<\/p>\n
A Combined Lojong\/Pranayama Practice:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n A Personal Reflection on Hard Times<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0[Note:\u00a0This is a story of\u00a0some practices I found useful in a specific set of hard times and is offered here as simply that — a story about a hybrid practice from my experience in yoga and the mindfulness tradition.\u00a0\u00a0There are references to dharma sources to give a sense of how the practice was grounded, but without any thought of\u00a0originality of my own.\u00a0 These thoughts, as well as other entries to this site, are meant for a circle of practitioners and not as a general discussion vehicle; however, I would welcome comments at mw@meredithwwatts.com]<\/span><\/p>\n Introduction: A Mixed Tonglen\/Pranayama Practice<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Hard Times and Your Storehouse of Practice<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0One of Those Times (A personal story)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Resume of the Practice<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n What is the value of the practice for me, and for others?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Introduction: A Mixed Tonglen\/Pranayama Practice<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n This reflection discusses a simple practice that combines elements of lojong training, tonglen and pranayama to bring breath to someone who does not have enough of their own.\u00a0 It arose naturally from the near-fatal accident of someone whose breath was being supplied by elaborate machines in an intensive care unit.\u00a0 It has since been used other breath crises, including the last stages of ALS (Lou Gehrig\u2019s disease) when, eventually, the diaphragm muscles cease to function and the breath stops.<\/span><\/p>\n Because the practice was so personal, I hesitated for some time to set it down in writing.\u00a0 However, the two people who inspired it are now in safety \u2013 one recovered, and the other having left the body as peacefully as her condition (ALS) allowed.\u00a0 My reflections are still personal, but with a bit more distance now.\u00a0 I am sharing this with others now because the experience renewed my faith in the value of continued and varied practice, creating a storehouse of resources for complex times.\u00a0 It became as a tool for working in community to give direction and focus for our compassion for people who were in crisis and risked losing their breath; I have since generalized the technique a bit in my own practice, but its origins are still in sending and receiving the breath.\u00a0 Those who would like to skip the discursive part of this reflection might wish to go directly to the \u201cResume of the Practice\u201d below.<\/span><\/p>\n Hard Times and Your Storehouse of Practice<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Most yoga practitioners gain a familiarity with many practices — not just asanas but breathing and meditation techniques.\u00a0 Most do not practice them all the time or on a daily basis, but choose those techniques that have become habitual or fit the particular needs of the day.\u00a0 For teachers the practice is often dominated by the need to develop a particular sequence or set of practices to transmit to others.\u00a0 At other times, one\u2019s personal practice has more flexibility for incorporating elements that are directed to the practitioner\u2019s personal needs and growth.<\/span><\/p>\n Personal practice always nourishes one\u2019s teaching, and the reverse is of course true.\u00a0 But sometimes the personal practice (and the teaching one has received but perhaps not actively used) provides a resource that can be drawn upon.\u00a0 This storehouse of practices is somewhat like the passive vocabulary a language learner acquires, but does not always use.\u00a0 We all have a stored knowledge of practice that can be called upon \u2013 drawn from the passive interior of memory into the action and reflection.\u00a0 The depth and subtlety of the physical practitioner\u2019s experience is a storehouse of techniques, modifications, and adaptations of postures (asanas) — for example, to accommodate specific conditions, limitations, or transient states of mood or energy.\u00a0 The same is true for practices of the breath and meditation.<\/span><\/p>\n The practice of tonglen rests, for many of us, on the belief in the interconnectedness of all people, that there is a subtle exchange of energy and well-being that passes among them, and that directing your attention, generosity and compassion outside yourself are restorative. The simple elements of this breath practice are:<\/span><\/p>\n Pranayama<\/em>: The yoga practice of breath distribution and control, involving many techniques of inhalation, exhalation and retention.<\/span><\/p>\n Lojong<\/em>: An ancient Buddhist training by the sage Atisha, codified into maxims for the training of the mind. \u00a0\u00a0Some of the maxims embed the notion of \u201csending and receiving\u201d the breath — the link between pranayama and tonglen that helped connect several communities of not-entirely-well but breathing people with those whose breath might not stay.