Taking the Leap Part 2

Like Larry Trapp, each of us has our own capacity for prejudice, and it's very common to justify it when it comes up. Our fixed ideas about "them" arise quickly, and this has again and again caused great suffering. This is a very old habit, a crippling habit, a universal response to feeling threatened. We can look at this habit with compa.s.sion and openness but not continue to reinforce and strengthen it. Instead, we can acknowledge the powerful energy of our fear, of our rage-the energy of anything at all that we may feel-as the natural movement of life, and become intimate with it, abide with it, without repressing, without acting out, without letting it destroy us or anyone else. In this way, anything we experience becomes the perfect opportunity for touching our basic goodness, the perfect support for remaining open and receptive to the dynamic energy of life. As radical as this idea might seem, I know it to be true that there is nothing that can occur that has to set off the chain reaction of shenpa. Anything we experience, no matter how challenging, can become an open pathway to awakening.

Sometimes in a really threatening situation there may not be a lot we can do or say to help anyone, but we can always train in staying present and not biting the hook. I received a letter from my friend Jarvis Masters, an inmate on death row, recently in which he told me that there are many times when the prison atmosphere is so violent that all he can do is not harm anybody and not get caught up in the seductive force of aggression. The stories don't always have a happy ending.

If you're in a profession where you're interacting with violent people, you know that it's not so easy to avoid getting hooked. But we could ask: "How can I regard the ones I don't agree with, with an open mind?" "How can I look deeper, listen deeper, than my fixed ideas?" or "How can I address the ones who are in a cycle of violence, the people who are hurting others, as living, feeling human beings just like me?" We know that if we approach anyone with our fixed preconceptions, with our minds and hearts already closed, then we'll never be able to communicate genuinely, and we can easily exacerbate the situation and promote more suffering.

Underlying hatred, underlying any cruel act or word, underlying all dehumanizing, there is always fear-the utter groundlessness of fear. This fear has a soft spot. It hasn't frozen yet into a solid position. However much we don't like it, fear doesn't have to give birth to aggression or the desire to harm ourselves or others. When we feel fear or anxiety or any groundless feeling, or when we realize that the fear is already hooking us into "I'm going to get even" or "I have to go back to my addiction to escape this," then we can regard the moment as neutral, a moment that can go either way. We are presented all the time with a choice. Do we return to old destructive habits or do we take whatever we're experiencing as an opportunity and support for having a fresh relations.h.i.+p with life?

Basic wakefulness, natural openness, is always available. This openness is not something that needs to be manufactured. When we pause, when we touch the energy of the moment, when we slow down and allow a gap, self-existing openness comes to us. It does not require a particular effort. It is available anytime. As Chogyam Trungpa once remarked, "Openness is like the wind. If you open your doors and windows, it is bound to come in."

The next time you're getting worked up, experiment with looking at the sky. Go to the window, if you have one in your home or office, and look up at the sky. I once read an interview with a man who said that during the Second World War, he survived internment in a j.a.panese concentration camp by looking at the sky and seeing the clouds still drifting there and the birds still flying there. This gave him trust that the goodness of life would go on despite the atrocities that he was witnessing.

Usually when we're all caught up, we're so engrossed in our storyline that we lose our perspective. The painful situation at home, in our job, in prison, in war, wherever we might find ourselves-when we're caught in the difficulty, our perspective usually becomes very narrow, microscopic even. We have the habit of automatically going inward. Taking a moment to look at the sky or taking a few seconds to abide with the fluid energy of life, can give us a bigger perspective-that the universe is vast, that we are a tiny dot in s.p.a.ce, that endless, beginningless s.p.a.ce is always available to us. Then we might understand that our predicament is just a moment in time, and that we have a choice to strengthen old habitual responses or to be free. Being open and receptive to whatever is happening is always more important than getting worked up and adding further aggression to the planet, adding further pollution to the atmosphere.

Whatever occurs is the right opportunity to s.h.i.+ft the basic tendency to get hooked, to get worked up, to close our minds and hearts. Whatever we perceive or feel or think is the perfect support for making a fundamental s.h.i.+ft toward openness. Natural openness has the power to give life meaning and to inspire us. With just a moment of recognition that the natural openness is here, gradually you realize that natural intelligence and natural warmth are present too. It's like opening a door to the vastness and timelessness and magic of the place in which you find yourself.

