I’ve been reading a lot of Pema Chödrön lately. In case a gentle reader hasn’t been exposed, Pema is the American Buddhist nun, a foremost student of the Tibetian meditation master, Chögyam Trungpa and best selling writer of Buddhist aphorisms. In fact, I would say, she’s the Oscar Wilde of Buddhism. She’s so smart, she’s so witty, she rocks, she rolls, she gets the mot juste. And because of her, I have learned to practice, somewhat, the ingenious art of Tonglen, which basically means, breathe in what you most fear, most hate, have the strongest negative feelings about, breathe it in deeply and then exhale its opposite emotion as a way of distancing your thoughts from your behavior. And of course, your thoughts from your thoughts!
I practice Tonglen a whole lot with my darling husband who drives me absolutely nuts. And it often helps. Instead of saying, “You idiot, you boring lamebrain, you white male who is now repeating the story I have heard you tell eight thousand times,” I try if I can catch myself, to breathe in frustration, and to breathe out patience, humility, gratitude. I was having a minor spat with my son on the phone a few weeks ago and initiated the breathe in, how unappreciated I feel you ungrateful child, and breathe out gratitude, confidence. calmness……. And it worked with being a mother too! The thing with Tonglen is, it actually does put some air in between you and your very negative feelings, that is, if you can catch those negative feelings in the nick of time. Nip them thoughts in the bud as it were. Because I am the very new Jew Bu, the challenge is, to catch those negative feelings before they are out in the air waves, so to speak.
It isn’t easy.
Tonglen works in the dressing room when you’re trying on bathing suits, (breathe in your sadness about your body, breathe out joy into the department store for all those who suffer like you do). Tonglen works on the phone when your friend is boring you to distraction. It can even sometimes prevent an orgy of writer’s block, though not always, and not this morning. Breathe in your feelings of inadequacy, breathe out confidence!
Ideally says Sister Chödrön, if you see in the distance a man beating a horse, you can practice Tonglen by breathing in how horrified, how frightened you are by this spectacle. Breathe in your sorrow for the horse, and kinship and pity for the man who is clearly not able to control himself. And breathe out loving kindness into the world.
Why not go over and beat the man up? Report him to the PETA? Or just shoot him?
I would love to ask Pema, are we meant to breathe in our pity for the children who are detained at the border, separated from their parents, and breathe out loving kindness to 45 and his pack of merry white men?
That’s my universal problem with Tonglen. It works in minor disputes, on the personal and perhaps even on the familial and community level. But it sucks with things like children separated from their parents by a brutal regime. It doesn’t work on the Holocaust, Rwanda, Darfur, Congo, or the pogroms of Europe that sent my ancestors here to America. Nor does it work with the Chinese Exclusion Law or Jim Crow. Or lots of other epic horrors I can think of.
But it works with my husband, and it works in the dressing room of the department store…
As much as I admire, Sister Chödrön, I don’t think I would have liked to have her as my mother. Or my best friend, or even my shrink. Though my shrink is the one who turned me onto Chödrön.
How infuriating it would be to be in a relationship with someone so enlightened. Someone whose goat you couldn’t get. Someone you could not behave like an infant with. Someone whose wisdom you could not escape.
Still, I love Pema, and every little bit of her wisdom helps in the small, entitled, silly little life I call my own.
“Deeping Tonglen….
In Tonglen, after genuinely connecting with the pain and your ability to open up and let go, then take the practice a step further and do it for all sentient beings. This is the key point about Tonglen: your own experience of pleasure and pain becomes the way that you recognize your kinship with all sentient beings. Practicing Tonglen is the way you can share in the joy and sorrow of everyone who’s ever lived everyone who is living now, and everyone who will ever live.” (Comfortable with Uncertainty, Shambala Press).
May all beings everywhere be happy and free from suffering!
Illustration by the fabulous Aimee Levy
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