<\/span><\/p>\n Tonglen: Use of the breath for sending and receiving — breathing in the anxiety and fear of others, and breathing out peacefulness and equanimity.\u00a0 The emotions one feels are used to identify with the suffering of others and to employ one\u2019s empathy and compassion to understand others, identify with them, and reinforce your aspiration to alleviate suffering.<\/span><\/p>\n One of Those Hard Times (a personal story)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n The occasion for this reflection is the near-fatal accident of my son whose truck went off a road in the mountains of Colorado and left him for weeks in an intensive care unit.\u00a0 During much of this time he was unconscious and unable to breathe without artificial support<\/span><\/p>\n Since then I have used some variation of a tonglen\/pranayama practice for other intrusions of turmoil and mortality: the death of close friends, serious illness in the family, a second son who was injured in an accident, and other deeply intrusive emotional and physical events.\u00a0 The tonglen practice embraces the dark, painful sensations of anger and fear.\u00a0 It is often taught as a technique to prepare you for daily rough spots and provide a practice for dealing with the harder bumps in the road. \u00a0Most of all, I think, it is a practice to use your own suffering to understand the suffering of others, and to renew your aspiration to help reduce their pain.\u00a0 It aims to replace anxiety and self-pity with compassion.<\/span><\/p>\n The broader practice is lojong is found in the fifty-six maxims of classic mind training of the Tibetan tradition.\u00a0 The more specific, crisis-oriented practice is that of tonglen, the receiving of pain and the sending of compassion.\u00a0 A used here, tonglen is the immediate search for relief when there is an illness of the body or spirit, while lojong is the broader, life-style training;.<\/span><\/p>\n The first event of this practice occurred in the waiting room of an intensive care unit.\u00a0 I had arrived full of anxiety and had not yet seen my son.\u00a0 I only knew that he had survived driving off the side of a mountain — he had serious internal injuries and had been unconscious since the accident.\u00a0 There seemed to be no life-threatening injury to the head or central nervous system, but damage to the lungs and internal organs was severe.<\/span><\/p>\n What greeted me as I entered the ICU area in this unsettled state was a prayer meeting \u2013 an improvised mass \u2013 for a large Latino grouping of friends and relatives of someone who had been injured.\u00a0 A chaplain held a group prayer in the waiting room, blocking the entrance and filling the space.\u00a0 There was nothing to do but wait. \u00a0And join the mass though that was not my own spiritual tradition.<\/span><\/p>\n In this group there was a spirit of compassion and community that had not been part of my solitary and unsettled plane ride to the hospital.\u00a0 Without knowing who they were praying for, nor the condition of my son, I joined them \u2013 praying with them for their injured one and hoping to absorb their prayers for my son.\u00a0 This was the first, almost automatic, tonglen \u2013 breathing in the suffering of the community.\u00a0 I could identifying with them as people who had also come to the edge of fear by a threat to the life of someone they loved.\u00a0 Being with them helped me merge my suffering with that of others and to share a few moments of spiritual community.<\/span><\/p>\n Later in the week I had the support of relatives and friends who were able to be present.\u00a0 We were a mixed group that might not otherwise have been together, but in this crisis we were connected to each other through our common concern.\u00a0 Temporarily we were along the path together, even though our various egos, agendas, and differences were scattered about us, creating confusion and mental dispersion.\u00a0 Tonglen became a way to dispel (at least for myself) that dispersion of energies that competing egos and perspectives created.<\/span><\/p>\n On returning home I had several such support communities that were willing to share my suffering, and who wanted to share a spiritual offering to my son, whether or not he was aware.\u00a0 \u00a0I experienced the warmth and compassion that comes from gathering with others to send prayers (in whatever tradition, language, or religious idiom).\u00a0 Though I have often been unwittingly skeptical (or perhaps just unconcerned) with the efficacy of such practice, I began to take comfort from this belief by others.\u00a0 Even more, those people seemed to derive comfort and solidarity from expressing their compassion to each other and to me, even if they did not know my son.\u00a0 In a sense we might call this \u201ccommunity,\u201d though I especially like Thich Nhat Hanh\u2019s term \u201cinterbeing\u201d to describe this web of human interconnectedness.\u00a0 This is the giving up of our delusion that we are separate beings and embracing our interconnection and interdependency.<\/span><\/p>\n Weeks later I had another such experience and began slowly to develop the tonglen\/pranayama practice with a group.