When you are waking up in the morning and you aren't even out of bed, even if where you are is frightening or perhaps so routine that it's boring or deadening, you could look out and take three conscious breaths. Just be where you are. When you are standing in a line waiting, just allow for a gap in your discursive mind. You can look at your hands and breathe, you can look out the window or down the street or up at the sky. It doesn't matter if you look out or if you give your full attention to a detail. You can let the experience be a contrast to being all caught up, let it be like popping a bubble, a moment in time, and then you just go on.

When you meditate, every time you realize that you are thinking and you let the thoughts go, that openness is available. Chogyam Trungpa called it being "free from fixed mind." Every time the breath goes out into s.p.a.ce, that openness is available. In any moment you could put your full attention on the immediacy of your experience, you could look at the floor or the ceiling, or just feel your bottom sitting on the chair. Do you see what I mean? You can just be here. Instead of being not here, instead of being caught up, absorbed in thinking, planning, worrying-caught in the coc.o.o.n where you're cut off from your sense perceptions, cut off from the sounds and the sights, cut off from the power and magic of the moment-instead of that you could choose to pause. When you go out for a walk in the country, in the city, anywhere at all, just stop now and then. Punctuate your life with these moments.

In modern life, it's so easy to get consumed, particularly by computers and TVs and cell phones. They have a way of hypnotizing us. As long as we are on automatic pilot, just run around by our thoughts and emotions, we'll feel overwhelmed. It doesn't make much difference whether we're at a peaceful meditation center or in the busiest, most caught-up place in the world. In any setting, we can allow a gap and let natural openness come to us. Over and over and over, we can allow the s.p.a.ce to realize where we are, to realize how vast our mind is. Find a way to slow down. Find a way to relax your mind and do it often, very, very often, throughout the day, not just when you are hooked but all the time.

The crucial point is that we can relate with our life just as it is right now, not later when things improve. We can always connect with the openness of our minds. We can use our days to wake up rather than go back to sleep. Give this approach a try. Make a commitment to pausing throughout the day, and do that whenever you can. Allow time for your perception to s.h.i.+ft. Allow time to experience the natural energy of life as it is manifesting right now. This can bring dramatic changes in your personal life, and if you are worried about the state of the world, this is a way that you can use every moment to help s.h.i.+ft the global climate of aggression toward peace.

9.

THE I IMPORTANCE OF P PAIN.

Before we can know what natural warmth really is, often we must experience loss. We go along for years moving through our days, propelled by habit, taking life pretty much for granted. Then we or someone dear to us has an accident or gets seriously ill, and it's as if blinders have been removed from our eyes. We see the meaninglessness of so much of what we do and the emptiness of so much we cling to.

When my mother died and I was asked to go through her personal belongings, this awareness. .h.i.t me hard. She had kept boxes of papers and trinkets that she treasured, things that she held on to through her many moves to smaller and smaller accommodations. They had represented security and comfort for her, and she had been unable to let them go. Now they were just boxes of stuff, things that held no meaning and represented no comfort or security to anyone. For me these were just empty objects, yet she had clung to them. Seeing this made me sad, and also thoughtful. After that I could never look at my own treasured objects in the same way. I had seen that things themselves are just what they are, neither precious nor worthless, and that all the labels, all our views and opinions about them, are arbitrary.

This was an experience of uncovering basic warmth. The loss of my mother and the pain of seeing so clearly how we impose judgments and values, prejudices, likes and dislikes, onto the world, made me feel great compa.s.sion for our shared human predicament. I remember explaining to myself that the whole world consisted of people just like me who were making much ado about nothing and suffering from it tremendously.

When my second marriage fell apart, I tasted the rawness of grief, the utter groundlessness of sorrow, and all the protective s.h.i.+elds I had always managed to keep in place fell to pieces. To my surprise, along with the pain, I also felt an uncontrived tenderness for other people. I remember the complete openness and gentleness I felt for those I met briefly in the post office or at the grocery store. I found myself approaching the people I encountered as just like me-fully alive, fully capable of meanness and kindness, of stumbling and falling down and of standing up again. I'd never before experienced that much intimacy with unknown people. I could look into the eyes of store clerks and car mechanics, beggars and children, and feel our sameness. Somehow when my heart broke, the qualities of natural warmth, qualities like kindness and empathy and appreciation, just spontaneously emerged.

People say it was like that in New York City for a few weeks after September 11. When the world as they'd known it fell apart, a whole city full of people reached out to one another, took care of one another, and had no trouble looking into one another's eyes.

