Compassion Meditation (Tonglen)

Ethan Nichtern, author of The Road Home: A Contemporary Exploration of the Buddhist Path (FSG Books) and Shambhala senior teacher offers a guided practice of compassion meditation, or Tonglen (sending and receiving), one of the most transformative styles of compassion meditation in the Tibetan Tradition.

Transcript

So in The Road Home,

I talk a lot about relationships and also how meditation can prepare us for relationships.

So I wanted to work with a very central Tibetan compassion meditation called Tonglen or sending and receiving meditation.

I would say just as a way of precaution or warning,

This can be a fairly intensive practice.

It may be the case that among Buddhist compassion meditations such as metta or loving kindness meditation,

That this one is a little bit more involved with the truth of suffering and the intensity that can come up.

So I definitely think that this isn't the practice for every time we meditate,

And it's a good practice to work with after you are already somewhat familiar with mindfulness meditation,

Mindfulness of body,

And other practices.

But it's also a practice that can be incredibly transformational,

And there's a few places I think where we can work with the intensity of Tonglen meditation.

So I just want to guide us through about a 20 or so minute session of Tonglen or sending and taking compassion meditation.

In my tradition,

Every practice begins with a period of mindfulness of body settling in.

So you could just take a moment to connect with intention for this practice,

That your intention is to connect more with yourself,

To feel compassion for whatever difficulties you're going through right now,

And to then try in whatever way we're able to right now to extend compassion and healing wishes to others who are suffering or struggling.

So let's just take a moment to sit with our intention towards self-compassion and compassion for others.

And when you feel ready,

You can begin to bring your attention into your body.

You can do this practice with your eyes open and slightly downward cast,

About six or so feet in front of you,

Or your eyes closed,

Whatever is more comfortable for your mindfulness of body practice.

You can take a few moments to scan your body or just connect with a soothing and easeful breath.

As you feel your seat,

Feel your shoulders,

Feel your torso relaxing,

And feel your breath in and out,

An easeful rhythm,

Sort of home base for our mind to gather to.

If your mind wanders,

You just come back to your body,

Come back to your breath.

Our mind wanders all the time,

And all we do is come back.

And these first few minutes of breath meditation are just to settle us,

To gather us.

So let's just take a moment to sit with our intention towards self-compassion and compassion for others.

So let's just take a moment to sit with our intention towards self-compassion and compassion for others.

So let's just take a moment to sit with our intention towards self-compassion and compassion for others.

So this Tonglen meditation has four stages.

The first stage is connecting with our awakened heart,

Our awakened mind,

Our naturally existing ability to accommodate,

To be aware,

And also our naturally existing ability to empathize,

To feel compassion for our own difficulties and others' suffering or struggles.

So I just invite you for a moment to feel completely open to your surroundings,

To whatever sense perceptions you experience,

Whatever you're feeling right now,

If you're feeling tired or overwhelmed or giddy or stressed or not stressed.

Just feel open to your experience in a way that's aware and just letting sense perceptions and letting feelings be there.

And then within this space,

You can bring to mind an image that opens your heart.

Perhaps there's a place in the world where people are suffering that has a tender quality.

You can just bring to mind that just to let yourself feel connected and tender and compassionate.

Or it could be a person who really opens your heart.

It could be a baby.

It could be a kitten.

It's something that makes your physical heart center feel tender and softened a little bit.

So this first stage of practice,

We are connecting with bodhicitta,

Awakened mind,

Awakened heart.

In the road home,

I call them heart-mind.

And this awakened heart-mind has a quality of accommodating openness,

Just being with what is,

Which is its unconditional quality.

And it has a quality of caring and connecting with specific beings and their suffering,

Which is its more relational or relative quality.

And that's what we'll work with in the next phases of practice.

In the second phase of tonglen,

We work with our breath again,

But in a slightly different,

More imaginative way.

And this may be counter habitual.

So first,

You could allow your eyes to close if they're open or remain closed.

And just allow you to,

Invite you to imagine that your body is light.

It's not so solid.

It's almost holographic.

So it's sort of porous and made of light and just has a very flexible,

Luminous quality to it so that what we visualize in this practice doesn't feel like it sticks with us.

