Within the wisdom teachings of Buddhism, there are many stories that refer to its founder as the Supreme Physician, a healer of all illness-mental, physical, and spiritual. The Buddha understood suffering and its antidote, and his prescription and philosophy for right living led directly to a Tibetan meditation practice that is the medicine our modern-day hearts have been searching for.
On Good Medicine, the remarkable American-born Tibetan Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön shares the gift of tonglen, a simple and elegant meditation system for ordinary people like ourselves. Through tonglen, we can use the difficulties in life-those that cause the most suffering-as a way to befriend ourselves, accept the past we have rejected, and widen our circle of compassion. These traditional breathing meditations cut through obstacles on the spot.
Skillfully distilled into a two-and-a half-hour workshop, Good Medicine offers a revolutionary practice that is already 1,000 years old-and ready to awaken our hearts today.
TONGLEN
Tonglen (Tibetan: གཏོང་ལེན་, Wylie: gtong len, or tonglen) is Tibetan for 'giving and taking' (or sending and receiving), and refers to a meditation practice found in Tibetan Buddhism.
Tong means "giving or sending", and len means "receiving or taking". Tonglen is also known as exchanging self with other.It's the seventh slogan, under Relative Bodhicitta, in Lojong. And is aspirational Bodhicitta precepts training in the Longchen Nyingthig Ngöndro, to see others as equal to self by exchanging self and other, where applying Bodhicitta begins with giving.
Practice
In the practice, one exchanges the self with other, sending and taking should be practiced alternately. These two should ride the breath. As such it is a training in altruism.
The function of the practice is to:
reduce selfish attachment
increase a sense of renunciation
purify karma by giving and helping
develop and expand loving-kindness and bodhicitta
The practice of Tonglen involves all of the Six Perfections; giving, ethics, patience, joyous effort, concentration and wisdom. These are the practices of a Bodhisattva.
Practical aspects on this meditation
Pema Chödrön, an American Tibetan Buddhist nun in the Shambhala Buddhism tradition (2000), says Tonglen can start on the inhale and gives the instruction as follows:
"On the in-breath, you breathe in whatever particular area, group of people, country, or even one particular person... maybe it’s not this more global situation, maybe it’s breathing in the physical discomfort and mental anguish of chemotherapy; of all the people who are undergoing chemotherapy. And if you’ve undergone chemotherapy and come out the other side, it’s very real to you. Or maybe it’s the pain of those who have lost loved ones; suddenly, or recently, unexpectedly or over a long period of time, some dying. But the in-breath is... you find some place on the planet in your personal life or something you know about, and you breathe in with the wish that those human beings or those mistreated animals or whoever it is, that they could be free of that suffering, and you breathe in with the longing to remove their suffering.
And then you send out - just relax out... send enough space so that peoples’ hearts and minds feel big enough to live with their discomfort, their fear, their anger or their despair, or their physical or mental anguish. But you can also breathe out for those who have no food and drink, you can breathe out food and drink. For those who are homeless, you can breathe out/send them shelter. For those who are suffering in any way, you can send out safety, comfort.
So in the in-breath you breathe in with the wish to take away the suffering, and breathe out with the wish to send comfort and happiness to the same people, animals, nations, or whatever it is you decide.
Do this for an individual, or do this for large areas, and if you do this with more than one subject in mind, that’s fine… breathing in as fully as you can, radiating out as widely as you can."
The intention of this practice is to work with habitual patterns of mind and "develop the psychological attitude of exchanging oneself for others," as Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche writes in Training the Mind and Cultivating Kindness.
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May All Sentient Beings Be Liberated.