It is fairly common for crisis and pain to connect people with their capacity to love and care about one another. It is also common that this openness and compa.s.sion fades rather quickly, and that people then become afraid and far more guarded and closed than they ever were before. The question, then, is not only how to uncover our fundamental tenderness and warmth but also how to abide there with the fragile, often bittersweet vulnerability. How can we relax and open to the uncertainty of it?

The first time I met Dzigar Kongtrul, he spoke to me about the importance of pain. He had been living and teaching in North American for over ten years and had come to realize that his students took the teachings and practices he gave them at a superficial level until they experienced pain in a way they couldn't shake. The Buddhist teachings were just a pastime, something to dabble in or use for relaxation, but when their lives fell apart, the teachings and practices became as essential as food or medicine.

The natural warmth that emerges when we experience pain includes all the heart qualities: love, compa.s.sion, grat.i.tude, tenderness in any form. It also includes loneliness, sorrow, and the shakiness of fear. Before these vulnerable feelings harden, before the storylines kick in, these generally unwanted feelings are pregnant with kindness, with openness and caring. These feelings that we've become so accomplished at avoiding can soften us, can transform us. The openheartedness of natural warmth is sometimes pleasant, sometimes unpleasant-as "I want, I like" and as the opposite. The practice is to train in not automatically fleeing from uncomfortable tenderness when it arises. With time we can embrace it just as we would the comfortable tenderness of loving-kindness and genuine appreciation.

A person does something that brings up unwanted feelings, and what happens? Do we open or close? Usually we involuntarily shut down, yet without a storyline to escalate our discomfort we still have easy access to our genuine heart. Right at this point we can recognize that we are closing, allow a gap, and leave room for change to happen. In Jill Bolte Taylor's book My Stroke of Insight My Stroke of Insight, she points to scientific evidence showing that the life span of any particular emotion is only one and a half minutes. After that we have to revive the emotion and get it going again.

Our usual process is that we automatically do do revive it by feeding it with an internal conversation about how another person is the source of our discomfort. Maybe we strike out at them or at someone else-all because we don't want to go near the unpleasantness of what we're feeling. This is a very ancient habit. It allows our natural warmth to be so obscured that people like you and me, who have the capacity for empathy and understanding, get so clouded that we can harm each other. When we hate those who activate our fears or insecurities, those who bring up unwanted feelings, and see them as the sole cause of our discomfort, then we can dehumanize them, belittle them, and abuse them. revive it by feeding it with an internal conversation about how another person is the source of our discomfort. Maybe we strike out at them or at someone else-all because we don't want to go near the unpleasantness of what we're feeling. This is a very ancient habit. It allows our natural warmth to be so obscured that people like you and me, who have the capacity for empathy and understanding, get so clouded that we can harm each other. When we hate those who activate our fears or insecurities, those who bring up unwanted feelings, and see them as the sole cause of our discomfort, then we can dehumanize them, belittle them, and abuse them.

Understanding this, I've been highly motivated to make a practice of doing the opposite. I don't always succeed, but year by year I become more familiar and at home with dropping the storyline and trusting that I have the capacity to stay present and receptive to other beings. Suppose you and I spent the rest of our lives doing this? Suppose we spent some time every day bringing the unknown people that we see into focus, and actually taking an interest in them? We could look at their faces, notice their clothes, look at their hands. There are so many chances to do this, particularly if we live in a large town or in a city. There are panhandlers that we rush by because their predicament makes us uncomfortable, there are the mult.i.tudes of people we pa.s.s on streets and sit next to on buses and in waiting rooms. The relations.h.i.+p becomes more intimate when someone packs up our groceries or takes our blood pressure or comes to our house to fix a leaking pipe. Then there are the people who sit next to us on airplanes. Suppose you had been on one of the planes that went down on September 11. Your fellow pa.s.sengers would have been very important people in your life.

It can become a daily practice to humanize the people that we pa.s.s on the street. When I do this, unknown people become very real for me. They come into focus as living beings who have joys and sorrows just like mine, as people who have parents and neighbors and friends and enemies, just like me. I also begin to have a heightened awareness of my own fears and judgments and prejudices that pop up out of nowhere about these ordinary people that I've never even met. I've gained insight into my sameness with all these people, as well as insight into what obscures this understanding and causes me to feel separate. By increasing our awareness of our strength as well as our confusion, this practice uncovers natural warmth and brings us closer to the world around us.

