One of the readers of this blog asked me if I practiced tonglen with the anger that I wrote about the other day. It's a good question. Unfortunately, the answer is no.
Now, most of you are asking just what the hell I'm talking about. That, too, is a good question.
Tonglen comes from the Tibetan lineage of Buddhism. The word means simply sending/taking. It's one of the simplest and most effective of thespiritual practices one can learn. It works like this: any time you have a feeling that we normally label as negative, breathe it in. Encourage it to fill your whole body, to the very tips of your fingers and toes. Let the anger or shame or remorse just fill you to the brim. Then, as you breathe out, give away all the goodness, peace, serenity, confidence, patience, and any other positive feeling you can think of.
It doesn't really seem like that big a deal, does it? But tonglen can be extremely freeing. I have written here before that the source of our suffering is not the experience of a negative event but our reaction to it. When we try to escape it, to push it away, we give it strength. Similarly, when we try to grasp on to a positive feeling or event, we diminish it because we shrink it to a size that can be grasped and this causes it to be much more ephemeral than it might be if we shared it freely. So, tonglen works counter to our impulses, asking us to freely take on all the darkness and give away all the light.
What happens, of course, it that we find that the darkness cannot harm us; when we invite it in, as in the Rumi poem I quoted in an earlier post, when we treat it as an honored guest, it will stay for as long as it must and then move on. And when we share the lightness, it stays and infuses our being, as well as that of those around us. This sounds like voodoo or something, but it's actually simple common sense. When we allow things to move through us without an impulse to control their movement, we are much more at peace. We are attracted to what it light and helpful, and it is attracted to us.
But the question really was, do I use it when I am angry. I know from experience that this can be very effective, but in the heat of the moment I tend to forget about it. For me it is progress to practice "the holy pause", that moment of hesitation between the flare of anger and the words coming out of my mouth or from my keyboard. At the very least I have avoided doing harm. The next step is to use that pause to take myself to a place where fear is not in charge and I can open my heart back up after the impulse to anger has closed it down. This stuff really works, folks. It can change your life.
Now, most of you are asking just what the hell I'm talking about. That, too, is a good question.
Tonglen comes from the Tibetan lineage of Buddhism. The word means simply sending/taking. It's one of the simplest and most effective of thespiritual practices one can learn. It works like this: any time you have a feeling that we normally label as negative, breathe it in. Encourage it to fill your whole body, to the very tips of your fingers and toes. Let the anger or shame or remorse just fill you to the brim. Then, as you breathe out, give away all the goodness, peace, serenity, confidence, patience, and any other positive feeling you can think of.
It doesn't really seem like that big a deal, does it? But tonglen can be extremely freeing. I have written here before that the source of our suffering is not the experience of a negative event but our reaction to it. When we try to escape it, to push it away, we give it strength. Similarly, when we try to grasp on to a positive feeling or event, we diminish it because we shrink it to a size that can be grasped and this causes it to be much more ephemeral than it might be if we shared it freely. So, tonglen works counter to our impulses, asking us to freely take on all the darkness and give away all the light.
What happens, of course, it that we find that the darkness cannot harm us; when we invite it in, as in the Rumi poem I quoted in an earlier post, when we treat it as an honored guest, it will stay for as long as it must and then move on. And when we share the lightness, it stays and infuses our being, as well as that of those around us. This sounds like voodoo or something, but it's actually simple common sense. When we allow things to move through us without an impulse to control their movement, we are much more at peace. We are attracted to what it light and helpful, and it is attracted to us.
But the question really was, do I use it when I am angry. I know from experience that this can be very effective, but in the heat of the moment I tend to forget about it. For me it is progress to practice "the holy pause", that moment of hesitation between the flare of anger and the words coming out of my mouth or from my keyboard. At the very least I have avoided doing harm. The next step is to use that pause to take myself to a place where fear is not in charge and I can open my heart back up after the impulse to anger has closed it down. This stuff really works, folks. It can change your life.
Just found you, glad I did...will continue to follow you. Off to an AA celebration, more later today
ReplyDeleteWow. Yoga = Tonglen. It's a small world. I see some reading & learning in my future.
ReplyDelete