Tonglen Archives - Mindful Happiness

August 18, 2015 By Admin

Tonglen Ultimate Compassion Meditation

Tonglen Meditation or Giving and Taking

I have added various posts about many compassion practice. Earlier posts have covered a range of practices – from super-easy to more demanding. Here, I will add a more advanced practice. This Tibetan compassion meditation practice has been taught often in the Vajrayana school of Buddhism. In my opinion meditation teacher, Pema Chodron, is perhaps the most gifted trainer in this particular form of compassion practice. Tonglen, or giving and taking, is a more serious practice and one that sometimes requires more courage than other compassion practices. Tonglen emphasizes core Bodhisattva skills and practices; some of its foundations come from the 11th century Indian Master, Atisha.

When I do Tonglen, I like to begin with a ceremony that places my heart and soul in their most sensitive places. I do the nine bells ceremony (also posted here), in which I ring three Tibetan singing bowls three times each followed by three deep bows with hands in prayer mudra. I do this with deep respect for people in my family who have passed away. I repeat this ceremony three times. I do this ceremony slowly. I also like to pay attention to a poem I have written about the dead. The poem requests that YOU remember the face, smile, eyes, voice, favorite behaviors, and emotional connection between YOU and a significant person who has passed. I sometimes do loving kindness for myself and others before Tonglen practice. I find that such practices soften us up a bit; these practices place us in a better emotional position to do Tonglen. Are you ready to practice? My instructions are bare bones in detail. Note that preliminaries were based on the dead, but that Tonglen practice is based on people who are suffering right now – people known and unknown to you. Ultimately, the practice forces us into an insight of non-self-cherishing and giving great compassion and comfort to others. There are many choiceness realties in concentrating, accepting, exchanging and transforming the suffering of others.

First, we become aware of our breath. Begin by using your imagination as if breathing IN dark, heavy, thick, hot, smoky breath and breathing OUT light, floating, smooth, cool, clear breath. Practice this for a few very slow breaths.
Then focus your attention and empathy on known and unknown people who you know are suffering right now in this present moment. Be specific in each breathing sequences – a few minutes each. You may wish to begin with a person close to you, a person who is now suffering. After practicing a while with a person you are close to, you may want to turn your accepting (taking and giving) to other people, perhaps even people you do not know but understand are suffering right now.
Here you practice radically accepting another person’s suffering and pain as your own, and not defending into avoidance or suppression. The practice enhances the belief that we are all inter-dependent, not separate selves of independent origination.
Add more detail to your imagination by having a strong focus on what their suffering FEELS like. Do not block it. Continue to take it in on your in-breaths. Yes, you are willingly taking in the painful suffering of others. On your out-breaths, do your best to PUSH OUT compassion, feelings of love and caring, your compassionate intelligence, and soft heartedness to the same people. Allow your soft, caring, loving human heart to do the work. Taking in pain and suffering, and giving out compassion, caring, concern and love. You may even decide to send out some of your personal joy and happiness.
As a more intensive practice, you may wish to do what Chogyam Trungpa suggested – along with breathing in and out, imagine taking and giving using every pore in your body. This more intense body practice may be beyond your capacity if you are new to Tonglen.
If at any time you find this practice too strong emotionally for you, it is quite acceptable to stop doing it. Simply shift to loving kindness, etc.
End with a brief loving kindness meditation for yourself.

By Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont

Author of Mindful Happiness

CLICK HERE or any image blow to Order

Human Needs and Spiritual Experience and the Need for Supportive Rituals From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont Recently the Human Givens Blog in the United Kingdom presented a post about human needs. I will paraphrase their information as well as information from other sources for Mindful Happiness. Having such […]

Mindfulness-Based Emotion Regulation The following emotional regulation practices (also called emotional balance skills) have been supported by over 2500 years of mindfulness training and current psychological research on human emotions. These practices/skills are to be practiced before they are needed, and directly applied when they are needed. Here is the list. 1) Practice noticing and […]

Happiness #5 – Last Post on Characteristics This will be my last post for a while on the important topic of happiness. Here I will hit a few highlights about simple joy and lasting inner experiences of true happiness. Simple Joy – We experience simple joy in simple experiences, small sometimes subtle events in our […]

Self-Reality Checks Are Needed in Your Mindful Clinical Practice It is highly important for helpers working in the co-occurring conditions field to become keenly aware of their own realities in practice and life that impact clinical effectiveness. Below I have listed four areas that show up in clinical surveys and added four more that I […]