When we go in the other direction, when we remain self-absorbed, when we are unconscious about what we are feeling and blindly bite the hook, we wind up with rigid judgments and fixed opinions that are throbbing with shenpa. This is a setup for closing down to anyone who threatens us. To take a common example, how do you feel about people who smoke? I haven't found too many people, either smokers or nonsmokers, who are shenpa-free on this topic. I was once in a restaurant in Boulder, Colorado, when a woman from Europe who didn't realize you couldn't smoke inside, lit up. The restaurant was noisy, bustling with conversation and laughter, and then she lit her cigarette. The sound of the match striking caused the whole place to stop. You could hear yourself breathe, and the righteous indignation in the room was palpable.

I don't think it would have gone over very well with the crowd if I had tried to point out that in many places in the world smoking is not viewed negatively and that their shenpa-filled value judgments, not this smoker, were the real cause of their discomfort.

When we see difficult circ.u.mstances as a chance to grow in bravery and wisdom, in patience and kindness, when we become more conscious of being hooked and we don't escalate it, then our personal distress can connect us with the discomfort and unhappiness of others. What we usually consider a problem becomes the source of empathy. Recently a man told me that he devotes his life to trying to help s.e.x offenders because he knows what it's like to be them. As a teenager he s.e.xually abused a little girl. Another example is a woman I met who said that as a child she had hated her brother so violently that she thought of ways to kill him every day. This now allows her to work compa.s.sionately with juveniles who are in prison for murder. She can work with them as her equals because she knows what it's like to stand in their shoes.

The Buddha taught that among the most predictable human sufferings are sickness and old age. Now that I'm in my seventies I understand this at a gut level. Recently I watched a movie about a mean-spirited seventy-five-year-old woman whose health was failing and whose family didn't like her. The only kindness in her life came from her devoted border collie. For the first time in my life I identified with the old lady rather than her children. This was a major s.h.i.+ft: a whole new world of understanding, a new area of sympathy and kindness, had suddenly been revealed to me.

This can be the value of our personal suffering. We can understand firsthand that we are all in the same boat and that the only thing that makes any sense is to care for one another.

When we feel dread, when we feel discomfort of any kind, it can connect us at the heart with all the other people feeling dread and discomfort. We can pause and touch into dread. We can touch the bitterness of rejection and the rawness of being slighted. Whether we are at home or in a public spot or caught in a traffic jam or walking into a movie, we can stop and look at the other people there and realize that in pain and in joy they are just like me. Just like me they don't want to feel physical pain or insecurity or rejection. Just like me they want to feel respected and physically comfortable.

When you touch your sorrow or fear, your anger or jealousy, you are touching everybody's jealousy, you are knowing everybody's fear or sorrow. You wake up in the middle of the night with an anxiety attack and when you can fully experience the taste and smell of it, you are sharing the anxiety and fear of all humanity and all animals as well. Instead of your distress becoming all about you, it can become your link with everyone all over the world who is in the same predicament. The stories are different, the causes are different, but the experience is the same. For each of us sorrow has exactly the same taste; for each of us rage and jealousy, envy and addictive craving have exactly the same taste. And so it is with grat.i.tude and kindness. There can be two zillion bowls of sugar, but they all have the same taste.

Whatever pleasure or discomfort, happiness or misery you are experiencing, you can look at other people and say to yourself, "Just like me they don't want to feel this kind of pain." Or, "Just like me they appreciate feeling this kind of contentment."

When things fall apart and we can't get the pieces back together, when we lose something dear to us, when the whole thing is just not working and we don't know what to do, this is the time when the natural warmth of tenderness, the warmth of empathy and kindness, are just waiting to be uncovered, just waiting to be embraced. This is our chance to come out of our self-protecting bubble and to realize that we are never alone. This is our chance to finally understand that wherever we go, everyone we meet is essentially just like us. Our own suffering, if we turn toward it, can open us to a loving relations.h.i.+p with the world.

10.

UNLIMITED F FRIENDLINESS.

