QUESTION
Dearest Robina,
I hope you are well, I am looking forward to the retreat with you.
My question: I need your opinion on instructions for the practice of tonglen: a teaching I read says we must start by feeling a warm feeling, so think of someone who has shown us a lot of love and kindness. For many of us it will be our mother, it said.
But my mother was very mean, she didn’t give us any care and I would like to know if we don’t have a nice mother who we can think of?
Finally, can you explain the practice of tonglen in order to train me to broaden my vision in this meditative practice, of the exchange of suffering and happiness?
Thanking you in advance for your valuable help.
Love,
C
ANSWER
Dearest C:
Tonglen is very specific: it’s a method for radically increasing our compassion.
Essentially —
1. We imagine in front of us a person who’s suffering.
2. When we breathe in, we imagine all their suffering coming into us and smashing our self-cherishing: we’d rather have the suffering than them. We’re so glad they’re free of suffering now.
This is the practice of “taking”: taking upon ourselves the suffering of the other. It’s the practice of compassion: may they not suffer!
3. When we breathe out, we breathe out all of our merits and good things and happiness and imagine they receive it: we’d rather they have the happiness than me. We’re so glad they are now happy.
This is the practice of “giving”: giving all your good things. It’s the practice of love: may they be happy!
That’s essentially the approach.
As for our mother being kind. I understand your mother did mean things to you. Nothing surprising: after all, she’s a normal human being just like the rest of us!
But we’re always shocked about it: we seem to assume that just because she’s my mother, she should be perfect!
Try to have compassion for her. Why? Because anyone who is unkind or even very harmful to others is clearly driven by their own delusions of attachment and anger and the rest.
Of course, we don’t like to think this way. We just want to see her bad qualities.
Changing our thinking in this way helps us see things differently — see her differently.
And it’s good to remind ourselves that we were born very specifically to that mother, so we have created the cause to have her, to be in that relationship. That’s a pretty big view: the view of karma.
And, of course, your being mad at her because she harmed you simply means you’re angry with her – how dare she harm me! That means you’re seeing her mainly through the lens of your own anger, which means you only see her faults, you can’t see any good qualities.
So another important thing to think about is to bring to mind the various things she must have done that in fact were kind, but which we forget about: for a start, she gave birth to you; she didn’t abort you. Wow! That’s pretty kind! She fed you, clothed you, looked after you, educated you.
In other words, slowly, slowly you will paint a different picture of your mother; you’ll see her through the lens of your kindness and compassion.
This is not easy, but it’s the practice.
Love,
Robina