Effective Clinical Supervision Perhaps other than the mental health status of the therapist and her/his ethical clinical skills, there is no more important variable in successful clinical work than effective CLINICAL supervision. I emphasize “clinical’ because in today’s bureaucratic systems, so much supervision tends to be about required procedures like utilization level, reporting requirements, and documentation for services […]

Very “SAD” Facts about the Addictions Field A recent issue of the Addictions Professional presented very disturbing news about how clinicians in the field are doing. NOT WELL! Addictions clinicians treat people with addictions but mainly people with co-occurring disorders – addictions with trauma, depression, anxiety and/or eating disorders. Often there is also a co-occurring medical […]

A Practice To Help Prevent Alzheimer Disease Kirtan Kriya meditation is part of the ancient Kundalini yoga tradition. Current clinical research dealing with prevention of Alzheimer disease supports its use in medical meditation. As G. Harrison (The Beatles fame) noted: As you move attention beyond yourself, you may find peace of mind is there. Sanskrit root […]

Using Meditation, Yoga and Breathing… You can Anchor your Choice Making A key outcome of serious practice is that you now reduce auto-pilot reactivity to people, places, things, emotions, sensations, craving, and memories and at the same time notice your mind CAN BE in charge of your brain-body reactions. Yes, regular daily mindfulness practice allows […]

Grief, Mourning, and Traditional Chinese Medicine Based on the Buddhist reality of impermanence – we all will someday die; it is also quite true that we all will suffer from loss, grief, and mourning when others we care about die. The typical stages in this process are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. There are […]

The True Nature of Phenomena Here I will present common steps in the process of vipassana meditation. My presentation will end with a brief discussion of nirvana (enlightenment). 1) It will be helpful not to have strong conceptual intention about your goal of attaining insight. You will know when you have entered it via your […]

Mindful Loving Can Improve Relationships The 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), Pema Chodron, David Richo and many others have provided us with helpful advice about improving the quality of our significant relationships. The Dalai Lama in various writings reminds us that to have true compassion for others – including those we love – we must […]

Stress In America – How to Deal with it Effectively The American Psychological Association just released the results of its annual stress survey for 2014. This comprehensive study of stress in America has some serious implications for our health and happiness. Although self-reported stress levels in many categories are lower than in 2013, the overall […]

Core Elements in Clinical Supervision In addition to what supervisors bring into group supervision and clinical training, the list below will be used for discussion about YOUR supervisory role. The order of content below is generally random. The content noted applies to clinical supervision; it could also apply to doing effective therapy. The skills and […]

Vipassana Meditation – Emptiness One of the great insights from regular, long-term vipassana practice is the experience of emptiness. The actual knowing of it by the experience of it. This is not your typical conceptual emptiness of the West; it is not total void, negative beings, or nihilistic pit, or suffering in endlessness. It is […]

Mindful Happiness: Joy is Within Reach – It is Up to You to Choose It! We all live in a very troubled world with lots of greed, hate, warfare, and danger. Many of us use distractions (addictions, cell phone habits, eating, gathering, games, etc.) to make it through the days. This is true! However, […]

Breathing Practices and Emptiness Here I will introduce you to five breathing practices, each one moving progressively closer and closer to emptiness/no-self experiences. Do your best to remain open in these practices. Notice the feel of your posture. Once comfortable notice your breath as it is. Relax and close your eyes if ok. Rest your […]

The Nine Bow Ritual for Those You Respect Deeply The Nine Bow Ritual is a simple practice of deep respect. Think of a person, living or not, for whom you have very strong positive feelings. If you select a person no longer living, you may be surprised at the emotional impact of this ritual. If […]

The Heart Sutra – Thich Nhat Hanh “Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha.” This ultimate mantra is one of the most important in Buddhism. Thich Nhat Hanh’s new translation of The Heart Sutra offers a great deal of enlightened, sometimes more advanced, information and process. Avalokitesvara and other great Bodhisattvas present important views of this […]

Mindfulness & Happiness – Tools In this post I will provide basic instructions for several mind-body practices that allow calm equanimity both at rest and in action. We will cover RAIN, RAINDROP, Cloud Journeying, Gratitude, Tapping, and other Body-Based practices. RAIN (Tara Brach) – This simple to use approach helps you to maintain a cognitive […]

Alternative to Buddhism as Religion – Simply put and Clearly Stated In case you become too serious about yourself in this life, note that there are reportedly 400 trillion subatomic vibrations every second. So be humble! And being humble is something I have had to do regarding my experience with Zen Buddhism as my […]