I've often heard the Dalai Lama say that having compa.s.sion for oneself is the basis for developing compa.s.sion for others. Chogyam Trungpa also taught this when he spoke about how to genuinely help others, how to work for the benefit of others without the interference of our own agendas. He presented this as a three-step process. Step one is maitri maitri, a Sanskrit word meaning loving-kindness toward all beings. Here, however, as Chogyam Trungpa used the term, it means unlimited friendliness toward ourselves, with the clear implication that this leads naturally to unlimited friendliness toward others. Maitri Maitri also has the meaning of trusting oneself-trusting that we have what it takes to know ourselves thoroughly and completely without feeling hopeless, without turning against ourselves because of what we see. also has the meaning of trusting oneself-trusting that we have what it takes to know ourselves thoroughly and completely without feeling hopeless, without turning against ourselves because of what we see.

Step two in the journey toward genuinely helping others is communication from the heart. To the degree that we trust ourselves, we have no need to close down on others. They can evoke strong emotions in us but still we don't withdraw. Based on this ability to stay open, we arrive at step three, the difficult-to-come-by fruition: the ability to put others before ourselves and help them without expecting anything in return.

When we build a house, we start by creating a stable foundation. Just so, when we wish to benefit others, we start by developing warmth or friends.h.i.+p for ourselves. It's common, however, for people to have a distorted view of this friendliness and warmth. We'll say, for instance, that we need to take care of ourselves, but how many of us really know how to do this? When clinging to security and comfort and warding off pain become the focus of our lives, we don't end up feeling cared for and we certainly don't feel motivated to extend ourselves to others. We end up feeling more threatened or irritable, more unable to relax.

I've known many people who have spent years exercising daily, getting ma.s.sages, doing yoga, faithfully following one food or vitamin regimen after another, pursuing spiritual teachers and different styles of meditation, all in the name of taking care of themselves. Then something bad happens to them and all those years don't seem to have added up to the inner strength and kindness for themselves that they need to relate with what's happening. And they don't add up to being able to help other people or the environment. When taking care of ourselves is all about me, it never gets at the unshakable tenderness and confidence that we'll need when everything falls apart. When we start to develop maitri for ourselves, unconditional acceptance of ourselves, then we're really taking care of ourselves in a way that pays off. We feel more at home with our own bodies and minds and more at home in the world. As our kindness for ourselves grows, so does our kindness for other people.

The peace that we are looking for is not peace that crumbles as soon as there is difficulty or chaos. Whether we're seeking inner peace or global peace or a combination of the two, the way to experience it is to build on the foundation of unconditional openness to all that arises. Peace isn't an experience free of challenges, free of rough and smooth, it's an experience that's expansive enough to include all that arises without feeling threatened.

I sometimes wonder how I would respond in an emergency. I hear stories about people's bravery emerging in crises, but I've also heard some painful stories from people who weren't able to reach out to others in need because they were so afraid for themselves. We never really know which way it will go. So I ponder what would happen, for instance, if I were in a situation where there was no food but I had a bit of bread. Would I share it with the others who were starving? Would I keep it for myself? If I contemplate this question when I'm feeling the discomfort of even mild hunger, it makes the process more honest. The reality gets through to me that if I give away all my food, then the hunger I'm feeling won't be going away. Maybe another person will feel better, but for sure physically I will feel worse.

Sometimes the Dalai Lama suggests not eating one day a week or skipping a meal one day a week to briefly put ourselves in the shoes of those who are starving all over the world. In practicing this kind of solidarity myself, I have found that it can bring up panic and self-protectiveness. So the question is, what do we do with our distress? Does it open our heart or close it? When we're hungry, does our discomfort increase our empathy for hungry people and animals, or does it increase our fear of hunger and intensify our selfishness?

With contemplations like this we can be completely truthful about where we are but also aware of where we'd like to be next year or in five years, or where we'd like to be by the time we die. Maybe today I panic and can't give away even a crumb of my bread, but I don't have to sink into despair. We have the opportunity to lead our lives in such a way that year by year we'll be less afraid, less threatened, and more able to spontaneously help others without asking ourselves, "What's in this for me?"

A fifty-year-old woman told me her story. She had been in an airplane crash at the age of twenty-five. She was in such a panic rus.h.i.+ng to get out of the plane before it exploded, that she didn't stop to help anyone else, including, most painfully, a little boy who was tangled in his seat belt and couldn't move. She had been a practicing Buddhist for about five years when the accident happened; it was shattering to her to see how she had reacted. She was deeply ashamed of herself, and after the crash she sank into three hard years of depression. But ultimately, instead of her remorse and regret causing her to self-destruct, these very feelings opened her heart to other people. Not only did she become committed to her spiritual path in order to grow in her ability to help others, but she also became engaged in working with people in crisis. Her seeming failure is making her a far more courageous and compa.s.sionate woman.