\u00a0 I had been working with seniors in a day care program for older Latinos that provides recreational activities and a variety of social services.\u00a0 They are not residents, but daily visitors to the center.\u00a0 For months we had been doing \u201cyoga\u201d together \u2013 or at least a yoga-derived movement practice that was based on a casual assortment of center\u2019s chairs and a few simple props that I could bring with me.\u00a0 Those who could stand would do Trikonasana (triangle) and Warrior II with me, and some could do variations of Utkasana, half-Utthanasana and a few other poses that could be done with chair support.\u00a0 Some suffered dementia or Alzheimer\u2019s in addition to their physical limitations, but even where some might not remember me exactly from week to week, they seemed to retain some muscle memory of the postura de tri\u00e1ngulo, guerrero II, and silla (Utkatasana) we did together.<\/span><\/p>\n This is a population of people who were mostly migrants to the city — a history dating back at least a century to the efforts of tanneries and other industries in the area to bring in new labor.\u00a0 Their lives had been filled with hard work that was too often not supported with good health care.\u00a0 Their senior day care program now gave them a space, a community, temporary care-givers, and activities.\u00a0 There were wide variations in mobility, memory, speech, clarity, and serenity.\u00a0 At least one had no legs below the knee, another had no body below the pelvis.\u00a0 It was the most challenging \u201cyoga\u201d class I have ever taught, but this group was familiar with crises of the sort I had in my heart.\u00a0 And I found in them an astonishing ability to see the suffering of others and a great capacity to share it, even when their own limitations seemed so pronounced.<\/span><\/p>\n When the group learned that I would miss some sessions to visit my son, they asked for details and requested that we have a moment of silence and prayer.\u00a0 We sat in silence together for a time.\u00a0 Many offered to send their prayers.\u00a0 One man, whose grasp on memory and language was not firm, seemed to have spent much of the class constructing this message to me \u2013 in the first English sentence I had ever heard from him\u201d \u201cI will pray all day for your son.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Who was I, then, not to let myself into the embrace of such compassion \u2013 and to send it to my son?\u00a0 This was yet another reminder of the old saying that you are rarely so strong that you cannot be helped, nor so weak that you cannot help others.<\/span><\/p>\n We did our first group tonglen\/pranayama practice together.\u00a0 The beginning was not hard because I had previously taught them some simple breath practices.\u00a0 Together now we combined those practices with their prayers to send our breath to my son.\u00a0 It is easy to imagine how the practice would have worked with a roomful of Buddhist or yoga practitioners who would already know, or immediately understand, tonglen.\u00a0 Meditating on the breath, sending and receiving, is a familiar practice.\u00a0 But this was a room of Spanish-speaking seniors of many different faiths.<\/span><\/p>\n Participants in my other classes were of even more diverse religious traditions \u2013 from liberal to conservative, from devout to skeptical.\u00a0 These were my community along the way.\u00a0\u00a0 Whatever the combination of faiths, we always decided that as a group we could make our breath a joint prayer.<\/span><\/p>\n Throughout this process there was a rich and diffuse outpouring of prayer and compassionate wishes to me and my son, but this was different: It was a mindful and deliberate mental, emotional and spiritual activity consciously directed toward the experience of compassion — receiving pain and suffering from others and sending them your compassion and love.\u00a0 It evolved into practice that was done in a group, a community.<\/span><\/p>\n Theology never became a problem.\u00a0 Many participants in any yoga class or meditation group might be skeptical or argumentative about the value of prayer, and many have doubts and arguments about the nature of a higher power.\u00a0 But tonglen does not need anything more than the belief in a compassionate community.\u00a0 It is not a belief or faith, but is instead a practice of identifying with the suffering of others and expressing the intention to feel, share, and alleviate that suffering.\u00a0 It is an identification with the universality of suffering and a willingness to meet it with the universality of compassion and generosity.<\/span><\/p>\n This meeting of faiths (and skepticism) is reminiscent of the lojong maxim that \u201cAll dharmas are one,\u201d rendered more simply by Surya Lama Das as \u201cAll teachings are in agreement.\u201d \u00a0In spite of whatever differences in doctrine and spiritual tradition we had as a group, most agreed in the value of some form of prayer or \u201csending light\u201d of compassion, faith, hope, optimism, generosity, and loving-kindness.