A grin comes to my face as I remember her voice on the telephone.
"That's backwards isn't it? You meant
breathe in the good and send out the bad, right?" she said, not
unkindly. Being gracious, she was making a space for me to realize
that my aging brain cells had gone dyslexic.
I had been chatting with an old friend for first time in quite awhile, talking about my continued wonder at the Lojong Teachings of Tibetan Buddhism in general, and Tonglen Practice
in particular.
After a moment's pause, to relax and reconnect with the
basic openness of mind -- and to make sure that I really hadn't
verbally zigged when I had intended to zag -- I continued.
"No, I actually did mean that I shift my attention from the thoughts
running through my head to the feelings coursing through my body. Then I
breathe into my heart the difficult
and challenging darker emotions that had emerged. There in my heart of
hearts I get in touch with the reality that countless people are feeling this same form of energy. My heart naturally responds with the heartfelt aspiration that we all be free of such
suffering. Then I send out a sense of relief and healing with each exhalation. It's in with the "bad." Out with "good.".
She paused for awhile (perhaps, to relax and reconnect with a
basic openness herself? LOL) Then she simply replied,
"Oh?"
She didn't sound convinced.
Hers was not an uncommon response. Raised in a highly
individualistic and materialistic
society, the basic premise of this ancient Tibetan Buddhist system of
mind training seems counterintuitive. Instead of always grasping at the "good" and pushing away the
"bad," with Tonglen Practice we choose to open our hearts to the entire gamut of human emotions. Seems a bit crazy, right? It most certainly is.
Crazy like a fox.
Transforming All Experience into the Path of Awakening
Lojong is an intricate system of training the heart and mind that emerged in Tibetan Buddhism in the 11th and 12 centuries. Grounded in the Mahayana doctrine of Two Truths, it's goal is to cultivate the wisdom and compassion needed to embrace both the conventional truth of appearances and absolute truth of Reality in our own lives. All experiences of our lives are seen as an opportunity to Practice.
Lojong's framework of 59 training aphorisms are supported by two meditation practices: basic
sitting meditation (Shamatha-Vippasyana) and Tonglen. I've seen that, over time, these three tools have changed my day to day life dramatically. With Practice, I've been able to navigate the inevitable ups and downs of life with increasing ease, kindness, clarity and compassion. With time, energy, effort and patience, I've been able to be Present more wholeheartedly, moment by moment, to Life.
To wit:
As I sit here and pay attention, I become aware of a clear, bright, vast, and open sense of spaciousness beyond the tunnel vision of my thoughts.
As I pause and expand my attention to become
aware of my body, my breath, and the sights and sounds of the room that I
am sitting in, and to the world outside the window, there a palpable shift in my consciousness. As
I come into the present moment more fully, I can feel its expansiveness throughout my body. I can relax and rest in
its embrace.
Sitting here, breathing in, breathing out, I'm aware of the dance of my fingers along
the surface of this keyboard. I see that
milliseconds before the fingers move, thoughts emerge instantaneously,
seemingly from nowhere in particular. Although, these thoughts are most
certainly prompted by my intention to write this blog post, they appear
to be emerging by themselves, quite mysteriously.
Although Western
science claims that these thoughts are epiphenoma, merely brain secretions of some sort,
at this moment they appear to be connected to something much grander than
that. My heart feels that connection. I have come to trust that
feeling. A sense of wonder and joy emerges from the luminous
silence that embraces me as I embrace it. Aware of my feet on the
floor, the clicking contact of my fingers on the keyboard, the
soft humming of the computer, the wind outside the window, the
vast, open spaciousness of a clear and boundless open mind, my heart
opens. I feel the Presence of the Sacred.
But, I digress -- sort of.
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