Right before the Buddha attained enlightenment under the bodhi tree, he was tempted in every conceivable way. He was a.s.saulted by objects of l.u.s.t, objects of craving, objects of aggression, of fear, of all the variety of things that usually hook us and cause us to lose our balance. Part of his extraordinary accomplishment was that he stayed present, on the dot, without being seduced by anything that appeared. In traditional versions of the story, it's said that no matter what appeared, whether it was demons or soldiers with weapons or alluring women, he had no reaction to it at all. I've always thought, however, that perhaps the Buddha did did experience emotions during that long night, but recognized them as simply dynamic energy moving through. The feelings and sensations came up and pa.s.sed away, came up and pa.s.sed away. They didn't set off a chain reaction. This process is often depicted in paintings as weapons transforming into flowers-warriors shooting thousands of flaming arrows at the Buddha as he sits under the bodhi tree but the arrows becoming blossoms. That which can cause our destruction becomes a blessing in disguise when we let the energies arise and pa.s.s through us over and over again, without acting out. experience emotions during that long night, but recognized them as simply dynamic energy moving through. The feelings and sensations came up and pa.s.sed away, came up and pa.s.sed away. They didn't set off a chain reaction. This process is often depicted in paintings as weapons transforming into flowers-warriors shooting thousands of flaming arrows at the Buddha as he sits under the bodhi tree but the arrows becoming blossoms. That which can cause our destruction becomes a blessing in disguise when we let the energies arise and pa.s.s through us over and over again, without acting out.

A question that has intrigued me for years is this: how can we start exactly where we are, with all our entanglements, and still develop unconditional acceptance of ourselves instead of guilt and depression?

One of the most helpful methods I've found is the practice of compa.s.sionate abiding. This is a way of bringing warmth to unwanted feelings. It is a direct method for embracing our experience rather than rejecting it. So the next time you realize that you're hooked, you could experiment with this approach.

Contacting the experience of being hooked, you breathe in, allowing the feeling completely and opening to it. The in-breath can be deep and relaxed-anything that helps you to let the feeling be there, anything that helps you not push it away. Then, still abiding with the urge and edginess of feelings such as craving or aggression, as you breathe out you relax and give the feeling s.p.a.ce. The out-breath is not a way of sending the discomfort away but of ventilating it, of loosening the tension around it, of becoming aware of the s.p.a.ce in which the discomfort is occurring.

This practice helps us to develop maitri because we willingly touch parts of ourselves that we're not proud of. We touch feelings that we think we shouldn't be having-feelings of failure, of shame, of murderous rage; all those politically incorrect feelings like racial prejudice, disdain for people we consider ugly or inferior, s.e.xual addiction, and phobias. We contact whatever we're experiencing and go beyond liking or disliking by breathing in and opening. Then we breathe out and relax. We continue that for a few moments or for as long as we wish, synchronizing it with the breath. This process has a leaning-in quality. Breathing in and leaning in are very much the same. We touch the experience, feeling it in the body if that helps, and we breathe it in.

In the process of doing this, we are trans.m.u.ting hard, reactive, rejecting energy into basic warmth and openness. It sounds dramatic, but really it's very simple and direct. All we are doing is breathing in and experiencing what's happening, then breathing out as we continue to experience what's happening. It's a way of working with our negativity that appreciates that the negative energy per se is not the problem. Confusion only begins when we can't abide with the intensity of the energy and therefore spin off. Staying present with our own energy allows it to keep flowing and move on. Abiding with our own energy is the ultimate nonaggression, the ultimate maitri.

Compa.s.sionate abiding is a stand-alone practice, but it can also serve as a preliminary for doing the practice of tonglen tonglen, the practice of taking in and sending out. Tonglen is an ancient practice designed to short-circuit "all about me." Just as with compa.s.sionate abiding, the logic of the practice is that we start by breathing in and opening to feelings that threaten the survival of our self-importance. We breathe in feelings that generally we want to get rid of. On the out-breath of tonglen, we send out all that we find pleasurable and comfortable, meaningful and desirable. We send out all the feelings we usually grasp after and cling to for dear life.