\u00a0 From this tonglen\/pranayama practice we were put on the prayer list of conservative evangelical, Catholic churches, several Jewish congregations, and a mixed Lutheran congregation of Latinos, Hmong and various Asian and other ethnicities in the city\u2019s neighborhoods.\u00a0 In this case, at least, \u201call teachings were in agreement\u201d about faith, compassion and the power of community.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The Practice<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n In thinking through this practice I drew heavily on Pema Ch\u00f6dr\u00f6n (Chapter 6 in Start where you are) Boston: Shambala, 2001. The key sayings or slogans are:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSending and taking should be practiced alternately\/These two should ride the breath\u201d \u00a0\u201cBegin the sequence of sending and taking with yourself\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Ch\u00f6dr\u00f6n Points out that \u201cwhat you do for yourself, you\u2019re doing for others, and what you do for others, you\u2019re doing for yourself, \u201d and that \u00a0\u201cWhen anything is painful or undesirable\u2026breathe it in\u2026breath [feelings and emotions] in and connect with what all humans feel\u201d (p. 36).\u00a0 She continues by saying that if you \u201cbreath it out, you give it away, you send it to everyone else.\u201d\u00a0 This can be the case for many emotions \u2013 she refers mostly to positive ones here \u2013 and counseled sending positive energy to others with the outbreath.\u00a0 In my own practice I have included a conscious focus on sending the breath itself to one who lacks it.<\/span><\/p>\n The idea is to visualize the suffering of others on the inbreath and give peace and happiness on the outbreath \u2013 spiritually affirming the desire to send them the breath they need.\u00a0 As a crisis practice, it is directed to a particular person and might be called \u201crelative bodhchitta\u201d — directed to specific suffering; \u201cabsolute bodhichitta\u201d would be the intention of such a practice directed at the general suffering of all beings (Lokah samastha\u00a0 sukhino bhavantu).\u00a0 The key, these teachers say, is the ability to be present for suffering \u2013 not denying, but confronting, accepting and \u201cdigesting ours.\u201d It is not an abstract notion, but a technique to bridge a hard, unpredictable situation with some equanimity and compassion.<\/span><\/p>\n The actual practice, as it evolved, looked like this:<\/span><\/p>\n Finding position<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n [ NOTE: This sitting posture than is more typical of pranayama than of some meditation traditions.\u00a0 For one, it places more emphasis on the lift and opening of the chest, the use of the shoulder blades to support the chest opening, and its greater use of thoracic breathing than the more abdominal meditative techniques. It is important for a more vigorous pranayama component, but not necessarily for the tonglen\/sending-receiving practice itself.\u00a0 Of course, a softer abdominal \u201cbelly breath\u201d may be substituted for the more vigorous abdominal\/thoracic form.]<\/span><\/p>\n In a chair (at least for this population, may also be seated in sukhasana (sitting cross-legged) or other yoga posture)<\/span><\/p>\n Legs perpendicular to floor, aware of all four corners of each foot (balanced on inner and outer metatarsal area, inner and outer heel)<\/span><\/p>\n Side ribs lifting, sternum lifting, outer shoulder tips slightly back, shoulder blades moving in to support life of chest, shoulders released downward to \u201cnormal\u201d height<\/span><\/p>\n Eyes closed softly<\/span><\/p>\n Relax muscles of face of throat, vocal chords, base of tongue, lower jaw)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Initial Centering<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n A few moments of centering and concentration on the breath<\/span><\/p>\n Ujayyi I (\u201chero\u2019s breath,\u201d calm, \u201cnormal\u201d but full inhalation and exhalation)<\/span><\/p>\n Focus on movement of breath in the torso, lungs<\/span><\/p>\n Calm the shoulders, allow the breath to lift the side and upper chest (alternatively, soft abdominal breathing)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Reflection\/Prayer (personal religious practice)<\/span><\/p>\n Maintaining posture and Ujayyi (or abdominal) breath (not straining with either)<\/span><\/p>\n Spend a few moments in your own tradition of prayer or reflection, acknowledging your own suffering and that of others.\u00a0 If you wish, ask for help (mercy, blessing) in your own tradition<\/span><\/p>\n [Note: this element was an important grounding element for those with a religious practice, but is also a moment of deepening reflection\/centering for those without prayer tradition)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Sending and receiving<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n (Stage 1)<\/span><\/p>\n Identify the suffering (in this case, the inability of the other to take a breath)<\/span><\/p>\n Inhale the suffering and anxiety of that person<\/span><\/p>\n Breath out fully, carrying that breath to the other<\/span><\/p>\n On the in- and outbreath, use some variation of the phrases\/gathas from the compassion practice, for example:<\/span><\/p>\n May (he\/she\/they be held in compassion.