It's a sense in tonglen of turning our being into like a compassion recycling plant.

So just to feel a sense of lightness and accommodation about your own body,

Almost like a hologram.

And as you breathe in now,

You can imagine that whatever pollution or sickness there is in the world,

That you can actually be strong enough and compassionate enough to take this in.

And this may feel like the exact opposite of what some meditations tell us to do.

In tonglen,

We take on the difficulty.

So I like to imagine that it's like smoke stack,

Industrial smoke stack smoke entering your body.

Through your nose,

Through your pores.

But again,

Your body is light.

It's receptive.

So you're breathing in the thick,

Dark,

Polluted air.

And in your body,

That air is transformed,

It's healed,

It's purified.

And so that as you exhale,

As you feel your physical exhale,

The body releasing and relaxing,

You can imagine clear,

Pure air and light exiting your body.

So we're establishing in this second step the rhythm of taking in difficulty,

Taking in pollution,

And feeling strong enough to process it.

And as we breathe out,

It's transformed into pure,

Clean air.

So this is the rhythm that makes this tonglen practice intense.

And we just really come back to this idea of your body being light,

Not so solid,

That this will not stick with you to breathe in the difficulty.

Breathing in.

The pollution exhaling clear,

Pure air.

In the third stage,

We begin to work with specific people that we would like to extend our compassion,

Our sending and taking to.

And the ancient teachings say to always begin with yourself,

With self-compassion.

Every single session.

So these next few minutes are your chance to just think about how you're struggling right now.

To imagine yourself,

To empathize with yourself,

And imagine being relieved of that pain or confusion or illness.

And it doesn't have to be complicated,

And there doesn't have to be a question of whether or not you deserve to be relieved of suffering.

It's just a chance to build compassion for yourself.

So I just imagine that you think about one way you're struggling right now.

It could be as simple as not sleeping well.

And as you breathe in,

You visualize that the you that is practicing takes on,

Takes in that confusion or difficulty,

The pain of that situation.

You could also continue to imagine that it enters you in the form of pollution or dark air.

And as you breathe out,

It's your opportunity to send to yourself whatever might help or heal.

So you could,

As you breathe out,

You could just imagine yourself getting a beautiful bed and pillows if you're tired.

As simple as that,

And no need to judge the suffering and no need to judge what we offer to heal the suffering.

So breathing in,

Imagining you're taking on your own difficulty.

And as you breathe out,

Whatever might help,

Whatever might heal,

Whatever might soothe or clarify.

Send that to yourself.

So let's work with taking and sending for yourself for a few more minutes.

With whatever small or large struggles you're having right now.

Breathing in the difficulty,

Breathing out something soothing or healing.

If your mind wanders,

Just come back to the practice at hand.

Come back to your own struggle,

Breathing in the difficulty,

Breathing out something that helps or just pure air,

Light.

Now we can bring to mind someone else in our life who's suffering or struggling.

Either someone who's personal to you,

Who you care about.

Or somebody in the world who's having,

You know,

Is having a hard time.

But this individual should be somebody we really want to help,

We care about.

We don't have a lot of complicated or negative feelings towards them.

So we'll just take a moment to think of somebody to bring their presence forward in your mind,

To visualize.

It doesn't have to be a clear picture.

It can just be a few of their qualities,

Their voice,

Their outline,

Whatever makes them more present in your mind.

And then imagine whatever their current suffering or struggle or confusion is.

And as you inhale,

You breathe that into your light body and in your body,

The difficulty is transformed and you breathe out with compassion,

Whatever might help them.

Whatever might heal,

Whatever might soothe.

And if you don't know,

You can just send them a wish or light.

So breathing in this person's perceived difficulty,

Struggle or suffering,

Breathing out healing or light or something specific or a wish.

Thank you.

So it's also possible to do this practice for more difficult people,

People who bother us,

People we have a hard time with,

Even very difficult people.

Or we could keep doing the practice for other individuals who we love or care for.

So we don't have to make it difficult.

So I'm just going to leave two or three minutes and if you'd like to try to work with somebody you have a harder time with,

You can bring that person to mind.

But I would really start just with someone irritating or annoying rather than someone abusive or traumatizing.