Tonglen can begin very much like compa.s.sionate abiding. We breathe in anything we find painful and we send out relief, synchronizing this with the breath. Yet the emphasis with tonglen is always on relieving the suffering of others. As we breathe in discomfort, we might think, "May I feel this completely so that I and all other beings may be free of pain." As we breathe out relief, we might think, "May I send out this contentment completely so that all beings may feel relaxed and at home with themselves and with the world." In other words, tonglen goes beyond compa.s.sionate abiding because it is a practice that includes the suffering of other beings and the longing that this suffering could be removed.

Tonglen develops further as your courage to experience your own unwanted feelings grows. For instance, when you realize you're hooked, you breathe in with the understanding, even if it's only conceptual at first, that this experience is shared by every being and that you aspire to alleviate their suffering. As you breathe out, you send relief to everyone. Still, your direct experience, the experience you're tasting right now, is the basis for having any idea at all about what other beings go through. In this way tonglen is a heart practice, a gut-level practice, not a head practice or intellectual exercise.

It's common for parents of young children to spontaneously put their children first. When little ones are ill, mothers and fathers often have no problem at all wis.h.i.+ng they could take away the child's suffering; they would gladly breathe it in and take it away if they could, and they would gladly breathe out relief.

It's suggested to start tonglen with situations like that where it's fairly easy. The practice becomes more challenging when you start to do it for people you don't know, and almost impossible when you try to do it for people you don't like. You breathe in the suffering of a panhandler on the street and aren't sure you want to. And how willing are you to do more advanced tonglen where you breathe in the pain of someone you despise and send them relief? From our current vantage point, this can seem too much to ask, too overwhelming or too absurd.

The reason why tonglen practice can be so difficult is because we can't bear to feel the feelings that the street person or our nemesis bring up in us. This, of course, brings us back to compa.s.sionate abiding and making friends with ourselves. It has been precisely this process of doing tonglen, trying to stretch further and open my mind to a wider and wider range of people, that has helped me to see that without maitri I will always close down on other people when certain feelings are provoked.

The next time you have a chance, go outside and try to do tonglen for the first person you meet, breathing in their discomfort and sending out well-being and caring. If you're in a city, just stand still for a while and pay attention to anyone who catches your eye and do tonglen for them. You can begin by contacting any aversion or attraction or even a neutral uninterested feeling that they bring up in you, and breathe in, contacting that feeling much as you do with compa.s.sionate abiding but with the thought, "May both of us be able to feel feelings like this without it causing us to shut down to others." As you breathe out, send happiness and contentment to them. If you encounter an animal or person who is clearly in distress, pause and breathe in with the wish that they be free of their distress and send out relief to them. With the most advanced tonglen you breathe in with the wish that you could actually take on their distress so they could be free of it and you breathe out with the wish that you could give them all your comfort and ease. In other words you would literally be willing to stand in their shoes and have them stand in yours if it would help.

By trying this, we learn exactly where we are open and where we are closed. We learn quickly where we would do well to just practice abiding compa.s.sionately with our own confused feelings, before we try to work with other people, because right now our efforts would probably make a bigger mess. I know many people who want to be teachers, or feed the homeless, or start clinics, or try in some way to truly help others. Despite their generous intentions they don't always realize that if they plan to work closely with people, they may be in for a lot of shenpa. The people they hope to help will not always see them as saviors. In fact they will probably criticize them and give them a hard time. Teachers and helpers of all kinds will be of limited use if they are doing their work to build up their own egos. In fact, setting out to help others is a very quick way to pop the bubble of ego.

So, we start by making friends with our experience and developing warmth for our good old selves. Slowly, very slowly, gently, very gently, we let the stakes get higher as we touch in on more troubling feelings. This leads to trusting that we have the strength and good-heartedness to live in this precious world, despite its land mines, with dignity and kindness. With this kind of confidence, connecting with others comes more easily, because what is there to fear when we have stayed with ourselves through thick and thin? Other people can provoke anything in us and we don't need to defend ourselves by striking out or shutting down. Selfless help, helping others without an agenda, is the result of having helped ourselves. We feel loving toward ourselves and therefore we feel loving toward others. Over time all those we used to feel separate from become more and more melted into our heart.

EPILOGUE.

TAKING T THIS INTO THE W WORLD.

Deep down in the human spirit there is a reservoir of courage. It is always available, always waiting to be discovered.