<\/span><\/p>\n May (he\/she\/they) be free of fear.<\/span><\/p>\n May (he\/she\/they) be free of harm.<\/span><\/p>\n May (he\/she\/they be safe.<\/span><\/p>\n On the inbreath, draw in the fear and suffering of the other, on the outbreath send compassion, peace, restfulness, fullness of breath, strength<\/span><\/p>\n (Stage 2)<\/span><\/p>\n Imagine now the sending and receiving of breath as breathing for the other, merging your breath with the one who is fighting for breath<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0Concluding the Practice\u2026<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n By giving thanks silently in your own tradition, and giving thanks (with the atmanjali mudra\/namaste position) for this community that shared its suffering and hope.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n What is Value of the Practice For Me, and For Others?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n My own practice does not qualify me to speak with any authority about the techniques, but I am hoping here to reflect on my own experience.\u00a0 I will have to rely on others for any authority in these issues of everyday dharma.<\/span><\/p>\n From my own experience, the practice directs attention away from the own \u201cego\u201d \u2013 the smaller self, and helps transform this attention into the aspiration to relieve the suffering of someone else.\u00a0 I found it to be a gift to have a practice that was relevant to the particular situation, but was derived from classic techniques for broadening broaden one\u2019s energy to transform suffering into compassion.\u00a0 This has stages: the first is the transforming of your own suffering into compassion for others, dealing with your own pain to understand that of others and to develop the intention to develop compassion toward them.\u00a0 There are hundreds of \u201cI\u201d statements about the pain of others that are really about myself \u2013 how it affects me, how stressed I am, how I can\u2019t feel better until they are better.\u00a0 All of this has validity, but the focus at this first stage remains on how I feel about what is happening to you, or to them.<\/span><\/p>\n The practice can shift this \u201cI\u201d center and begin bringing a compassionate awareness to your own pain and suffering, treating it as a part of you and helping digest those feelings (rather than being dominated and controlled by them).\u00a0 Breathing in that pain, darkness, heaviness; breathing out (to yourself) lightness, peacefulness, and generosity.\u00a0 Teachers recommend that you first make peace with yourself and absorb your pain into the larger spirit of your health, generosity and acceptance of yourself.\u00a0 As Surya Lama Das says, (p. 163) you can \u201cconsider yourself as having two parts.\u00a0 One part is loving and compassionate; the other needs love and compassion.\u00a0 Envision yourself being able to send love, care and acceptance back to your own being.\u201d (162-163)<\/span><\/p>\n The second step is to include another being that is suffering.\u00a0 If the practice is during \u201chard times,\u201d we have someone in mind whose suffering also causes us pain.\u00a0 If it is someone close to you, visualize that person, attempting to maintain your own balance.\u00a0 Usually you can become better at avoiding the dramatizing of your own feelings and anxieties about the situation; then you can maintain any composure you gained in the first step and avoid any \u201cI\u201d narratives that feed your fear or anxiety (e.g., \u201cWhat will I do if he dies.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cHow can I handle this?) These are important areas of darkness and anxiety, and they are dominating your mind and emotions, it may be better to stick with the first stage until there is some calm.\u00a0\u00a0 It is hard to develop a clear intention of healing for the other person if your focus is still on you.\u00a0 Working on that first seems to (eventually) help clarity of your intention toward the other person.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Looking Beyond the Crisis: Generalizing the Practice<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n I have been reflecting here on practice in a crisis \u2013 hard times for you and someone you care deeply about.\u00a0 Distinguished dharma teachers have\u00a0described the possibility of generalizing\u00a0the practice to some broader collective, or even to all sentient beings, as Surya Lama Das writes in Awakening the Buddha Within, \u201cAfter you have warmed your own heart with love, extend the circle of beings for whom you feel love and compassion (p. 163).\u201d\u00a0 He recommends a general practice imagines a series of concentric circles, with yourself in the center and others arranged in larger circles depending on how close they are to you.<\/span><\/p>\n It may be that the nature of the crisis may keep you from choosing the next broader \u00a0\u201ccircle\u201d of concern because that circle may be others involved in the situation though they may not be the next closest to your heart.