You can bring all of your unfinished karmic business right into tonglen practice. In fact, you should invite it in. Suppose that you are involved in a horrific relationship: every time you think of a particular person you feel furious. That is very useful for tonglen! Or perhaps you feel depressed. It was all you could do to get out of bed today. You're so depressed that you want to stay in bed for the rest of your life; you have considered hiding under your bed. This is very useful to tonglen practice. The specific fixation should be real, just like that.
You may be formally doing tonglen or just having your coffee, and here comes the object of your fury. You breathe that in. The idea is to develop sympathy for your own confusion. The technique is that you do not blame the object; you also don't blame yourself. Instead, there is just liberated fury---hot, dark, and heavy. Experience it as fully as you can.
Breathe the anger in; remove the object; stop thinking about him. In fact, he was just a useful catalyst. Now you own the anger completely. You drive all blames into yourself. It takes a lot of bravery, and it's extremely insulting to the ego. In fact, it destroys the whole mechanism of ego. So you breathe in.
Then, you breathe out sympathy, relaxation, and spaciousness. Instead of just a small, dark situation, you allow a lot of space for these feelings. Breathing out is like opening up your arms and just letting go. It's fresh air. Then you breathe the rage in again---the dark, heavy hotness of it. Then you breathe out, ventilating the whole thing, allowing a lot of space.
-Pema Chödrön
1 comment:
It's amazing how profound the very act of breathing can be.
By the way, though your white on black text is easy to read, when I look down at my keyboard after viewing it, I perceive dark lines across my vision. It takes a minute maybe for it to fully subside.
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