In the last years of his life, Chogyam Trungpa taught unceasingly on the very real possibility of creating enlightened society-a society where individuals cultivated unconditional friendliness for themselves and unconditional caring for others. It is true that when we try to do either of these things, we find that it's not so easy. The resistance to accepting ourselves and to putting others' welfare first is surprisingly strong. Nevertheless, he spoke with enthusiasm and confidence about our remarkable capacity for bravery, for open-mindedness, for tenderness-our remarkable capacity to be spiritual warriors, fearless men and women who can help to heal the sorrows of the world.

The Buddhist master Shantideva set forth a path for training in spiritual warriors.h.i.+p. In his text The Way of the Bodhisattva The Way of the Bodhisattva, he explains how the bodhisattva or spiritual warrior begins the journey by looking honestly at the current state of his or her mind and emotions. The path of saving others from confusion starts with our willingness to accept ourselves without deception.

You would think that a training whose intention was to prepare us to benefit others would focus exclusively on other people's needs. But the majority of Shantideva's instructions entail working skillfully with our own blind spots. Until we do this, we are in the dark about how other people feel and what might soothe them. It only dawns on us slowly that the way sorrow and joy feel to me is the same way they feel to others. As Shantideva put it, since every single being on the earth feels insecurity and pain, just the way I do, then why do I keep putting the emphasis only on me?

This book has been an attempt to look closely at how we stay stuck in this kind of narrow, self-absorbed vision. It has also been an attempt to pa.s.s on some of what my teachers have taught me about how to get unhooked. The motivation for presenting this material, however, is not solely the wish that each of us might become happier. The primary intention is that we might follow the advice contained here in order to prepare ourselves to look beyond our own welfare and consider the great suffering of others and the fragile state of our world. As we change our own dysfunctional habits, we are simultaneously changing society. Our own awakening is intertwined with the awakening of enlightened society. If we can lose our personal appet.i.te for aggression and addiction, the whole planet will rejoice.

For the sake of all sentient beings, I hope that you will join the growing society of aspiring and full-fledged spiritual warriors who are emerging from every continent on the globe. May we never give up our genuine concern for the world. May our lives become a training ground for awakening our natural intelligence, openness, and warmth, and may this small text be of some support on the way. As Chogyam Trungpa joyfully proclaimed, "We can do it!"

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

I want to express my grat.i.tude to the women who helped me bring this book to fruition. My thanks go to Eden Steinberg for envisioning the book, to Glenna Olmsted and Angela Rose for their secretarial support, to Martha Boesing for her insightful comments, and especially to Sandy Boucher, my friend and editor, who so beautifully shaped the transcripts into their final form.

RELATED R READINGSBrach, Tara. Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha. New York: Bantam Books, 2003.

Chodron, Pema. No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2005.

Kongtrul, Dzigar. It's Up to You: The Practice of Self-Reflection on the Buddhist Path It's Up to You: The Practice of Self-Reflection on the Buddhist Path. Boston and London: Shambhala Publications, 2005.

---. Light Comes Through: Buddhist Teachings on Awakening to Our Natural Intelligence Light Comes Through: Buddhist Teachings on Awakening to Our Natural Intelligence. Boston and London: Shambhala Publications, 2008.

Masters, Jarvis Jay. Finding Freedom: Writings from Death Row Finding Freedom: Writings from Death Row. Junction City, Calif.: Padma Publis.h.i.+ng, 1997.

Nagler, Michael N. The Search for a Nonviolent Future The Search for a Nonviolent Future. Novato, Calif.: New World Library, 2004.

Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva The Way of the Bodhisattva. Translated by Padmakara Translation Group. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1997.

Trungpa, Chogyam. Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1984, 1988.

---. Great Eastern Sun: The Wisdom of Shambhala Great Eastern Sun: The Wisdom of Shambhala. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1999.

ABOUT THE A AUTHOR.

Pema Chodron is an American Buddhist nun in the lineage of Chogyam Trungpa, the renowned Tibetan meditation master. She is resident teacher at Gampo Abbey, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, the first Tibetan monastery in North America established for Westerners. She is the author of several books including the best-selling When Things Fall Apart When Things Fall Apart and and The Places That Scare You The Places That Scare You.

THE P PEMA C CHoDRoN F FOUNDATION.

All of the author's proceeds from the sale of this book go to The Pema Chodron Foundation. The Pema Chodron Foundation supports Pema's own monastery, Gampo Abbey, and the development of the monastic tradition in the West. Monastic life is based on training within a community of others who have committed themselves to the goal of awakening the dignity and wisdom that is the human inheritance of all.