\u00a0 They may be chosen for you \u2013 by the way they are affected by and involved in the crisis.\u00a0 Hard times may not bring out the best in everyone and old resentments, frictions, blaming and grudges may darken the situation.\u00a0 This can be challenging and it tempting, even natural, to place your own suffering, resentments and expectations above theirs.\u00a0 I found this also to be an important part of the practice.\u00a0 You may be in a circle of sufferers you did not choose, but you temporarily form a community \u2013 linked by the person about whom you are concerned.\u00a0 That is a practice of \u201cinterbeing\u201d with others, particularly when you do not ordinarily identify or sympathize with them.<\/span><\/p>\n Surya Lama Das (p. 156) states this in a more general admonition to \u201creflect on the kindness of everyone you meet \u2026Everyone you meet, both the wise and the foolish, has something to teach you.\u201d\u00a0 This includes those who you are in difficulty with and who arouse feelings of anger, jealousy and enmity (p. 156).\u00a0 Simply stated, you don\u2019t always get to pick the people with whom you are joined in coping with adversity; this is very often the case when you or someone you love is in crisis.\u00a0 You are not in this alone, but you can\u2019t pick who else is in the scene.\u00a0 Exclusion of those \u201cunworthy\u201d to share your suffering is no help.\u00a0 A helpful (but by no means easy) practice here is to reinforce the boddhisatva desire \u201cfor all sentient beings to be happy and free (Lokah samasta sukhino bhavantu). \u00a0The practice of tonglen offers a concrete to develop this aspiration — using your own pain to understand and relate to others.\u00a0 It also helps direct attention from your personal suffering of physical and emotional pain and see how it affects others.<\/span><\/p>\n It uses your recognition of that pain in yourself to identity with the universality of that pain for all like you who are suffering.\u00a0 In a crisis that universality of all suffering beings may again be too large and diffuse for your intention, but you can direct the practice to breathing in the pain of those who, like you, are in this situation.\u00a0 That may mean other family members and friends who are affected by the crisis.\u00a0 Whether or not you love them, or even like them, they are experiencing pain like yours.\u00a0 Don\u2019t try to minimize their pain by relativizing \u2013 for example, by saying \u201cShe doesn\u2019t love him the way I do,\u201d or \u201cNobody understands how I suffer as a parent.\u201d\u00a0 Of course no one else suffers exactly the way you do and your situation is not exactly like theirs, but some part of that suffering is universal and shared by all of you affected by the situation.\u00a0 Use the practice to identify with what is shared; you can deal with your differences later.\u00a0 In fact, you may make more progress dealing with those differences (even severe, intractable ones) if you first recognize and identify the commonality of the suffering you all experience.<\/span><\/p>\n Does it work?\u00a0 Well, what do you mean by work?\u00a0 The eminently practical Dalai Lama is\u00a0\u00a0reported to have said: \u201cWhether this meditation really helps others or not, it gives me peace of mind.\u00a0 Then I can be more effective and the benefit is immense.\u201d \u00a0Surya Lama Das devotes a chapter to the tonglen practice (pp. 161-165) — he describes it as a practice for \u201ctransforming the recalcitrant hardened heart into a heart softened by love and empathy\u2026\u201d and as a \u201cway of increasing one\u2019s capacity for unconditional love, generosity, and openness of heart\u201d (p. 161).\u00a0 Within this broad intention we can face the current crisis, perhaps not yet ready to include all sentient beings, but beginning with ourselves, the person(s) in danger, and the circle of others who share our concern (whether or not we share any other positive thing with them).\u00a0 Moving from tonglen on ourselves to tonglen for others is \u201cwhen you replace self-concern with a concern for others… \u201cdissolving the barriers between self and others by transforming self-centered attitudes.\u201d (p. 162).\u00a0 This means shifting as much of your attention as possible from how this situation affects you toward the person in greatest crisis and the others affected.\u00a0 This is a difficult practice, but my own experience with \u201csending and receiving,\u201d \u2013 specifically sending the breath \u2013 had benefits of bringing together a community far more than I could have imagined.\u00a0 Though there may be no way of knowing what benefit this loving practice can bring to those who are ill or injured, it can give the circle of sufferers peace of mind and help them be more skillful in dealing with themselves and others.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Combined Lojong\/Pranayama Practice: A Personal Reflection on Hard Times \u00a0[Note:\u00a0This is a story of\u00a0some practices I found useful in a specific set of hard times and is offered here as simply that — a story about a hybrid … Continue reading