We can learn so much by just paying attention to the feelings that arise in our body and working with somebody who bugs us a little bit.

Or you can keep working with other people that you feel very close to who are struggling right now.

So in this third step we work with specific individuals.

You start with yourself but then you can leave space to work with whoever comes to mind or whoever's on your mind in your daily life.

So I'll leave three minutes here for breathing in the suffering and breathing out healing or compassionate wishes towards whatever individuals you want to work with.

So I'll leave three minutes here for breathing in the suffering and breathing out healing or compassionate wishes towards whatever individuals you want to work with.

We'll go for five minutes here so we can share the time we have forçonsation.

So now we'll move into the fourth and final phase of practice,

Which will be brief.

This is where we begin to universalize the empathy,

The compassionate intention around the breath.

So you can begin to imagine as you breathe in that you are just staying open to suffering wherever it arises.

You can imagine that you are breathing in 360 degree space so that you're breathing in through all of the pores of your body.

And it doesn't have to be a feeling of being burdened as you breathe in by the suffering in the world.

It can just be a feeling of staying open,

Letting it touch you.

And then as you breathe out,

You can imagine that you are offering compassion,

Offering the wish for healing in all directions.

Perhaps specific situations come to mind.

Perhaps it's just a feeling of staying open to the space around you,

Breathing in,

Staying open,

Breathing out,

Offering your presence,

As simple as that.

You can also allow your eyes to open so that you're really present in your body,

In the space with the soft downward gaze.

Just breathing in and breathing out,

Staying open to suffering as best you can.

And finally,

We can just let our body and mind rest for a few moments,

Letting go of any effort,

Just being with yourself,

Just being open for a few final moments,

Not having to be any particular way.

If this practice session brought up any intense feelings,

You may want to even allow yourself to sigh,

To just release the intensity of confronting suffering in this way.

And having engaged in this compassion meditation,

This tonglen session,

Which is sort of like a yoga for slowly opening and stretching our ability to empathize,

To feel compassion for the difficulties that we face and that others face,

Having done something that's not easy to do with this practice.

When the gong rings to bring our practice session to a close,

If you'd like,

You can offer yourself a little bow or any other gesture of gratitude that you were able to work with your mind and body and heart in this way.

Reviews

Wonderful. I’m will use this in my daily meditation rotation. Namaste 🪷

Beautiful guidance of Tonglen practice thank you so much🙏🏼

I’m very grateful and happy that I found this tonglen recording. Thank you for guiding us through this practice with so much care and thoughtfulness.

Thank you very much 😊It helped me to connect with the energy of compassion and care. We are all doing the best we can.🤍

I love this, it always makes shed tears, yet I feel quite at peace when I finish, kind of reconnected...

This is an incredibly powerful meditation technique. There is quite a bit of unfortunate background noise that might interfere with the practice but I found it powerful, moving and very evocative.

Beautiful to feel conpassion in such a troubled moment/time😊

It feels like coming home to listen to Ethan and remember these practices.

Good progression from self to a loved one and then Maaaybe to someone we find annoying. Dark smoke in, light released from our porous and almost holographic self.

Wonderful introduction to tonglen practice. Perfect for a someone new to it.

Personal notes for later reference: Long introduction, open periods of breathing.

My favorite tonglen recording on Insight Timer. Thank you for sharing the teachings. 🙏

A wonderful Tonglen experience. "Yoga for the heart" a stretching of our emotional muscles.

Amazing. Perfect instructions on how to do a type of meditation I hadn't known I was doing wrong. No rambling, straight to the point and allowed lots of silences. I feel great!

Long but so good. Peaceful and difficult but supportive too.

Keep returning to this meditation! The message, the calm tone of delivery it’s all just right.

Just what I need it
Love is voice, calm and solid
Love the space

Als je nog nooit tonglen hebt gedaan, is deze misschien wel moeilijk. Ik deed al enkele keren begeleid tonglen en dan brengt deze meditatie wel verdieping. Dankjewel

Great practice for hard times!
Thank you Ethan
🙏

First time I’ve listened to Ethan, got a lot out of it. As he says, it is a bit intense but nothing was unpleasant or incongruous about it.

Intense and healing. Thank you.