Adapting the Tonglen for daily life

Introduction

Three Tonglen practices

Tonglen in daily life

Print this entire article

Sometimes when you bring the Tonglen practice to your daily encounters with suffering, you may find you still have a subtle hope or fear: a hope that the person will be grateful, or change, as a result of the practice, or a fear that you will experience his or her suffering. If this happens, then use one of the following methods to adjust yourself or adapt your practice:

Do the Tonglen mentally, as an aspiration: "May I be able to relieve the suffering of all beings; may I give my happiness to all beings."
Do the Tonglen for your own aversion to the other person's suffering
Focus on the Loving Kindness or the Self-Tonglen meditation.

The Tonglen practices should be approached as a training, so that as you gain familiarity with each part of the practice, you are able to engage in the next stage with greater ease and confidence. I have found that before applying Tonglen in everyday situations it is important to first spend some time doing the preliminary Tonglen practices in your daily meditation--Tonglen for an Uncomfortable Atmosphere and Self-Tonglen--so that you learn to extend a genuine acceptance and compassion toward your own suffering and even your fears.

Then train in doing Tonglen for Others as a meditation. With the increased confidence and familiarity this brings, you'll find that when you encounter suffering in your daily life, you are able to naturally do the "giving and receiving" practice of Tonglen with genuine love and fearlessness.

If you find you have difficulty extending compassion toward yourself, you can consider that, with each in-breath, you are taking in and transforming the suffering of all others who presently experience the same kind of illness, loss, pain or emotional distress as you. This may help you begin to accept your own painful circumstances with more awareness and compassion.

Finally, doing the Tonglen practice while we are ill or disabled is an extraordinary way of bringing meaning to our suffering, and it enables us to begin using each life experience as a preparation for our death. The Tonglen practice enables us to transcend our suffering by dedicating it to others, thus literally "forgetting ourselves" in the process.

Back to the introduction