Robina’s Blog
21 December, 2023
The seventh verse of the Eight Verses, I think, is the source of the practice called tonglen. It says, “I will give all my good things and my merit to others,” and then it says, “I will secretly take upon myself their suffering.” All the other verses lead up to this.
For some reason tonglen is very popular in the West, and I really don't understand this because it's so outrageous, so advanced. I think often we misunderstand it. We think it’s a healing practice – well, it is healing: healing for ourselves. It’s like putting atomic bombs under our self-centeredness; that's the point.
Tonglen means literally “giving, taking,” and there's a way of doing the practice formally on your cushion.
First you’d do the taking: you'd visualize a person in front of you – a person who is suffering – and then you would visualize at your heart a little rock, let’s say, which is your self-centeredness, your self-cherishing. When you breathe in, you imagine that you’re breathing into yourself, like yucky smoke, all of their suffering, all of their afflictions; you take it all off them.
It’s not as if you’re trying to literally get their suffering, their delusions. No! You’re imagining that if you could, you would take upon yourself all the suffering they’re suffering, all the anger, all the hurts, all the despair, and all the karma they’re creating for themselves. You’d rather have it than them! You imagine breathing it in off them, as if you’re taking it from them, breathing it in, happily taking it into yourself because you want them to be free of the suffering.
As I said, it’s not a practice to heal the other person. There are lots of healing techniques. You can do Medicine Buddha, for instance; you can do lots of practices to help a person heal their suffering. This is a really specific practice for oneself; to help us grow compassion and love.
You’re using this particular person, visualizing their suffering, their pain, and wanting them to be free of it. This is what compassion is: may you be free of suffering. That’s the meaning of compassion. But this is sort of an extra level of it, a bonus level of compassion. You’re saying, “Oh, no, look at that suffering!” – what they’re doing to themselves, as well as their pain. But then you say, “You know what? I would rather have it than them. I would rather have the suffering than them. I can handle it!” It’s very courageous!
Then you do the giving: when you breathe out, you visualize giving them, in the form of blissful white light, your happiness, your merit, all your goodness, all your virtue, all your good things. You would rather them have those than you – and that's the practice of love.
With the practice of compassion – wanting them to be free of suffering – you imagine taking the suffering upon yourself and smashing your self-cherishing. And then the practice of love is giving them everything that’s yours; you’d rather they have it than you.
It’s a really specific practice. You’re not just saying, “Oh, may they not suffer,” which is regular compassion; not just saying “Oh, may they be happy,” which is ordinary love. And tonglen is even more than what’s called “great compassion,” mahakaruna, or, if you like, “great love”: “What can I do to help?”
As I said, it’s like the bonus on top: “Well, you know what? I’d rather have the suffering than them.”
It’s a really intense practice. In a sense, it's got nothing to do with the other person. It's you using the other person as the grist for your mill to help you develop incredible compassion and incredible love.
And then, of course, having trained yourself to think this way, you’ll eventually act this way! That’s the point.
It’s very courageous, actually – that you would rather have the suffering than the other person, and you'd rather they have the happiness. Wow! If that doesn’t smash self-cherishing, I don’t know what would!