Brief note: today I tried my first real tonglen meditation, guided (via an app)(I know, but it has some good teachers and the best bell sounds that I’ve found if I just want the timer). First, I read what Pema Chödrön had to say about it, and then I tried it.
You have to start by feeling all of your own three poisons (craving, aversion, indifference) and then releasing them and replacing them with compassion.
Things I crave:
- attention
- acclaim
- comfort
- routine
Things I hate/fear:
- uncertainty
- embarrassment
- stumbling/backtracking
- loneliness
Things I am indifferent to/ignorant of:
- history
- economics
- majority of my neighbors
- local politics
It is hard as hell to be compassionate in the face of that! What a shallow, self-centered (totally normal) existence! Anyway, after you provide yourself compassion for your own poisons, you cycle through some specific individuals. Chödrön stresses that to be effective, tonglen has to be specific. I don’t imagine the world merely suffering, I am to imagine all of the people who resent/reject their fathers for leaving when they were three in the hopes of great riches that never materialized. Hypothetically speaking, of course.
It was rough. It felt very superficial and impossible to be anything other than that. Which seems like a good place to hang out for a bit.