only staying with it at the top of the breath,
We're also in the transformation process.
We're beginning to feel what the sublimation and the metabolism of this difficulty feels like so that we can exhale this purity.
And as we exhale this purity,
If we're imagining that the difficulty itself belongs in the air around us,
As we continue to exhale pure air,
We're removing it from the air around us.
So as we continue this exercise,
The more and more we breathe in,
In search of this feeling and of this difficulty,
It exists less and less because we're using the power of our bodies and the power of this transformation to remove the suffering from the air itself.
And now we can expand our capacity to transform this suffering.
Instead of just focusing on ourselves and our own difficult emotions,
Think about other people in your life who may be experiencing similar circumstances.
Or maybe even people who are walking down the street,
Driving down the road,
These anonymous faces and people who exist in the world.
Where else is this quality of suffering present?
Who all is suffering from this?
Can we use our breath?
Can we use this transformative tool to now not only include our own suffering,
But can we reach further?
See if you can pull from the air,
Deep from the recesses and where other people reside.
Can you pull that air?
And can you pull the suffering quality of the air from those places and breathe it in?
And can you use this body as a transformative tool to then exhale pure energetic air to all of them as well?
As you exhale,
You can think of the relief these people might be getting and the joy of giving this air to all of these people.
As if you could blow the air out and as the washing of air goes over someone's face,
A wave of relief hits them.
They realize they've been in this hypnosis of suffering and have awakened to something pure and infinite within them.
That is the quality we give when we exhale.
We now see the power for this for ourselves and the power of this for other people.
And finally,
We will expand this to pull this difficult emotion from all recesses of the world,
From all people who share in this universal suffering that we've identified.
This difficulty,
This thing that is so naturally human.
Where does it exist?
Can we reach for all of it?
Can we scoop all of it up with open arms and bring it into ourselves?
Can we carry with love this poor,
Frightened energy,
Begging for love and attention,
Bring it into ourselves,
Hold it,
And allow it to dissolve?
In the dissolution,
Can we breathe out and purify all of the air?
That this quality no longer exists in space.
It is not possible for other beings to breathe it in because it no longer exists.
We no longer need to focus on the inhale of suffering and the exhalation of pure energy as it has been transformed.
So instead,
We may sit in the stillness that we've created and slowly,
Subtly,
And gently just focus on the process of the breath itself.
The slow,
Gentle rising and falling of the body,
Which happens so naturally without any effort on our part.
With the stillness that we've created,
We now have the opportunity to walk back into our lives and share this stillness with all of those around us.
This is the power of Tonglen.
