Slogan #7
Sending and taking should be practiced alternately. These two should ride the breath
The Buddha used the analogy of the two wings of a bird to illustrate the Bodhicitta path—we need both the wings of compassion and wisdom to balance the heart and mind. Begin your practice today with the following mantra: Om Mani Padme Hum which roughly translates as “the union of compassion and wisdom leads to the pure exalted body, speech, and mind of enlightened beings.”
Slogan #7 focuses on the practical application of compassion training. Tonglen is Tibetan for “taking and sending” and is a hands-on practice of self-awareness, self-reflection, and self-regulation. Tonglen gives us the opportunity to turn things around even though we are hardwired for survival and not for compassion. We learn to make use of the mud in our life. A typical definition of compassion is to “suffer with; to feel and acknowledge our own pain or the pain of another.” The Lojong slogans and Tonglen practice ask us to take this movement of the heart one step further; compassion is also wishing others to be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. Suffering is part of the shared human experience and our interconnectivity is one of the most profound themes of these teachings.
Tonglen Practice #1: Become aware of breathing as an exchange: air from inside your body is being exchanged with air from the outside. The nature of this exchange is that it’s reciprocal and mutually sustaining. Feel your breath with your heart. Trust what is emerging. Be gentle and patient. Open your heart to your own sadness, love, pain, and compassion. Breathe in and breathe out. Acknowledge moments of challenge and recognize that everyone has them. Breath in for all the people who are similarly caught and send out healing, equanimity, patience, whatever bubbles up. Reverse the pattern to turn away or suppress but instead embrace what is difficult. Whatever pain you feel, take it in, wishing for all beings to be free of it. Whatever pleasure you feel, send it out to others. Breathe in resistance, betrayal, hopelessness, disappointment, and breathe out clarity, acceptance, love and compassion. This experience teaches us that our hearts and minds can hold a tremendous amount of challenge, pain, and suffering.
If we can practice Tonglen in the gap between action and reaction, then compassion training becomes the intervention that will change our habitual Fight/Flight/Freeze patterns. When we embody love, the hearts around us resonate with the same vibration. Breathe gently into the area of the heart; open to words, images, emotions. This practice is a method for connecting with suffering‐‐our own and the suffering of others. The process of tonglen – bringing to mind pain and difficulty, touching it and breathing it in and holding it in your heart is expansive and life-affirming. The love that you feel will help you to take better care of yourself and others.
Choose someone in your life that you care about. Focus on your connection to this person and your shared potential for healing; their compassion will be healing you too. Breathe in the wish to take away all their pain, fear, and hurt and as you breathe out, send whatever emotions would relieve them of their suffering. When you are anxious, angry, in reaction, or triggered, remember how relevant these slogans are for the particular conditions of your life right now. This is an intentional psychological practice that is not theoretical or abstract but instead, points to exactly who we are and what is happening to us. These slogans will interrupt the escalation of emotional reactivity and will teach you how to open when you want to close down and how to give when you want to hold back. We don't need to fear the grief and suffering of others. We don't need to run away from loss and uncertainty.
Journaling Prompts
Embrace the three types of learning: study (conceptual), contemplative (reflective), and experiential (lived experience and intuition) in developing compassion.
Contemplate the different words to describe life-force energy and your relationship to these traditions: Prana (Yoga); Chi (Chinese); Ki (Japanese); Lung (Tibetan); Psyche (Greek); Spirit (Christianity); and Ruach (Judaism).
Review Slogan #1 and Preliminary #4: counteract suffering by making a serious effort to develop compassion. 💗