Suffering and I are working on accepting eachother. Suffering wants me to face it when it presents itself to me and I want to ignore all suffering and act as if it never existed. I don't mind my personal suffering all that much, but I do mind when other people/living things suffer. Just seeing one of my dogs hold up their paw because she's in pain from getting a sticker caught in it sends me running from my dog, not to her, because it hurts me too much to see her in pain. Well, that's not working for me any longer and I'm ready to face suffering. Tonglen is my key.
Tonglen is what I've been using, quite frequently in fact, as a way to face suffering head on. When I first heard of tonglen, I thought of tongs (yes, the tongs used for cooking) and lend, as in lending a hand to someone. Once I found out what tonglen was, I started thinking of it as using tongs to offer my help to someone who was suffering either right next to me or from afar, where I wouldn't actually touch someone since I was using tongs. The things that my mind thinks of...
Anyway, tonglen is a method of breathing in someone's suffering (they can be right next to me or far away) and breathing out remedies for that suffering. For example, while I was walking outside, I noticed a woman on her cell phone crying. My heart hurt for her and I wanted to help, so I breathed in her pain. I thought to myself as I was breathing, I take in your pain and suffering, and then I breathed out, thinking, I replace your pain and suffering with resolution and peace. I don't know what she was crying about, but I felt that my positive thoughts would give her a little bit of positive energy to help her in her time of need.
I just finished reading When Things Falls Apart by Pema Chodron, and found out that I can use tonglen for a group of people. For example, I recently had a dear family friend pass away from cancer and I used tonglen for her entire family, even though I didn't know all of them. Death had always been a form of suffering that I tried to hide from. Instead of hiding from it this time, I breathed in thinking, I take in your pain, sadness, confusion, sorrow, and loss and I breathed out thinking, I give you peace, happiness from the memories you shared with her, and resolution. I envisioned my release of breath and thoughts going to every single one of her family members embracing them with a hug and giving them strength. Each and every thought is powerful.
In addition to using tonglen on a group of people, I also learned that I can use it for pain that I am suffering, and apply it to a group of people that may be experiencing the same thing. For example, I have six screws and a plate in my left knee from an accident that I had last year. It started hurting me yesterday, so I breathed in thinking, I take in my pain, frustration, and sadness for myself and for anybody else who may be experiencing the same thing, and I breathed out thinking, I replace it all with peace, understanding, and acceptance. My pain stopped and I was more accepting of the changes that I made to my life because of my left knee.
Tonglen has helped me face other people's suffering, instead of, running away from it. I don't look the other way at suffering any longer and I don't try to think of something else so I don't have to be exposed to their suffering. I use it when I watch the news, when I drive past a homeless man on the side of the freeway off ramp (I used to actually look away from the homeless people I saw, but now I use tonglen and actually look at them - I make eye contact with them), when I talk to someone who is suffering, etc. I even use tonglen to help build my compassion for people that I struggle getting along with. There are plenty of opportunities for me to apply tonglen and I am grateful to know about it. A couple years ago, I would have thought to myself, man, on man, I wish I would have known about this sooner, but now, when I learn about new concepts/ideas, I think to myself that I am grateful that I was ready to learn about this new thing. I believe that the Universe presents me with things that I'm ready to learn when I'm ready to learn them. I was ready to learn about tonglen. I wonder what I'm going to learn about next?
